"You almost died!"

I had an appointment today with my primary care doctor, Dr S. Sort of a post-surgery follow-up to bring her into the loop (my surgeon's office had sent my records) and to touch base on some pesky little irritations I have going on. Tony and I've been seeing her for years; of course neither of us has been really sick, so luckily we haven't had to see a lot of her. Well, turns out, she's pretty cool.

We were waiting in the exam room for a while (I wanted Tony to come back with me as he knows more about all the post-surgical complications than I do). At one point Tony said "hopefully it's taking a while because she's reading the novel the surgeon's office faxed over". He was right. There was a knock, the door started to open, and before her head even appeared, we heard Dr S say sympathetically "You almost died!"

Over the next half hour (yes, we had her full attention after she read the surgeon's report) we covered all aspects of my surgery, complications, recovery, etc. Dr S was very sympathetic (lots of "you poor thing", pats on the shoulder and the knee) and understanding of how I feel physically. When I told her I have no energy she said "well yeah, you almost died!" It was actually sort of cute the way she kept saying this - equal parts impressed and sympathetic.

It was a very good appointment, and we think Dr S is sort of excited to have such an interesting patient case to monitor and treat. I go back in two weeks to check-in again and see what's happening. I was happy that she wants to be so involved in my recovery; as well as her support of my just wanting to take it slow.

She checked my blood sugar readings and recommended I discontinue the insulin but continue to monitor my blood sugar and report to her. She prescribed a powder for a skin irritation I have -- that's all I'll say about that. And she told me that the pasty-mouth not-able-to-taste-anything thing I got going is not an infection, but it's just traumatized taste buds and she assured me it will get better. That earned me another "you poor thing" and a pat on the knee.

So, I'm improving, but it will continue to take time - I'm excited to get off the insulin, and I've noticed that my hair loss has slowed dramatically from what it was last week (thank God I had so much to begin with!). Tony and I are taking it day-to-day and he says he is more than happy to take care of me (which is nice because he left the appt with a whole new list of "To Do's").

We did lunch at Ground Round after the appt -- we know how to do Valentine's Day up right. ;-) I joke, because having Tony here wanting to take care of me, filling all my prescriptions, buying me fruit, etc, is about the best Valentine's gift I could hope for. :-)