egads!  i get there.  i'm waaay early.  i have two cups of caffeinated
coffee in the waiting room (i react badly to caffeine, btw, makes me
jittery) and certainly, i still hadn't eaten anything.

he finally sees me.   we sit in his office for a bit, i can feel him sizing
me up and then, he tells me what a rough day it's been for him and why.  i
notice balloons on his desk and ask if it is his birthday.  yeah, but it's
still a bad day, cuz of patients' families who don't trust his best advice
and so on and so forth.   most of the time is spent talking about his other
patients.  he asks me  a few questions based on the form i filled out.  has
me walk up the hallway normally and down the hallway, on heels, on toes and
toe to heel.  uhhhh . . . not much i can do about how strangely i did it,
cuz of my bum leg.

then he puts me in an exam room and disappears for longer than a few
minutes.  i'm going nutty, cuz my back, hips and neck hurt.  so, i spend the
time stretching and trying to be comfortable, but i'm miserable.  and it's
hot in there.

he finally comes in.  my bp is 172/92---highest i've EVER seen it.  runs me
through the neuro exam paces.  then tells me to get dressed and go back to
his office, where i find he's on the dictaphone doing his dictation about
me.  my brain is not working or picking up on things.  he takes a phone call
in the middle of dictation and starts talking to two other doctors about
another patient.  finishes that, looks at me and asks if he did dictation on
me.  told him i walked in on something you were saying into the phone that
sounded like me.

says we are going to do just a cervical mri to rule out stenosis and if
there isn't any, then he'll rule out something else that went clean over my
head the moment he said "and stress disorder/anxiety disorder.  i say,
"what?  is my body just acting out like a kid who doesn't know what to do
with his energy?"  he says, stress can cause all this numbness.  i'm
thinking, yeah, right.  where's the bridge you're gonna try to sell
me?--guess, i gotta look at it, cuz you say so.  i say, "gee, y'know, i
really wish somebody would take pictures of the rest of my spine".  he says,
"why?"  i say, "because my middle and lower back have hurt for over 30
years."  he says, "pain is not a good reason to have an mri."   i thought,
who said mri?---i said pictures.   but i didn't say it out loud.

i never handed him the two pages of stuff i typed out from my post on asa
and the few other things i remembered.  i figured, what's the use; like what
would be the point of that exercise.  i figured, he's already on the scent
of something else; might as well not confuse him with details.

mri slated for the 29th; next appmt with him on the 3rd of jan.

kate