Summary

Yesterday, in brief:

• My diabetes insipidus is under control and Dr. Kidney doesn't need to see me until next spring. I just have to get blood drawn every so often to be sure I'm not dehydrated and I have to be extremely careful if I get sick. I already have that precaution with lithium, although to be honest I haven't been good with that; my Pedialyte supply expired and I haven't replaced it. It's just so expensive. But having it at home is better than having to drive to the next big town to get it when sick.
• Dr. Kidney won't be the doctor to treat my blood in the urine. That will fall to Dr. Urologist, to be determined pending CT results.
• Barium is nasty, but a huge amount of this was that others had told me it was overly sweet vanilla or strawberry flavored so that was what I expected. I took several huge gulps before I realized it was orange cream flavored. The result of the surprise was that I gagged quite a bit on the first cup and vomited a tiny amount up. Thank God it wasn't more, I would have died before drinking extra at that point. Then I got the 2nd cup and remembered the childhood trick of holding your nose closed. This actually worked extremely well and I barely gagged on the 2nd cup.
• Medical students don't know much about DI; I feel like it's something I don't have a great grasp on, but I knew about as much or slightly more as the med student yesterday.
• Radiology tech students know nothing about DI. He kept asking "but your diabetes, what about _____?" I kept saying "It's not real diabetes in the sense you're thinking. It's a kidney disease." After a few rounds of this his supervisor grinned at me and nodded at him. I really hate this part of that diagnoses; it would make things so much smoother if they hadn't called it diabetes anything. It's too rare and it confuses everyone. Even when I found out I had it, I knew a brief amount about it because I knew it was always a possible side effect of lithium, I still was scared to hear that word.
• My understanding that I'm at higher risk for vascular anomalies because of having a large portwine stain birthmark is accurate. That means the kidney thing probably is the bloody tumor option, at least by my interpretation. (Dr. Just Me)
• I'm really tired after all the stress yesterday and don't want to go to work. At all. And I won't have a day off until July thanks to how my company sets up PTO. Ick.
• I really wish I'd gotten to see Dr. Mind yesterday. I'm not ready for every other week.