Woo doctor's appointment!

I went to the gynecologist (actually she was a nurse practitioner, but whatever) about the lump. She found it and thinks it's more than likely a lymph node acting up. But, to ere on the side of caution, I have an ultrasound on Tuesday.

The funniest thing was when I called to set up my appointment, the receptionist was just going out of her way to see if I had any questions or concerns and said everything really empathically, until she said rather sternly that I couldn't bring children to the facility. I found the contrast amusing, as well as the way she just went out of her way to be sensitive and nice. Most receptionists deal with things sort of matter of factly, which doesn't bother me since I'm used to that manner and I know they deal with this shit everyday.

My mom's friend who had a pretty rough case of lymphoma said that if my lump is tender it's actually a good sign.

Senior!

Tonight (actually last night since it's now into the wee hours of the morning) I finished up my last academic act of my junior year, thus making me a senior. I'm proud and at the same time wondering where on earth all this time went.

I found a small lump under my armpit yesterday. I made an appointment for my yearly gynecological appointment because I was due for and also asked if they can look at the lump. This happens on Friday. It scared the crap out of me yesterday but now I'm not as stressed. I'm obviously pretty worried, but optimistic that it's nothing, especially considering my age (20). I read online that 80% of these lumps turn out to be nothing. However, I've also been reading about the horrible things it could be (breast cancer, lymphoma). I know the worst thing you can can possibly do to yourself is read about disease insanity online, but I just couldn't help myself.

So, wish me cysts or angry non-cancerous lymph nodes.

Summer Challenges

With the weather in Pittsburgh FINALLY getting nice (read: not raining/snowing every day, you can actually see the sun and you don't need a jacket to leave the house), comes a whole new set of POTS challenges. With warming weather, one's veins don't constrict as much, leading my blood to hang out in my legs even with compression tights most days. It's frustrating and tiring, which probably explains why I've spent most summers being extremely lazy.

Yesterday I left the house to go to another friend's house wearing shorts and a tank top. I realized that this was probably the first anyone other than my roommates has actually seen of my leg since September, when I started wearing the tights.

My semester wraps up on Wednesday evening, though for some reason I keep feeling like I'm done with nothing else to do, which is far from the truth. I still have two papers to finish and three presentations to give. I guess I'm not used to having no actual "finals" during finals week.

On April 30 my roommates and I are leaving for a two week camping trip to Maine in Acadia National Forest. I'm going to keep my contact with the outside world limited to the a couple of phone calls to my parents.

Doctor's Appointment

I went to my Internist appointment on Friday morning. All systems are pretty much a go. The Atenolol is working wonders. I still use my tights, but that's a small price to pay for being able to move and not get tired. I told him about the stones and that I have yet to set a urologist appointment. Yeah, I really need to get on that, but when you have roughly 45-50 pages of written work to do in less than a month which will dictate your grad school admission (in social work, if you get a B or better in all your core classes then you get to skip the foundation year of grad school and get "advanced standing" meaning that you'll have a master's degree in only a year).

So yeah, I'll set that up sometime this week.

However, this week (and next week) is pretty packed. I have a concert Sunday, a community meeting which I HAVE to attend for one of my papers on Monday, a final on Tuesday, a paper due on Wednesday and a paper due on Thursday. The Wednesday and Thursday papers are more or less done (I have about one more additional page for the Wednesday paper). Next week I present and turn in the paper related to that community meeting on Monday, present and turn in a paper on Tuesday, present on Wednesday and I'm basically done. I say basically because I have an extension on another paper to an as of yet undetermined date... my professor and I are going to talk about that on Tuesday.

After all this is said and done my friends and I are taking an "end of the year" trip to Maine to camp for a little while. Should be fun.

Albuquerque, Spokane and Kidney Stones

I traveled with the Women's basketball team for the first and second round games to Albuquerque. Wonderful city. Good food. Nice people. Nice Weather. It also didn't hurt that the women upset Baylor in the second round, meaning the next weekend I was out in Spokane for the Sweet 16. We didn't do so well out there against Stanford (who is currently in the women's final 4) and it decided to snow in Spokane while we were there, but it was an alright town.

Of course I had the routine POTS flareups at the airport. When you're weighed down like a pack mule, it happens. That's what the cane is there for. I tried when we were coming back from Albuquerque to not use the cane at all, but that failed about halfway through security. With all this traveling and early morning wakeup times and lack of sleep, POTS flareups were inevitable.

I came back to Pittsburgh for good (I was in town for 2 days between Albuquerque and Spokane) a week ago. All these trips and lack of foresight on my part has delayed my work on my massive end-of-semester papers, but I've figured out that as long as I write 2-3 pages on SOMETHING everyday, then I'll be fine and hopefully not pulling any all-nighters, which I despise.

So I'm in class on Tuesday when I feel a dull ache in my back. I thought it was the way I was sitting so I shift. When squirming didn't work I excused myself and walked around the building for a minute. When that didn't work, and the pain was getting so bad that I was actually wimpering in class, I called the ambulance on myself. I didn't even go to the hospital when I was hit by a CAR, just to put into perspective how badly this hurt.

Of course it took the medics a while to get there, so the campus police and first responders had to show up too. They also had to temporarily shut down traffic on 5th avenue to get me in, which I felt really bad about. By the time I got to the hospital I was screaming and crying. Of course they have to follow protocol and find a room and a nurse and take their time and blah blah blah. I was in one of those triage units with the cloth between you and next person. When they finally got a nurse, she said "I'll be with you in a minute" and disappears. I'm screaming and crying so loudly at this point that other people's relatives are looking at me funny. When the nurse wouldn't come I began screaming "HELP ME!!" It wasn't long after that that someone finally got on my case. When the tech came in to draw some blood and get a catheter in me, he was apologizing for hurting me. I was like "dude, that feels like kittens right now compared to the pain I'm in." The nurse gave me a muscle relaxant and a narcotic (Demerol) which was AMAZING. I went almost instantly from screaming crybaby to completely chilled out.

I had a CT scan to confirm what was suspected: kidney stones. Moving my stretcher to the CT room made me nauseous and I eventually lost my breakfast, but the narcotic was so damn good that I just didn't care.

The pain started up again so I was given some percocet. Once I sobered up a little bit from that I was taken home via campus police and given a prescription for some "just in case" narcotics, which I ended up filling and using.

The stone ultimately passed thank god. I should really set up the appointment with the urologist, but it always slips my mind. I have an appointment next week with the Internist for my POTS stuff.