The Ills of Ill

I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday. Not with my general practitioner, but with a specialist. An endocrinologist. Many years of education beyond the baseline to be licensed to lay hands on the general public for healing. I’ve seen her once before and left with a folder of lab slips and no answers. Yesterday was a conference to discuss those slips and lack of answers.

My appointment was for 3:15 pm. I used the time between returning from work and leaving for my fate-revealing to prepare bread for dinner and place it in the oven to cook while I was away. Not as dicey as it sounds, in that my “bread” is an unholy combination of fibers and ingredients known only to descendents of the lost continent of Atlantis. Usually, takes up to 1 ½ hours to bake, so I was in good shape.

I arrived on time to a waiting room papered with disgust and angst. People were awash in sweat stains and impatience. I knew my bread was a goner.

I was not seen by the doctor until nearly 5:00 pm. The waiting room had no air conditioning or ventilation of any form. Clad in a wool sweater and tights beneath my jeans, I quickly began a spiral into heat-promoted misery and ill-temper. The only saving grace was an over-priced soda machine outside the office. The soda was not cold, but it was wet and this satisfied my mouth. The carbon dioxide did not satisfy by intestines, though, nor did the liquid satisfy my bladder. The blow upon the bruise…

One by one, people were called behind the scenes by the ever-smiling receptionist. Clean and dry due to an administrative office provided with continuous cooling breezes, hatred flowed her way like water from the waiting room hostages. Finally, my time had come. I actually hoped for the instruction to strip down and put on the examination gown, but my hopes were dashed. Fully clad in winter wear, I sat and waited again. Finally, the doctor graced me and I was as unimpressed with her as I was on our first meeting.

I have discussed before that the only prize I will win for my beauty is Best in Show, but at least I make the effort. I am a professional and try to dress the part at my job and do prepare my face and hair accordingly. My endocrinologist is a slob. Her hair has not seen a brush since the Eisenhower administration and she manifests neither makeup nor jewelry. Normally, I do not hold this against a person. But, in combination with the Jackson Pollack-like splattering of condiments and crumbs on her clothing and doctor’s coat, I feel this lack of personal adornment is more a factor of slovenliness than a choice to buck society’s conventions for female appearance. She also coughs. I do not appreciate being sprayed with the germs of another individual, unless sexual contact is involved in some way. I was not awe-struck.

Again I waited as she flipped through the pages and pages of my medical records. With each flip, my anxiety growing by increments. Finally, she looked me in the eye and said “This is a complicated case.” What an awful thing to say. Awful in its true lack of information. Complicated. Complicated in that it will take many steps to affect solution or complicated in that the condition is very convoluted, but they KNOW the cause of the condition…The word “complicated” says nothing to me of use. I was not anticipating a successful outcome to this conference.

So, I waited for further exposition and was not rewarded. Again, she tested various physical parameters – blood pressure, pulse, weight, strength, joint mobility and asked me more questions than a police sergeant interrogating a murder suspect. All questions she asked me during our first meeting. But, in fairness, she did ask me about how things had changed since I had last seen her and did pose a few new items for me to address, but my head was beginning to spin from the heat, the lack of fluid (having been cut off from my soda supply), the lack of food and the knowledge that I was going to achieve nothing from this visit.

I was both wrong and right about that last statement. I did achieve a few things. I obtained more lab slips for innumerable blood tests. I obtained an order for a chest X-ray. I obtained an appointment for an abdominopelvic CAT scan. And I obtained a forewarning that an MRI was in my future. The CAT scan and MRI ordered to test for the presence of tumors. I obtained more waiting, more lack of answers, more worry, more sleepless nights, more anxiety, more inability to answer the questions of friends and colleagues.

What I did not achieve was what I wanted most of all – answers. Just something definitive. For good or bad – something tangible against which to fight. I am tired of flailing at specters. Punching the air. I want something real to battle. I want an enemy with form. As it stands, I am powerless because I know not where to land a blow. I cannot take action. The situation is completely out of my hands and I do not fare well under these circumstances. I need control of things, I have no illusions about this. I need to have my say. I need to feel like I am moving forward. I thrive on progress and wither with stagnation. I know that there is a factor devastating my physical form and the lack of its name is more frustrating than the physical woes. It plays with my brain in a terrible way. It leaves me with that most-hated helpless feeling with which I deal poorly. My anxiety emanates from me like rays of heat. I live in a constant state of worry and verge some days on despair. To fight your way to the grave is one thing, to meander around in circles in fall in at some point is another…

I am very tired. I woke at 2:30 am, as has been my habit of late, with a sense of heaviness. No rest. That is my pattern since my symptoms began to intensify and I started seeing doctors. I am not really sure if my sleep disturbances are related to my medical condition or its actions on my state of mind. I don’t really sleep. I close my eyes to bide time until I have to go to the bathroom or get hungry. I wake no more rested than when I laid down for the evening. My motivation for life is low. I have a business that I have completely neglected for weeks. I have not even checked to see if I have received any orders. I have isolated myself from people. I have cut off contact with people that I used to telephone and see regularly. Honestly, I just don’t want to bring people down. Also, it keeps me from having to cope with the offers of help that will manifest. Right now, my brain would not handle that well. I am coming to the point where I may have to ask for help and that upsets me. The only factor that might make it possible is that if I do the asking, I maintain my need for control. I made the decision and that might be an rationale my solitary spirit might accept.

But for now, I continue on. More visits to the hospital, more waiting rooms designed by the Hades Interiors firm, more worry, less sleep…my only bright spot is an upcoming trip to California to see a dear, dear person. Her blithe spirit will be just what I need to battle back the blues.

That, and Disneyland….