Growing older sucks
About this time last year, I was making plans to simplify the things around my house that take up extra time. The whole housing bust had other ideas. So now it is a year later, I’m in the same location, but not exactly the same place.
After 9 months on the market, the house didn’t sell and I was feeling the strain of keeping the place perfect all the time. The cats were also showing signs of stress. The past 3 months have been a nice break even if I didn’t bring everything back into the house. If a garage sale didn’t take so much effort, I might have decreased the pile of boxes occupying the garage.
I’ve been working my way up to talking to a new therapist. I haven’t actually talked to her yet, but I broached the subject with GK and got an official referral. It may not sound like much, but it took me 2 months to figure out how I wanted to bring up the subject with GK in the first place. I keep getting stuck at the point where I say, “Hi, I’m a grown adult and I have no idea how to manage day to day and ongoing communication.” I’m not sure exactly how or where the conversation will lead, but I’ve decided to find out anyway.
I found out at the end of May that my doctor is leaving her current practice this fall, which means that I have to pick a new doctor. I’d only been seeing her for about a year, but I liked her and she saw me through a rather rough patch at the end of last year. This is actually more of a footnote than anything else. I called in Thursday for an appointment for an ear infection. She was on vacation, so they set me up with another doctor to get my ear treated. This is where things get interesting.
After she checked my ear and rechecked my blood pressure, made a tsk-tsk sound and asked if I had a nervous habit of scratching my arms. To such a pointed question, I have a hard time sidestepping the uncomfortable reality, so I admitted that I do and added that I was scratching at wax nodes that formed under my skin. That sent her back to my charts where she started underlining and circling numbers from the results of previous blood tests. By the time she got done, she told me some things that I haven’t been looking forward to hearing, but expected to come up sooner or later.
All of this is of course subject to change, but based on the information she had, she suspects that the wax nodes are actually fatty cholesterol depostis due to high levels of triglycerides in my system. They are called Xanthomas. They are both painless and benign, but may indicate underlying disorders. The treatment is to get control of blood lipids (triglycerides & cholesterol). The most likely suspect at this point is a metabolic disorder such as familial hypercholesterolemia. Hopefully there will be more answers when the latest round blood tests are back from the lab. Even without genetic testing, there are strong indicators that familial hypercholesterolemia is likely.
I’ve been trying to eat healthily for quite a while, so hopefully my diet won’t get too much more restricted. One thing I’m afraid of is that I may eventually be forced into a diabetic diet, but that hasn’t been brought up so far.
Such is the current mind and body updates. Growing older sucks.