A quick note–I hope I didn’t offend anyone, including Ms. Reddy, with yesterday’s bit of snarkiness. A Mississippi Delta blues song that, to me, totally puts women down, sung chirpy and perky and with an Australian accent–it just didn’t work out well for me.
Okay. Moving along!
I did, however, put my friend Neil’s music on last night before going to bed and I sat in front of the speakers, absorbing the notes in just a couple of favorite pieces before turning in, reveling in how good they sounded with my aids adjusted to the new situation. Planting something positive in my brain for future five a.m. half-awake brainstorm sessions. It worked.
I hate having to fill people in from scratch and watching them wince. But at least then she filled the doctor in for me.
He came in and got the details. He did a fair bit of wincing himself, while I wanted to tell him, it’s okay! But then, none of it was new news to me, and I deeply appreciated that what I’d gone through meant something to him. (And her.) I mattered. It showed in his face. Thank you, Dr. F. And Nurse M.
I handed him the UCSF results and watched his eyes as he looked it over. I told him that Dr. R knew steroids didn’t work on me, but there was no convincing the young doctors from Dr. R’s department working my case in his absence, who were sure that if you just threw enough steroids at that Crohn’s, it would tamp it down at last. 200 mg a day. (That is a breathtakingly high dose. Granted, they were trying to save my colon and my life. Details.)
His eyebrows raised. “Did it?”
“It did absolutely zero.”
He allowed as how being as laid up as I’d been had contributed, too, but he made the diagnosis definite. Osteoporosis. At 50. Walk, he said, good that you’ve started walking again, take lots of walks. Some of the loss is irreversible, but some you can do something about. And build that strength back up.
