Stupid doctors... in Another Open Diary refugee

I think we need to find a new doctor… John’s appointment today was a complete and utter waste of time. Apparantly he was supposed to have his A1C done before he went (when? nobody said anything to us about it…) so all he got was a lecture on how he needs to exercise and lose a ton of weight and how he couldn’t possibly lose enough weight to control his diabetes without medication unless he had weight-loss surgery (never mind that he’s losing 2-5 pounds a week all by himself)… but at the same time the doctor doesn’t want him taking meloxicam or muscle relaxers because they’re bad for your heart and apparantly the doctor thinks we’re both heart attacks waiting to happen (the lecture included ‘it doesn’t matter what the tests said, you’re going to drop dead in the next five years’, your arteries are accumulating plaque and they just can’t see it)… argh. Went off to get the blood work done`and I bet the doctor will be surprised by the results… aside from his sugar, John hasn’t had a bad blood test in the ten years we’ve been married, and I’d be very surprised if anything’s changed now.

I quit meloxicam almost a week ago because the doctor was carrying on about how bad for me it was when I had my appointment, and I feel like crap. Surprisingly, my back is doing fine and I can walk okay apart from being very stiff. I haven’t had the ‘legs won’t move’ issue that I’ve had every other time I’ve tried to quit the anti-inflammatory, so I think the bulging discs in my lower back have eventually healed themselves! But the rest of me isn’t doing so great. My inflammation level is increasing daily and my hip feels like somebody’s sticking a knife in it tonight. My jaw is popping, clicking and doing weird things and making my left ear hurt every time I open my mouth, and I’ve had asthma for the last two days. Not sure if that is from general inflammation, because of the lousy weather, or because I ran out of prilosec on Tuesday and I had acid reflux Wednesday night. I got up and used the nebuliser immediately, but the damage was done. I’ll ride it out for another week, but at this immediate moment I’m NOT HAPPY… John’s got a referral to the rheumatologist and I’m not sure that I shouldn’t be going too… the doc asked if I wanted to go and I said no because I didn’t want to have to spend the money.

Now, on a good note… I want to go to the Hobe Sound Singing Christmas Tree this weekend… There were pics in the paper and it looks like a pretty big deal. And next weekend is the carol service at St Lukes, and Friday night is a concert at the planetarium that I’d love to go to. The only one of those events that costs money is the planetarium, and they’re all in the afternoon or early evening, so I won’t have to stay up late to go to them. I’m in the Christmas Spirit this year… it’s a quiet christmas, but I want to do some things together anyway.