Psychosomatic

I will admit that I'm nervous about my next trip to the doctor, coming up this Wednesday morning.

The last time I was in her office, I was exhausted and presenting with a laundry list of symptoms.  I was hurting, and I was scared, and I'd been to the ER more times than I ever had before.  She listened carefully to my list of complaints, put her pen down, and began to speak to me about the possibility of many of my symptoms being psychosomatic.

Believe it or not, I can understand it.  I've had an anxiety condition most of my life, and I'm well-enough aware that it brings with it a variety of scary symptoms that feed the cycle.  I've been there before, and if that was the problem - if I really felt that was the problem, then I would stop there, seek therapy, and stop pestering my GP's office for answers.  For me, there is no shame in admitting that I might have a mental problem, because for me there is no real delineation between mental pain and physical pain.  For me, it doesn't make any difference what's causing the pain.  The fact is that I am in pain and I want it to stop.  Or at least lessen to the point where I have a decent quality of life.

In the aftermath, it did feel somewhat minimizing of the pain that I was going through, and even though it might not be right, I felt more than slightly resentful of it.

No matter what she says, sometimes I do think that my GP is near the end of her ability to help me.  I just wish she would say so.

We came to an agreement that she would send me on my way with a bag of pills (including anti-depressants), and she would run bloodwork to see if there was something else causing my pain.  What the blood tests turned up was low iron and low Vitamin D. 

Unfortunately, I only found this out after a couple of weeks of battling through worsening symptoms, and being almost on the verge of tears.  And calling the office every day for answers and getting no return call until finally, a nurse answered that had no idea of my history or what I was calling about.  When I told her, she told me she would call me back, and only then did I find out that my iron was low and my Vitamin D was low, and they were calling supplements into the pharmacy.

Since then, no matter how bad it's gotten, I refuse to call the office because I don't really feel that I'm being heard. 

I know they're busy, but that was just ridiculous.

Sometimes I feel like 'psychosomatic' is a nice way of saying 'hypochondriac', but that's my own issue.

Repurposing

I've had this blog for quite some time, and hadn't been posting in it.

I hadn't been posting much of anywhere for a while.

The simple fact is that I'm sick.  I've been sick for going on a year now.

I was under the understanding that my thyroid issues were well under control.  They were not.  I was in the middle of the first major up-and-down period of my entire time having been diagnosed with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis (I frequently will refer to it as "the Hashis").  From there, it feels like it's been a downward spiral that hit rock bottom just after Christmas of this past year where I was standing in the middle of my pharmacy struggling to get the question in my head to come out of my mouth.

Whether be it outright anemia or just low iron levels, it was low enough that it was causing a lot of cognitive problems.  And when the iron runs out, it does so again.

Fact is, I've been in and out of doctor's offices more often in the past year than I have in my entire life prior to this.  And while I am getting better, I'm nowhere near close to 100%.

Right now, I feel like I'm at about 25%, in fact.

So, I'm reappropriating this blog to give myself a place to talk about all this crap so it won't just be bouncing around in my head.  And I like the whole "16 hours" as an anthem for this.

I'll probably be back later with some stuff that happened fairly recently, but for now, consider this your intro.