One Step Forward . . .
I'm about to get about five extra hours every week.
For the past couple of months, minus time off for surgery and recuperation—not to mention vacation—I've been going to physical therapy twice a week. The PT place is, like most of my medical destinations, not near anything and not particularly easy to get to. So I have to commute almost an hour each way for a 30-minute appointment.
It's absolutely been worth each and every trip, but the inefficiency of it all definitely bugs me—the inconvenience-to-benefit ratio is way too high. For that reason, I wasn't exactly broken-hearted today when my physical therapist told me that she thinks I'm nearly ready to leave the nest. Come Labor Day, and possibly sooner, I will be able to fill those slots with other, preferably more enjoyable—or at least more lucrative—activities.
But before I start spending time I don't yet have, it looks like I'll be adding another partner to my medical dance card. I checked in with MOSWO (my oh-so-wonderful oncologist, lest ye forget) today, even though I'm not due to see him for another month. He'd asked me to keep him posted on my joint pain, which we'd concluded was a late-breaking side effect of one of my chemo drugs, so I gave him a brief update.
Turns out that the persistence of this particular symptom is "out of the realm of the usual," which means that he thinks it's worth ruling out other potential causes, like Lyme disease. Oh, and lupus.
Yeah, I was un-psyched about those possibilities, too.
But I'm going to tread very carefully on the road to conclusions—no jumping for me, even if my joints were up to it. First stop is a visit to a rheumatologist.
Perhaps I'll get lucky and have an easy commute this time around.
For the past couple of months, minus time off for surgery and recuperation—not to mention vacation—I've been going to physical therapy twice a week. The PT place is, like most of my medical destinations, not near anything and not particularly easy to get to. So I have to commute almost an hour each way for a 30-minute appointment.
It's absolutely been worth each and every trip, but the inefficiency of it all definitely bugs me—the inconvenience-to-benefit ratio is way too high. For that reason, I wasn't exactly broken-hearted today when my physical therapist told me that she thinks I'm nearly ready to leave the nest. Come Labor Day, and possibly sooner, I will be able to fill those slots with other, preferably more enjoyable—or at least more lucrative—activities.
But before I start spending time I don't yet have, it looks like I'll be adding another partner to my medical dance card. I checked in with MOSWO (my oh-so-wonderful oncologist, lest ye forget) today, even though I'm not due to see him for another month. He'd asked me to keep him posted on my joint pain, which we'd concluded was a late-breaking side effect of one of my chemo drugs, so I gave him a brief update.
Turns out that the persistence of this particular symptom is "out of the realm of the usual," which means that he thinks it's worth ruling out other potential causes, like Lyme disease. Oh, and lupus.
Yeah, I was un-psyched about those possibilities, too.
But I'm going to tread very carefully on the road to conclusions—no jumping for me, even if my joints were up to it. First stop is a visit to a rheumatologist.
Perhaps I'll get lucky and have an easy commute this time around.
posted by Jody Rosen Knower at 7:56 PM
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