Let's Get Physical

My husband and I went in for our annual physicals last week.  We went together, because I need his help to get on the exam table, and he needs my brain to remember all the myriad details and issues he wants to discuss with our doctor.  It turns out, though, that together is not always the best way to have an appointment, if you want a really in-depth and detailed interaction with your physician.  Our doctor, and his nurses, tended to lose track of what they had done on whom. 

So my husband had his pulse and blood pressure checked, and I did not.  My husband - with my prompting - had a very productive discussion with our doctor about various skin conditions, treatments, and concerns that he had about his health, and assurances that he would get exactly the type of lab test I knew he needed to confirm whether his insulin levels are too high.  I got.... a PAP smear.  With a pelvic and breast exam.  I forgot to talk about how bothersome my carpal tunnel symptoms are getting to be in my right hand.  I didn't get to discuss whether there are any options I can pursue for relief from my erratic, heavy periods and the almost uncontrollable rage my PMS brings me.  I didn't even realize I hadn't had my vitals taken until after we'd left the parking lot already, and we didn't turn around and go back. 

This bit me in the ass some hours later, when the on-call physician who received my lab results called me that evening.  She was extremely concerned because my serum potassium levels were too high and wanted to know if I'd been having a racing or skipping heartbeat.   Hmmm.  Guess we should have checked my heartbeat at the office.  I reassured her that I felt fine, and she prescribed an oral medication to lower my potassium over the weekend, with instructions that I return for more blood work on Monday.

The oral medication for lowering your potassium is a chemical compound called sodium polystyrene sulfonate.  This is derived from plastic, is used in hardening cement, and tastes just like it.  It's like filling your mouth with dental cement paste, and swallowing it.  If you can swallow it.  I gagged, repeatedly, while choking down my three or four swallow dose.  It hits your stomach like a rock, and makes you uncomfortable throughout its entire journey to your colon.  Where you can only pray it will exit without ripping anything.

Thank goodness I was also prescribed Cipro antibiotic for my UTI, which happens to cause diarrhea to counter-act the constipating concrete.  (How's that for a sentence you never thought you'd have to say.)

On the second day we had the brilliant idea to contact the pharmacy and see if the powder could be mixed with something else instead of or in addition to water to help me get it down, and found that it could, so long as I received the entire prescribed dose.  So that night we mixed it with cranberry juice, and I shot it all down in three or four consecutive swallows instead of pausing to allow gagging in between each mouthful.  That still made me cry a little bit but it went considerably better than the night before. 

Come Monday morning I had to go back to the lab for more blood work.  I was hoping that would result in me not having to take the potassium-reducer any longer.  Unfortunately, those results aren't available yet.  I have to drink the concrete another night and check with the doctor in the morning.  And my INR is too high (I knew this when I saw the way the blood jumped up outta my arm after the needle was withdrawn this morning) so I have to skip my coumadin tomorrow (I already took it today).  I'm ingredient checking just about everything I eat for signs of potassium, presence of vitamin K (screws with coumadin) and levels of fat (makes me overproduce bile).  If I ever seem flaky or spaced out or clueless it might be because I have to devote an encyclopedic amount of brain memory to my medication names, their doses, side effects, schedules, and food interactions.  In addition to everything else I have to remember about my medical history.  Sigh. 

But you know what I thought the other night, while I was crying from gagging on the cement slurry?  I thought about how tons of cancer patients undergo chemotherapy and feel nauseous and awful all the time.  I thought about how they would love to have only one awful tasting pukey drug a day to endure.  And how all of us, them and me, will choke anything down that they tell us will save us because that's what you do when you want to live.  Whatever it takes.