Slept shittily and my day hasn’t been too great either. More proof there’s no God for if He really helped those that helped themselves, I wouldn’t have gotten the phone call I dreaded from my doctor’s office and figured I’d eventually get. The fact that the numbers still hadn’t been posted told me something was amiss, but the fact that I wasn’t called earlier in the week also told me nothing scary and dangerous was found either that needed to be addressed instantly. 

I had a bad feeling – and my intuition is rarely wrong – that I would be faced with a new issue now that the thyroid issue was resolved. It’s like I’ve been compensated for better finances with health issues, and I fear it’ll be one thing after another till the day I die, whenever that may be. 

Women’s intuition is pretty amazing. It also sucks that I can only be psychic these days when it’s in a bad way. Meaning, the dream I had of him getting a raise was correct. He just didn’t get as much as I dreamed he would. No win notices either, after dreaming about receiving one. 

It began when I went to bed just to wake up a few hours later with the hot flashes and racing heart from hell. Before this, I had a medication nightmare, which I haven’t had in a while. Something about Tom spilling pills that flew up into the air and landed in my mouth. I tried and tried but couldn’t spit them out. I had a bad feeling the dream was a sign that bad news was coming. 

Then the racy heart was on. Yeah, Fitbit said my heart spiked from 74 to 134. 

I got up to help cool my body down and took a lorazepam cuz I knew I’d need it to help calm me in order to fall back asleep. I even did some emotional tapping to help relax me further. 

As I was doing so, sure enough, there was a message from Dr. A’s nurse, Zaradhe Yach, to call her back. Too exhausted to deal with her at the moment, I called Tom and left him a message about it. He wasn’t able to answer at the time. 

Called the nurse when I got back up a few hours later and while my TSH score is still in the high-normal range, my LDL cholesterol was very high. They recommend a low dose of Lipitor which is supposed to be safest for those my age, but as they very well know, the trauma I went through with the levothyroxine has left me deathly terrified of medication in general. If my muscles seized up and killed me, would that really be better than a fatal heart attack or stroke? And just HOW at risk of a heart attack or stroke am I really? I wonder. The point is that after all I’ve gone through, I would question every single ache, pain and cramp I felt if I took it. If it was a case of being home-free after surviving it without problems for a week or two – maybe – but the muscle issue could occur at any time. My sister could get it right now and she’s been on statins for ages. 

You never really live in fear of what could happen until something actually does happen. Once traumatized there’s no getting back to where you were before. You can improve, but you don’t fully get back to your old self. 

She did point out that muscle issues from statins are very rare, and I appreciate that, but so is being born with one ear and having non-24-hour sleep/wake cycle. That’s why I didn’t call earlier, I told her. I slept all day. Still, I don’t think I have the guts to take the Lipitor and have those what-ifs hanging over my head. Annoying side effects are one thing. Terrifying ones you could never adapt to or survive are another. 

My TSH is 10 where they prefer 2, but 2 is like -10 for me since I’m one big hormonal mess right now and I have a rapid HR. 10 isn’t life-threatening, though, and my gland shouldn’t enlarge or anything like that. My endo said that as long as I’m not over 10, I’m safe. 

She first asked me how I was feeling and I told her that I was okay with the exception of some fatigue and dizziness, and that’s when I told her that I was more than likely suffering from perimenopause, and I mentioned the hot flashes, too. She said it would be no problem for Doc A to do blood work to determine my hormone and estrogen levels. They just didn’t want to miss anything they were unaware of that my body may be trying to fight. 

The reason she asked how I was feeling was due to an elevation in my white blood cell count. This is normal for me, though. Even in the '90s, my white blood cell count would always register as a little high. She said, “There’s a mild elevation in white cell blood count and eosinophils (one of the white blood cells that can elevate in conditions like allergies and asthma)." 

Well, I do have asthma and allergies, but they’ve been mostly under wraps since quitting smoking. I did tell her I had an asthma attack and had to use the inhaler once that was given to me in December. 

Here’s where it takes a new and somewhat scary twist. My red blood cell count is also a bit up there and I’m like, WTF? I know I shouldn’t rely too much on what I read online, but what I did research was a bit unnerving. Symptoms include fatigue, rapid HR and other things, and can be a sign of heart failure, sleep apnea and other things. 

I’m just sick of feeling shitty half the time! Even when I don’t have something terrifying, I’m tired of the hit-or-miss sleep, the hot flashes (thank God I don’t still live in Arizona), the fatigue, the racing heart. 

No matter what I do to try to help myself, nothing is ever good enough. I back off the cholesterol… my cholesterol is up. I exercise and try to watch the calories… I’m still fat. Why bother trying? 

Even right now as I write this, I feel like I’m on fire. My face feels flush as if I’d been in the sun all day, and of course my anxiety is up too, as I wonder if there could be things wrong with me more serious than I thought. I just want a break from all these fucking health issues I can never seem to escape! I totally want to throw in the towel and walk away from this shit, but if I turn away the symptoms will just tap me on the shoulder and make me turn around and face them. I can’t ignore these symptoms and I don’t want to feel this way. Yet I feel totally stuck. It’s either suffer the symptoms or suffer the side effects of the medications used to treat the symptoms. How fucked up is that? 

My blood sugar, kidney and liver function are great, though, so it isn’t all bad. Just not quite good enough.