The Waiting Game

I never understand going to Doctor's places.
Because they have you show up early, you know, so you can get in on time....
Only to have you sit and wait and wait and wait before you can be seen.
Past the time you were supposed to have been seen at.

I understand that doctors would want to see as many patients as possible within their work day.
So scheduled appointments would obviously be close together....

Yet...there is always that one patient....that throws the whole schedule off track and puts the doctor behind on seeing their other appointments on time.

I showed up yesterday, for a recheck on my arm with the doctor.
Showed up 10 minutes early as requested.
....and ended up sitting in the waiting room for nearly 40 minutes after I was supposed to have been seen.
Then I was taken into a room to wait for the doctor....for another 20 minutes.

I mean, I've had to wait a while before to see doctors/dentists/eyedoctors etc....
But it was over an hour after my scheduled appointment before I finally got to see the doctor.

*shakes head*

Good thing I hadn't had anything planned afterwards....because I would have been very late to it.

It was just one of those days with multiple difficult appointments that the doctor had to deal with.

In any case,
I got to check in with the doctor once more about my arm.
To see if it's improving.

Which the lymph nodes on my arm are improving.
Only one is still bumpy maybe two of them are still bumpy. The others are now just shadows on the skin if not completely gone. :)
The redness on my knuckle....about the same.

I expected the doctor to just say 'oh it's still looking better so let's keep watching it."

But no.
We ended up talking a bit more than that.
Because I was in the 'grey zone' of what we should do next.
Because my lymph nodes weren't completely better, nor were they healing in a normal way. (the nodes are in a line on my arm, but they're not healing in a line. They're going away out of order even though they showed up in order.) Nor were they getting worse either...they were improving.

So there were two things we could do.
We could continue to wait and see if my arm continues to improve.

Or since my knuckle still isn't healed....
We could do a biopsy on my knuckle -which would require me being sent to a hand surgeon to get the biopsy because....the knuckle is kinda a delicate area. and test it to see what the specific bacteria is.

We could biopsy the lymph nodes on my arm....but since they're all improving, it's possible that the bacteria is already gone, and my arm is just taking its sweet unique time in healing up. So biopsying that area may bring no results.
Possibly doing my knuckle will bring no results either....so who knows. *shrugs*

But it would give us a better idea of what types of medications to put me on, if any bacteria is discovered.

As on this visit, the doctor was more inclined to consider the fact that it may not be a bacteria from a fish tank/fish water that is my problem.
As...after all, I do work in a pet store. I work with all sorts of animals in the store. Birds, Snakes, Lizards, Guinea Pigs, Mice, Hamsters, Cats, Dogs....not just fish.
So its possible that the bacteria had been transferred from one of those creatures as well. *shakes head*

So the doctor left it up to me.
As he didn't want just put me on various drugs and hope that one of them works.

So after brief consideration.
I decided to wait it out another month.
As I'm pretty sure my lymphnodes will healed by that point.
The main focus is to see how my knuckle continues to heal. If it continues to heal or still remains basically the same.

If the knuckle remains basically the same, then the plan is to have me do a biopsy. It's unclear what we'll do if the knuckle is getting better....
if it's healed....then yay no worries!! lol.

So. Once more...
I continue the waiting game.

Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi