Thursday, June 18, 2009

My iodine uptake is low. My thyroid antibodies have been retested and are negative still. My TSH is low. My T3 and T4 are normal. My thyroid is painful and tender. So. My endocrinologist has suggested that I may have subacute thyroiditis, although he says that that is not the only possibility. This will cure itself sooner or later, and in the meantime I just have to hold on and wait for the ride to end. My endo would like me to come in once per month for monitoring. That way, if I plunge from hyperthyroid to hypothyroid (a definite possibility) we can treat that as fast as possible, and if I go more severely hyperthyroid, we'll know and respond to that. Also, he mentioned that beta blockers may be an option if my cardiac symptoms become more pronounced.
All in all, I think this is confusing but mostly pretty good news.

Yesterday I had the unusual occurrance that I saw THREE other T1s. One person on the bus I saw with a minimed 722 pump; I went and sat next to her. She's had diabetes for 52 years. I was impressed. Then I met up with Carrie, who I know because of this blog, so that wasn't a random coincidence. And then towards the end of my day I was about to eat supper and I had taken out my Novopen Jr, and somebody said to me, "Hey, is that an insulin pen?" and I said Yeah, how'd you know? And she pulled out her humalog pen. A most unusual day.

Thursday, June 04, 2009

The Uptake Scan That Wasn't

Tuesday night I lowered my insulin dose, checked when the early bus was leaving. Wednesday I caught the bus at 6:16 in the morning and headed to the hospital. Checked in around 7:15, filled out paperwork. A nurse took me into her office at around 7:40. We went over my papers and she asked me some questions about my health. Then she told me that I'd be swallowing a capsule. Stop right there.

I can't swallow pills. I can't swallow capsules either. For the medications I've had to take that were in those forms, we've either emptied the capsule and let me take it that way, or I've chewed it, or we've ordered an alternate form. Some of these things have been horrendously bitter and I've attempted to learn to swallow them- to no avail.

I informed the nurse that I can't swallow a capsule. She picked up the phone that was on her desk and called. "Marcy, I've got a young man here with orders for a 123 scan and he has grave doubts about his ability to swallow the capsule." Within minutes a meeting is convened: the nurse who I've been talking to, the head nurse, the pharmacist and me. We run through the options:

1) Could I attempt to chew this thing? No, that would render the test extremely inaccurate.
2) Is there a liquid form? No. The capsule can be melted, but nobody in the building has ever done that before, and they're not confident that they can do it right. There is a guy in the department who can, but he's on leave for the week.
3) Can we do the I131 scan instead? That's a liquid. No, because there's a suspicion of cancer and the 131's not nearly as accurate in that area.

So we rescheduled for a week later when the guy who melts the capsules will be back. They were really apologetic and offered me any time slot I might want and I stupidly picked a 10 AM time; I need to call and move it to earlier because they want me NPO from midnight until 2 hours after taking the thing, and I want to be able to eat lunch. Missing breakfast messes with my blood sugar plenty.