Health

Friday TMI

I have my annual checkup with the gyno today. Can you tell how excited I am?

My very first experience with a gynecologist was horrible. And guys, don’t worry - I’m not going to get specific about what goes on in the examining room. The biggest reason I didn’t go to a doctor for over a decade was this woman. Her bedside manner was atrocious. She put me on pills for a month and then suggested I see an endocrinologist, who also suggested pills but seemed in no way interested in helping.

At work one day a couple of years ago, as I was getting up the courage to get the ball rolling again, I mentioned by first gyno. Someone else there had once gone to see her. As she was waiting outside the exam room, she heard the doctor tell someone else “There’s too much fat down here. I can’t see.”

Wow. Wow. It was simultaneously great to know that I wasn’t crazy but horrifying to know that the doctor treats her patients like this.

Last year, I sucked it up and went to my mother’s doc. My appointment was on what would’ve been my grandmother’s 75th birthday, which made me strangely calm seeing as she’d begged me to go to a doctor prior to her death at 65, and a little exasperated with myself for having such a great memory of dates.

The bedside manner is like night and day. All of my paranoias and insecurities about what got me here were laid to rest by her basically saying “There’s nothing wrong with you that can’t be fixed. Go to this endocrinologist.” She prescribed my reproductive endo, and suggested I take Citrical with Vitamin D, walk, and do weight training. Two outta three aren’t bad, right?

At first, getting my hormonal issues under control was stressful - partly because office staff could be idiotic, and partly because I was projecting symptoms onto myself. It’s been several months; I’ve been on a regular dose of levothyroxine and HBC and things seem cool. I’ll have to make an appointment for a blood test within the month to see if my thyroid levels are cool, but, knock on wood, all is well and I shouldn’t have let that first gyno all those years ago make me fear doctors to the point that I didn’t get this taken care of way earlier.

So, this afternoon, I go for the annual well-woman. I am not looking forward to it, but at least I’m not dreading it. Hell, last year, I even made my mother come with me. Our little Diz is spreading her wings and venturing out into the world. (What the hell?)

Oh, and remember when I said I have this great memory of dates? I am pretty sure that today is the birthday of my ex. And he is certainly not someone I want to be thinking of today.

Tags: doctors, hormones, insecurity, thyroid

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