As most people know, I started this year struggling with graft vs host disease and hopeful to begin my medicine residency here at Mayo in July. Beth and I were married in May but the GVH never really left so residency was, once again, postponed.
The summer was enjoyable but I developed a pretty severe infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV) that continued to keep me sidelined. I started doing some part-time research through Mayo (mostly from home) and that turned out to be useful in helping me feel more productive.
About the time we got the CMV under control, we realized my thyroid was shot. My TSH continues to be way out of whack (86 currently) and is not responding to increasing doses of oral thyroid hormone supplementation.
Ultimately, there seems to be a severe malabsorption problem that keeps a lot of my medicines from doing their job (I take over 13 unique meds/day, multiple doses of some). And it's a catch-22 because if I increase the steroids to help cut down on the inflammation and increase absorption, it makes me that much more susceptible to the CMV and it really messes up my bones.
As things stand in December 2012, I've got a lot of things wrong with me. I effectively have no thyroid and will probably require some special subcutaneous form of levothyroxine to address this. My energy is low as a result of the thyroid issue and also anemia that is caused by the medicine I have to take for the CMV. Unfortunately, the CMV medicine is not working perfectly and I may actually be developing some resistance to it. I continue to deal with GVH which causes a fair amount of nausea, vomiting, and colitis. The steroids that I take for this have officially weakened my bones to the point of osteoporosis. I take vitamin D for this but, once again, I'm not absorbing it as well as I should be. My heart and my lungs are working great, and my liver seems to be doing better. My kidneys are losing a little bit of protein which causes me to swell up sometimes but it's probably just a medication side effect and we're watching it.
Anyway, I remain hopeful some of this stuff will work itself out. Certainly, I'm cancer-free and that's a blessing.
And although this all sounds like it must be horrible, life is really pretty good. Being married to Beth is the best part and she brings a lot of joy to my life. She is enjoying teaching at the high school and I'm proud of how hard she works. We have a lot of friends here and have made so many more meaningful connections with people than we would have predicted just a year ago.
As far as major life changes, I've decided (with the support of Beth, our families, and my doctor) that internal medicine is probably never going to happen for me....and, quite frankly, I don't think I want it to. I have certain priorities for my life and working 80 hours/wk just doesn't align with them anymore (not that I could ever physically do it anyway). I've put in an application for a part-time science tutoring gig at the community college which I think I might enjoy. I'm also continuing to do some important research here at Mayo and am trying to become a more productive writer. I have mostly decided that, if I do decide to pursue a residency and career in medicine, it will probably be in the field of pathology....but that wouldn't happen until July of 2014 at the earliest. I suppose there's no rush; I've already passed all my boards. In the mean time, I'll be exploring opportunities in teaching and research and possibly writing a book!
I'm going to try to keep this blog up to date (I never was a facebook fan) so feel free to follow it for info on how I'm doing, what I'm up to, and where you can buy the book ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment