Just heard this on Pandora. Thought it was perfect for my post below :)

Thoughts on grace...

I don't know exactly what it is lately. Maybe it's Jakob's upcoming 3rd birthday??? I'm so emotional. -It's not a bad emotional though. I do feel on the verge of tears many times during the day, but it's all because of the grace God has shown me throughout my life. I know I'm so unworthy. I know he is so great and worthy of my praise. Life is not easy, (was it Solomon who said man's life is short of days and full of trouble?) and yet even through every hard point and low point, even when I don't trust God because I cannot see what good this pain is doing in my life he still gives me grace. In fact when I look at the rough times I see the grace God has provided and the way he brought me to him and showed me himself through my trials. God's grace is not (thankfully!) dependent on whether I am good enough to deserve it. I know I never will be. God's grace is not just there to give me what I want, but to show me a better way than I could have imagined for myself. To help me accept and even embrace what I wouldn't have chosen for my own life. I am thankful that I can look ahead to the rest of my life and know that when hard things come God's grace will still be there. There have been many times in my life when I haven't been gracious to others, and yet God has never taken his grace away from me. I want to be constantly reminded of the grace shown to me and to share it with those who have maybe forgotten (just a little) or maybe have never even known this gracious God of mine    

Good news...

My doctors office called yesterday and informed me that my echo-cardiogram showed no problems with my heart (sigh of relief). I still have an appointment with a cardiologist, but I see my endo again on the third of August and I will ask him if he thinks I need to see the cardiologist. The only reason I'm thinking I might need to see the cardio doc would be because of my racing pulse. The endo is ok with dealing with the whole thyroid thing but he's definitely not a heart specialist. 

Another little piece of good news I received was that my mom's doctor (back in C'view) has agreed to order all the blood tests to check my hormones and try to figure out if my thyroid symptoms may be coming from a hormone imbalance. He will work with me long distance which is awesome because I cannot find anyone down here who would prescribe bio-identical hormones (if needed). The doctors here just say if there's a hormone problem they would put me on birth control. Not happening to this chick. Too much family history as well as personal experience to teach me to stay away from birth control and synthetic hormones. When I was first married I had all those problems with my bladder and such debilitating pain I couldn't even get out of bed. Once I got off the birth control the pain eased by 80%. Now with not drinking caffeine or eating a lot of sugar I rarely have any pain with my bladder.  I am a little nervous about bringing yet another doctor into the picture right now but I am more than a little interested in knowing if I have some hormone issues going on...we'll see :) 

Tuesday...

I went to the doctor yesterday assuming that this giant medical group that had many different offices would house my new doctor in a separate office. Imagine my surprise when i learned this new doctor was also in my old doctors office! I wanted to just turn around and leave especially when the receptionist gave me a less than friendly look (or two) when i arrived. -Now she might have been having a bad day, i don't know but i did mention to the person booking my appointment the other day that i was unhappy with the service i was receiving at the time...ooops.- Anyways i figured i'd ask this new doctor if the same type of issues were going to be a problem. If they were then i will keep looking for another doctor. When i was in the exam room the nurse took my BP. It was good 117/78 which i think is very good considering i was upset to be dealing with the same people who'd been ignoring my calls for over a week now. Once the nurse left and i was waiting to see the doctor i heard a very loud man talking and I thought...oh, I hope that's not my new doctor. He just seemed like one of those loud people who aren't very personable. Well, my thoughts were pretty much right on target. The loud guy was the doctor. He's pretty horrible at people skills. In fact I was telling Jeremy some things he said to me while I was there and Jeremy said it was a good thing he didn't go this time because I'd have to drive all the way to the other coast to find a new doctor :) I have read that most endocrinologists are not overly friendly. They deal with diabetes and considering the amount of people suffering from that these days they are super busy and don't have time for chit chat. He came in and asked me what my problem was. I told him about the heart issues I was having and my eyes teared up a little (mostly just because I'm exasperated and a little scared). He said "why are you crying?" and then I started to tell him about not being able to get in touch with the office, sitting around at home feeling as though I was going to have a heart attack. I told him that had I known he was in the same office I never would have gone to see him either. He very abruptly told me to stop talking...(one of the first times I didn't like him) and told me that I was absolutely right to be upset. He told me that he wanted me to talk to the office manager about it. He said "you're young so that's one thing, but what if a 70 year old person calls and nobody calls them back. They might give up and something bad will happen to them" Here I interrupted him and told him just because I'm young doesn't mean that my issues are any less important. I feel like a lot of times doctors down here discount what I'm telling them because I'm "young and healthy." Anyways, my bloodwork came back saying that my thyroid function is normal. I told the doctor that I'm still having symptoms like my hair falling out, insomnia, jittery feelings and he asked if I wanted to take the meds for thyroid and see if bringing my thyroid number down a little helps me feel better. I said yes, I do want to try that. He also told me it sounds like I may have a prolapsed valve in my heart which would be causing the pain and sent me to get an ultra-sound of my heart (echo-cardiogram) -I know that will make Cat feel better- :D Overall I was happy that something is finally being done to figure out what's going on with me. I don't like the doctor as a person, well maybe that's not the right way to say it, I don't like the doctors personality but I feel like he is more capable to handle what I've got going on than the last doctor. He's already ordered a bunch of blood tests for my thyroid that my last doctor never had done. I'm going to take the methimazole for 2 weeks (that's the med to slow the production of tsh in the gland) and then I'll go see the doctor again and assess the progress. He also gave me a beta-blocker which would be for the heart pain, and would help slow down my racing heart, but he told me not to take both pills right now. He wants to know what my reaction to the methimazole is first before taking anything else. They are also scheduling me to see a cardiologist. He thinks I should have a stress test done to make sure my heart is ok. Last night I finally went to church after missing a couple weeks. I felt pretty good but about halfway through I started having major hot flashes. I asked Jeremy if he was hot (we are in south florida after all) and he said no. I should have known that would mean bad news...I woke up at 3 this morning with my heart just racing. I know I've got to be patient and give the medicine time to work. I think it actually takes a couple weeks before I'll see any changes. Thanks for the prayers and words of encouragement. Tuesday was the first day I've ever left Jakob with someone (outside of family) for a few hours. He did great. When I got there I asked him if he was ready to go and he said "no" and kept running around with his little friend :) It is such a load off my mind to have someone who can watch Jakob if I need her to. I try to get appts on Fridays then Jake can stay with Jeremy but sometimes it's just not possible. I hope you're all doing well and have a great weekend!   

So I went and had my blood drawn on Tuesday. Probably could have gone in and had it done Monday except the doctors office never called me to tell me that's what they wanted me to do. I was hoping to get the results by Friday, but I knew it probably wouldn't happen because it usually takes 4-5 days for them to get the results back. I decided I would call Friday morning and just ask. The girl on the phone said she would call the lab and ask if they had run the blood yet and talk to the doctor and see what he wanted to do. Well...no surprise I did not receive a call on Friday. I finally called the doctors office at 11:40 because I knew that they close at 12 on Fridays. I was put on hold for 15 or so minutes and finally I realized they're not answering the phone. They're probably done working for the day. This has been one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. What good is a doctor if you can never get in touch with him? I have just had to pray and trust that I will be ok until I can get someone to help me. If I think about what's going on too much or try to figure out why I'm having these pains I will go crazy!!! Anyways, as soon as I hung up the phone I decided I was going to get a new doctor. I figured it would probably take a month or two to get in (endocrinologists usually have a long waiting list) but in the meantime the primary care doctor had run blood on me and he can handle things for a month or two. I found another doctor (who's actually in the same medical building) and called his office. I told them that I have an endocrinologist but I'm very unhappy with him because I can never reach him or his nurse. They gave me an appointment for Tuesday. Thank-you Lord! I am hopeful this experience will be better than the last. I don't expect a ton from this doctor. I've never had to call and try to talk to a nurse before. Normally if I have some kind of symptom I make a note of it and ask the doctor on my next appointment. This time I was told I cannot wait until August to see the doctor, I need to see him as soon as possible. That was a week and a half ago. All I want is to be sure that when there is a problem my doctor is going to do something about it. So I'm sort of expecting a call from my current endocrinologist tomorrow...sort of. If they keep up the status quo then I won't hear from them tomorrow and I'll just talk to the new doctor on Tuesday. It's been a week and a half. One more day isn't gonna hurt anything. Both of these doctors are in the same medical group (internal medicine associates) so I think it will be easy for the new doc to get all my records and everything. You know what's funny? When I was referred to this doctor by an RE he said "let me know if you don't like him, some people don't and I'll refer you to someone else."  At the time I said "I just want the best doctor you know of" but if this is the best that guy knew of we obviously have different opinions of quality of service :/ I'll let y'all know what I find out either tomorrow or Tuesday. And now a question...should I tell the current docs office that I'm leaving and tell them why? I don't want to be mean about it but I really want to tell them that either they're too busy to have me as a patient or they run their office in a way I'm not comfortable with. I'm sure they're not going to miss one patient but I really feel like I should say something...

Craziness going on...

So i'm finding it a little harder to blog these days. I don't really have anything nice and flowery to say and who wants to write about depressing stuff all the time? I've been calling doctors offices literally all day today and have been either turned down or had to leave a message on an answering machine every time. I think i've reached a point with my thyroid disease that something has to be done. At the beginning of this year (it actually started when i was first pregnant) i started feeling my heart racing. I would take my pulse and my hr would be above 120. It is a very scary experience. Last week when we were supposed to be leaving to go home to visit i was having pressure in my chest. Like somebody was pushing down really hard on it. When i wasn't having that feeling i felt like a stabbing pain in my chest. Kinda like if you've been running and then try to breathe deeply. Chest pain really freaked me out. I canceled our trip and on Friday i went in to urgent care to get it checked out. I felt like i was winded all day. Like i couldn't catch my breath. The doctor checked my oxygen level and it was fine. They ran an ekg on my heart and it looked fine. He told me he thought these feelings were related to my thyroid and the only way to help rid me of them is going to be to slow my thyroid down (aka radio-active iodine). I'm at a point now where i'm just about ready to feel better. The bad part is i don't know if killing my thyroid will help me feel better. I don't know if there's something else going on in my body making my thyroid act up. I have read about your hormones being out of whack and that affecting your thyroid but good luck trying to find a doctor who wants to check in to that! I take that back. I did find one clinic today that gave me an appointment with their doctor and they do bioidentical hormone replacement but of course it's not covered by insurance. I have an appointment for Monday to meet with the doctor and ask some questions. I also got my blood drawn today and will hear from my endocrinologist in 4 or 5 days to see what my tsh levels are. It is very frustrating to know there's all this craziness going on in my body and it seems like i can't find a doctor to take me seriously or find anyone who has any answers.  As of right now i don't know which one i'm dreading more, my doctor saying my thyroid's out of whack again or him telling me there's nothing wrong and my levels look fine. I think if he tells me everything looks fine i might just break down on him. Anyways, that's what's going on in my life right now and why i don't have much to blog about lately. I would appreciate your prayers that i can find somebody who's willing to investigate and figure out what's causing all this. I realize nobody feels perfect and i accept that i never will but there's got to be something better than what i've got going on right now