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Jan. 26th, 2018 08:14 amI ended up not going to parent teacher conferences last night because I got home from my afternoon appointment and pretty much crashed. Scott got me some turkey before he left, and I was able to get more food after that because the turkey gave me a little energy.
Have a diagnosis and a treatment plan is actually helping me feel better about not doing all the things I normally would. Without the diagnosis, I wondered if I was just not trying hard enough. Without the treatment plan, I'd be telling myself that all of this stuff has to get done-- long term-- whether I'm sick or not and would have gone to the conferences, accepting the fact that I wouldn't be able to do anything much at all for the next 1-3 days.
I'm still getting test results from Saturday's blood draw trickling in. Yesterday, I got the ferritin which was still (barely) in 'normal' range but low enough to be a potential warning sign even without everything else.
Today I got another result for a hormone-- ACTH. Like the cortisol, it's just a little bit high. I don't know and haven't managed to find enough information about that whole system to know how much which numbers mean. There are some tests where being 1-5 units outside of the lab defined normal range still leaves you inside the normal range as defined by, say, the Mayo Clinic. There are also some where being a couple of units up or down doesn't actually change much. I don't like the look of the things that most commonly cause ACTH and cortisol to be high, so I'm hoping it's not going to turn out to be anything but my anxiety and my body/brain fighting the anemia.
But I'll be surprised if I don't end up with more testing on this one.
I took a cab to my appointment yesterday and then the bus home. The bus station was closer than anywhere I'd have wanted to go and buy food. There's a Starbucks right next to the office where I had my appointment, but I thought that coffee or tea wouldn't help. There's a diner about halfway between the office and the bus station, but I only generally go there when I have cash. Any of the other places I'm comfortable going (mostly knowing that there's food that won't make me sick) would have meant a longer walk than to the bus.
I can tell that I was very out of it, though. I got to the crosswalk by the station and glanced over to where the bus I needed usually waits. I didn't see any buses (there can be up to three in that part of the block). I had the walk light, so I did. Then I looked again and realized that there was, in fact a bus there. It couldn't have arrived between when I first looked and when I looked again because it would have had to pass through the crosswalk where I was.
If it had appeared from nowhere, I'm pretty sure the other people waiting for buses would have noticed, so my brain must have glitched.
I slept with the c-PAP last night to see what would happen. I didn't wake with a headache, not even one that went away quickly. But I did wake a few times during the night and end up feeling less rested than I expected. I'm going to keep trying, off and on, to see if addressing the anemia changes things with the c-PAP.
( To-do list )
Have a diagnosis and a treatment plan is actually helping me feel better about not doing all the things I normally would. Without the diagnosis, I wondered if I was just not trying hard enough. Without the treatment plan, I'd be telling myself that all of this stuff has to get done-- long term-- whether I'm sick or not and would have gone to the conferences, accepting the fact that I wouldn't be able to do anything much at all for the next 1-3 days.
I'm still getting test results from Saturday's blood draw trickling in. Yesterday, I got the ferritin which was still (barely) in 'normal' range but low enough to be a potential warning sign even without everything else.
Today I got another result for a hormone-- ACTH. Like the cortisol, it's just a little bit high. I don't know and haven't managed to find enough information about that whole system to know how much which numbers mean. There are some tests where being 1-5 units outside of the lab defined normal range still leaves you inside the normal range as defined by, say, the Mayo Clinic. There are also some where being a couple of units up or down doesn't actually change much. I don't like the look of the things that most commonly cause ACTH and cortisol to be high, so I'm hoping it's not going to turn out to be anything but my anxiety and my body/brain fighting the anemia.
But I'll be surprised if I don't end up with more testing on this one.
I took a cab to my appointment yesterday and then the bus home. The bus station was closer than anywhere I'd have wanted to go and buy food. There's a Starbucks right next to the office where I had my appointment, but I thought that coffee or tea wouldn't help. There's a diner about halfway between the office and the bus station, but I only generally go there when I have cash. Any of the other places I'm comfortable going (mostly knowing that there's food that won't make me sick) would have meant a longer walk than to the bus.
I can tell that I was very out of it, though. I got to the crosswalk by the station and glanced over to where the bus I needed usually waits. I didn't see any buses (there can be up to three in that part of the block). I had the walk light, so I did. Then I looked again and realized that there was, in fact a bus there. It couldn't have arrived between when I first looked and when I looked again because it would have had to pass through the crosswalk where I was.
If it had appeared from nowhere, I'm pretty sure the other people waiting for buses would have noticed, so my brain must have glitched.
I slept with the c-PAP last night to see what would happen. I didn't wake with a headache, not even one that went away quickly. But I did wake a few times during the night and end up feeling less rested than I expected. I'm going to keep trying, off and on, to see if addressing the anemia changes things with the c-PAP.
( To-do list )
