Curious Lymie goes to the Doc

How am I doing? I've been asked this a lot lately so I thought I'd take the time to update.

I am actually doing extremely well. I have been staying up later and sleeping less. I still have moments of pure exhaustion, but usually after one great night of sleep I wake up refreshed. This is something I haven't felt in over a decade.

Even though I am doing wonderfully, there are a few things that are bothering me. First one is hard to explain. I have never been able to explain it, but it's this feeling in my knee. I touch it and it feels like something is under there. It moves all around and feels extremely weird. I have never found the right words to describe it, but others that have felt it just say "wow that's weird." The second is that yesterday, a new mole popped up on my ear. As I am sure you guys are just as OCD as I am about your skin, I check out my skin every day. I am constantly looking for ticks. Ironically just yesterday morning, I was checking out my ears b/c there was a tickle. One of my ticks that I have had was attached to my ears so I am always checking them out.

Well I was teaching a class yesterday when I felt a slight "pain" right on the top of my ear. So of course I touched it. I realized there was a "rough spot" that sort of felt like a tick. So I immediately went to find someone else to take a peek b/c it sort of looked like a tick from my view in the mirror. After work, I drove to my Primary Care Physician (I haven't been to that office since Feb. 07, but I knew that my nurses weren't in at my LLMD's yesterday and that my LLMD had a full client load).

It was in that moment I realized how much I love my LLMD. I spent 30 minutes in the waiting room. I spent another 10 minutes in the patient room (which is actually a really great time for this particular office .. once I fell asleep and two hours later ... I woke up ... I still hadn't been seen yet ... obviously) only to see the physician for a whopping THREE MINUTES! I even timed him as soon as the door opened. He took about a 5 second look at my ear .. and spent the rest of the time typing on his computer.

Oh and get this: So I have this other bump on my leg. I showed him that too (which he looked at for a whopping 5 seconds, but at least he FELT that). He told me (and I hadn't told him about my Lyme Diagnosis yet) ... it looks like a spot where a bug or tick may have bit my skin and maybe I didn't get it out all the way and the skin grew over it leaving a bump. It was at this point that I told him about my OCD about skin checking for moles, bumps and ticks because of my Lyme diagnosis.

As I explain that I am a little OCD about my skin and how I check myself every day and look at my moles every day .. and I know this one wasn't there before .. he blew me off and said, "these things pop up from time to time. Don't worry. Do you need something for anxiety?"

OMG .. I wanted to slap the man. Then he said if I wanted, he would slice it off to call and make an appointment for another time for him to do so. Yeah .. like I want a man who looked at my ear for 5 seconds "slicing" at my ear! I figured out that if I paid 20 bucks for the 3 minutes he was with me .. for a full hour (which is what I get at my LLMD's office) ... I would have paid ... 400 dollars.

So yeah, the mole is a little frustrating. It is very annoying and even somewhat painful and the doctor didn't take me seriously. Just thought I'd share a day in the life of a Lymie going to regular doctor.

Missing the "gene"

I am missing a very important "gene" in my genetic make-up. This isn't a medical condition of missing an actual genetic component, but there is something missing none-the-less. As you all know, I recently got my hair cut. I let my hair get way too long. Why you ask? Because the longer it is, the easier it is for me to maintain. That is until it gets to a certain length where it begins to form a bird's nest in it overnight.

If I don't feel like trying to do something with it, I could throw it up in a pony tail and go. This has been my ritual since middle school. I've only gotten my hair cut this short since 1990 ... maybe 3 times. Every time I get really excited at the hair salon, but then the let down happens.

It's the moment I realize ... I am missing the "girl" gene. The gene that automatically is there that let's me know not only what to do with my hair to make it look good, but how to do it. After my hair cuts, I wait as long as possible to wash it because I know after I wash it ... it will never look as good as it did.


So last night, I finally washed it. I couldn't find my "clips" to "hold up the layers" to dry it with a kind of torture device called a hair dryer. So I finagled my old picc line covers to hold my hair up. It worked, but whoa was it funny looking. I still am not quite able to dry my hair nice and straight with the dryer and brush b/c ... who can brush their hair and hold a hair dryer at the same time?????? Oh wait .. the whole female population ~ except me.


I attempted to dry it. I spent two hours "trying" to flatten the mess out of my hair disaster with a hair torture device known as a flat iron. I used some kind of product for heat and used some kind of product that smells good and the mist misery fell upon me as the spray sprewed (yeah yeah I made the word up) all over my glasses.

So after spending over two hours working on my hair, I first cried about how I was missing the fixing hair gene and then I slumped into bed the hair messer-upper device. I woke up with my hair sticking straight up in the air with no evidence that I had spent wasted over two hours of my life the night before. So I had to lose another 45 minutes just trying to get it to look decent for work or I'd be ridiculed by the ladies (that have the gene).

*sigh* It saddens me that I can not figure out how to make my hair unruly. This is my profile of what I saw this morning. I can not even show you the front view because I had just rolled out of bed and it was a sight not to be seen. Can you see that "mess" in the back sticking straight out?

And just on Thursday,
my hair stylist a woman who has the hair fixer gene
had my hair looking like this:



What is wrong with this picture???? Can anyone help me? It took her an hour to wash, cut, dry and flat iron my hair. It took me NEARLY FOUR HOURS to wash, dry and flat iron and it didn't look anywhere close to how she had it. :(