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  1. Anxiety Wears a Black Duster

    July 19, 2015 by Diane

    Man walking into light

    In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Boo Radley is the mentally disturbed neighbor who everyone views as The Boogeyman. What brilliance to include this character in a story about how people fear, or hate, or distrust a fellow human due to a judgment of skin color or class or…yes, mental illness.

    Anxiety is one of many mental challenges that remains a stigma in our society today. As Atticus points out in Mockingbird, you can’t understand another until you’ve walked in his shoes. So, for the sake of bridging the gap and giving voice to what many of us experience, I’m sharing my take on anxiety, written back when.

    * * *

    Anxiety wears a black duster that whips the air as he strides in tall black boots. Gaunt pale face, curved nose, laser-beam eyes, shocking red lips.

    A salvaged cigarette in the hands of a desperate smoker.

    In the hospital bed, my heart thumps warnings into my back that no one hears. In the hallway, a clipboard tucked under his arm, one doctor says to another, “It’s anxiety. It’s nothing.” Anxiety isn’t nothing, I want to shout, it’s a prison! It’s steel bars in a rundown tenement. It’s the child crouching under the stairs peering with mournful eyes behind spiderweb hair. It’s the last continent under a sky devoid of stars. It’s the tightness in the chest, the warning shot of adrenaline. It’s coffee all jacked up. What’s wrong with me? It’s that question, asked over and over and over again without an answer to soothe it to sleep.

    I ache for that soothing hand, that brush against my cheek, on my forehead, against the small of my back where numbness traces its canyon path. I want to un-crouch from inside, to fly, to be free and soar and run and giggle and pretend and create and believe and have faith again in my own healing power. Why couldn’t the doctor say, “It’s fine, you’re safe, all is well. Nothing to worry about, chum. I can’t explain why you’re feeling what you’re feeling, but I assure you it’s not physical. It’s your brain playing tricks.”

    Anxiety is the brain playing tricks. Thoughts gouging dry riverbeds in the mind.

    When I’m alone in my anxious brain, it’s a dangerous place to be. The brain is a trickster. It thinks it knows the truth, but the truth is only a guess. It takes the bits and pieces I feed it through my eyes, fingers, skin, taste buds, nose, ears, and it sorts them into bins and labels each bin.

    Very organized.

    Very tidy.

    The problem is with the labels.

    Don’t believe everything you think. It’s my mantra. Don’t believe everything you think.

    I hold on, knowing that one day I’ll rear up and grab hold of anxiety’s black duster and rip it off and reveal a bare, huddled creature underneath. Something cringing from the sudden light. And I’ll laugh again.

    Laugh! Again.

    Because the truth is: A shadow can’t survive the light.

    It disappears.

    Category Fer Cryin' Out Loud | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments

  2. Some Might Think You’re A Hypochondriac When…

    June 21, 2015 by Diane

    Shelf with books

    Some might think you’re a hypochondriac when you’re abnormally anxious about your health. But when does normal anxiety about one’s health become abnormal?

    A case in point…

    I became concerned about my cortisol levels. All of those adrenaline surges I’d suffered night after night after night had battered my adrenal glands to the point where they were shooting out cortisol like water from a busted fire hydrant. So obviously I needed to reset my adrenals, right?

    There’s a book on how to do that very thing.

    This book was written by a doctor who was on the Dr. Oz show. Not that I watch the Dr. Oz show (although if I was a hypochondriac, tuning in daily would be a tell-tale symptom). No, my mother watches the show, or she watched it this once—when the adrenal reset expert was on—and she recorded it and called me that evening and replayed the whole thing, repeating everything the doctor said about resetting your cortisol levels, which was this:

    “For breakfast, eat raw oats with berries, nuts and coconut milk.”

    I already did!

    So why was I still having those adrenaline surges?

    I looked up this expert online, and got his book, and in the book he clearly states the opposite: that it’s pure protein you should eat for breakfast, meaning MEAT, not carbs. Which is downright confusing! And I told him so in an email.

    Hey, on the Dr. Oz show you said to eat oats for breakfast, but in your book you said…

    Someone in his office emailed back, and gave me this explanation: there wasn’t much to choose from on the Dr. Oz set, so we went with what was available.

    Huh?

    Just who is this doctor?

    Dr. Christianson.

    Yeah, Dr. Christianson! That’s who.

    But I digress.

    In between adrenaline surges, I like to sleep with my left arm flung overhead. The result? When I wake up in the morning it’s numb, which in my book is a clear symptom of a heart attack. Is this the thought process of a hypochondriac? I think not. After all, my arm has gone numb many a time. For instance: one afternoon I set my laptop on the ironing board and stood and typed for an hour, my shoulders pressed into my earlobes, and sure enough, my left arm went numb. Now if that isn’t the start of a cardiovascular incident, I don’t know what is, right? Furthermore, if I was a hypochondriac–which I’m not–I might have called Dr. Oz himself, or even Dr. Christianson, for advice. If I had their numbers. But I didn’t. So I called the next best expert: my mother.

    “Um, my left arm is kinda numb, and it’s bugging me.”

    I was taking a walk when I called her, so it’s unlikely that I was having a cardiovascular incident, which her rational mind pointed out to me. Still, you can never be too sure.

    Now, some people might think that makes me a hypochondriac. And if they’ve read my blog, they might also think that I have generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and insomnia (NO-ZZZ), all of which add up to an obvious case of Squirrels in the Doohickey (SITD).

    But is my concern abnormal?

    Oh, sure, I’m not above asking people if I can poke around their stomach to see if it feels like mine, since mine feels like a mine-field.

    “That’s your vertebrae you’re feeling,” my doctor claims.

    “That hard knot?”

    “It’s your spine.”

    “Through my stomach?”

    “You’re thin.”

    “Here…that thing?”

    “Yes.”

    “Can I feel yours?”

    I’m not above asking my boyfriend to offer his abdomen to my probing fingers.

    “Can I…”

    “Oh for God’s sake…”

    And with an audible sigh he’ll roll onto his back and offer his belly, like a dog does, but not as happily, and I’ll knead away, like a cat does, but not as peacefully, and his belly, every time, feels soft and warm and pliant and not at all like mine.

    Now I ask you…does that make me a hypochondriac? Or you, for that matter–if you found yourself nodding with recognition?

    Some might think so.

    Some might think you’re a hypochondriac because you have the urge to feel a stranger’s carotid artery in the elevator after surreptitiously feeling the odd shape of your own. “Excuse me…”

    Some might think you’re a hypochondriac because you count the number of coughs you have in one day (throat clearings don’t count), and by two o’clock in the afternoon you’re up to fifty and wonder if you’re being a tab obsessive.

    Some might think you’re a hypochondriac because one whole bookshelf in your bedroom is filled with medical tomes. Especially if it’s a paramedic looking at that shelf (the night you end up going to the hospital wearing your own pajamas and come home wearing someone else’s), and as he scans that row of medical titles, his eyes flash a warning to his buddy that says, “uh-oh, hypochondriac,” ….well, I’m here to tell you one thing: don’t believe it.

    Not for a second.

    Because in my mind…

    (that is, if we’re really talking about you in this scenario, and not me),

    …in my mind you’re perfectly normal.

    Category Fer Cryin' Out Loud | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

  3. Doc, I’ve Got This Thing…

    December 14, 2014 by Diane

    Portrait of senior male doctor with documents in hospital

    “Can you eat apricots?” the doctor asked.

    This is the doctor who decided that I might have a tumor in my neck. That slight bulge under my carotid artery, “It might be a tumor,” he said. “But don’t worry about it.” And he leaned back in his chair, looking pensive. “Can you eat apricots?”

    Wait. A tumor?

    And he wanted to know if I could eat apricots?

    When I go to a doctor with a thing, I want to know exactly what that thing is. I don’t want to hear “could be,” or “maybe,” or “probably.” I want that expert in the white lab coat to utilize his vast knowledge of the human species, his years of medical training, to offer a solid scientific explanation for what’s occurring in my body. After all, I did my part: I dragged my body to his office, and paid large sums of money to keep him available on a moment’s notice to diagnose and treat whatever the heck that thing is.

    Doctor Apricot, though, seemed to be on the tail-end of his professional career. He looked like the kind of old-timey doc who happily carted a black leather bag from house to house in the countryside and sat around  kitchen tables discussing dried fruit. In his defense, he had felt my neck–which I, in my infinite number of hours on earth, had also felt, prodded, and poked, reaching the same dire conclusion on my own. Without medical school.

    A tumor.

    As I sat across from him, stunned, my head swimming, he turned his worries to my diet. I’d mentioned all of the foods that I avoid due to sensitivities, or allergies, or whatever response my body chooses to communicate, and this age-old doc, after examining my neck, propped his sagging face onto one finger and asked, can you eat apricots?

    Apricots?

    I never saw him again.

    I did, however, schedule a scan of my carotid artery, a procedure that involved shooting me with a contrast solution which…oh…“could kill you,” the nurse said as she stood over me with a clipboard, “so will you please sign this paper first?” I blinked at the nurse, and called my stalwart protector into the room (my advocate whom I had dragged along with me), and my advocate suggested that I “suck it up” and get the scan.

    So I sucked it up.

    I got the scan.

    The nurse injected me, a radiology technician slid me into a cold, indifferent scanner, and my heart surged and raced. I mentioned the surging and racing afterwards, and the technician said, “Oh, that’s from the solution. We didn’t tell you.”

    We didn’t tell you.

    And the tumor? There was none.

    Unless they’re not telling me about that, too.

    “So what’s the bulge?” I asked my new doctor, who shrugged. “Probably the weird way you’re made.” An expert diagnosis if ever I’ve heard one. I wanted to ask: “Did they teach you that in medical school?”

    Because really, what do they teach?

    Certainly not good hygiene. I can’t tell you how many doctors insist on shaking my hand before washing theirs. One doctor had mustard under his fingernails. Mustard! Or what looked like mustard. For most of the appointment he sat in the next room conversing with another doctor on the phone while I lay sweating on the exam table. As I listened to his muted voice, I was thankful that at least he wasn’t examining me with mustard fingers.

    And what about examinations? I had one doctor who must have skipped that lecture, because he didn’t examine me at all. I sat on the thin crackly paper while he asked a series of questions and then pulled a medical tome from his shelf, ran his finger down several entries, paused to read, snapped it shut, and told me I probably had an infection. Probably. The spiderwebs in his waiting room, and the lack of a receptionist, should have tipped me off: this guy was not rich with patients.

    Do they teach bedside manner in medical school? Evidently not. I had a consultation with a surgeon who was overweight, reeked of cigarettes, and had a nasty attitude. He strode into the exam room wearing scrubs that he must have dug up from the bottom of the laundry basket. And he was going to slice open my body? Uh…no. Obviously, he missed the lecture on healthy habits.

    So what do they teach in medical school?

    My guess, based on my vast experience in doctor’s offices, is this:  do not, under any circumstances, admit to a patient that you’re clueless. Instead, use the words “probably,” “maybe,” or “could be.” Or change the subject. Talk about apricots.

     

    Category Fer Cryin' Out Loud | Tags: , , , | 8 Comments

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