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December 16, 2006
More Blood Work and Surgery Update
Alright, if you are new here:
I have a couple of pituitary tumors that have caused hormone problems: high prolactin which led to low testosterone. My blood work history is available in this blog as is a rather long summary of my experience the last four years. All the hormone entries can be found by clicking here.
Blood Work:
I had blood drawn this past Tuesday, which would have been December 12. I've been taking the generic form of Dostinex (Cabergoline) for almost 4 months. I normally have blood taken on a Thursday morning before I take the Thursday dose of medicine. As I take the meds Sundays and Thursdays this give me a reading when I have the lowest level of cabergoline in my system.
The Tuesday draw came about as I wasn't paying attention when I made the appointment.
In any case, my prolactin level came in at 6.9 (with a reference range of 2.1 to 17.7 being normal), which is the best it has been since I've been tracking it. My testosterone doesn't get tested at each draw anymore as it is always good now -- it should certainly higher than it's been the past four years.
Oh, that reminds me. It was four years ago this month that I started taking Dostinex.
Surgery Update
(For some background on this, the hormone problem led to gynocomastia that needed to be surgically treated. When I started taking Dostinex I started losing weight that I'd been trying to lose, unsuccessful, for a long time -- over the past four years I've dropped almost 150 pounds ... thus, the tummy tuck. I've read that low T and/or high prolactin can cause weight gain and make it hard to lose; my experience supports this.)
I had gyno surgery and, for fun, a tummy tuck, this past November 6th. So, it was about 6 weeks ago. The gyno surgery (and there were baseball-sized bits of tissue removed from behind each nipple) never really hurt much. Or maybe the pain was made unnoticeable by the uncomfortableness of the tummy tuck. Who knows? I took a week off work to heal up some.
Anyway, I'm healing up nicely. My belly aches just the tiniest bit if I sneeze really hard.
Posted by delmer at December 16, 2006 5:40 PM