Great news yesterday!  I have been corresponding with Anne Marie, moderator of the Pituitary Hormone Deficiency Group at Yahoo Groups. Anne Marie suggested I contact her endocrinologist who practices in another province in our country.  On Friday I finally had the energy to put my thoughts together in a coherent manner and emailed him.  What a wonderful surprise when the phone rang at noon yesterday and this lovely lady told me that this endocrinologist would like to see me.  The only stipulation is that I need to get a referral letter to him from my family doctor. This will be my top priority when I see Squirt tomorrow.

Today is my fourth full day on Lasix.  I have been taking two a day – one first thing in the morning and one at lunch time.   Of course I am making continuous trips to the bathroom but on the whole I am just as bloated as I was on Friday night when I first started the Lasix.  When I press down on my legs from my knees to my ankles, I leave deep indentations which take forever to go away.  My feet and ankles are also affected in this way.  My hands are so swollen that I cannot see my knuckles.  I have not lost any of the weight I gained back so suddenly after being released from emergency.

Squirt told me to stop taking the potassium pills that had been prescribed for me when I left emergency.  I decided that I would continue to take them until today because I was not going to take a chance on another potassium crisis over the weekend.  After all, the Lasix I am now taking twice a day is much stronger than the diuretic I was taking once a day before the crisis.  Tomorrow is my appointment with Squirt and I will have a blood test to determine my potassium level.

I do not feel good about my appointment tomorrow.  I seem to get a premonition when an appointment will be a complete waste of time. Hopefully I am just tired and miserable and that I will be pleasantly surprised by tomorrow.  I am not at all sure that my decision to ask Squirt for this letter of referral is such a good idea.  However, No Name, my other choice, is still on vacation.  We will see if Squirt is capable of writing a simple referral letter.  I have faxed Squirt a note which reads in part as follows, “I would very much like to go to __________ and see this endocrinologist.  However, I would like to be able to see Dr. ____________ without him having preconceived ideas about my health concerns and without him being prejudiced by what the other endocrinologists have determined.”  I will soon know whether Squirt is capable of following simple and explicit instructions.