Coma

Like a lot of women my age, I'm trying to figure out what to do about the hormone replacement therapy (HRT) I've been taking for about a year and a half. I tend to not get terribly overexcited about reports in the news media--over the years I've learned to take things with a grain of salt and not believe everything I read.

I've been putting off calling my doctor about it, for two reasons. One is that I know she's probably been inundated with patient calls, like every other gynecologist in the country. And two, I get angry every time I call her office. She works out of a clinic with several other doctors; when you call, you immediately get voice mail, with no opportunity to ever speak to a doctor. The only possible selection is to be transferred to the nursing department, but no one ever answers the phone there, either. Ever. You just get voice mail again.

So I leave a message, and I know what's going to happen--the doctor won't even be given the message, a nurse will call me back.

So the nurse just called me back, and I said I didn't really want to talk to her, I wanted to talk to the doctor, so she heaved a big put-upon sigh and said that she would pass the message on, and if the doctor had time, she would call me back.

It's not the doctor's fault. I really like her a lot, so I put up with the office, but it always makes me angry. I imagine most doctor's offices are like that now, I'm sure it's not that unusual, and I suppose it's not a bad idea to have someone screening calls, but it's so frustrating. I'm sure it's frustrating for the doctors, too. Maybe doctors should be like lawyers, and every time I call the doctor, I get a bill for however much time she spends with me, say 15 minutes. I'd be okay with that. I know my doctor isn't my friend--it's a business relationship like any other. Except that unlike a business relationship, it involves my body and my health, so I have something of a vested interest in the outcome.

So anyway, I still don't have an answer. My guess is she's going to say to stay on it, and I'm fine with that, but I'd like to hear it from her. I'm calling now because my prescription runs out in about a week and I need to decide what to do.

Lunch today was Popeye's red beans and rice left over from dinner Sunday night, frozen broccoli, some dried apricots for dessert, and knitting. I'm making a vest out of some very cool yarn I found over the weekend at JoAnn--I'd sort of given up finding anything really interesting there, but Coats & Clark is making a new yarn called Tweed that I really love, and I found a free vest pattern online, and I'm about an inch into it. I knitted for a half hour, then read for the second half hour, while I ate.

I had ravioli last night for dinner, which was wonderful, but which put me in a carbohydrate coma, and I fell asleep at about 8:00, I think. Bob ended up cleaning up the kitchen, turning off the lights, blowing out the candles, and coming upstairs at about midnight to cajole me into taking off my clothes and getting under the covers.

It started thundering shortly thereafter, and at 2:00 a.m. I was lying wide awake listening to the storm. Pyewacket was sleeping in the bed between us, and I felt Dinah jump up on the bed and ask to have her head washed. There were washing sounds: wash, wash, wash, then the inevitable nip on the ear when Pye was tired of washing. Dinah jumped up and ran away, and Pyewacket came up between us and laid her head on Bob's pillow.

I laid awake so long that I thought about getting up, but knew that if I did, I'd have a hard time making it through the rest of the day, so I stayed in bed, and I eventually went back to sleep.