Appointment with the Doctor

I finally had my doctor's appointment in San Francisco yesterday.  It was such a relief to address the problems that I've been having, as they become more aggravated by the day.

Luckily, it seemed to him that my issues are pretty straight forward.  My previous doctor forwarded all of my past blood work and he was able to review that along with my history.  He ordered a pretty insane amount of new blood work, and I won't have the results until December 7th.  That said, it's his suspicion that I need an adjustment on my thyroid medication.  Also, a hormone test that I took back in 2007 indicated that I had some adrenal exhaustion that was never addressed.  It's very common to experience this with Hashimotos, I guess.  He did a simple test for it in his office that was pretty interesting.  He took my blood pressure sitting down.  And he took my blood pressure standing up.  A normal person's blood pressure will rise slightly when they stand.  Someone with an adrenal issue's blood pressure will dip slightly when they stand.  Mine went down 12 points!!!  This was enough of a dip to warrant a hardy reaction from him.  I don't why, but there's something really satisfying about seeing a doctor look a little bit thrown off by a test that they've given you.  On the other hand, the fact that my blood pressure went down is pretty bad, so I'm trying not to feel too satisfied by it.  My physical examination showed signs of anemia.  I didn't quite understand the problem, but it was something about my eyes.

We discussed my diet a bit and as suspected he believes that it's really important for me to be gluten free.  No more cheating.  No more fresh baked bread or grilled cheese sandwiches.  He didn't seem to think that I needed to go vegan.  Lean proteins are great and I should eat them.

One thing that he did mention was making some lifestyle changes in order to reduce my stress.  It's likely my stress level that has depleted my adrenal glands.  When he asked me what I do I told him I'm a stay at home mom, which has been my standard answer for the past 8 1/2 years.  My girls are in school all day, so most people think that I am a professional soap opera watcher.  He asked me to take him through a day in my life... so I did.  He said, "You said that you didn't have a job!  You have 3 jobs!!!!" And I suppose that's true.  I am stretched too thin all the time, to the point that at night I have no patience for my children and no love for my husband.  This is not a healthy way to live my life.   This week has been particularly bad.  I deal with stress by going to the gym.  I only go to the gym on days when the kids are in school.  If they aren't in school and I want to go, Jay has to be home.  He's usually asleep when he's home, so I'll get up at 5 or 6 in the morning and go for a 60 minute session or something easy like that.  When we were in Denver, I was able to go to the gym at the hotel the first day but I wasn't able to go the second day (I had been out until nearly 4 AM, and up by 7).  The following day Jay went back to work and he wasn't awake for me to go.  On Monday the kids didn't have school.  On Tuesday I went back to the gym.  On Wednesday I went, I had to be at the school to make pies with the third graders and was only able to stay for 1/2 an hour.  On Thursday I went but I got really stressed  by all the things that had to happen that day and about the state I had left my house in that morning (I hadn't even made the beds).  Jay was away on Buddy weekend and texted me about when they wanted to come back to the house.  And I just got really overwhelmed by what a mess it was, how I hadn't done my grocery shopping or even folded the mountains of clean laundry in my bedroom... and I had to leave the gym and deal with some of my real life stuff.  I got in 40 minutes on the elliptical and that was all.  Then,  yesterday I had to skip it because we left for San Francisco at 7 AM and when we got back to Concord, Jay had Buddy weekend and the girls were about to get out of school.  I had no real way of dealing with my stress.  I guess the worst thing to do is to become so stressed out and stretched thin that you can't make time for yourself in any respect.  Between my work for the school and the work I'm doing for my father and the general duties of a mom, I have these moments where I feel I'm going to snap.  I get totally overwhelmed and have trouble putting it all in order.  I also helped to organize a parent driven program at the school called Motor Perception and because I completely forgot about it this week, no volunteers showed up and it had to be canceled.  This was very embarrassing and upsetting.  I think that I need to buy one of those old school calendars to carry with me.  I really hate the idea of keeping a calendar electronically and I need a way to keep track of everything that I have going on.  It's too much to remember, particularly with the kids getting older, having their own lives and hobbies and activities and friends and play dates and parties and needing to keep track of all of their stuff as well.

I am going to start knitting again.  In order to take my stress down a notch I like to drink wine at night.  It really helps me.  I feel my whole body just melt into a state of relaxation when I have a glass of wine.  But alcohol  depletes that adrenals and I need to heal mine.  I feel like knitting would help a lot with this.