A friend and I were talking and it came up that when my daughter Lauren was young, and then a teen and then into her late twenties, I would tell drill into her, “Don’t put yourself in a position to have bad things happen to you.” It was something I heard on Oprah.

What I like about this is

it requires a person to slow down and think things through instead of acting on impulse, which is really great when you have ADD like Lauren and I do. It doesn’t guarantee that bad things won’t happen to you; but, I guess, it’s like looking both ways before you cross the street instead of just darting out into oncoming traffic. Even so, if a meteorite is headed toward you and has your name on it, it doesn’t matter how many times you look before crossing the street. Unless you’re looking up, sorry, you’re toast — but at least a damned Mack truck didn’t hit you first. Am I right?

My friend said, “So what you really mean is don’t go borrowing trouble.”

Well, yeah. Not that I’ve thought through the differences between what I said and what she said, but they’re close.

As y’all know, trouble finds me enough. The last thing I do is go looking for it. Most of the time, I’m trying to hide from it. Except when I forget to. Because ADD will screw with your brain at the most inconvenient of times — which is the same as screwing with your entire being — which makes me forget to hide from trouble.

Like recently.

Since January I’ve been with a new insurance company, which has meant brand new doctors and, now, everything is on “the portal.” What that means is everything’s online. Provided you have it set up to remember what your password is, the portal keeps track of your upcoming doctors’ appointments, your medications, test results — all that jazz.

The portal has been around for years now, with lots of different doctor’s offices and insurance companies using whatever their version is. As convenient as it is, I hate knowing my medical records are online. I’ve put off using it for as long as I could. Unfortunately, this year was the year I had to get with the program.

First of all, who came up with that name — the portal? It sounds like if I go to the portal, I’m going off to a different dimension. If I’m going to a different dimension, I don’t want to see test results or know when I’m scheduled to see the nutritionist next.

I want to see GOD!

Then I want to return back to this time and place just the same OR BETTER than when I left.

That is not what one sees, though, on the portal. It’s a very disappointing experience. I see a bunch of numbers that don’t mean a hill of beans to me. I also see a growing list of medications I’m taking. It reminds me that I’m getting old-er-ish.

Also, if you’re like me, you find it disconcerting to have personal information available to any hacker who’s worth their salt. I’m not a hacker, so, basically, I figure that if I can get into the portal, then anyone else can, too. It’s not like I have any STD’s  (do they still call them that?) or anything, but still, is it anyone’s business but my own if I were, say, incontinent? Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Do I want some dirtbag goofball

working at some company looking at my medical history and laughing their butt off because I may have had a foreign object removed from a place I’d rather not divulge? Again, hypothetically speaking. I’m sure they don’t laugh. That would be unprofessional. But they could laugh and knowing they could — because I probably would — is at the very least annoying!

Anyway, I’m wandering around the portal

the other day because I’d been to my doctor the day before. The last time I saw this doctor — so I could get medical clearance to get my cataract surgery — I ended up with concerning test results. He ended up sending me to see two other medical specialists. By the way, it’s not like anyone from his office called to tell me this either.

It was the young office clerks at the specialists’ offices who notified me when they called to set up appointments. They had no idea why I was seeing their doctors. Unfortunately, this was the first I’d heard that I needed to see anyone new. Talk about giving me a heart attack!

The good news is that I probably didn’t need to see either specialist. This new primary healthcare doctor of mine just doesn’t like to take chances, apparently.

We’ll call it — he’s just looking out for me.

Still, if you’re going to send me to a specialist, please phone me and tell me you’re going to do this and why. Don’t spring this with no explanation on an old-er-ish woman who would like to make it to sixty. I swear, I lost two years of my life just from that traumatizing experience alone!

Also, it’s weird when you see a specialist and the first thing they ask is, “So, why are you here to see me today?”

I found myself saying, “Beats the hell out of me! You don’t know?”

So, I’m poking around the portal because I don’t want any new surprise phone calls from specialists’ offices when I see a change to my medications. Apparently, I’m going to have to start taking something called ergocalciferol (Vitamin D2.) It’s right there next to the new prescription for semaglutide I’m going to be taking. I know what the semaglutide is for. But what’s this ergocalciferol for? I already take D3.

As any curious patient would, I Googled it.

That, my friends, is known as borrowing trouble. That is also putting yourself in a situation to have bad things happen to you.

Did you know that ergocalciferol is used to treat hypoparathyroidism? I looked up hypoparathyroidism. Shit! So, there it was. I had a new diagnosis. I mean, it checked off a lot of the symptoms I have. Not all, but a few. Okay, one. Possibly two. BUT STILL…

I’d never even heard of HYPOPARATHYROIDISM before. IT’S RARE AND IT’S NOT GOOD NEWS, Y’ALL!

Then my doctor called a few hours later. It wasn’t his assistant who called, but the doctor himself. This had to be bad.

He said that after seeing my test results, he was going to call in an antibiotic for me.

If I wanted, he could send me to a fancy specialist, too, because I seem to get UTI’s pretty frequently. He thought my lady plumbing might need a specialist to get to the bottom of things.

What?????!!!!

Why was he calling about a run-of-the-mill UTI? Was he just warming up before he gave me the really bad news?

I told him I was less concerned about the UTI and was more concerned with my new diagnosis of hypoparathyroidism. Could we talk about that?

I freaked him out just as much as I was freaked out. 

As it turned out, after we’d both calmed down (me, really), it was decided that whoever typed in the medications I’m currently on — which was on the portal — listed ergocalciferol in error. “Whoever” should have typed in D3 and not D2. The doctor immediately deleted ergocalciferol from my list of meds.

IT WAS IN ERROR!

Did that mean I didn’t have HYPOPARATHYROIDISM?

That’s exactly what that meant.

Getting a call from the doctor telling me I had a UTI —and only a UTI — was the best news I’d had all day!

Wayward Friends, I hope your week is blessed and that whatever version of “the portal” you use only brings you good news!

And music —

and

and

and

 

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TTFN,

Mona