I had a doctor’s appointment today. I love seeing my Internal Medicine doctor because she truly cares, and wants to help. Not that the others don’t, but she really seems to care, She has made it her mission to get to know me and understand what I am going through. As most people with any type of illness can tell you, finding a doctor like this is very rare. I have been lucky to have three of these doctors in my lifetime. One of them was pre-diagnosis, back in the early to mid-2000s. She actually moved from my hometown of The Dalles to a town about two hours away. I remained her patient and drove to see her each appointment. Luckily, she moved back to my hometown and I continued to see her until I moved away. Then I had a slew of doctors that just were prescription happy, and misdiagnosed most of my illnesses. At my worst, I didn’t have insurance, and was at the end of my rope with all the symptoms from an undiagnosed Wegener’s Granulomatosis. I just happened to pick a doctor that my new insurance covered, and was near my home. She was the doctor that referred me to the doctor that referred me to the doctor that diagnosed me. She helped manage my medicines from a local standpoint, since I had to go six hours to my specialist. She is a doctor I miss. However, my current doctor is one smart lady. She is the doctor that facilitates my medicines, my referrals, and really tries to help. I don’t feel like I’m just a patient. It’s nice. It also allows me to speak my mind and be at ease, which is so helpful when you face anxiety like I do.

Right now, I am dealing with a lot of pain and fatigue. We are trying to figure ways to manage it, without just adding more medications blindly. This is going to be a process, and require several referrals. I feel a bit overwhelmed because it feels like I am back at square one with Fibromyalgia. However, with Wegener’s being in a remission of sorts, that is a huge worry off of my plate. I am anxious to get in with the specialist. As usual, they didn’t have appointments right away. So now I need to find a way to cope with things how they are until I can get in to see them. My initial feeling is to just do what should be natural…eat well, get enough sleep, and exercise. Simple enough. However, when you are in so much pain and extremely fatigued all of that is nearly impossible. I think I cause myself extra grief by stressing myself out about I “should be” doing this and that. It’s very aggravating.

I know this blog didn’t help many, but it helped me to just write. J