Diagnosis: A Lifetime of Diagnoses


Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash


The list keeps getting longer.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Depression
ADHD
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
Hypothyroidism
Sleep Apnea
Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Seasonal Allergies
History of Kidney Stones and frequent kidney infection
History of Abnormal Cervical Cells
Borderline Diabetes (due to PCOS)

These are the things that show up as diagnoses on my visit summaries from my various doctors. It seems like every year I get a new one. When I was in my early twenties I thought I was healthy. I probably had most of these problems, I just hated going to the doctor, so I ignored them and pretended to be healthy.

Sometimes I feel like a reject when I go to the doctor and ramble off my list of symptoms. Good grief, they should probably just take me out back and put me out of my misery. But you know what? I’m thankful for these diagnoses. I’m not thankful that I have the health problems, but I’m thankful that doctors have finally started figuring out what’s wrong with me. Now we can work on making me better.

I’ll never get rid of these diagnoses. They’ll follow me around like a black cloud for the rest of my life. Even if I eat right and lose weight I’ll still be borderline diabetic because of the polycystic ovarian syndrome, and that’s the only one on the list that can be cured. But, I’ll take my medications. I’ll continue following up with various physicians who specialize in each area. We’ll keep tackling problems as they arise.

I'm not alone in this fight. 40 million Americans suffer from anxiety and depression.  20 million Americans have thyroid disease. 1 in 10 women have PCOS. If you're suffering from health problems and you feel alone, know that you definitely are not.

And they're nothing to be ashamed of.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mom, Don't Read This One: Anxiety and My Sex Life

Image
Photo by Drew Hays on Unsplash
Warning: Don’t read further unless you want to hear about my sex life.
More serious warning: Possible sexual abuse triggers ahead.
I ended my post titled Sexual Abuse by saying “for the love of god, if a girl says no – whether she be a friend, girlfriend, or wife, it fucking means no and you deserve whatever you get if you don’t stop.” I have good reason to say that. I never would have said I was raped. Not until recently, anyway. A big problem with society these days is they think of rape only as involving a man abducting a woman in an alley, beating her up, and holding a knife to her while penetrating her. That’s not always the case.
If someone says no, it means no. Period, the end, do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not keep pushing.
If someone says no and you beg, plead, and eventually talk them into it, that’s rape. I have quite a lot of experience with this one, unfortunately.
An early long-term relationship is probably the cause for this parti…
Read more

Sexual Abuse

Image
This has been weighing pretty heavily on my mind lately. I’ve kept my mouth shut for decades because I didn’t think it was worth mentioning. With all the sexual harassment allegations flying around, and so many people saying they’re being blown out of proportion or defending the abusers, I just can’t keep quiet anymore. Seems as though I’m losing the ability to keep my mouth shut about a lot these days! When I was in high school, before I got my drivers license, there was a boy on the bus who I considered my friend. He started making comments, pretty much daily, about my breasts. Sure, he was joking and meant no harm. But he didn’t think about how I might feel about the comments. I’d always change the subject. Being the non confrontational shy gal I’ve always been, I couldn’t just come right out and say he was making me uncomfortable.  Then there was the boy at work – this would probably have been my senior year of high school – who started commenting on my breasts, and then actually gr…
Read more

I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it.

Image
Photo: Me and Amanda

Imagine you love reading books. It’s who you are as a person, it’s how you identify yourself. You are a book lover. The feel of the book in your hands, the smell of the pages, the way you forget all your troubles when you get lost in that book…that’s the essential you. Now imagine it’s like Fahrenheit 451. Society thinks it’s fundamentally wrong that you love books. Society judges you for your love of books. But you didn’t choose to love books, it’s just who you are. You were born to love books.
Imagine everyone around you loves to watch television, so you’re expected to love watching television as well...even that show that you really hate. You play along. All your life, you watch television with the rest of them...but secretly you long to read a good book. You can’t just be yourself, because if you mentioned your love of books, they would grimace and never look at you the same. So you pretend you’re someone else. You pretend to love television, and only televisi…
Read more