The meeting with the hematologist did not go well. Her silent, awkward assistant, who I am not entirely sure spoke any English or understood a word I said, drew three vials of blood from my right arm. Upon pulling out the needle, she didn’t apply any pressure to the entry point and blood started running down my arm. She also didn’t have any gloves on, which was unsanitary for both her and me. In addition, she took a half-assed patient history and had me write down my current prescriptions and medications on what appeared to be a piece of scrap paper. The whole experience was wildly unprofessional.
When the doctor met with my husband and I in her private office she rotated between moments of clarity and completely quirky and inappropriate rants and tirades. Also, my appointment was cut short because the next patient was ready. The doctor’s assistant knocked on the door during our conversation about treatment options and told her my time was up. I’ve never seen a doctor that actually sticks to assigned appointment times or schedules because it often means getting less time with the patients who need a little more.
Here are some things I took away from our brief conversation:
- After being on the steroids for 2-3 weeks, my numbers should be back to normal.
- Hemoglobin: 12-16
- Platelets: 150-450
- Steroids are an effective treatment method for approximately 90% of patients.
- Upon tapering off of the steroids, 35% of patients relapse fairly immediately. Another large percentage of patients relapse 5-10 years down the line. A small percentage never relapse at all.
- She would like me to get weekly blood draws at Quest Diagnostics to monitor my RBC & platelet counts both on the steroids and as I taper off of them
- By next week’s blood draw she should know if the steroids have worked or not
- Before I left I made it very clear that I wanted to know all of my results. She had the receptionist take down my phone number and she said she would call me or text me the next day with the results.
Here are some useless things I took away from my appointment:
- Yoga and proper deep breathing can fix everything
- Once I learn how to properly breathe and exhale, everything else will fix itself
- My body is like a tree and all of my blood vessels and capillaries are limbs coming off the heart. If the trunk of the tree (heart) isn’t receiving proper oxygen it cannot disperse it to the limbs, so they begin dying off.
- My blood vessels work like broken sprinklers. They can only spread blood and oxygen to the little area of grass around them and the ends of the vessels never get any of the oxygen. The sprinkler doesn’t water out that far.