Yup. Legs are getting/have gotten worse.

Today was Wound Care and it was hell getting there and back for me. I was in so much pain during the walks to and from the car and up to the Community Care Clinic (CCC) were agonizing. By the time I got where I was going, I was sweating like a winning racehorse and panting just as hard too.

Frankly, I don’t know if I can do that again. That might be my last trip to Wound Care for a while. At least until my legs get better.

Assuming I ever get that rare and exotic thing known as a diagnosis.

It’s been three months now that my legs have been dying out from under me and I am still no closer to knowing what the hell is wrong with them.

If trends continue, I will be functionally unable to walk before too long.

And I will blame that entirely on Doctor Chao.

If he had shown one scintillionth of the necessary sense of urgency in my case, I would have a diagnosis and maybe even (gasp!) a treatment by now.

But nope. Three months in and I’m in the dark. my legs are in pain, and Doc Chao is off on vacation without so much as leaving a locus to handle his patients while he is gone.

Oh well, at least he isn’t someone with massive responsibilities and the literal power of life and death over hundreds of people or anything. O wait….

Not that I’m bitter.

I’m just seriously fucking pissed off.

I am going to try to make it to Somewhat Urgent Care tomorrow. Preferably as early as I can stomach. And maybe they will care enough to actually diagnose me.

Or at least spend more than five minutes with me. And at least pretend to care.

Actually, that’s unfair. Doctor Chao definitely pretends to care. I tell him my problems and he’s all “Oh my, that’s terrible!”.

Doesn’t keep him from shoving me back out the door as soon as possible, but ya know, at least he cares enough to lie.

So um, thanks.

I will go to the Theoretically Urgent Care Center knowing I might be in for a long wait. So I will at least bring a book.

Makes me wish I had my tablet already, though. Tablet plus WiFi equals a healthy percentage of the comforts of home, at least.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I could wait in a hospital bed, like in the ER.

No wait is unpleasant if I can nap through it.

Then again, if I really do get to the point where I can barely walk at all, I will then feel entirely entitled to go to the fucking ER.

Screw this slow bullshit. Sure, I have waited very long times at the ER, but at least something eventually fucking happened.

Although if this time I go there and tell them my tale of woe and they do a bunch of tests and then have the nerve to come tell me they don’t see a problem, they will be able to hear me yelling, “THEN KEEP LOOKING, ASSHOLES!” on the ISS.

More after the break.

An unpleasant theory

I have had an unfortunately quite plausible terrible thought.

OK, hear me out.

Remember way, way back when I thought I might have lactic acidosis because I had been to the ER and that creepy fucking ER doctor, just before he ejected me from the ER, said something like, “Well, the only thing we found was extremely high lactic acid levels, but….. you don’t care about that, right?”

And I was far less bitter and cynical back then, so I just went along with it?

But then later I got to thinking that sounded pretty bad and looked up lactic acidosis and got freaked out because it can actually be pretty bad and what the hell was the doctor doing sending me home with levels that high?

So I went to Doctor Chao, whom I still trusted, and asked him to test my lactic acid levels to see if they were still high?

And then I went back to him a week later and he said they were fine?

Well he didn’t say it in a very reassuring way. In fact, looking back, it was clear he had completely forgotten our previous conversation and so he only stammered out something like, “Oh right…. we checked that…. it was fine. Perfectly normal. Good. ”

I told you all that so I can tell you this : what if I have been suffering from lactic acidosis all these years and not known it? What if that is the actual cause of the lesions on my skin and the deterioration of my poor legs?

Because as I took my first Aleve dose in three days today, it occurred to me that without the Aleve, the muscles in my legs and in other places start to burn.

And that sounds a lot more like an excess of acid than diabetes to me.

Think about it. I may have suffered years and years of debilitating symptoms which may yet cost me my ability to walk or even my life all because my fucking doctor forgot he had ordered a lactic acid test and why, so he just made up some bullshit that would cover his ass in the moment, and to hell with what happened to me.

I want an lactic acid test on my blood and tissues ASAP. Maybe there truly is no problem and I am just being paranoid and lashing out.

But maybe I am the victim of profound medical malpractice on the parts of both the ER doctor and my GP, Doctor Chao.

A lactic acid test will establish the truth.

But who do I get to order one for me?

Maybe someone at Kinda Urgent Care can help me.

Though I had better come up with a reason to ask that doesn’t implicate two other doctors or they may close ranks and refuse to cooperate with me at all.

I am sure I will think of something.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.