I’m so nervous about tomorrow’s doctor’s appointment with my new primary that I may take a chill pill for the first time in about 3 weeks before bed. I’ve had anxiety coming and going all night that’s been more annoying than scary, but that I could still do without. It may help me sleep better, too. Don’t know if I’ll take one right before I see her or not. 

Yes, it’s nerve-wracking seeing a doctor I don’t know and have never seen before, but nothing’s got me more terrified than the thought of returning to thyroid medication of any kind. Or statins and anything else for that matter. Treatments, procedures and medications can be a lot scarier than the actual disease! 

If they find some new problem when I get around to having blood drawn, I will absolutely scream. I won’t have much of an update tomorrow, and whenever I do get around to doing an entry, it may be late in the evening. 

Just over 21k words for my NaNoWriMo story. I’m trying to get as far ahead on that as I can to make up for days I’ll be too busy to write. Sometimes I get bored with my story, but it does help me to keep my mind off of things to a degree. 

After tomorrow is when I make the big schedule flip in preparation for Andy. I joked with him earlier saying, “Just think, the next time you hear me bitch about having to stay up long hours to reverse my schedule it will be because of YOU!” LOL, at least it will be for a worthy cause. 

Wondering why I haven’t heard from Tammy about her MRI. Hopefully, she’ll leave me a message tomorrow. 

They weren’t kidding about the rain. It’s just now starting out there from what I can hear. We’re supposed to be in for a mix of rain and clouds tomorrow and a high of 64°. Kinda wish I could be in Hawaii or Florida till the spring. 

Later… 

My appointment is over! No more appointments this month – yes! It went pretty much as expected. Lots of paperwork to fill out being a first-timer and a little bit of a wait in the waiting room of about 10 minutes. Doctor A was very nice. Shorter than me too, which is something I don’t see very often. 

My BP was slightly high, but that was mostly because I was nervous. She felt the glands in my neck and my stomach as well. Didn’t take my temp or look in my eyes and ears, though. 

Even though I was hoping I could work with just her, she is going to refer me to an endocrinologist after all. The lady at the desk referred me to one that she sees and says is wonderful and will spend all day with you if that’s what you need, so I’ll probably give her a call at some point, and of course there’s lab work that needs to be done too, and an eventual ultrasound. 

I told her what happened after being on 75mcg of levothyroxine, and sure enough, she gave me a prescription to start at 25. This drug takes time to build up in the body and she doesn’t feel comfortable with me going without any medication at all and reminded me how it can raise cholesterol levels and put you at risk of a heart attack and all that. Hopefully, my cholesterol numbers will be at least a little lower since I’ve made a point of almost never having eggs, bacon, red meats, and other high-cholesterol foods. She also recommends what I already do – at least 30 minutes of exercise 5 days a week. For a while, I was at 3-5 days for 20 minutes because I was paranoid about elevating my heart too much and then having an anxiety attack on top of an already elevated pulse. 

The only problem is that technically the racing heart isn’t a “side effect” of the levothyroxine but what they want. They want to elevate your heart. That’s the whole point of taking it; to get your metabolism moving again. It was more than likely that my not being used to that effect was what spawned all the anxiety attacks. Still, be it from the medication or my own anxious self, I don’t ever want to experience anything as intense as I did for a while there. It wasn’t just annoying, it was scary. 

Doc C was right, though, about the levothyroxine not being as responsible for me going into freak-out mode as I first thought it was, and of course this was reinforced after I stopped taking it yet continued to have symptoms. I think the higher doses, however, do feed the anxiety a bit and that I’d be better not going over 50mcg. So I’m pretty sure it still had at least a little part in influencing it. 

Gonna miss Doc C big time!!! She was one of the kindest (and prettiest) docs I ever had. I let her know online why I had to cancel her, that it had nothing to do with her personally, and that I hoped to catch her at some point on Facebook (unless she responds telling me not to add her there). 

Doc A wants me to continue my counseling but not take the lorazepam unless it’s absolutely necessary. It’s probably going to be several months before I can feel comfortable enough with no anxiety medication here and there and without seeing Dana. I signed a release form so they can request my records from Sutter, and also a form that lets them test for drug abuse. Lorazepam is addicting and some people get carried away with it. Believe me, I don’t want to get dependent on the shit. It’s just for when it gets bad. Last night I took one for the first time in a few weeks because I was anxious over today’s appointment and knew I would have trouble sleeping if I didn’t. When I was actually at the doctor’s office I realized how silly it seemed to be all wound up last night since everyone was so nice, but sometimes we get nervous and we gotta do what we gotta do. 

They do have an online site, so we learned, just like Sutter had. I was glad to learn this. It makes things way more convenient. I’ll be setting that up later on. 

I’m not going to start the levothyroxine till a few days after Andy leaves when Tom will have 4 days off, so I don’t have to be alone. 

While I’m not at all looking forward to going back to medication, appointments, and all that shit, I just feel sooo much better now that I met my new primary and can know I’ve got the rest of the month off! Well, almost anyway. The only pressure on me now is flipping my schedule for Andy, but Tom says that will be “easy.” I hope he’s right because he said aiming it for this week’s appointments would be hard, but it wasn’t. Oh, I would’ve slept later if I could have, but I wasn’t drop-dead exhausted or anything like that. 

Just hugged and kissed Tom good night and now I want to go hug and kiss my rats. :)