All, thanks so much for following my little journey here...this is going to be a long post.
Rustsmith :lol I do still need luck but maybe not quite as much now, hopefully.
I'm still at the airport, flight home leaves in 2 hrs. Argh. Tried to get earlier flight, they wanted $95 for the empty seat...nope nope nope.
I really liked Dr B. It was a very interesting and helpful consultation. He said he suspected my issue with norco wasn't tolerance, but was a timing issue as to when I was taking it; since I wasn't tracking when exactly, we're not sure.
He actually said he thought the emotional symptoms I was reporting may well be something else and if so, he thought that might be hard to tease out. (I've had depression before and this is a bit different, but it's a point).
That freaked me out a little bit and scared me, for if I'm not sure what's causing it, how am I going to get better??? But I really respected him for saying it. (Contrast with my current sleep MD who basically told me she thinks my symptoms must be the PMLS.)
He said it because my PLMs were 248 in 4 hrs in the study, and my awakening index was 12. He said he gets people with double this. (Does anyone have insight on these numbers and their own symptom levels? I'd be curious to hear if anyone has severe symptoms with similar numbers).
He wrote me a rx for oxycodone and lyrica anyway (I didn't ask...he seemed to be saying both things at the same time...this may *not* be caused by RLS/PMLS, *and* let's treat it.) Which at first I was confused by and later actually appreciated. He also didn't say any dumb anxiety provoking stuff like 'well we won't know until we try,' etc. Which is exactly the kind of thing my sleep doctor would say.
While it was a bit emotionally difficult just due to my own expectations, it opened up a whole new level of inquiry for me. Might I be focusing too much on fixing the RLS/PMLS that I'm missing something else important?
These were questions I was asking myself; he wasn't asking me. Which I really appreciated...that he wasn't trying to act like he knew the answer to that and he wasn't trying to bully me into accepting any kind of diagnosis or non-diagnosis. He strikes me as a man who is confident in his specialty, and humble outside of it.
I found myself wondering about menopause...which I finished a year ago...and these fatigue and mood symptome have been worsening in the past few years. So this, among other things, is something for me to consider. Heck, maybe there's even a placebo effect for the meds. Who knows?!
I still feel that my symptoms are caused by the PLMs, but I also have an open mind now, which I think is important and that in itself was worth the trip!
The other thing that made the trip hugely worth it was to be treated with respect, and to take my health and level of distress seriously, and have my doctor do the same. Friends, it made me feel like gold!
I didn't realize how disabled, immobilized, and incapacitated I had become in response to the condescending, patronizing, arrogant, rigid, and judgmental behavior of my doctor and the medical field in general towards those who take pain meds.
I wondered, what would my sleep doc think? I worried that she'd think I was being too extreme and say something like, 'I don't know what they'd do that I wouldn't." What would the pharmacy think of say?
As it was, I solved both of those problems in the waiting room after the consultation. I fired my sleep doctor via voicemail :lol (I had to do it before she fired me when the pharmacy calls her about my new rx from out of town MD).
I said "I am seeing an RLS specialist and I will let you know if I need help in the future. Oh, and you don't need to worry about the norco rx because I'm not going to fill it."
Then I let Dr B's office send the rx electronically so I don't have to deal with the suspicious and rude costco lady. When I go pick it up, when they try to educate me about addiction, and especially if they have an attitude about it, I m gonna bring some articles for them to read too. So the conversation is gonna go both ways.
I am hopeful about the new meds.