Towards the end of February 2014, I started having pain in
my lower left side again. Extreme bloating. Very tired. Katie, who had once
mentioned she had never seen me cry, saw me breakdown and cry for no reason
when we driving to Teds Montana for dinner. I was running to the bathroom
frequently and had lower back pain. It was like a urinary tract infection,
except I wasn’t having pain while whizzing and I wasn’t running a fever. It
felt, again, like a cyst on my ovary had burst.
On Feburary 27th, 2014, I had my first (and
last!) appointment with Dusty Ukropec. Dr. Notte had left and…giving my
distrust in general of doctors (see Why I Distrust Doctors) – I wasn’t exactly
thrilled, but I was willing to give her a chance.
However, she didn’t even take my temperature (yet suspected
UTI)! She jumped right away to my symptoms being a urinary tract infection. I
was focused on it being a cyst on my ovary, she was focused on a UTI. She didn’t
do an internal. She just pushed around on my abdomen and spent the first 10
minutes of my appointment telling me that Dr. Notte must have had fairy dust
sprinkled on him when he was born because he could do no wrong in the eyes of
their superiors. Now listen, I was a fan of Dr. Notte, so I didn’t find it appropriate,
no matter how much she seemed to be “kidding” – I sensed a very passive
aggressive thread of displaced anger
(envy?) toward Notte. Because she then went on to tell me about this time Notte
and her worked at some old folks home and all the residents adored Notte and
the nurses adored Notte and at the end of their time there, he got a bacon of
the month club gift certificate and a plaque and she got nothing! Now, keep in
mind, I’m in fucking pain! It takes a-lot to get me to the doctors (see Why I
Distrust Doctors!) and now here was my new “family” doctor – and instead of getting to
know MY history, she’s treating me as if I’m her psychologist and she’s
complaining about being treated unfairly!
I leave with a script for Cipro that I said I would not fill
until the results of my urine test comes back. I go home and realize I didn’t
mention that I’ve been getting extremely bloated. So I send her an email and
suggest that maybe, because of my mother’s history of uterine/ovarian cancer
and because I had a cyst on my ovaries 6 months ago, maybe I should get a CA125
test. She emails me back discouraging (can’t be reliable) it but ultimately writes me a script to get
tested. I get a call that my urine didn’t
test positive for bacteria but it did have blood in it, so now she wants me to
get an ultrasound of my bladder and kidneys. Well, I write back asking will
this show my ovaries? She says no, she thinks it’s a urinary problem, not
female plumbing problem, but since I’m worried about it, she’ll add that to the
referral for an ultrasound.
Dusty is so adamant it’s kidney related but I just feel so
sure it’s ovarian related – but I start to doubt myself. After all – she’s the
doctor. She went to school for medicine. But I never felt she actually listened
to me and so I got home and TRY not to focus on the fact I feel terrible, but then
I worry that what if something is truly wrong – like it was for my Fran (my
mother) and it goes undetected for years? We’re always told to be our own “advocate”
yet when we sit in those small doctor offices with some dude or chick who is
wearing an white jacket – and try to be our own advocate – we’re told to stop Googling
our symptoms, don’t listen to friends or family, and more often than not, don’t
even pay attention to our symptoms. We start to question ourselves. And so
there I was – caught in the middle of feeling crappy and sure that something
was wrong, missing the reassurance of my old family doctor, being told that my symptoms
were probably just caused by my hormones (going through the change) – feeling like
a freaking idiot but also feeling that I shouldn’t give up on figuring out what
was wrong. Making sure this wasn’t ovarian or other female internal junk
related – because unlike Fran, if I did have cancer, I knew I would just let
nature takes it course. I would not put my body through chemo. If I drink as
little as three alcoholic drinks, I wake up the next morning miserable: I’d rather
have a great quality of life than a sickly quantity of life. And so I started
to request my old records from Doylestown hospital so I could keep track of
what was going on…this Dusty hardly knew me. And no one knows your body better
than you know yourself. ***looking back in paperwork – the request for
ultrasound says I have family hx of cancer but that my menses is normal. The “normal”
menses seems to be a thread throughout this journey. I repeatedly tell EVERY
doctor that I have not had a normal period for almost 7 years. That I only get
my periods twice a year. See, people are NOT listening!!!
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