When One Year Ends and Another Begins

I always look forward to the end of the year, as in man, am I glad that’s over. On the other hand, I don’t look forward to the coming year nor do I believe it’ll be any better — unfortunate, but that’s been my experience in the recent past, though 2009 was definitely better than 2008. I’m hoping the trend will continue.

The reason I have a hard time looking forward to the new year is because for me, it’s fraught with medical appointments: the annual physical and pap smear, which most people go through; eye check-up, again, which a lot of people go through; twice a year dental cleanings, which many people have and that I just started having and as cool as my dentist is, am still dreading; and now that I’ll be 41, another mammogram, which most women have (hopefully) but it’s yet another thing. Then there’s my annual ultrasound to check the size of my uterine fibroid and please, please, please, not another colonoscopy! You’re not even supposed to have one until you’re 50 and I’ve had 2 before I turned 40! I can’t remember if in 2008 the CRS said I wouldn’t need another for 10 years or until 2010.

Either way, I want a CRS closer to home, and since I’ve been having some IBS issues lately, I still have no choice but to see one. Or is it a GI doctor that I need to see? Again, either way, I have to find one or both.

I’ve had problems with my ears since childhood. You know how they test your hearing in grade school? Well, I never quite passed. I was plagued with ear infections and had 3½ pairs of tubes at different times. The ½ pair was a larger tube and was only necessary in one ear. Now that I’m getting older, I swear, my hearing’s starting to go. Brian never seems to have trouble hearing the TV but I do, and this has been going on for a few years now. I clean my ears daily, so it isn’t that. It’s probably time to see my ENT who I’ve known and loved since I became his patient when I was 22, though I first started seeing one at age 13. Funny: the first one TALKED LIKE THIS and my current ENT is soft spoken.

Then there’s this minor eczema-type thing that’s been bothering me and that I’ve already seen the doctor for, but it. Won’t. Go. Away. And I’ve either developed tendonitis in the ankle I sprained badly last spring, or it hasn’t fully healed. Do I see a dermatologist and an orthopedist in my future? I hope not.

I must sound like a complete hypochondriac but the sad thing is, all of this stuff is real and some of it I’ve been blowing off because I’m sick of doctors, so I plod along with these symptoms that make me miserable.

I’ll be continuing my weekly therapy and monthly pdoc appointments, but those have been integrated into my day-to-day life so in my view, skewed though it may be, they “don’t count.”

The one good thing about all this is that we have excellent insurance benefits. Even so, I’d rather not have to use them.