A week of appointments

Starting today I’m going to go through another week of doctors appointments. I have to see the family doctor this morning. One of the reason that I need to see her is to access whether I’m ready to go back to work or not. I hate to say this but I’ve been doing horribly lately and I think if they send me back I’ll be off work again by Christmas. I hate failing- and being off work feels like failure, and then trying to go back and getting sicker and sicker as I work my shifts also feels like a major failure. I hate this. I wish my Crohns would just settle down.

Then on Wednesday I get to see my gastrointernoligist. It’s time to go over the results of all the tests he’s put me through in the last several months from gastroscopy, coloscopy, CT enteroclysis, and uhmmm rectal MRI – why they didn’t take MRI photos of my small bowel while I was lying in that horrible machine for an hour I don’t know but they only did the one area. I already know that the scopes didn’t show anything – no surprise there, my problems are in the small bowel where the scopes don’t reach, but I don’t know the results of the CT. The MRI surprisingly, because I didn’t think I had any problems down there, did show granulomas, enlarged nodes – all signs of an inflammatory process going on. We’ll see how the doctor interprets all of these lovely results.

I also need to find out from him if he thinks I should try to return to work. What I’m hoping is that some of the results he obtained from the tests will give him some ideas, and maybe he’ll try me on different Crohn’s meds. Maybe ones that actually work so that I can feel better and get back to work.

I barely go out anymore because I get so nauseated when I’m walking around, or my abdomen starts hurting more and more. Unfortunately this means I’m not getting much exercise or activity – which I hate.

The last appointment that I have is on Friday afternoon. It’s with the Occupational health doctor from my workplace. It’s for him that I need to get notes from the other doctors that I’m seeing this week. Notes that tell him whether I should return to work or not. Since I’ve been off work for a year he needs some official paperwork to back things up if I end up staying off for another month or more.

Wish me luck- either that I spontaneously get better or that I have good appointments with my doctors and we come to some decisions that work for all of us – mainly me of course – anything that will make me start to get better would be great.