OK, consider yourself warned. If you don't want to hear about periods and breasts move along.
If you watch the TV show House you know that one of Dr. House's pearls of wisdom is that people lie. They ask patients for their histories, and inevitably the patient has either forgotten something, or even made a conscious decision to leave something out, and it is again inevitably the key to diagnosing their problem.
But the fact is that we don't lie...we just don't connect the dots very well.
Take for instance this friend of mine, let's call her My Example (ME.) ME recently had a revelation that, after three months of various nagging symptoms, they might be attributable to a change in medication he started almost 5 months ago! Silly ME. How could that silly patient not realize?
The whole story is in the extended entry...
See, ME changed health insurance carriers about six months back, and with that change came, as often happens, a change in formulary that required ME to change the type of birth control pill she takes. ME has been taking various incarnations of the pill off and on for most of her adult life and has never been one of those to experience side effects (much as ME would like to blame any weight gain on it.)
Anyway, also within the last year, ME has had an irregularity show up in her mammogram. They say it's nothing, but they have her on a every-six-month schedule for more mammograms, so really, how "nothing" could it be?
So during the last few months since that last July mammogram ME has been overly aware of her breasts. They seem more sore than normal, not sore, but maybe, sensitive. Doctors everywhere would be proud of ME's newfound devotion to self-exam, although her technique is rather haphazard, rather than methodical as recommended.
ME is also getting old enough to wonder when the symptoms of peri-menopause might start. She has a friend who started quite early. ME's own period has been more erratic lately. Not coming one month. Coming three days late a few months in a row. Being so light as to be hardly noticeable (which is fine, just fine with ME.) Now those of you women on the pill know one of the bennies is that your period is extremely well-regulated. You can calendar it. But lately ME's hasn't been that way.
Then this month ME got her period three days early! While she was still wrapping up taking that month's pills. That has never ever happened to ME before. Not in 20 years.
And suddenly ME thought..."hmmm, could it be this new pill prescription is causing side effects?"
ME has also been opening pill packages and throwing away the inserts about side effects and risk for 20 years. BUt ME seems to vaguely recall that sensitive breasts and erratic periods may be indications that a pill's hormone levels aren't exactly right.
Now why didn't ME think of this before? Is it that she's stupid? If she had been unable to connect those dots in a doctor's visit, would she have been lying?
No, I don't think so. The first time we experience some kind of mild-to-moderate physical symptom we're likely to think it's nothing, and the first few times it happens it's like a surprise each time! I think that it's hard to notice patterns that develop over time, and then go back in your mind and affix a starting point, and then even harder to remember what might have also happened back at that starting point that could have been a trigger. And even if you do notice there's a pattern, if there's anything at all you're afraid of in your own medical history or family history, your mind is going to go there first.
You know, we've got a lot on our minds, and as much as everyone says that one's health is the most important thing, we really don't think about it if we don't have to, do we? And that's the way we like it!
So, ME, although she will feel slightly silly, is going to call her doctor this week and inquire whether the dots she just connected are indeed finally connected properly. And hopefully there will be some other prescription she can get, and even more hopefully ME's symptoms will abate. If not, ME is back to square one.
Comments