Stupid labs, part 2
I've found that having a slight meltdown on the phone with both of your doctors will do wonders in having them jump and find the answers the quell your fear. When I first talked to Peter he said not to pay attention to the high lab numbers and "it could be worse", which is the LAST THING to tell a patient when she thinks she'll be relegated to the couch for the rest of her life. I faxed him the labs and he passed them around the office. He called 2 hours later with the CDC website in front on him explaining what everything meant. Essentially, 3 of the lab numbers have gone down, which is good, and I can ignore the number that went up because the CDC says to ignore it (and I paid for this test because????). My numbers are so high because I've had such a severe case and they actually are evidence that something happened in the past, not right now, and it could take years for the numbers to go down to normal. Peter likened it to dead soldiers on a battlefield. Just because they're all around doesn't mean the fight is still on. He managed to talk me off the cliff with that one.
In the meantime I had left a panicked message with my other doctor. It took her almost 30 hours to get back to me, in which time I figured she realized I'm a kook and had her number changed. Finally her assistant called and put me at ease by saying she had good news and was going to make me feel better. She had the same message as Peter, that the numbers were actually good and not an indication of a current infection. My body was doing very well and healing.
So with this info I'm slightly more encouraged to order our new kit for 2008, although I'm skeptical of how the designs will turn out. Polka dots? Oh please kill me! Some of us will never be climbers, dude. Give me solid black wool and I'll be happy. A skinsuit out of black wool? Ok maybe not. Just give me something to make me look fast.
4 comments:
Are you talking about the various antibody levels for EBV lab tests? I remember being horribly effing confused by those, but then me and the interweb spent a lot of quality time looking up information and deciphering things and I think I eventually understood... The doctor I'm with now hasn't run those labs again, though. So I have no idea where the numbers are at. We are working on "other things" such as me being terribly anemic. Maybe I should ask about it...
A rheumatologist (who is not my rheumatologist anymore) explained to me that the EBV thing was basically a hoax and wasn't something to be worried about. I was thinking like... dude, I have read more about this on Pubmed than you probably have, given how current your knowledge about other chronic illnesses seems to be. I did not say it, though. He was a testy fool.
Also, don't you know polka dots are "hip" now?! :D
Yay! Looking forward to making fun of your new kit, er, I mean, seeing you at races!
Jess - Yes those are the EBV antibody tests. There are 4 of them: IgG, IgM, Early Ab, and Nuclear Ab. One forum I went to said the interpretation depends on the lab that did them, and they didn't understand this lab's techniques. WTF? It's data. I have a science background. Data is used to determine patterns and derive results. WTF is this data to be used for if it's all a hoax?? Like I've said before, if Bob Dole had EBV they'd make a little blue pill and I'd be all better.
As for the kit, thank GOD the polka dots didn't win. It would look sweet on a lean and mean team, but with my lovely lady lumps it would be a travesty. :)
Yeah, I imagine mostly everyone is confused about the EBV thing. I think that my rheumatologist was trying to say that They found a correlation between EBV and some other chronic illness in the 80s, but his opinion was that the studies were poorly done and that correlation did not imply causation.
You know, I just did a pubmed search on EBV, and I don't like what I'm seeing. As in, there are a lot of recent papers published, and they don't say good things about EBV. I'm going to go download the PDFs and be morose for a while.
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