Well, today was my first check-in at the new homeopathic specialist. I was going to see one of his associates to inform her on my progress and see how everything was going. And since I am currently overjoyed to be experiencing an upswing I was all the happier to be there.
The basic run down comes to this: The B-12 shots I was given didn’t do anything. The medical records I painstakingly acquired were not only taken from microfiche but were handwritten. This caused great amusement and she had to say sorry, she didn’t think it’d be that useful as it was impossible to read. Well… I can’t say I blame her. Maybe a blank slate is better anyway. I mean I looked them over myself and wow, the lengths those doctors went through NOT to diagnose me with fibromyalgia was phenomenal. “Patient has fibro-like symptoms.” If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck… but I digress.
In addition to this my last battery of test results came in. Aggravatingly they didn’t say much. Shockingly after raising animals and playing with livestock for thirty-some-odd years I didn’t have a single parasite. I also didn’t have any healthy gut bacteria. Like…. None. All dead. Like Wal-Mart goldfish. So I was asked to try some probiotics which I will happily do. My food allergy tests came out negative except for a TINY one-point into the positive “very low” wheat allergy. Even so I was encouraged to go wheatless for at least a month to see if I could get anything to improve. OK. Will do. My Lyme test, the correct one, stated I didn’t have any traces of the disease in my system which is another shock knowing how many ticks I tend to bring home playing in the woods in the warmer months. And my hormone panel? WELL. I think I fucked it up because it was supposed to be on the 21st day of a normal cycle. I went in on Day 21… and then skipped a fucking period. SIXTY-THREE days later as my period tracking phone app kept alerting me to interesting new irregular period podcasts Aunt Rosie finally goddamn showed up. I asked if this lateness may have fucked up the test results. She didn’t give me a straight answer…. Just said I was low on Progesterone and that she was going to give me a cream to try hopefully in the two weeks between ovulation and my period IF I could guess it appropriately. This…could be a challenge…. But OK, I WILL DO MY BEST.
Finally she put me on some anti-inflammatory med from the compound pharmacy. She hopes it’ll help the pain that plagues me. And to top it all off she did send me off to have more blood taken and an eye test because I lamented I had found another fucking wave of mold in my home…
All and all I have a lot of homework, no conclusive diagnoses, and I am struggling not to feel like I am just lobbing spaghetti at the wall hoping something will stick. Then again isn’t that what my entire life is about? Between trying to figure out what my medical problems are I continue to plot ways out of the house I think is killing me… I wrote a book hoping it’d turn into some sort of income. That’s been a year and I am currently pulling an impressive 0 sales a month. I continue to write and hope to publish more but I no longer look at it as a means of income. I incentivized my blogs. On good months I get about 4 cents for my efforts. And now I am drawing weekly comics – I’m giving it a year to gain fans and followers before I set up a shop but it seems very few understand or appreciate my quirky humor so I’m thinking that will be another flop… Can I really expect anything more of my medical quest?
The more I tried to control my life, the more I sought concrete solutions, the more I failed and more miserable I became. I am letting it all go now. I write because I enjoy it. I take beautiful photos and sculpt because it soothes my soul. I draw comics because I love giving the gift of laughter. And I go to specialists, not believing I will find an actual diagnosis or cure, but because maybe they’ll find something to soften the blow a little. If I can improve my health at all it’ll be a blessing. And in the meantime I am really enjoying my visits to this practice. The staff there are absolutely wonderful. Their financial advisor even asked me for a hug! And that’s not bad. Not bad at all.
Being human means never being able to ever truly see “the big picture.” I don’t have a clue what it is I say or do that’ll make my life better but I know it’ll be something at some time. I have to keep hope in that.
**** All photos displayed in this entry have been taken by myself Theophanes Avery – save for the last which is a photo OF me.