Let's talk a little about poo, shall we?

I have wanted to write about this latest chapter in my life for a while now, but I hesitated. Was it too much information?

And then I remembered there's Twitter and nothing beats too much information like Twitter.

So, the Poop Story. Apparently, according to my doctor's nurse practitioner, I have irritable bowel syndrome (and I am officially Elaine Benes).

Irritable bowel syndrome is great. I never considered myself anal retentive until this past year and then whoa! Am I ever. So I would eat and eat and eat and....nothing. Nada. Well, nothing except my belly would get bigger and bigger and bigger until I could swear I felt a baby moving around in there and would run down to the Dollar Store for a cheap preggo test, despite the fact that there is no way on God's green earth (ok, maybe only .001% of a way) that I'm pregnant.

After about a year of this (I'm a slow learner), I broke down and called my primary care doctor. Their office has this ridiculous system for making an appointment. You never speak to a human being, you leave a voicemail on the message line and "someone will call you back to schedule an appointment." What? You're an office that relies on appointments and yet you can't seem to employ someone to make them. Nice.

Well, I dutifully left a message for my doctor, explaining that I think there's something really wrong with me and I want a referral or recommendation for a gastro who can appropriately diagnose my colon cancer, since by then I'd decided I must have cancer.

And then I waited. No one called.

And no one called.

Three weeks later I got pissed off about something else (I'll give you one guess) and not liking powerlessness in my life, I opened Word and shot off a letter to my doctor.

Dear Dr. S,
Your system (or lack of) for making appointments with you
sucks. No one ever calls me back. I trust your opinion and need it in times like these, when I think I'm dying.
Thanks,
Heather

I am paraphrasing, but you get the jist. I was sure the letter would never land on his desk because I see where mail goes in a doctor's office and it's not straight into the doctor's hands.

To my surprise, I got a phone call two weeks later. The office manager said Dr. Sanders had given her my letter, they'd made changes to their call-you-back system, and they were sorry. Did I want to make an appointment with him?

I hesitated.

It's like complaining about your food before it gets to your table. Do you really want to eat food that someone's spit on? After you cross a bridge, be sure not to set in ablaze, kay?

I made the appointment because I wanted to make sure my insurance company pays for my colon cancer treatment. They wouldn't let me see my doctor, they shuffled me to his nurse practitioner, who was decidedly cold when she first entered the room.

So you know what I'm thinking.

My file totally has a giant red mark on it. There are notes about me, and I'm not talking about my medical history. I'm a problem patient.

The good news, if you can call it that, is that I now have an official diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome, and my bloodwork showed that my thyroid is fine. Always good to know.

The bad news is I have to exercise and change my diet. And now maybe I also have to find a new doctor.

- H