A doctor that makes a 'house call'- when the patient isn't even there!

Don't know if I've mentioned it yet here - I don't want to use actual names since this is on a public site, but Shawn's current doctor is a friend of ours. (Funny story, I'll add it here sometime... when we first went to see him we didn't know that's who we were going to see.)

SO, right after we saw this doctor in December, he was going out of the country, and I had some travel books I lent him. Tonight he stopped by to bring them back. He asked how Shawn was feeling so we told him not so well; seemed to us he was getting worse and worse. We talked for awhile about the aldosterone test, like why was the 24 hour test positive if the blood tests were both negative(He said he really didn't have a good answer for that but if things didn't get better he'd probably try repeating the test). Then he suggested that he could possibly try a drug that lowers aldosterone and if that WAS what was wrong his blood pressure should drop right away. We were discussing that and I said that I knew Shawn was now keeping a journal of his blood pressure at more regular intervals. He said he'd talk to Shawn in the next day or so to get those numbers.

Time for a commercial break: Ever heard of Google Docs? http://google.com/docs. This amazing FREE tool allows you to create documents and spreadsheets and share them over the web with others. You can edit shared documents and each see what the other person has added. Really simple to use, works alot like Word and Excel, except the document is stored online in a place that everyone who has been invited to edit the document can access it.

Why the commercial? Well, Shawn has been keeping his journal on Google Docs, and sharing it with me (This allows me to stop nagging him when I see he's been recording values throughout the day!). So when we were talking about the journal I said "Actually, I can show you the numbers right now" and I pulled up Google Docs.

He started reading the last few days (worst reading so far was yesterday afternoon - 226/178, heart rate 120.) Then he asked if we could get Shawn on the phone, as he said half to himself "this isn't just anxiety".

The upshot is that he wants Shawn to go to the clinic on campus tomorrow, and then have the doctor give him a call while Shawn is there - he has a whole set of other tests he now wants to run. Some of the things he's interested in are seretonin, adrenalin, calcitonin, (maybe a few more *onins for good luck?) He says the kind of spikes he's seeing doesn't look like aldosterone but maybe one of these other *onins... There were a number of other things he mentioned but with each one he said it probably wan't that because of one reason or another. To be honest I couldn't keep up after awhile... The big thing is that he's now finally got the idea that something is really wrong and that this can't just go on like it has been... this feels like a really huge step forward.

Breathe a big sigh of relief... things are looking hopeful again.