Saw the endocrinologist this morning.
In our last exciting installment, I had called a few weeks ago to set up my six-month appointment, only to be informed that they were displeased that I had missed my previous appointment. That was news to me, since I hadn’t heard from them since the previous November. So they made a new appointment for today.
Got there, got to see the doctor promptly. (unusual, but welcome). She asked when I had taken the last injection. That was yesterday. She got pissed off and said they wouldn’t be able to take blood for her labs. I was of the opinion that if it had mattered, it was up to them to let me know, as I’m surely not their only patient on TRT. It went downhill from there. I had printed out an information sheet for her; she didn’t want it, so I read it off to her. She had no problem with splitting the injections from 2x/mo to 4x/mo. She got mildly freaked out when I asked about the daily injections some endos are doing now; absoutely not. I told her that my creatinine and CR-P are off-kilter, and that I had gone off the keto diet temporarily to get clean readings. She got upset and said testosterone would not cause that. I said I understood that, it was a known characteristic of a ketogenic diet, but her labs from November listed CREAT and CR-P, and if those were important for her evaluation, the numbers might be skewed. She reiterated that testosterone would not cause that. We circled that drain a couple more times and I skipped to the next item on the list.
One of the things she had asked about in the first visit was if I had “brain fog” or trouble thinking clearly. That was a yes. I mentioned it was still a problem. She denied ever having asked that question, and got upset again. Hoo-kay. Good thing we were about done by then. [she did ask; I noted it in my post-visit writeup, and this sort of thing is *why* I write a synopsis of each visit with a medical practitioner]
She wanted a copy of the results of the lab my regular doc will be having done next week. No problem. She felt the dosage I’m taking is fine. She wanted to see me in December. I got an appointment card on the way out.
I was fairly annoyed; she kept jumping the gun and rabbiting off, which wasted time, and I resented being cast as the one making a mistake when they didn’t tell me not to take my regular dose before seeing her. All in all, it’s a pretty good example of what I call the Alien Encounter; we spent most of the visit having two entirely separate conversations. Alien Encounters seem to happen all to frequently to me.
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The endo’s office is in a hospital complex. Going back to the car I walked past a black Dodge Charger. I’d noticed it on the way in; it had been raining off and on all night, and it was misting rain both times I walked past it. The car was spotlessly clean, even the wheelwells. Normally tires and wheelwells would be covered in liquid slop lifted from the road by the rain.. The water was beaded up all over the body. It takes a really good wax job to do that on modern basecoat/clearcoat paint. But my nose caught something as I was walking by… sniff… sniff… that “fresh rubber” smell. Ah, I know it well, from mounting new tires on the race car. I looked down… the little injection-mold nubblies were still visible on the tread blocks. The nearest Dodge dealer is thirty miles away; they should have been long gone. I’d lay odds the car had been delivered there on a rollback. Heh. I thought delivery went out with bell bottoms and tie-dye.
