My Anus Horribilis

I had an appointment with my gastroenterologist this past week. It was just a regular follow-up appointment that I go to every six months to make sure I’m still doing fine.

For once, I remembered before the appointment to check my medication to see if I needed a new prescription and to check my blood work requisition form to see if I needed a new one.

I do blood work every three months, and the requisition form expires about nine months after the first time I use it, so I get three uses out of each form. At the blood work lab, they are very picky, and they won’t let you go a week early, as I tried to do once; I need to wait at least 90 days since the last time I had blood work done before they can do it again. I get my blood work done on Saturday mornings, since that’s the only time my lab is open outside of my regular work hours. If it’s a holiday weekend, they’ll be closed on Saturday, so I’ll need to go the next weekend, and if that happens, my blood work form usually ends up being expired about a week before I’m supposed to have my blood work done for the third time.

Anyway, this time, I was able to just squeak in before the expiration date; I would need to do my blood work on that Saturday, and then the form expired on Sunday, so I needed to ask the doctor for a new one.

My actual appointment was typical, and I’ve described how it goes on this blog before, so I won’t go into detail.

My doctor mentioned that my blood work showed that the inflammation marker was in the normal range, but it went up from 5 in April to 7 in July. She said as long as I wasn’t having any symptoms, it was probably fine, but we’d just need to keep an eye on it.

She told me to make a follow-up appointment for nine months from now, rather than in six months. It’s always nice when I get to have appointments less often, because it means I’m doing well.