High Calcium– “Let’s Watch and Wait”

 

My son was home for the holidays and suggested we watch a popular movie from last year,  “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once”.  It’s kind of a crazy movie, and to really understand it, you probably need to watch it about 3 times. Let me try to briefly explain the plot, so you’ll understand where I’m going with this.

The story revolves around a Chinese couple who find themselves traveling between multiple parallel universes, each universe moving toward a different outcome, according to choices made earlier in life. Though the plot is much more complex than that, let’s keep it simple for the purposes of this blog.

For those of you reading this who have a high calcium level, and a diagnosis of hyperparathyroidism is either suspected or already established, perhaps your doctor has recommended a “watch and wait” decision. I have had many patients who have taken that recommendation, maybe months, or even years ago. In the meantime, they have remained symptomatic, often with fatigue, memory and concentration problems, osteoporosis, bone pain, rapid heart rate, among other things. Having followed a “watch and wait” recommendation, they have lived in this universe of always feeling lousy, and no one seems to take them seriously about how badly they feel, and how “there must be something wrong”.  Some of those patients have eventually taken matters into their own hands, and have found a surgeon such as me, who recognizes how dramatic the symptomatic improvement can be with a curative parathyroid operation.  If they had only been referred for surgery much earlier, they might have lived in a “different universe”, one in which their symptoms were relieved so much earlier in their life.

If your current universe is one in which you know you have a high calcium level that might be or is already known to be from hyperparathyroidism, I recommend that you make a choice for prompt evaluation for possible surgery. It’s very likely to steer you into a future universe that’s free of many of the symptoms you might be suffering from on a daily basis.