Early morning news

So. We have a "patient portal" where we can get in securely/remotely, and information gets posted.

I didn't have a lot of hope of seeing blood test results before Friday.

But I woke up early this morning and checked my e-mail before logging in to Duolingo (I have picked up working on German again, but have turned off all the competitive features, because those take away the fun for me)

"You have new results in your patient portal"

I decided to look: knowing is better than not-knowing for me.

To my surprise, in addition to the usuals (CBC, metabolics, lipids), she had a hormone panel done, but then, she's the doctor.

The usual results: everything within the normal ranges. (The fact that my AST/ALT, and creatinine/BUN, and white blood cell counts were normal suggested to me: it's probably not cancer or any other weirdness).

Hormones? The results suggest "premenopausal female in the follicular phase."

Follicular phase is what a woman would be in right after having finished with a period.

In other words: normal for someone who is not in menopause yet

So. Yeah. I was wrong about that. And I was especially wrong about something being horrifically wrong with me.

It's good to be wrong some times.

Oh, I'll still get the dang ultrasound if she orders it, just to be SURE, but I'm wondering if the reason she didn't leave orders for one - and didn't tell me - was "if the hormones come back as we would expect for a woman-not-in-menopause, let's not bother"

And yeah, she's seen them. She saw them yesterday midday, apparently from the time stamp, and left a message saying  "We'll discuss these at the January visit" though I suspect the discussion is going to be "don't be so anxious about these things."

***

I think of someone who used to have a knitting blog, who had either had breast cancer or had had a breast cancer scare very young (and had a family with elevated risk) and how she went in to the doctor after getting a worrisome symptom evaluated, and the news was "nothing is wrong at all" and the doctor - knowing she was a churchgoer - told her to sing the Doxology extra loud that week and yeah, I think I will be doing that today.

And now, yeah, I feel good about taking the time (which was not really very much time, chili is not hard) to make a big batch of chili for our chili lunch today. The local "soup kitchen" sort of place (it is called Families Feeding Families) is building a new facility and to raise funds, they asked churches to serve chili lunches (asking people to make and donate the chili) and to take a "love offering" that would then go to the group. They are a good group and do a tremendous amount of good for people who need help, and the mother of the woman who is one of the people who runs it is a friend of mine, so I definitely wanted to help.

I also feel better about giving up my Saturday to prep really hard for advanced biostatistics. Because it feels now like there will be a lot more Saturdays, and if I can be disciplined this week and get the prep for NEXT week done during the week, I am going to Whitesboro on Saturday and buying myself some yarn and maybe even some quilt fabric.


And yes, perhaps there's some bigger message in all of this: a "Look, the Man Upstairs really does have your best interests at heart, don't second-guess things, don't assume that you did something horrible you are being punished for, that's not how it works. And enjoy the life you have."