got a new doc.
My new doctor is effective Oct 1st, and I have an appt with her Oct 4th. We'll see how this works out.
My first physical therapy appointment is on thursday the 29th. I also have my annual woman visit that day too. So that's fun, at least the laying on the table with legs up is first, just incase I get really hurt at physical therapy. Either way both are gonna hurt.
Oh I haven't posted on this thing yet. On Sunday, Nya came in one dog door and didn't come in the other, Grif went to find out where she was, found her at the bottom of the stairs right inside one dog door and she was whimpering. He asked her to come and she hopped for a second and then fell to the floor. We decided to give it a couple hours see what was going on if she would get up again. Didn't seem to be her hip area, more like her knee was hurting. After about 2 hours we took her to the vet. The vet is open on sundays but the visit costs more, i found that a bit odd; $10 more. They wanted to take x-rays and charge $70 per and they wanted 3. We said no way, what our are options... well you can give her aspirin and she might just get better on her own, some dogs live just fine with 3 legs.
So Nya Lemon (new middle name) seems to be doing better, she went out both dog doors already, though decided to come back INSIDE to go poop. She's hopping along fine, but still spends most of her time on the floor. Even wrestled with Niri.
The strangest thing. Nya was laying on the floor, head and body facing AWAY from Niri, all of a sudden, Nya stood up and whipped around to attack Niri. Full PROOF that dogs and cats definitely DO communicate. Niri obviously said something to get Nya's attention. Just too funny.
So not sure if Nya broke something or tore a tendon, with either of those the x-rays would have told us how much more we needed to spend. Her leg is still pretty limp, so won't step on it, but seems to move it a little, so not sure, maybe could still be a sprained knee or pulled muscle or something.
3 comments:
Erin!
I'm sorry that finding a good doctor is such a pain in the ass - or back.
Hopefully this one will be better.
When I went to physical therapy (a few years ago after a car accident when I had so much of a pain in the neck that instead of sleeping I just cried at night) - they did this weird thing called a heat ultrasound - it felt like they weren't doing anything, but really they were somehow sending heat to my deeper muscles -
SO - my physical therepy really involved mostly lying there and then getting a little light massage at the end.
I looked up some differential diagnosis stuff on back pain (dr talk already?!) - so stuff on how to figure out what's happening when someone has lower back pain.
1st - you're old Dr. obviously had something else going on in her life and a staff that was hopefully overworked (rather than just ignoring you) - and all they did was add to your stress and thus your pain (duh, right) - and that's unfortunate and it's really, really good you're going somewhere else.
2nd - If the pain is being caused by muscle spasms, I did read that lateral scoliosis can be CAUSED by certain kinds of one-side only muscle spasms (so the muscles pull the vertebra out a bit to the side = scoliosis). Back pain is one of the most problematic issues in medicine today - lot's of it and hard to treat, yay! Anyway - you may want to ask if the scoliosis is a symptom or a cause.
3rd - most (unfortunately not all) back pain is temporary - 90% goes away in a month (which doesn't mean it won't come back, but still...)
4th - An MRI would be better at diagnosing any disc issues - but first you're gonna have to get your new Doc up to speed on everything - including your frustration with your old clinic's entire staff and system - tell her about driving to the radiologists, crying on the phone, and being threatened to "be dismissed". All of that stuff is important for her to know in order to really help you. And how she (he?) reponds to your story will help you figure out if this is the right Doc for you.
Anyway - I hope it get's better and you know the on the table with the legs up exam *should* never hurt - but that's a whole other thing. I hope your back thing get's figured out. If you need anything let me know - now that I'm in med school I have access to all sorts of medical resources.
Anyway - sleep now, horrible exam Sat AM
Martha
hehe the leg up thing is gonna hurt because it hurts to lay on my back on those tables LOL though the wire brush on the cervix does kinda hurt.
But yeah I plan on taking my x-ray report with me, none of my other medical records really matter.
And I definitely plan on telling her about the mess with the other doctor.
And everybody has been saying and MRI would have been better, I don't know what her problem and MRI's is.. but also the pharmacists asked, when I kept asking if the anti-inflammatories were gonna help with pain, "is there a reason she's staying away from narcotics" other than they mess me up no, but would be nice to be able to take one at night or something... sheesh.
I think xrays are a basic way to "rule out" some things - MRI's are expensive.
We have this whole thing in the US where we spend more money on health care than any other industrialized nation, yet we have one of the worst health (healthcare? both?) of any industrialized nation. I'm not sure an MRI is what you need - right now I mostly am full of head and neck anatomy.
I had muscle relaxers when my neck was funky. They made me groggy and I felt like a wet noodle - so not so good for daytime, but definately let me sleep. Sleep is important.
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