Purple pills and pedicures

My endocrinologist called me yesterday afternoon with my results from last week's charming test. Apparently my calcium levels are just a tad higher than normal in both my urine and my blood (did I mention that when I lugged that jug of pee into the doctor's office, I had to have yet another blood test? Three more vials of blood? And the nurse could not find the vein in my left arm but took several minutes and many jabs of the needle to figure that out before finally switching to the right arm? And I forked over another $30 copay for the privilege? Because that's what happened, and it was the perfect end to a fabulous experience).

Anyway, this still means that he thinks that I have hyperparathyroidism but isn't sure. And this is why I want to know why I had to take this test to begin with. That is exactly the same theory he had before the damn test. And when my dad had this condition he didn't have to do the urine test--they went straight from the ultrasound and blood test to the parathyroid scan, which is exactly what I have to have done next. But whatever, I'm not complaining. Well actually, I am, but I'm done now. I think.

Anyway, so this parathyroid scan is a three-step process: at 9 a.m. I'm given an injection in the arm, then undergo a 10-minute scan. At 10 a.m. I have a 30-minute scan. At 11 a.m. I have another 10-minute scan. Oh, and I also need to have a bone density x-ray which apparently only takes a few minutes and so can be fit in between the 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. parathyroid scans. Except that of course the same department doesn't do the scheduling for both so I had to pick an appointment time for the parathyroid scan, then call the bone density people with fingers crossed that they had an appointment open for exactly 9:30 on that particular day. Of course, they closed for the day at 3 p.m. and I called at 3:30. So hopefully they'll call me back today and tell me that the appointment time works.

Ugh. I can just see this turning into a ridiculous wild goose chase where I make an appointment with one place, then call the other place only to find out that they don't have that same time available, and so on until I've already used up more time scheduling appointments than it would take to just go to the damn hospital on a different day for each test.

Anyway, the endocrinologist once again assured me that if I do need this surgery, it's not urgent because it is basically a surgery to prevent bone density loss later in life. So it's totally fine for me to wait until after our wedding (and probably just until after the holidays in general) to do it, as a few months will not make the slightest bit of difference. So that made me feel better.

Of course then he shot the feeling better to hell by telling me that the blood test revealed that my thyroid hormone levels are better but still not perfect, so he needs to up my dosage again, which means I need to go back to his office again next month for another blood test to see if the new dose is the magic one or if he has to adjust it yet again. I thought there might be a silver lining because each different dosage of Synthroid is a different color--so far I've had white and green pills, and I was hoping that this new dose would be one of the two available purples, but tragically, it's yellow. Damn!

So to make myself feel better about all this, I went and got a pedicure after work. A purple one, natch.


And you know what? It totally worked.