I have been feeling shitty for a while. The migraines, I am always freezing and my fingers turn blue and very cold which the last doctor thought was Raynaud's, the big finger tips (e:paul,60458) that keep growing, and the fact that I am increasingly forgetful.

The physician assistant I am seeing says, "has anyone ever talked to you about Schleroderma."

I said no but at the time I was thinking, "no but my whole life I was afraid of schleroderma because my Dad had some client who had it and we had a mug with it written on it." I looked it up one time as a kid, probably in encyclopedia Britanica and it freaked me out." I didn't really even know what it was. I just knew it was bad.

Anyways, she says she wants to look it up more before we talk about it, " how about we see each other again in two weeks after some labs?"

Who just brings that up casually like that without really knowing enough about it. Looking back maybe its just as wikipedia says, "Raynaud's is the presenting symptom in 70% of affected persons, occurs in 95% of affected individuals at some time during their illness" - but way to make a patient freak the hell out. Like she didn't think I would google it at that point and freak out. So I google it an read over the wikipedia article and some google images

Anyways, so I go get the labs right next door at Kaleida. At first I was all excited because Kaleida has their own portal and you get the lab results back in about 24 hours, right away, before they are even pass through a doctor for evaluation.

Then a few of them came back out of normal range with no doctor interpretation right from the lab. Like white and red blood cells count and I freaked.




In fact I immediately looked on google and it was all cancer, HIV, death, blah.

So I ran to Walgreens and got an HIV test. Negative. So then I was like oh fuck I am going to die of cancer. Emailed my leukemia doctor buddy and he said the range was not that significantly abnormal.

Then I found my test results from 6 months ago when I had the migraine attack from hell before I got the sumatriptan. Anyways, the numbers were better so I felt, oh god, the numbers were normal 6 months ago and are dropping now, I look that up. Google = you are going to die. I am sure everyone who is not a doctor and is reading this knows how that goes.

Then I decide to go way back and check my lab results on estrip from my physical in 2013 (e:paul,58517) . Turns out my lab results then had my levels lower than the normal range but that time included the text "some values may show slight deviations form the listed normal ranges but are not significant" vs the Kaleida one in bold, red with no interpretation.



Previously I was arguing for work to release lab results right away to patients because I knew the labs were doing it but the anxiety from that today, due to the way that they were presented, without interpretation really sent me over the edge. I know realize how important a doctor's interpretation is.

Here are the last two sets of results for future reference.

::READ PDF::

::READ PDF::

Seeing I'm always freezing and my fingers turn blue and have changes shape I thought I'd go to the doctor. It seems ridiculous that my doctors have moved even further away when I live next to a giant medical campus.

What I want more than anything is a doctor that plans go stay in town for more than one visit within walking distance of my neighborhood. I might need to just quit UBMD.

It's amazing how long it has taken to finally get rid of the depreciated versions if IE in my life. I feel like I just went through a huge breakup. Good riddance.

As time goes on my blue dead fingers look weirder, bigger and more dead. They are always freezing regardless of the temperature. Really my whole body is freezing even when I am under blankets. I feel like it will end up being one of those things where a doctor will say how did no one ever notice that.

Then move to Buffalo where everyday is cloud day.