Episode 44: How Can a 54-Year-Old Woman This Damned Sick Look This Damned Good?

Okay, I'm taking all of us on a little Mary Dell ego trip today.

Actually, I started this episode a year ago, when Honey also took the photo I'd planned to accompany it. I'm a year older but don't look much worse than I did then. I've moved the photo to the second page of this episode to save virgin eyes from seeing it if they don't want to. Hey, it's not pornographic--just a bit suggestive.

Yes, come with me .... hop on my magic carpet ride to a land where the marvelous science of photography (without any tricks such as PhotoShop) suggests that I may not be so darned hideous after all--certainly not too bad for a gal of my advanced (50+) years. You see, my entire life, I've always felt unattractive--or, at least, the core of me did. I could fake being attractive and convince men I was attractive, but I never felt it deep inside.

And now, ironically--how many ironies does chronic disease rack up? (pun intended)--Answer: A LOT--the attractiveness that others see is doing me a disservice (though I'm happy to have it regardless).

The fact that I don't look like a middle-aged, chronically ill woman means that many health professionals I see once or twice think I'm malingering or trying to get attention or some other stupid shit, and they don't take me seriously. For the latest egregious example of this phenomenon, see Episode 41 and my nightmare consultation with a neurologist at Johns Hopkins Medical Center.

The fact that I don't look like a middle-aged, chronically ill woman means that co-workers, friends, even my sister and one of my sons, neither of whom sees me nearly enough, have hinted at finding my complaints hypochondriac in nature. With my son, I'm thinking it's sort of denial--no one wants a sick mom. With my sister, I think it's just that I'm the youngest and can't possibly know what I'm talking about, ha.

But I love them both dearly, of course, no matter what. None of this is easy to take in, even as I experience it day by day.

Hopefully, given the latest neuromuscular diagnosis, signs, and symptoms, those who know me well no longer doubt me. One thing my mom pounded into my head during the 29 years I was blessed to have her in my life was honesty. And the last thing I want to do is waste medical dollars when so many others need care.

And this pic is TAME compared to all the sexting going on, so no big deal there, Mom!

No, I don't look sick.

In fact, I look damned good.

So how can a woman who looks this damned good really be this damned sick?

Episode 13: Dream Messages, Leg Lumps, and Mycophilia

No doubt this episode will sound hyperchondriac-ish, a charge my son lodged against me not long ago—but that one had no merit, as what I described to him had been confirmed by medical tests.  Hypochondria means:
 “extreme depression of mind or spirits often centered on imaginary physical ailments" (Merriam-Webster Online).  

When the conditions are real, and confirmed by lab tests of Western science (the only valid knowledge base on the planet, according to most people I know), the charge of hypochondria falls on its face.  I'm one of those folks whose body is waging a war on itself--but I'm also one of those fortunate folks who tends toward optimism.  I really want to hang around for a while, without being sick.  Others seem to think I enjoy these weird health conditions, but au contraire,  I miss the me who used to be full of energy and verve.  

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 7: Hypochondria and Bear's Head Teeth

After texting my twenty-eight-year-old son about my latest health issues, he texted back, “You’re a hypochondriac.”

I texted back, “I wish.”

Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit and the more recent Unbroken, describes her battle with chronic fatigue syndrome in the New Yorker at http://www.cfids-cab.org/MESA/Hillenbrand.html.

I am eminently grateful that my health issues are not as debilitating as hers.

But there’s no question that I have morphed from a healthy, active person for more than half of her life to someone who is no longer at her best physically and, I’m afraid, quite often mentally as well.  I haven’t quite given up on the possibility of recuperating to the point of being as physically robust as others my age, and so far I’ve done a decent job adjusting to the need to write things down to remember them.  It’s the fatigue that is relentless.  I do still have good days, and I relish those.  I recognize them as they are happening … “Hey, I feel damned good right now.  I have some energy!  I can do some of the things I want to do!”

Unfortunately, in my ADHD fashion, I go in about seven different directions when I’m feeling well, so the overall gain is less than it should be.  Something that frustrates me even as it happens.

I’m not interested in hashing out the details of the latest diagnosis in my endless permutations of chronic disease, but just to give this episode some context, I’ll just say that the doc says I have “reactive airway disorder” or some such medspeak.  I’ve had a bad chest cough for the past five or six weeks.  It won’t go away, and it exhausts me.  Over this time, I’ve popped two “Z-Paks,” prepackaged week-long dosages of Azithromycin, a heavy-duty antibiotic, to no long-term avail, so my doctor just prescribed an inhaler, some Prednisone (a steroid that reduces inflammation and, by the way, made my mother psychotic when she took large doses to increase her white blood cells so she could take radiation treatments for her cancer), and another hardcore antibiotic.