Doctor's Appointment: Preparation

Well, I have an appointment with my primary care doctor this week. There are a couple of things I want to discuss with him, and the biggest is (probably quite obviously) my knees. I have learned from a lifetime of Kaiser's brand of medical care, and so I am spending a little time tonight brushing up on my anatomy and such. Seriously guys, patients should not have to do this. I am capable of it, you are probably capable of it, but some people aren't. And those people will just slip through the cracks in the system. It's rather frustrating.
Anyhow, I have discovered (this was a huge surprise to me, though it really shouldn't have been) that tendonitis can be caused by rheumatism. I don't know why it didn't occur to me before. Rheumatism equals inflammation, and tendonitis is definitely based on that same mechanism.
Anyway, the good news is that I have some ammunition to take to my appointment, as well as a ten month record of trying and failing the regular first-line treatment. So, maybe I will get some suggestions?
I have very little faith in the medical establishment right now.

Ow. TMI alert, but I am hurting a lot right now, in my feminine regions. The timing is all wonky and totally wrong which means I am probably just having a bout of mittelschmerz, which I have experienced off and on since I was a teenager. It's been more off than on since my mid twenties but it used to be clockwork-regular. It occurs to me, at this late hour, that mittelschmerz is an inflammatory condition of unknown origin. Just like every other damn thing that is wrong with me. Why don't doctors look at the big picture and tally up all these things once in a while?

Sigh...

Anyway. No feeling sorry for myself! I have a new ballet classmate with artificial hips! Talk about moxie!

You Are Not So Bad Off

brazilian ballet school teaching the blind 

Very cool little video.

I was just thinking about how I hurt right now to the point that I want to call it stupid. Like... I stupid hurt right now. Like it's an emphasizing word*. But now that I've watched that I think I will just pretend I am not as shallow and self centered as I actually am and just say that we finally did more turning pas de bourrée and it was much less awful this time. We also did more of the crazy waltzing and hey, at least it almost made sense. Just almost, though.



*I know it has a name but I asked my husband (who has an English degree) and he was like "I dunno, yo" and if he doesn't know then what hope do I have (I have a stinkin' fashion degree)?