2021-01-22 What's Up Now?

 Most of the time, I talk about my love of RVing, trips and rallies I have been fortunate to attend, and a bit of family and friends thrown in. If you look back over the last few months, that's what you will see. But there has been something else going on. I have been having more and more trouble with my left hip. I was able to get around but it wasn't getting any better. Primary care doctor put me on Meloxicam about two  years ago but that was about the extent of it. The last visit with him resulted in his comment of "that's all I can do" when I said the Meloxicam wasn't really doing much for me. 

Last September, I did some online research and found myself an Orthopedic doctor who was really well rated and set up a visit. He took an x-ray and saw something on it in addition to the left hip joint with severe damage and the right hip hip joint with moderate damage. He said "you probably didn't expect to hear you needed a hip replacement on your first visit but your left hip is really bad." But he also said that we needed to find out what the other spot he could see was. So he sent me off to have a CT saying once we found out what the spot was, I would need to see a gynecologist or a gastroenterologist because it wasn't connected to the hip bones.

So, CT came back and I was off to see the gynecologist. She said she was 98% certain after doing an Ultrasound, it was nothing. But then, just in case, she sent me off to have an MRI. I had the MRI a few days later and then headed off to an RV rally. Two weeks later, I still hadn't heard back from her about the MRI and almost didn't call since she was so certain it was nothing. But that's not me, I had an expensive test and I wanted to hear the results so I called and talked to her nurse who said she would have her call me back. I think she had to call me back because she hadn't looked at the MRI results yet. 

Then I got the call back telling me that it might be nothing but it really needed to be removed. She sent me off to see a gynecologist oncologist who set me up for surgery a few days later. This doctor does laparoscopic robotic surgery. I ended up having a partial hysterectomy removing both tubes and ovaries. A few other little "amusing" things happened like the hospital nurse going over consent forms saying the doctor would be removing tubes/ovaries on the right side and a mass on the left. What???  No, that's not right. She decided that she would just wait "on having me sign" until the doctor arrived. Right, like I would have signed even if she wanted me to. Oops, doctor says no problem I'm doing a partial and the record is just wrong. Off to surgery. Surgery went well, took much longer than expected because the colon was wrapped around what turned out to be a "chocolate cyst" meaning filled with blood and it took him most of the time to separate it. Then the hospital screwed up and reported on their portal that I had a complete hysterectomy. Of course, that was really upsetting since the doctor had said he would only do a complete hysterectomy if he found cancer. It took until late the following day to get that straightened out. Of course, that record will never be corrected and I doubt the doctor's portal will ever get corrected even though I specifically requested it. So all future doctors will get wrong info....this is why I hate portals.

I went home the same day I had the surgery. Six weeks later the doctor released me via a telephone appointment, not even a video, just a regular phone call. 

So I called to get back to the Orthopedic Surgeon. It took a month to get an appointment. The week before I finally got back in to see him, I had to use a walker to get around because I was in such pain with my hip.

Sorry this was so long and boring but I want to be able to go back some time down the road and look and laugh at it all.