Not attitude issues. Not emotional issues. Not the issues of the magazines that no longer adorn doctor's offices since COVID precautions hit. No, as one might expect after exhausting that list of things it's not, its medical issues.
I seem to be really adept at having weird, however not dangerous, bodily...things going on.
I think the reason for all of these coming up now is that none of my doctors really want to leave anything to chance anymore, considering where not being overly concerned with a medical issue has gotten me in the past. They want to avoid any more sudden, gigantic, life changing problems.
I appreciate this immensely. However, I don't really like dealing with what I named this post: Unusual but benign medical issues.
I don't want to go into too much detail here, but I've got several. I have eczema with no discernable triggers. I've got sleep issues that nothing really seems to fix, but I do get some sleep, so that's ok. I've got a couple of cysts in odd places, and they're not life threatening. I once had an internal abcess with no real cause uncovered. Hell, even my appendix being taken out seemed to be a secondary inflammation that had no identifiable primary inflammation.
Then of course, there was the cryptogenic stroke. Can't forget that, ironically enough. Ha ha. Memory jokes.
I'm not ungrateful for the benign part. Not even ungrateful for the unusual part. It's really just more of a matter of a wtf situation every month or so. All of these things get found, freak me out for a bit, then get examined and given the "Huh, that's weird, but it's not dangerous, so we'll check on it next year."
Don't get me wrong, I don't want that to change. I'm good with things not being dangerous, and only a little annoyed with the checking on things every year.
What I'm really happy about, though, is that I'm being taken seriously every time I mention something, or every time something is found.
Many people aren't going to understand that. They're going to think "well of course they're taking you seriously. These are medical issues that people take seriously." They have every right to think that, however, there are a lot of people out there who have been kind of sidelined in their concern for their health by people in the medical field.
I, myself, have often been told "Oh, you're far too young for that," right before I had to start the whole process of getting that same thing I was too young for looked into. I've been told I was too young for a fatty liver, too young for chronic migraine, too young for arthritis. The first thing I can remember hearing that for was "You're too young to have carpal tunnel syndrome." Spoiler alert, I had carpal tunnel syndrome. Also in the you're too young category goes people not realizing I had GERD for nearly 30 years, even though I told people the heartburn woke me out of a dead sleep nearly every night, several times. Now that I finally have that under control, I can't tell you how much better life has gotten.
The times people have just believed what they were hearing and got me the proper care, when people took me seriously, those are few and far between. I struggled with secondary infertility for 6 years before my first actual OB/GYN took one look at my file and decided to test me for PCOS. I had my younger son less than a year later. When I told my doctor flat out that I was frequently dropping glassware at work and couldn't feel the last two fingers on my left hand, and I was sent in for a test not to determine whether I had carpal tunnel syndrome, but how bad it was. It was moderate. As was the ulnar nerve entrapment I had on my left arm.
A lot of things fell by the wayside, though, as tings do. Now, they don't.
I have tests all the time. Urine tests, blood tests, some motor skill tests, as well as the usual things you get yearly or every few years.
I don't like to leave much to chance, so I keep up with those, PAP smears, mammograms, colonoscopes, and upper GIs, to name a few. Yeah, they're all about the least fun ways to spend a lovely day, but they're important. After the last few appointments, looks like I get to keep up with more yearly things too.
I think to wrap this up, I just want to tell people that these yearly tests are important. I hear people say "I just don't want to know," or "the tests are useless," or even "my mother got that test for the first time when she was 70 and she was dead in a year." The thing is, most yearly, or every other yearly, or even every three yearly tests can determine whether you have problems before they cause any actual symptoms. Are they comfortable, fun, a wild ride? No. But several of them don't suck as badly as they used to even 20 years ago. And yes, finding out I have a big problem isn't my idea of a good time either, but isn't it better to know and stop the development process than to be unaware until you can't do anything? Even if you can't stop the development process, it could give you some time to do things you always wanted to do before it goes too far.
There are lots of reasons for everything. My personal reasons are pretty simple. I want to be there for my kids and my husband. I want to see as many years as I can. I want to do as many things as I can. Is this likely because of my stroke? Maybe. But I feel better now, and I still want to do these things.
Maybe don't wait until it's too late to do the things you want, either. Maybe give yourself some room to work on your dreams. And maybe get the tests you should so you know you have a while to get them done.
