Conversation With Gastroenterologist

 Back in April, I had a Fibroscan of my liver in a gastroenterologist’s office. At the time, they had told me that if they found anything serious, the doctor would call me. If not, then I could discuss my results at my follow up on June 17th. Only, I canceled the appointment on June 17th due to anxiety. I found out that I have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease back in November of 2021. It was discovered when I went to the emergency room for panic attacks that caused cardio symptoms. 

But with so many things going well in my life, I’m afraid I’ll die. So back on Monday, I called the GI office and was like look, is there any way the Dr can just call me. She was extremely rude, “Your insurance doesn’t cover that.” She snapped. I replied, “I will pay for it. I will pay 100% if he just calls me about this.”  I explained that I have severe anxiety over the issue and do no want to have to handle talking about it in the office. It would not only be humiliating for me, but they don’t want to deal with that, I don’t want to deal with that, and I would have to drive upset. She snapped again, “But your insurance doesn’t allow for a phone consult.”  And that’s true with Obamacare- if you have it and something is not covered and you are able/willing to pay out of pocket anyway, they won’t let you. But I started getting attitude back and said, “It lets me go on the teledoc app, that’s who referred me to y’all in the first place.”  She said hang on for her manager and then came back saying the manager wasn’t answering and then gave me her direct line. I called the direct line, and it was a non working number. That bitch! So I called back, got a completely different operator and started over. She put me on hold for the manager. I told the office manager everything and she asked, “Would you like me to run your insurance to see if it covers telehealth or would you like me to leave the doctor a message?” I said, “Can you do both?”  

So I was on kind of a long hold, she came back and said that yes my insurance covers telemedicine, she left my message for my doctor, and he’d call me Thursday the 3rd at 5:00 pm. 

He called a little before then. Immediately I started having panic attacks, but I did mention to him that this liver condition is an extremely serious cause of anxiety for me and that I wasn’t really interested in knowing what my liver looked like, I just had five questions- 1. Is there any medication he wants me to take? 2. Is there any medication he doesn’t want me to take? 3. Is there any specific food I should eat? 4. Is there any specific foods I should not eat and 5. How often do I have to keep coming back for this test? 

He told me first of all, to calm my fears, that everything on the test looks “promising”. He said a few more vague positive things before answering my five questions- there isn’t really a pill to take; my atorvastatin and metformin as long as they work controlling pre diabetes and cholesterol do fine. There is not anything to “not take”, he said, just don’t overdose on anything. As far as foods he described “The Mediterranean Diet” which is what they  all say, but there are more strict guidelines online. And that I should repeat the test about once a year. 

I then stepped back a little and said, “ok since it looks promising then I guess you can tell me what my liver looks like.” He seemed glad and said “Ok well your fatty liver disease is currently at a stage 0, which is the best it can be.”

I know from reading online that stage 4 would be cirrhosis.  Didn’t mention that though, was just glad to hear the number zero. He said the fibroscan was to check for hardening, and other bad things, of which I had none. 

I thanked him and before he hung up. He tried to convince me to get a colonoscopy again. I said, “Let me psych myself up for it for a couple months.”  He said that was fine. 

I told my mom, and she said, “I never had a colonoscopy, and I’m fine.”  

🤦🏻‍♀️ 

I’ve explained survivor bias to her before, but you can’t teach an old dog. 

I believe I know what causes this in me. It wasn’t the panic attacks. As a young woman, I was too skinny. I didn’t even reach 100 pounds until I was 22. Because of that, I constantly had older people telling me I had to gain weight and eat a burger and eat a pizza and I mean it was constantly skinny shaming. This seems counterintuitive to people, because only fat shaming is talked about. I was 220-something at my heaviest, and no one ever said anything about me being fat to my face. They kept it to themselves. Skinny shaming, though, is literally always 100% of the time, said to a person’s face. Because of that I spent many years making myself eat fatty unhealthy things, and that’s what I believe caused this. I feel like I’m not ever allowed to say that out loud though. People don’t like to hear about skinny shaming because they want to believe “society” wants women to be thin. But who exactly is “society”?  I’ve been working hard the last few years trying to reverse the habits and learn more about food. Combined with people who “wanted more for me than to just be in the kitchen” it has taken a lot of work and resisting. But I’m doing it. This morning I weighed 192.2, so some kind of plateau is happening.