I wrote a long post, hit my tablet screen once by mistake, and it was gone. Don't you hate it when that happens? I don't have the patience to write it all again.

Basically, my Dr. ordered a thyroid test which would require swallowing a radioactive pill.

I would rather not truthfully, although I can't claim to understand much about this test.

The imaging place was faxed the work order (for 3 tests) 3 times. I have been calling back and forth for 2 weeks trying to get the Dr.s office and imaging place coordinated. At this point, I think I'd rather watch paint dry.

So, I scheduled the test they have a work order for (MRI of abdomen and pelvis). I want this one.

Before you ask, I can't speak to my Dr. himself until my next appointment in early September.

Thoughts?

I feel for you. One of the reasons I have the medical plan that I chose (going through a university teaching hospital) is because they have everything under their umbrella. When they refer you for imaging, they're referring you to someone in their organization and there are few issues, if any, with coordinating and scheduling (other than the occasional significant wait times).

It's infuriating to have to put this much effort into getting medical tests and imaging that your doctor has recommended.

That said, as much as my tendency is to push things out of my mind I force myself to get things like tests and imaging done, even if it's scary to think about. Ultimately, I fall in the "if it's bad, it's better to know now and start treatment" camp. I hope you are healthy and your tests get scheduled and turn out to show nothing.

Sorry to hear about the scheduling problems. Frustrating.

Probably 30 years ago, I was having dinner with a family friend who was coincidentally my former pediatrician. She looked at me and said "your thyroid is swollen", and palpated my neck to confirm.

I went to my doctor and grudgingly agreed to having the radioactive iodine test to see what was going on. The guy who was there for the test was a specialist (endocrinologist?) and when he saw me, he was like, "whoa, that's a huge thyroid".

Happy ending to the story....I just had a big thyroid that eventually went back to normal size and I've had no issues since. And no one has any idea why it became enlarged....

Good luck!

It can be so difficult to coordinate consults and imaging, (especially if they involve long trips).

About the radioactive pellet, Daniel, all I can say is that a great many tests involve such technology and they (the pros involved) seem to be pretty blase about it. As I understand it, the amount of exposure is minimal (nothing like a cancer treatment, for instance) and we're fortunate such technology exists, as they are uniquely able to diagnose conditions which until recently weren't accessible without surgery.

A few such techniques have been used on me (there are so many available now), but they are quite common and allow the diagnosticians to screen internally without invasive access. Example, myelograms inject radiative dye into the spinal cord to figure out which nerves roots are pinched and swallowing radioactive pellets allow them to figure out just how ones digestive tract is functioning (the swallowed pellets are tracked over a period of days). Having had both, I remember how uniquely informative they were in vital diagnoses.

Guess, I'm saying we're lucky they came up with radioactive imaging - that it's life-saving!

Good luck!

A plaintive digression about scheduling medical jaunts. Somehow, I have to arrange to see several specialists hundreds of miles away (naturally, flying), and I don't know how to go about it. I don't even know what specialists I have to see, apart from the spinal surgeon himself and I'm hoping to patch them in a single week.

Naturally, every doctor sees patients only a few days a week and some are booked way out.

Furthermore, it's all kind of backwards as without a diagnosis for what's giving me an abnormal gait and poor balance (ever since the last operation), I don't even know what specialists to try to get in with. (It involves a trip to Duke in N. Carolina from here in central PA and I sure don't want to make more than one trip to see them, and have their required tests!)

All the more complicated since future corrective surgery might involve more than one surgeon too. Fooey.

I've been putting this off for ages, using COVID difficulties as an excuse but now that travel is allowable, I realize I don't know how to go about it. (Remember our discussing recommendations about retirement destinations and how we all agreed on the importance of proximity to a top medical center?)

Thanks.

I scheduled the tests.