Well folks it’s time for an another update. I decided to get some help from either Crisler or Shippen and got on the phone with both offices. Shippen’s office could get me in on August 5th. They would need me to send a letter explaining my symptoms with a self addressed envelope so he could send labwork. I would also need to include a 150 dollar deposit for the appointment.
Crisler’s office could get me in almost immediately, so I decided to see him instead. His office wanted me to pay in advance, but was less effort needed on my part other than flying over there. All I had to do was print and fill out the Medical History and the Consent/Authorization to Treat forms from his website and then forward them to the office. I quickly filled out the forms and faxed them. I decided to take their soonest appointment and buy my plan ticket. The best way is to go to the airport in lansing, but the prices were out of control to fly in there from south Florida. I decided to land in detroit, rent a cheap car for 40 bucks and drive to lansing, which is about 80 miles or so. This way I could save a lot of money on my tickets. The hotel I booked was the Staybridge Suites Lansing Okemos to spend the night.
The plane flight from south Florida was quick and easy. When the plane was landing, I could see Michigan’s highways and could not spot a single foreign car. The detroit airport was huge! I was walking for what seemed like an eternity to get to the shuttle bus that took me to the rental car place. Once I was at the hertz place, I told the lady to get me out of the Hyundai Accent I had reserved and into something American. There was no way I was going to driving around michigan in a foreign car! For a couple of bucks extra, I got a Ford Focus with sirius satellite radio. I plugged my GPS in and my phone in the car to charge up and off I went!
Michigan is miles and miles of absolutely nothing once you get out of detroit. Good thing the car I rented was averaging over 40 mpg so I wouldn’t have to look for gas stations until I got back. If any of you guys make this trip, forget about finding things to do in the town to kill time because there is nothing in lansing to do. Absolutely nothing. I had magazines, my laptop, and a hotel with internet to keep me busy, but that was it! When I woke up in the morning after staying in the hotel, I made the mistake of checking out early and I was bored out of my mind looking for a mall to walk around in before my 1:00 appointment. I couldn’t find anything! I wound up sitting in the car in a parking lot calling family to kill time until the appointment. Then I drove to Crisler’s office an hour early, figuring at least his office would probably have some good magazines to read while I waited.
A nurse came in to take my vitals and weigh me and I went back to the waiting room to wait for Crisler to take me. When he took me into his office, we talked about the town and the economic conditions and then he started looking at all the pages of labwork that I brought with me from other doctors. He said i have one of the biggest spreads he has ever seen on the labwork. When I told him I took propecia he said he was very sorry to hear that. He said he has a lot of patients that come to him that took the medication. He said it’s always a similar story, just a different variation on the labwork. My situation is a weird situation because I have fantastic testosterone levels and very poor free testosterone. Thyroid is good. Low DHEA levels. He is going to have me do a 24 hour urine test, because he needs some numbers he can count on before he can treat me.
So that’s basically where we left things. I’m waiting for the urine test to show up in the mail and then we’ll go from there. It takes about 10 days to get results back after I complete the test. On my way out, the lady that helped me book my appointment told me 95% of people that see Dr. Crisler come from out of state, so I feel like I’m in good hands. He must be excellent if almost all his patients are traveling to see him. I am going to wait a bit and see how my treatment works out before telling everyone to get on a plane and go see him, but so far I have a good feeling about everything. Most doctors tell you the problems are all in your head, at least we have some doctors here that will listen to you and try to help you instead of telling you that you are crazy. The second reason I am optimistic is that he seemed pretty confident he could help me.
I’ll be updating this thread as my treatment progresses. Hopefully I’ll have some better news in the next few months!