Keeping the Medical World in Business

My friends, my apologies! I know that you must be anxiously chomping at the bit since I left you hanging with my last post. Likely you are experiencing some serious symptoms of SCA, skin-chunk-anxiety that is. You may be tossing and turning, you may be biting your fingernails but most likely you are pounding massive amounts of candy corn. It's ok, it happens.

So my chunk of skin and I made it safely across town to the pathology lab at the hospital. Upon arrival, I went to registration, as instructed.

"Hi, can you please direct me towards pathology?"
[Insert snarky tone] "Ma'am, why do YOU need to go to pathology, it's not for patients."
"I understand, but I have a skin sample to drop off."
"Well just where is this skin sample then?"
[Reach into purse, calmly hold up bio hazard bag containing chunk of skin]
...
No words were spoken. Just a finger pointed to the left.

Once my skin was dropped off, I had to wait two weeks for results. You'd think this must have been a really long and stressful time of twiddling my waiting fingers. However, I take my role as "primary contributor to the medical world" very seriously, and I managed to squeeze 11 other appointments in between skin chunk biopsy and skin chunk results. I know, I know...shoe-in for patient of the year!

One of my many appointments was my first meeting with the speech language pathologist to work on my vocal chords. The SLP was wonderful and obviously very knowledgeable. She spent most of the hour hearing me make an assortment of ridiculous noises and asking me how things felt-don't worry, the track will be for sale on itunes shortly, search under "mostly hairless strangled animal." Turns out I wasn't giving my intuition and years of voice lessons enough credit when I awkwardly laughed and said, "I'm sure it isn't the case, but I just really feel like I'm being strangled all the time."

"No you are correct, you are being strangled."

Uh. Um. Right?

So post thyroidectomy, my nerves had a quarter-life crisis and decided to do something rash. Instead of buying a fire engine red convertible, my nerves decided to step it up a notch and attach themselves to different muscles. They fire when they should...but instead of speaking, singing, swallowing solid foods or projecting my voice, I strangle myself.

Eat your heart out "America's Got Talent."

In other news, a few days ago I received the results of my skin biopsy, stating that I had Fifths Disease.

Right. The &*%$#$ virus that caused this whole blog in the first place. The virus that lives no longer than 6 weeks at the most. The virus that I had almost 2 years ago. The virus that you can only get once. Right. Glad that's all cleared up.

Needless to say, some follow-up blood work was done by my extraordinarily confused doctor and I'm awaiting results.

Now the possibility that I have seronegative syndrome has come up several times in the last few years, and as a result of my skin biopsy and some blood work, it came up again. Seronegative means that for some unknown reason your blood does not produce the antibodies that show up when tested for various autoimmune diseases. So basically, you will always test negative, even if you have a disease that needs to be treated. Ya know, just to make sure you are really paying attention. That blood, a rebel without a cause!

The latest theory is that I have mastocytosis. It goes without saying that mastocytosis is an orphan disease, meaning it affects fewer than 200,000 people world wide. So ya know, that part fits.

Mastocytosis is a condition where you have too many mast cells in your body. Mast cells help your immune system defend your organs from disease by releasing chemicals, such as histamines, to alert you to a problem. As all dutiful followers of Claritin/Zyrtec/Allegra know, anti-histamines prevent you from having allergic reactions. Therefore when you have too many mast cells, you have a ridiculous amount of histamine in your body and you react adversely to everything.

And when I say everything, I do mean everything. The steri-strip used to close my skin biopsy site? Yea, had to dig that sucker out when my skin swelled up and over the strip overnight. The needle site used to take my blood? I could audition for "Attack of the Giant Mosquito." Oh and Mederma, when you labeled your scar therapy as "hypoallergenic," you clearly hadn't met me.

You get the idea.

So I've started a 3 week trial of medicine that suppresses the mast cells in my body and if I do, in fact, have mastocytosis, the medicine will help to decrease the symptoms. Luckily, "hurry up and wait" is my specialty.

Just to keep me on my toes, the medicine has to be taken 30 minutes before meals, and has to be at least an hour apart from thyroid and reflux medicine, which have to be 4 hours from each other and taken on an empty stomach. Always a good sign when the pharmacist pauses, makes a grimace and starts biting her nail when you ask her about timing your medications. So, I take my thyroid medicine, wait an hour, take the mastocytosis medicine, wait a half hour, and then I can eat breakfast. Then I wait an hour or so and repeat the entire process before my next meal.

So, anyone up for lunch today?

Just give me about two hours, I'll be there.