Doctor's appointments

Today we got to visit some doctors.

Both Ian and I were called in to see our family doctor about our cholesterol results. Fortunately, the rest of both our bloodwork was fine but he has issues with the cholesterol levels. My HDL (good cholesterol) was 1.92, my LDL (bad cholesterol) was 4.81, and the ratio of my total cholesterol over HDL is 3.7. Because my dad had a heart attack at 39 and died after surgery to correct serious vascular issues in his legs I'm considered to be at high risk for heart problems and a ratio of 3.7 is getting to be too high. I think that the ratio should be under 4.0 - which mine is - but it's gone up since the last time I had the cholesterol tested.

Ian has different numbers and other factors and his cholesterol has to come down, too. Our family doctor gave Ian some new medication but he doesn't want to give me yet another medication. Therefore, we have to make some dietary changes: more fruits and vegetables, no more ice cream (including Blizzards and McFlurries), no more high-fat foods, no more fries and chicken fingers for dinner.

We'll be getting our cholesterol checked again in about six weeks to see if the steps we're taking are having an effect. I hope that the change in diet works that quickly.

After seeing our family doctor I had a biopsy done on the the skin on my breast. A new spot has actually shown up at the end of my collarbone on the left side; he looked at it but he decided to focus on the breast skin. As he was looking at the area to figure out where to do the biopsy, he asked if I had any kind of implant. Ummm, no - if I did, I'd have made that breast bigger to be more like the other one instead of walking around with one normal boob and one mini-boob. Apparently the changes to the skin have somehow made the breast feel like I've got implants.

The doctor was really good especially when it came to dealing with me. I'd been nervous all day and when I laid on the thingy I started to get a very woogly back and had trouble staying still. Mostly it was the thought of feeling him do the biopsy and put in the stitches that was making my back all woogly so I tried to do some breathing and focusing on other senses. It mostly worked and I was able to stay more still. I did not think about beetles crawling on my skin, as Ian suggested afterwards, because that's kind of what the woogly feeling is like.

The doctor put in two stitches which will come out in two weeks when I go back for the pathology results. If the results are inconclusive then he'll do another biopsy. I don't exactly know what kind of biopsy he did but he was worried about puncturing an implant (hence the question about implants above) so I think he took a fairly large sample.