Haruspex
Today has been a whole new kind of awful. I’ve decided to commit suicide at age 49 and 364 days. It seems much more reasonable than going through this whole bowel prep thing again.
What’s that? Yes. Bowel prep. Also known as drinking the foulest substance known to man (and the “flavor packs” make it only marginally - very marginally - more tolerable) and having it come right back out whichever end it feels like. You just sit there and hope it’s the right one, and keep a bowl handy in case you’re wrong.
So…yeah.
About two weeks ago I went in to see a new GI doctor, one that had come very highly recommended by two people on Livejournal (yeah, yeah, I know). She’s fifteen miles away, which in LA might as well be at the bottom of the Marianas. But she *is* good, and I like her - at least as much as I like any doctor. She asked lots of questions - how long has this been going on? Nine months. And have you lost weight? Ten pounds - though I’m up to fifteen now. And yes, I have rashes and yes, I’ve been woken up by needing to use the bathroom and yes, this is Not. Normal. At. All.
And she finished up with a prescription for Levsin (which is a straight-up anticholinergic and NOT A SEDATIVE AT ALL, THANK YOU DR. ASSHOLE) and a desire to stick a camera down my throat and - oh joy - up my bum. Yeah. (It is at this point that I protest silently to nobody at all that I am 24 and not supposed to have to deal with this for another LIFETIME, thank you very much, but it doesn’t do any good.)
So she wanted to do it the following Wednesday, but my insurance decided that that particular clinic wasn’t good enough. There was a space open at Glendale Adventist the Monday immediately after the appointment (the Monday before Thanksgiving, for anyone keeping track) but I’d scheduled the GRE for that afternoon and I didn’t think I could pull off a colonoscopy and a computer-adaptive test in the same day. So we settled on Thursday. Tomorrow.
And um. Well. Here we have a perfect storm of phobias, doctors and hospitals and sedation and violation of bodily integrity and…yeah. Here we have me.
When I was very much smaller, I had a recurring dream. One of my family members would go to the hospital and be put into a tube-type thing, very much like an MRI. Everyone else would stand around very cheerfully, talking about how wonderful modern medicine was. And then the machine would start to whir, and knives would go in and out and blood… And everyone would stand around smiling happily, and I would be screaming and screaming and no one would listen. And the machine would stop and the person would come back out, either dead but untouched, or alive and…altered. And no one else would notice a thing. Everyone was very happy about the wonderful machine. It fixed everything.
This THING, this whatever the hell it is (why couldn’t it have been parasites? Or celiac? Celiac would be GRAND.), this THING means that I go out for brunch and stare at the menu and feel no desire for food because all I can think of is what it’ll do to my insides and how fast it’ll come out. This THING means I take a ziploc bag with me to a concert in case I decide I need to puke - I haven’t puked yet but there’s a first time for everything, and it would come when I’m in some awful situation). It means the first thing I do when I go out is figure out where the bathrooms are. It means going out involves a complex calculus weighing how crappy I feel at that moment and how likely I’m going to continue to feel crappy and how crappy I’ll feel for missing whatever-it-is-that-I-want-to-go-to. It means I’ve lost two friends who decided “I feel sick” is code for “I’m codependent and don’t want to hang out with you.” It means I’ve missed a myriad of parties and get-togethers. It means I don’t cook, I don’t eat, I don’t want to eat, I don’t want to think about food. It means when I’m out with friends I push food around so I look like I’m eating. It means I feel tired and nauseous and ugly and asexual all the goddamn time. It means I don’t even want to think about looking for a proper job because that would mean going out and - you saw the stuff up there. Going out is barely an option.
This thing is hell.
So I’ve choked down two liters of salty, lemon-lime horror and had cramps all afternoon and tomorrow - I don’t want to think about tomorrow too hard. I can’t. I really can’t. Tomorrow maybe I get an answer.
Tomorrow maybe I get an answer, and I’m still turning to C, as horrible as my life has been, asking, begging - “Tell me I’m doing the right thing.”
The pit and the pendulum. Scylla and Charybdis.
Tell me I’m doing the right thing.
Tell me I’m doing the right thing.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Mystery diseases make you feel like crap. Fear of the unknown makes even the simplest mystery disease horrifying. Been there.
This is when you really could use your a personal medical champion, a trusted friend or Significant Other who could do the research for you, hold your hand when you need to go through unpleasant, uncertain procedures and sometimes figure out what the doctors can’t.
Most of us aren’t that lucky though, we have to go through this stuff by ourselves without help.
Isn’t there anyone who could be your medical champion for your right now? Someone who can figure out the health insurance issues for you, find the doctors, look symptoms up on the internet for you and find out what the results of tests mean for you? Have you asked your local friends for this sort of help, or are you too new to the area to have super close friends who could be trusted to help you out?
I’ve heard there are professionals who do this, but for the life of me I can’t remember the names of any individuals or companies off hand.
I have a friend who figured out his wife had a brain tumor from her symptoms by looking them up on the internet. She’d gone to three doctors who told her that her symptoms were psychological, mostly because they did have much in common with many common issues. He believed something was really wrong because he knew her better than they did and did the research that made him demand a MRI scan. I wish I had someone like him around when I wasn’t well.
She’s doing fine now, it was benign but causing problems because of it’s growth.
If there isn’t anyone else you can turn to, please feel free to e-mail me. I can do some online research for you at the very least.
November 29th, 2007 at 4:38 am
Jhonen’s being great through all this - he’s driving me tomorrow and holding my hand through the parts they’ll let him. And a bunch of friends have been awesome; one brought over pho on a week when I was eating nothing but toast and bananas and drove me to my first appointment, a friend who’s working on her PhD in gastroenterology sent me loads of articles, the Quakers have been handing out hugs like candy (Quakers give the best hugs). I’m just this emotional sucking wound right now. It’s no fun, even with people being wonderful.
I’m pretty convinced it’s IBS, IBD or (unlikely) celiac; the GI doctor is working along the same lines but we can’t figure it out until after tomorrow - every single blood test I’ve had has come back normal. My money’s on IBD which is consistent with some of the other weird shit my immune system has pulled.
And thank you for the offer. I’ll let you know.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:21 am
I wish I could help! I’m very good at speaking sternly to doctors, so if you need somebody to do that just put me on the phone with them and I will require them to both listen and communicate in no uncertain terms. Hang in there! I’ll be thinking about you.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:02 am
You’ll be in my thoughts
It sounds so awful. Predominantly inexperienced with any kind of serious medical condition, I can’t offer a whole lot, but if you ever need someone to bring you something, or company, or whatever and your boy isn’t handy, we’re in the neighborhood 
Till then, I guess just try to focus on the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ as it were.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:04 am
It sounds awful.
You and This_Is_Not_Art are both having terrible unexplained stomach pain, although she has slightly different symptoms.
I’m glad Jhonen is supportive.
November 29th, 2007 at 11:05 am
P.S. You could have a giant hairball.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:47 pm
So I found my way over here from Facebook. Just wanted to chime in to say that your description of all this is so dead on. Especially the the lack of interest in food (sometimes bordering on repulsion when you know what evilness it has in store for you), the complete absence of energy, and of course, the utter nastiness of that salty “lemon lime” prep. Ugh. Makes me want to hurl just thinking about it.
You inspire me to, perhaps, someday, start writing in my LiveJournal again. If I do, it’s at mt_st_helens.
P.S. Keep in mind that, especially with this sphere of issues, diagnoses can be shape-shifting. After my first colonoscopy, they found nothing conclusive, and said it was probably just a hemorrhoid. Six months later it was undeniably UC. So even if you don’t get answers now, they may be forthcoming. Make friends with Ensure and Gatorade if you haven’t already.
In solidarity,
Erin