hypochondria

Before I sat down to write this I pulled on a pair of sweatpants. Backwards.

I could just stop there, but there’s more. Anyone can make a simple mistake. Recently I have been on a quest for more thoughtful and sophisticated ways to screw up–like two months back when I was doing the bills, and following my system, I wrote down the amounts for all of the bills I pay on-line carefully in my checkbook. Somehow though, I never made it over to the computer to actually get into the “bill pay” page and get the payments sent out. I sussed it all out when “past due” notices began to sprout from my mailbox like an unwelcome weed infestation. There are also some months where I pay all my bills twice. It just helps to round things out.

I know what you are thinking. He’s losing it. Dementia.

Normally, I’d go straight for that diagnosis also. That and brain tumor are my go-to thoughts if I get anything worse than a hangnail.

But at the time all of this happened, I was struggling with chronic dizziness (probably a brain tumor, right?). It isn’t incapacitating, but I can feel kind of “foggy” at times. It’s one reason I haven’t been writing of late. I first went to see my doctor about it in April, but I’d been having problems for at least a month before. It’s not the first time I’ve had this issue, but it was being so persistent that I decided to get my doctor involved.

That started a marathon round of appointments. He checked me over and sent me to a head and neck specialist and recommended I see a vestibular physical therapist (yeah, who knew there was such a thing).

The head and neck specialist did a couple of tests and deemed that whatever was causing it was probably cardiovascular or neurological. The physical therapist spent two sessions making me do a series of bizarre exercises trying to make me dizzy (or more dizzy than I was at the moment) and failed miserably. Shrug.

Went back to my primary care doctor who thought I should go see a head and neck specialist (wait, didn’t I already do that?). I ended up seeing exactly the same woman, who did exactly the same test, and came to exactly the same conclusions. I decided to check in with my neurologist. He suggested I go to the head and neck department.

I sought help from my acupuncturist who concluded there were clouds of smoke in my brain and that I needed to stay away from television, politics, basically, the world.

My local health provider held a small ceremony for me where I was given a certificate of achievement for my tenacity in unsuccessfully trying to find the cause of the problem. There was cake and everything (I’m making that part up).

Finally, I decided to quit listening to everyone and pulled down the box where I keep my daily meds and started looking at everything I was taking to see if there was anything I could eliminate, anything that might be the culprit.

Most of my meds are “old dude” regulars for blood pressure, cholesterol, and a couple more exotic ones. I take some Chinese herbs from my acupuncturist also, you know, for the whole “smoke in the brain” thing.

Oh, and I’d been taking Melatonin. When I stopped drinking nearly a year ago, I had trouble sleeping though the night. I was waking up more and more often at odd hours and finding it impossible to get back to sleep. Two in the morning is just not a fun time to find yourself awake and yet still groggy and exhausted.

When Mary suggested Melatonin, I thought, sure! It’s over-the-counter and therefore “safe”. It worked great! Magic! Later, when she mentioned that maybe I wasn’t supposed to take it continuously, I dismissed the suggestion. Pssssh. After all, I bought it at Sprouts. It was doing exactly what I wanted it to do. I didn’t even read the label until the day I began to examine all my meds.

Yes, the label that stated “If any adverse reactions occur, immediately stop using this product and consult a doctor” and “Limit use to two months with a break of one week.” I was checking out this information, written clearly on the bottle, after taking it every night for, oh, ten months straight.

It gets worse. I googled Melatonin and looked up possible drug interactions. Under “serious interactions” I found one of my daily medications. Possible side effects–dizziness. And the timeline fit. The dizziness had begun shortly after I started taking it. I just never made the connection.

MOTHERFORKING MORON!

So I quit taking it right away and the dizziness did not go away immediately, but at least the insomnia returned. It actually took three weeks before I was symptom free.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t do any permanent brain damage or anything although, you never know. I enjoyed 4-5 weeks of mental clarity without the low-grade sense that my brain was slowly rocking or spinning occasionally. I was quite proud of myself for chasing down my own stupidity.

And then the dizziness came back (“heavy sigh”). What are you gonna do? I’m just going to enjoy the ride for now. I’ll go through the pill box and see if I’ve got something else I can toss out. Maybe I can put my yard blower up against one ear and see if I can blow out some of that smoke on my brain.

I’m not a hypochondriac. At least, I don’t think so.

But at 61, I have several chronic conditions (TMJ, upper neck and back pain, anxiety) and then other issues that make guest appearances from time to time (vertigo, extra heart beats, random muscle pain and spasms). I go to the doctor if something seems unusual, or if I suspect they might have some treatment that will improve the chronic ones but other than that, I just try to enjoy the fact that basically, I’m pretty healthy.

However, if several of these symptoms show up at the same time, say vertigo, a restless heart, and a little chest tension, then, of course, my anxiety shoots up and I start getting worried—which makes everything worse.

I’ve had enough false alarms that I’m wary of rushing off too quickly to the doc. I have learned not to call the Kaiser “advise nurse” because no matter how benignly I might describe my symptoms, her solution is always to send me to emergency room hell. I also NEVER Google a symptom. There is no quicker way to be sure that you are dying of some heinous disease, than to plug in a couple of symptoms and let a multitude of websites guess at what you might have.

Because the neck pain drives me crazy, I take ibuprophen every day. I’m confident (because I’ve read the warnings on the side of the extra-large bottle) that eventually my stomach will explode because of it. So when I started to develop a chronic pain on the right side of my abdominal area, I decided to go in to see my doctor. I explained my concerns about the ibuprophen destroying my stomach, and he told me straight out that that was not the issue since my stomach is on the left side. The right side contains the pancreas, liver, and spleen. Great, I thought, now I’ve got three critical organs to worry about.

After reviewing my blood work and doing a physical exam, he told me that he was pretty sure I had something called “abdominal wall pain” which sounded like something that doctors say when they have absolutely no idea what is wrong with you. He reassured me that he had eliminated 95% of the “really bad stuff” and that this diagnosis really did make the most sense. To eliminate the other 5%, he could order up an MRI and blast me with lots of radiation. I decided that I was OK with 95%.

During the exam, though, he introduced me to an interesting bit of doc-speak. He told me that he understood my concerns and my desire for him to be thorough, and that every doctor has to evaluate his patient’s “tolerance for uncertainty” in making a diagnosis. I now know that my “tolerance for uncertainty” is 5% or lower. If I’m 6% uncertain, I’m going to want to full monty of tests, radiation be damned.

However, my tolerance was sorely tested on Christmas Eve this past year. After our usual wonderful meal and as the family celebration was continuing, I excused myself to go to the restroom. Imagine my surprise when I discovered my urine had turned pink. Blood in the urine! This can’t be good. Either my stomach had finally exploded or something was surely wrong with my pancreas, liver, and spleen now that I knew for sure where they were.

I could not rush off to the emergency room on Christmas Eve even if it meant having my kids watch their dad slowly bleed out as we drank beer and watched “A Christmas Story.” I calmly told my wife, and she agreed that I should monitor the situation and as long as I wasn’t in pain, we could get it checked out later. By noon the next day, the symptoms were gone and all that was left was that nagging worry that at any moment, I could go critical again.

I waited until December 26^th to go in to see an urgent care doctor and recounted the series of events and my various theories, all of which he kindly discounted. In fact, he seemed intent on assuring me that he was in far worse shape than I appeared to be. He asked me a long series of questions, none of which led to a conclusion. Finally, he paused and asked, “Did you eat anything unusual?”

Beets. Mary had made a beet salad from fresh beets and I ate it to be polite and because I read somewhere that purple food is good for you. I don’t even like beets. No one had ever told me that fresh beets, eaten in large enough quantity, will color everything that passes through your body for about 8-12 hours. Sure, ibuprophen has warning labels, but not beets.

So, am I a worrier—yes. Possessor of a 5% tolerance for uncertainty level—absolutely. Anatomically ignorant—check. Hypochondriac?—Hmmm. Still not sure. I think I’ll wait until the next time I’m nearly killed by a vegetable to decide.