Kia (sickandthyroid) - A Call With The Endocrinologist
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A Call With The Endocrinologist
By Kia (@sickandthyroid)
'Hello,' she says. 'Hiii,' I respond. Silence. 'We have a phone appointment today,' she continues. 'Yeah...' I reply. I don't want to start the conversation. I don't want to say I haven't been well. I've told her this about fifteen times in the past two years and she knows. After a long pause she asks 'how have you been?' in a mechanical tone that shows she doesn't expect much, and I respond with the dreaded 'not so well'. 'Ohhh...' she says, trying to sound empathetic like someone working at customer service. It's like we're actors that don't like acting, we have practiced this dialogue a million times, she's getting bored with me and I'm bored with my own responses. I'm not performing well.
I feel like I'm confessing my sins. I try to emphasize how I still make an effort to reach 5000 steps every day in order to prove that I am doing what I can, she suggests cardio to improve my declining muscle mass, and I explain how I tried to do yoga recently but within ten minutes I became so weak I almost fell down the stairs trying to get salt and sugar and had to lay down for 1.5 hours afterwards. She asks me to send a letter from the psychologist that we talked about a while ago, I feel defensive because I remember she had some doubts about the psychologist’s verdict (their insinuation that the medication might not be doing its job), but I hide my feelings and I promise to send it to her. We decide on altering the dose and conclude that after a trial of about eight months, T3 isn't really providing me with the benefits we had hoped for. I wish her good luck, she's transfering to a different hospital, and in a few months I will meet my fourth endocrinologist who is going to ask me how I'm doing, seven years after being diagnosed and three years after starting treatment, and I will have to answer the same thing.
Whole post recording read by Jenni Pettican