Episode 30: What's My Name? Mary Dell, MD (Medical Detective)

Here’s a call out to the then-Snoop Dogg (now "Lion," or was last I heard) for the use of his title—gotta love that tune! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHKEJqMSiDg[Contains “obscene” language.  And while we’re discussing that, here’s a link to George Carlin’s “SevenDirty Words” to loosen you up.]

Okay, if your ears can't handle a little profane reality--here's what I'm really talking about today:  MYSTERY SOLVED, or at least a huge chunk of it, no thanks to the doctor/patient relationship I'm now negotiating with my much-loved primary care physician who, I fear, is burning out on me and on her practice in general.  And who can blame her?  Our health care system is so messed up today with everyone's running a patient's care OTHER than her own doctor--that's backasswards.  If I were a caring physician today, I'd be as burned out as she is.  I could just as easily have included this in my Down the Rabbit Hole series on the madness of today’s health care system as the story starts with more of that madness.  First, I will lay out the facts:

Episode 28: A Sixties Childhood: Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Besotted Student

First grade teacher:  Mrs. Brown.

Pretty.  Big brown eyes and a beehive of rich brown hair.  Wore pretty clothes.  A lot younger than Mrs. Erwin, who'd taught kindergarten.

She was my first crush--oh, wait, that was Davy Jones.

Very little of that school year remains in the memory vault, but anyone who has had the demon anxiety stabbing its little fork into one's psyche as I so regularly did (until Effexor saved me--but that's another episode) will relate to the horror of this memory and the damage it must have inflicted on my already neurotic little six-year-old soul.

Mrs. Brown sat with the class during lunch, and each day a different student would be selected for the honor of sitting right beside her!  She always sat on the end, and I'm sure this was to relieve her of the duty of sitting between two students--but we didn't think like that then.  We were certain she was as happy to sit with us through lunch as we were with her.

On that day, I had been selected--at last, and to my immense joy--as the Chosen One. All morning I envisioned sitting next to Mrs. Brown and having the most wonderful conversation with her--or whatever six-year-olds want when sitting next to a beloved teacher.  My memory isn't quite that good, but I have to think I'd be trying to come up with stuff to say.

Of course, I could think of nothing to say.  Yes, even six-year-olds can be shy, and this memory tells me I'd already acquired that trait in spades by then.  But I was holding my own until . . .  I took a big bite of my apple and . . . .   Can you guess?

Episode 14: FAIL!!!

A better ending for the previous year could not have been had.  In my mailbox today lay the last sentence of a bitter chapter (Chapter 7) in my life: a court order granting my bankruptcy.  Oh, the consequences of the triggering event are not over with and never will be, but now at least I can look toward a brighter day with a hope that has been difficult to conjure since September 2008.  I’m starting over financially—not completely with a clean state, as I’ll still be paying student loans—but I’m okay with that, other than the interest gauging me every minute.  Somehow it seems apt that higher education and I remain tied together, despite our bitter divorce.  I owe so much to ol' H.E., personally and intellectually. Yet higher education is why I’m bankrupt in the first place ... one of those dichotomies in life than can never fully be reconciled, so to speak.

Episode 12: Blood Sludge for Turkey Day

I’m still getting the hang of this polycythemia thing.

You see, my blood is too thick. Too many red blood cells. That makes my blood turn to sludge, and sludgy blood is not good. Not only does it put me at higher risk of heart attack, stroke, and pulmonary embolism, it makes me feel as if I’m full of sludgy blood, which means every cell in my body feels heavy and slow and, well, sludgy.

You’d think that feeling would be easy to recognize. The thing is, it’s insidious. I start feeling bad and, because I’ve had fatigue problems for the past few years, I just accept it, even as it gets worse than usual. And then I finally realize, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got that thick blood thing, too … maybe it’s time to get drained.”

Episode 11: Discouragement

Discouragement: the scourge of chronic disease.

I do my best not to wallow in it; I try to push it away when it comes crawling in, like a fog under the door. Even when I’m immersed in it, I hate it. I’m afraid of it. I worry that it’s right, and I’m wrong, and one day I’m just going to have to give in to its seduction.

Yet I’d be lying if I pretended it didn’t happen.

It’s not something I like to talk about. As bestselling author Laura Hillenbrand says about chronic disease, “I didn’t want to talk about it very much because I had the experience of being dismissed and ridiculed.” No one wants to hear a sob story, and persons with chronic disease can look perfectly healthy most of the time, so the inability to apply the stamina of most persons our age to our lives becomes suspect in others' eyes.  Better to only imagine people think you're faking, not to see it in their eyes.

Episode 1: Anxiety and Me

One of my favorite books as a child was Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, and one of my favorite poems in the book was "My Shadow."

He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.	10
He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see;
I’d think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

Okay, well, maybe the verse doesn't translate well in a blog.  Robert was quite the spoiled little brat, wasn't he?  But he was wonderful.  Of course, I've known about my shadow for as long as I can remember, including in a Jungian sense, but it amazes me that I have only at this relatively advanced age recognized that a certain shadowy coward called anxiety has made a fool of me in every sort of way, staying close beside me, throughout my life.