A week of appointments with more to come

 

    I wrote last that I am privileged to have access to health care, and much variety in it, but that also brings you to a place where you wonder, "Am I doing too much?"  I began to ponder this over the course of this week, and even more as I look at the week ahead. 

    I started the week on Monday with a counselling appointment. I'm so thankful to have a supportive counselor that I've been seeing for years and is not afraid to speak truth to me when I need to hear it.  With holidays and travel I haven't been to see her for a few weeks, so this was a nice opportunity.  

    On Tuesday I headed into the city first to see my primary doctor, a Naturopath, for a monthly appointment combined with a magnesium IV.  My system doesn't tolerate magnesium orally and it is crucial for the process of replacing amalgam fillings that I am currently undergoing.  We discussed my current challenges with digestion and a recent understanding of the history of pain in my ankle. We also reviewed a recent virus panel she ran on me that showed multiple very active infections, but we resolved that there just isn't enough bandwidth to deal with them in the midst of everything else we are doing. From there I headed to my naturopathic dentist for my first set of amalgam filling replacements.  He determined that with the number of fillings I have and the risk that EDS brings in keeping my mouth open for too long we needed to have at least four sessions, one for each quadrant of my mouth.  This first appointment covered the lower right quadrant and replaced three fillings.  I was quite nervous about this process. I had a few bad experiences at the dentist as a child and teen, and then after undergoing eight years of orthodontia including complete reconstructive jaw surgery I get anxiety regarding anything dental.  I am happy to report that although the process was quite strange, the staff were wonderful and I had a good experience.  Because of the risk of mercury exposure they had me cover my hair and they draped me from neck to toes in a protective sheet.  They also used a rubber dam and had a large vacuum suspended over me. After discussing the challenges that EDS can add to local anesthetic, the dentist was attentive to ensuring that I was fully numbed before beginning and he added more when the effects began to wane about 2/3 of the way through.  Afterwards I had no more physical discomfort than from any filling procedure, which did include an extra sore spot at the right hinge point of my jaw - possibly from clenching, from the injections, or from being open for so long.  The whole procedure took about 90 minutes and they scheduled me for my next session next week.

    Wednesday morning, quite early, my husband drove me back into the city to a new provider's office for a Spinal Stability Test.  I was able to get in to see a specialist who offers a type of therapy for EDS called Prolotherapy.  As we work towards deciding if this is the best option for my treatment, I needed to get a thoracic MRI and have this test done.  The basic procedure is to place stress on different joints and assess the degree of movement. As you can imagine, it was not comfortable, but it was very informative.  I knew I had issues in my pelvis, after three c-sections, a hysterectomy, a tear in my right labrum and a near complete tear of my ligamentum teres as well as hip capsulitis this came as no surprise.  The PT doing the test though did not expect the degree of movement found in my pelvis.  I guess you're not supposed to have ANY movement in this joint under the circumstances of the test, and any movement noted is graded on a scale of 1-3, with 3 being the most movement.  In my right hip I scored a 2 and the left scored a 1.  He then went on to assess my thoracic spine and ribs, noting sprains with notable movement at T5-6 and T11-12. This surprised him as I was the first person he had ever seen with a sprain at T11-12, and he does these tests all the time.  His recommendation was that we start by trying Prolotherapy on my SI joint to work towards stabilizing the pelvis with the understanding that it supports so much of the body and a lack of stability there would undermine other efforts further up my back.

    I had a massage appointment scheduled for today (Thursday) to help offset the effects of the Spinal Stability Test, but unfortunately my massage therapist called in sick.  I had canceled my standard PT appointment for tomorrow both because I had so much else going on and I leave tomorrow morning for a long drive across the state to attend my son's graduation from college.  

    I thought this was a full week, but as I looked ahead to next week it turned out that I had appointments in the city on four out of five days.  I am feeling less and less safe driving myself to these as the commute is often 90-120 minutes each way and I get vertigo and struggle with focusing on the road, so my husband has been graciously driving me as well as being my second brain to keep track of all that is going on.  He does have to work sometime to be able to pay for all of these medical appointments though, so I've been working on trying to decrease the number of trips into the city that are necessary as well as lining up alternative drivers.  I moved my magnesium IV appointment to be on the same day as my PT next week, making for a long day but one less trip. I've also asked my sons to help drive if they are not working.  We'll see what happens!

Here's the thing:

Healing takes time, money, and energy - all of which are limited resources. I just can't address all the issues I face at once, we've had to prioritize. Right now I'm having my amalgam fillings replaced and looking into Prolotherapy in addition to my other maintenance work of monthly doctor appointments, and weekly massage, PT, and counseling appointments alongside diet work and handfuls of pills taken seven times a day.  I am grateful for the opportunity to have all these resources available to me, but it does come at a high cost.  Perhaps I'll delve into that more in a future post.