At My Doctor's Office...

....yeah, they know me there. The nurse has a new greeting for me everytime she returns my phone calls...."Hey girl, it's Sara...how's it goin? Still havin that same thing goin on, huh?"...and it goes from there. I like how she no longer has to give the long identification as my doctor's nurse from the clinic and say she's returning my call about such and such and verify my date of birth and name spelling and need a 5 minute long speech about my history because....she knows me. She called me this morning and greeted me with the usual "Hey girl, it's Sara...." to come in for lab tomorrow where the medical assistant who takes blood will insert the needle into my arm too slowly (obviously causing pain....phlebotomy 101-the faster the entry, the less painful), fumble with several vacutainer tubes, push the cotton ball down on the needle BEFORE she pulls it out only to realize she skipped one and have to poke me again (don't get me wrong, I have no problem with blood draws...I taught a girl to take blood using my arm as the practice dummy and I watch every time and my pain tolerance is pretty high-the girl ripped the needle out of my arm when trying to change the tube with the tourniquet still on and it hurt...also got in trouble after surgery for not using the pain button on the IV like I was supposed to...it's just a pain to sit in there while she fumbles) and rip my vessels apart from the inside out. Anywho, my point with this description is that I will have to deal with all of this only to get answers I already know to questions that have been answered before and don't even need to be asked....ugh. They will tell me..."thyroid as a whole too low....T4, T3, TSH", "prolactin out of whack", "insulin too high....we will have to continue to keep our eyes open for diabetes", "cholesterol still a little too high even on meds", "fibrinogen....still the same....soo.....", so here is this Rx. Hopefully this time she will order a sonogram or something to check things out a little further....blood work will tell you a ton, but a picture is worth a thousand words....especially since my doc has known my full history since I started going to her, but she hasn't really acknowledged it. In other words, when I see her I always mention it and she brushes it off with some vague answers, vague solutions,vague suggestions, and so forth. Maybe tomorrow will be the day I am treated like a real patient with problems that matter even though I am not pregnant (by the doctor, that is...the nurse and MAs always treat me like I'm a real patient with real issues even though I'm not pregnant).