The Letdown

My Husband being who he is, knows somebody who just happens to work with the head of the Encrenology Department at Stanford, spoke with him yesterday, and managed to get me an appointment to see him this morning. For this not-so-little token of love, I am truly grateful.

However.

My instincts have been telling me that there are just too many 'symptoms' that I have that can be explained away in many other ways, not least of which being genetics, having borne a child, and just not spending 20 hours a week at the gym with a personal trainer and nutritionist (fuck you, Madonna.) On the other hand, the crazy headaches and the debilitating fatigue I have no explanation for, nor for the test results which are off the charts.

So I went to see the Doctor. I felt something like a sham walking on the hallowed grounds of Stanford, which does have a beautiful campus, if you've never been. The staff I encountered were super nice. Not a single hassle or hiccup the whole time I was there. Timely service. Pretty much a stellar medical experience, as my track record goes. Some underling doctor to The Doctor came in and gave me a pretty thorough once over (her bad luck that I wore my stinkiest shoes today,) and I could tell that there were no immediate signs of 'Aha! Yes! Definitely!' The Doctor arrived and did a similar exam, asking me nearly identical questions. That went pretty quick. He basically told me that no, I don't obviously have any signs of this particular condition, although the test results *do* show something is wrong. He signed me up for a battery of tests to be redone at the on-site labs, including many of the same I just had done yesterday for my regular doctor, AND the same 24 hour pee test again.

I kind of sat there quietly, and he paused to ask if I was mad at my husband. I answered truthfully no, I appreciated that Husband was trying to be helpful, and that this just came from concern, but that I really did not have much hope that this was what was really wrong. I got an appointment for two weeks from today, and then he left.

I sat in the exam room for about 10 minutes afterwards with my head in my hands, feeling pretty deflated and defeated and even more like a sham. While it was by no means a suprise to me that I wasn't a textbook case of this particular syndrom, golly- to say it would've been nice to finally have a fixable problem would be the understatement of the year. I'm guessing that they can't recreate the test results, and that this'll all end up just being some sort of lab error. And if its a lab error as opposed to something I did, I shouldn't feel embarrassed to be doing all this, but I still do.

I had lunch in the cafeteria before having my blood drawn, and saw signs for the Children's Hospital. For a brief moment I actually managed to feel gratitude that that's not why I was here; having to be a parent sitting next to the bedside of a severely ill Mags, holding her hand while she was hooked up to machines and tubes. My heart wentr out to all those parents, and then onward to all the family members who were there looking after a loved one. Then I went and buried my head in the Datebook sectionof the Chronicle and pretended everything was fine until I had stuffed it good and far away.

I'm back at home now, having lost most of my day, and I'm getting ready to head out to help a friend work on some costumes. I'll try to put on a good face instead of weeping all over the appliques, and maybe I'll even succeed. Husband and Mags will be leaving tonight to go to the ranch for the weekend, leaving me ALONE to actually get something accomplished this break and to just be ALONE. Did I mention I'll be ALONE?

...

Well, I just cried all over rthe keyboard. Fuck I'm disappointed. I REALLY wanted the doctor to at least point to something and say something like, "Well you may not have this, but I think it might be this." I wanted a magic bullet in the form of ANY diagnosis so that I could start to actually fix stuff instead of being strung along in limbo while we wait for test results, AGAIN, that may or may not help. I wanted to be able to wave my little piece of paper in the air and say "See mom, I'm not a shitty daughter! I'm actually sick and having a rough time!" Hell, I wanted to be able to say that to myself, instead of having to battle the feelings that I'm not just being a big pussy who needs to buck up and just deal. Instead I'm ending up with more "Well, maybe"s, absolutely no new news on the headaches or fatigue, and an even stronger personal sense that I'm just a bitter mom with low self esteem who's just obsessing about the realities of having a child and is being overly narcisistic about her image -- and I don't even know where to stick the headaches or fatigue in all of that self loathing.

Jesus.