If it’s not one thing…
You know, the life of a cancer patient is often, out of necessity, one involving multiple, repeated visits to doctors, clinics, and/or hospitals. As I have documented here, though, I had moved to a place in which I was not going to the doctor nearly as frequently (and I was loving it). Of course, having such regular visits to my oncologist, I had not been to my general practitioner in several years. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to go back.
I like my GP. She’s the wife of the gastroenterologist who first started treating me back in August, 2007. She is pleasant and amiable and pretty darn conservative. The last time I went to the GP (again, back in ’07), after my checkup, she sent me to a cardiologist to follow-up on an aberrant EKG and a dermatologist for a spot on my back. Both follow-up appointments led to negative findings (meaning, that neither the cardiologist nor the dermatologist found anything amiss).
Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. I ventured back to the GP for my (what had become) bi-annual physical. She gave me the general once over. I was surprised, though, that she did not do a rectal exam given my family history with prostate cancer. I will follow-up with her about that later. She did, however, once again refer me to a cardiologist; apparently, the computer interpreted the EKG output as having a blocked something-or-other in my left thing-a-ma-jig. The cardiologist said he didn’t think there was anything wrong but ordered an echocardiogram (I’m still waiting for the results of those).
Meanwhile, my GP asked me to come in again to re-do my blood work; apparently there was something wacky in my white blood count or something. Well, I did that last week and I got a call back from the GP asking for the fax number of my oncologist (there was still something hinky in my labs and she wanted to show them to Dr. Kauh). She also sent me a packet to collect a stool sample (including a self-address, stamped envelope to mail it back; poor postal worker).
All in all, then, it seems that my out of warranty body continues to show the effects of wear and tear. I still, generally, feel fine. We’ll see what the various tests say in the end.
Cheers,
Merle