Well, I don’t think about what they might think. They know me by now, and I am always myself. So I feel free to call or email them anytime I have a question. It takes less time for them to answer my email or phone question than when I would come and visit them. At this time in covid-land, I think they prefer doing everything at a distance themselves. And it is their job after all, you know? I don’t want to deprive them of an income by never calling. 🙂
So that is the answer also: when I have a question about my health, then I notify. Mostly I have then experienced some relapse in my condition, tried to remedy it myself and also have formed a possible solution and want to have their opinion or just inform them about my decision, or request a recipe for another antibiotic I decided to try. Mostly they agree with my choice, sometimes they have another good idea.
These things always seem to happen on a friday evening, and I sometimes don’t feel comfortable waiting until monday morning until applying my own solution. I always have some antibiotics at hand for situations like these, so I don’t feel compelled to wait if I think things might get out of hand. Then on monday I inform them and we talk further. My sputum cultures are almost never usefull anyway, and an antibiotic will take 2 days at least to show effect. So I prefer to take a headstart.
For me, several factors can be important. I can tolerate some increase in infection or inflammation activity. I then try to compensate for that for instance with an increase in daily medication or a change in medication and see how my body reacts to that. But when this does not help and when I get too tired to do my normal fitness routines, this is a hard clue to take action. Fever also can be, especially when it lasts more than a couple of days and tends to increase.
Another pointer could be when my airway condition is starting to impact my sleep. I really need my sleep, physically and mentally. Years ago, when still suffering from recurring nasal polyps, this was also my cue for scheduling an operation: if I couldn’t sleep well from a blocked nose, I was very motivated to get rid of them and an operation started to seem suddenly strangely attractive.
So, I mostly listen to my body without thinking too much about it. When things get too uncomfortable, I take action. If my normal solutions do not work, I contact my center and ask for their input. If possible, I wait for a little while until applying that, to see how I feel about their suggestions and sometimes modify and ask for advice again if it doesn’t feel right. I know my body and my dossier much better than any doctor ever could. So sometimes I feel they didn’t consider every aspect that is important in my eyes. But we always solve this together.
PS I had to look up “loquacious”, thank you for this word! I hope this answer is not too loquacious. There, I used it in a sentence – it is real!
Cheers,
Paul