That Chat

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I went for the chat with the doctor - as always, it was more of a laugh than anything else. I've a feeling I've met him outside of a clinical setting at some point but I don't think I've slept with him or anything. I talked about the slightly vague cluster of infections I've had in the last few months and he said I should try a two-week course of antibiotics in case it was an infection in my sinuses that normal antibiotics wouldn't treat and would explain the illnesses I've had. If that didn't clear things up, I will come back at the end of March and he and I will have another chat.

The antibiotics have been and gone and now I've a couple of weeks to wait before I see him again. I have had a few thoughts since the appointment though:

* Thinking I was about to start on meds meant that there would be something tangible to all this, which was oddly reassuring as a prospect.
* Being in a serodiscordant relationship meant that, however consciously, I'd been thinking about that report that said you're less infectious on medication and would want to know I was doing all I could to be less poisonous.
* Numbers appeal to some kind of autistic tic in me where I think if I can see patterns and find logic, then I have less to fear, but I think the unpredictability of it all just seems to be playing into these neuroses.

With that in mind, when I go and see him again, I'll have a chat about my general health and hopefully I won't have had some weird infection ruin my insides in the meantime and I think I'm going to ask them to stop giving me my test results. Instead, I'll stick with the quarterly chats with the nurse who takes my blood and an annual chat with a doctor and I'll tell them that they should only get in touch with me after a blood test if there's something I need to do.

We'll see. Perhaps I need to think about it less.