June 2011
Having not had much luck with my primary care doctor in the past, my mom suggested I make an appointment with the APRN instead. After having my appointment I was very happy with APRN, she was much more personable, didn't make me feel rushed, and most importantly she listened to me. I explained to her how I had been feeling for the past 6 months and what I had tried to do to improve the symptoms. She asked me questions about any feelings of depression or stress (which I was happy to say I didn't feel at all) and I was really glad to hear her say that she didn't think it was stress related. Though I had a very stressful year, I had been done with classes and interning for 2 months, felt completely stress free, but was complaining that my symptoms were worse; had it been related to stress, they should have been improving. Because of this and the fact that I have a family history of both lupus and thyroid disease, she sent me to get some blood tests done for my sugar levels, my thyroid, lupus prescreening, Lyme's disease, and anemia. Though I feel tears come on at the thought of a needle and my stomach turns at the thought of a blood test, I was happy that she was taking these steps.
A week later I received the results of my blood work in the mail and had very mixed feelings about the results... everything came back normal. While that was great news for my health, I was very discouraged that I still felt like crap and had no answers.
After feeling frustrated and being back to square one I started to think maybe I was exaggerating, maybe I just need to get more sleep, maybe I just need to force myself to be more active...
A week later I decided I was not ready to give up. I called the doctor's office back and asked what they were going to do now. The way I was feeling was not OK, I wasn't exaggerating, and I was not willing to give up on searching for some answers, so I scheduled another appointment with the APRN...
