I have a corset, red panties & pose threat to population...also have a GP and the H word (maybe).

Am I in good health? No, actually I am probably in the worst health for a good long while. Cheryl and Linda are rather pissed at me because I keep passing out. I am not sure why they are pissed about that; it is not like I PLAN it. They say something about how I keep talking or doing things until I pass out. Well, sure, who wouldn’t? I mean, if my body gave me a timetable of being unconscious I could get a lot better in scheduling so I was doing stuff and then simply lying waiting for passing out, reading a manga maybe. I think the idea is that I should be reading manga and resting. But there is too much to DO!

I mean, while yes, I do have to go to Booth Gardner, I got my new corset by post today and it is medium junior and a little bit MORE medium (aka, smaller) than the last one I got. So did it fit? Well, the joys of the corset and the female form is that with enough will power it always fits (Cheryl said, ‘well, there are just ribs, I guess it isn’t going to fit’ – I thought, “That’s what you think” – two minutes later it was on). It looks very shapely if I may say so myself, although having a necklace of smelling salts might be prudent. Haha – I brought extra corsets in case I need to change!

Oh, sorry the big news is that I, Dr. Elizabeth McClung was TOTALLY WRONG. Yes, and it has give me a four letter response. After I talked to the guy (Dr. I.) who thought that female doctors’ were the reason (besides Jubilee being the worse hospital in Canada – his statement not mine!) health care here is crap for the chronic and terminal. Dr. I, said OF COURSE I had Lichen Sclerosis. However he was too busy to look. So I had to come back the next morning to the new walk in clinic in the village to see Dr. J. I told her I had Lichen Sclerosis and she said, “No you don’t.” I said, “Well, it might be Lichen Planus.” And she she, no, that is actually more common here, and she indicated the front of the shin. Of course, I am having this conversation sitting up facing her, with my Victoria Secret RED panties (go out in style!) at my ankles. She said, there is a very distinct discharge with Lichen Sclerosis.

I told her I HAVE a discharge, I have anemia, I have Progressive Anemia, I have a thyroid problem, I have an auto-immune disease ergo, Lichen S.

She said, “No, what you have is a severe hormone imbalance, and the discharge you are talking about, that brown on, it is dried blood because your skin is membrane here and bleeding out and your labia are fused and anytime you stress it (like say, taking a dump) you bleed (combined with pus and other fun stuff maybe dead white blood cells).

I said, “Oh.”

She said, “You have a severe deficiency in estrogen.” I explained I was already dealing with imbalance with pills.

She prescribed a cream. And I went, “OHHHHH!” and sank my head in my hands. She took this as a form of humility I think. And started explaining something. Actually, I was going, “Why have I been so STUPID!” (yes, it is possible to be a genius, catgirl or BOTH and still blow it!) I have been asking myself how I could be losing 1/3rd my weight while eating while Linda does and just sitting there, no exercise. And when you add in the hypothryrodism…..? Except I need many probiotics to try and absorb nutrients and I have been wondering if things are being broken down in the stomach at all. Wondering what if all is being absorbed. And I have been taking my estrogen supplements…orally! And due to Dr. Jimmy, no checking of hormone levels in like a year or more. Get the “OH!!!” Yes, I have a deficency and the hormones can’t get there. A cream is better, a cream solves the problem!

I asked her if the skin would thicken up. She said she believed so. I asked what about my hair, it was so thin and falling out in clumps. She said to wait and see. Here I had been complaining to Linda that with my breasts reduced in size I was feeling…..well sexless. I had been having dreams like that. With last recording of Androgen at 0.0 and two doctors looking at me going, “You have a severe hormone imbalance, and a estrogen deficiency.” It makes sense. I will put on the cream. I will see what happens. I have hope.

Of course, there is a problem that with adding all sorts of hormones to me, there could be a slight period of adjustment, where I have imbalance the other way. We have to hope for the local population that this does NOT happen. They need to get the correct level quickly for everyone’s safety!

For me Booth Gardner had three options, a) they tell me that it is all in my head (hey, I’m female: we must have tremendous brains for all the things we can have in our head from M.S. to CFS/M.E. and Fibro!), b) They tell me I am going to die or c) they tell me they don’t know. What this has made me realize is that I do NOT know ALL of the options. That as much as I like to think I have worked out all the options and that I am stuck here in a medical tower, far from help. So maybe that isn’t true (the trained crows who do my bidding are true however!).

I realized that like this woman who I asked, “Why do you KNOW this.” She said quite reasonably, “Well, I have seen Lichen S. and Lichen P and this estrogen deficiency (usually in the very young, the adolescent and the older but still, very distinctive). I told her that was the same grouping for Lichen S. She outlined the difference she had seen in her 30 years of practice in Portland, OR. Oh. Okay. Wait, Portland, like the USA? I asked her if she believe in treatment based medicine? She didn’t know what I was talking about.

I told her I had hypothyroidism but I couldn’t get a referral in order to…she interrupted, “Oh, I can give you syn-thyoid.”

“You don’t need to refer me?”

“No, why would I, vagina’s and thyroids I am very good at!” She wasn’t so great on complex autoimmune diseases, however the owner, Mark, who works in Vancouver and is over once a week is VERY interested as is an older woman doctor who seems to have a fine point focus and we spent 20 minutes talking details and she left saying, “I could talk about this forever, but I have patients.” They renew prescriptions. The Admin person help Linda get the MRI recording of my brain for Booth Gardner. They invited me to be a patient of theirs. I signed up. I now have team of 4 GP’s to return to.

But more important, I realized, as I talked to this very competent woman who worked in Portland that the doctors at Booth Gardner could come up with an EQUALLY logical and reasonable explanation that I have simply NOT THOUGHT OF. Of course, I am on a rebreather mask, and have 70% heart erratics now both showing central autonomic function, I also can’t feel my feet and have loss of nerves in my hands and have overheated 5 times today showing peripheral nerve damage. Even MSA people go, “How is that possible?” I don’t know!! I just live the life. They say autonomic failure and you have either cancer or the PAF/MSA group. But see, I could go in there and they could tell me something logical I never thought, like for example that I am B-12 sensitive, and my initial B-12 deficiency created pernicious anemia which destroyed peripheral nervous systems. And now, anything like my current anemia triggers it to restart, which is why I am losing more now. That is logical and something I never thought of; and they could say they have seen it X number of times. And maybe they have an explanation for the central autonomic failure. I don’t know. But maybe a treatment and maybe I will come home and not feel like a little pawn on someone’s large chessboard where I was the medical pawn everyone was desperately trying to forfeit.

Maybe having that four letter word: hope. Maybe it will make it all the harder if they say what I pretty sure what they will say. But I am not just going now for pain control (my Portland GP can do that), or other things that a GP SHOULD be able to do. Either way, I will leave there knowing my future. And I DO have a future; 8 I am going to Sakura-con, I am going to do the Times Colonist 10K, even if it takes me 2 hours, I WILL do it. Because I have a future; even if it is counted in weeks or days; months maybe, it is STILL a future. But now I have hope: hope that I will for once be ORDINARY, that I will be the ‘easy case’ because they know what to do. And I will have an anniversary of this day; the day my future grew, like a sunflower, high to the sun.