I spent many of my childhood days laying in my bed or on the couch, usually counting done the minutes until I would find myself in a doctors waiting room, yet again. My pediatric records read like an encyclopedia, with my 18 years of life cast out over hundreds of pages of doctors notes and lab results.
Yet in these 18 years, with countless tests and visits, no explaination was ever found.
In the early days, my complaints were of earaches or sinus pain leading each time to a trip to the doctor and ending with a sticker and a prescription. As I was too young to really recall the conversation extent of these visits, I don't really know how the physicians felt about these frequency's. However, no further tests were done, and I assume they chalked up my illnesses to the five school age siblings that were constantly sharing germs.
As I got into my early teen years, my trips to the doctors office became about the fatigue, nausea and stomach pain that were a constant in my life . Each time, the doctor would take my vitals, feel around my stomach, and proclaim everything just fine. He then would go on to discuss with my mother that I was probably just faking it, and the real issue was going on somewhere else.Nonetheless, I kept being sick, and she continued to take me to the doctor. Most of the time, my symptoms were written off as "girly problems." Meaning, after my hormones all leveled out, surely I would feel fine.
Over the course of a few years, I was in for a visit almost every week. Given unofficial diagnoses of gallstones, acid reflux, anxiety, and of course--irritable bowl. At one point, to the request of my mother, my blood was allergy tested. Her 70+ year old aunt had just been diagnosed with a wheat problem, and she wanted me to be checked too. The doctor proclaimed it negative, and decided allergies were surely not the issue.
Eventually, I was sent to a endocrinologist, who loaded me up on numerous medications to treat diagnoses of asthma, seasonal allergies, polycystic ovarian syndrome and hypothyroid. I became extremely overloaded with so many medications, and I became more exhausted than ever and rapidly entered into a depression. Which of coarse, meant I needed to take a drug for that as well.
After about a year or so of forcing myself to swallow hand-fulls of pills everyday, I couldn't take it anymore. The medications that were supposed to be making me feel better, were doing the exact opposite. Steroids and chemicals were not making me energized and healthy, and "happy" pills were causing me to be less happy then ever before.
So I quit.
I quit going to the doctor. I quit shoving pills down my throat, and I quit thinking I would ever not feel sick.
*Next up: a few of my favorite things.
