Menopause follow up

 I had a video visit with a nurse practitioner on my new PCP's care team last week. It was great; she was super reassuring. She's checking my thyroid (even though my old PCP was great about doing that regularly, since my mom has hypothyroid (and so did my grandma) but said it sounds like I am beginning my menopause transition and should live for the next few years with a constant hormone storm raging in my body. NEAT.

BUT.

Part of the pre-visit prep was to review my chart and make sure all of my meds and medical issues were up-to-date. I have not done this in forever because for in-person visits, this step in optional, and if you forget, the intake person will ask you most of the questions in person, although they usually do not talk about medical issues documented in the chart. It's more of a hey are you still taking prenatal vitamins LOL kind of convo. Video visits, though, won’t let you join the call until you at least open the darn chart. So, imagine my surprise while I was sitting patiently on the call waiting for the provider to join, perusing my chart, and I saw a condition from March of 2022 that said something like “perception of sensation to non present stimuli,” and when I clicked the “learn more” button, it took me to a page about psychosis. Could this be a note from the time the lingering smell of burned chicken made me think I had a brain tumor? Or the time a bruise under my toenail from new running shoes made me think I had melanoma? Or when a new way to part my hair at the salon uncovered a weird cowlick and I thought I had alopecia? You guys! I even checked my blog from March 2022 to see what the heck I could have been seeing the doctor for that caused them to note, like, advanced paranoia, but I came up short. 

At the end of the visit, I asked the lovely nurse practitioner about it, wondering if that note was why I got an appointment at all for something that she so clearly was not even a tiny bit concerned about, and she very seriously read the expanded version on her view of my chart, and then she took her glasses off and looked at the camera seriously, and then she laughed and laughed. Then she apologized and explained it was from a massage therapist who appeared to be trying to say that the pain I was reporting in my neck and shoulders did not correspond to any musculoskeletal issue he could detect but accidentally charted a severe mental health disorder. She deleted it from the chart. I was like oh are you just telling me you’re deleting it, but really you are noting in my SECRET CHART to not talk to me about it again? Luckily, she laughed at that, too. OR MAYBE SHE WAS PRETENDING.

Really, through, every time anything is a little bit off in my body, I assume first that I am facing a terminal diagnosis, especially when it is part of my body I cannot see. So, there’s that— which probably deserves its own note in my chart. And probably has one in my secret chart. 

Back on my Apple Watch bullshit. Usually when I use a fitness tracker, I gain weight, but this time, I am NOT wearing it when I am working out because I want to close all my circles OUTSIDE of dedicated exercise. Cross your fingers.

**I got my period on cycle day 59.