Burst Bubble #? (I Lost Count Around Age 8 or So)

The past couple of months have not been good ones for someone like me, that is someone with hypochondriacal tendencies and an extraordinarily low pain threshold. It all began with my annual physical in January, in which my doctor proclaimed I was fit as a fiddle: low blood pressure, fantastic cholesterol levels, etc. He praised me for my wonderful exercise (thanks again, Mandarine) routine of walking in the morning and the evening, telling me he’s usually desperate to get people just to do half that.

Fit as a fiddle I was, that is, until I started describing some rather disturbing symptoms I’d been having for about six months or so, noting those months had been rather stressful ones (stress being the typical source of any disturbing symptoms I suffer). The most alarming of these symptoms is that my right arm has decided that since I’m sleeping six to eight hours a night, it might as well do the same. Every morning, I wake up to a numb hand, and sometimes it takes quite a while to rouse it from its slumber. The other symptom was pain up and down my spine that comes and goes, but is sometimes unbearable. I suggested maybe the numbness was some form of carpal tunnel syndrome or something, but he automatically pooh-poohed that idea in the dismissive way doctors often do when a patient is bold enough to actually suggest a diagnosis. He immediately ordered a Lyme Disease test and a series of X-Rays.

The Lyme test came back negative. Then I forgot about the X-Rays, because we were struggling with Lady’s sudden illness and death. In the midst of all that, we got a call from the nurse informing me that something had shown up in my chest X-ray and that I needed a CT Scan.

Well, if you’re a Web MD aficionado (as some of us just might be, especially when the companies we work for give us special accounts through our insurance benefits), I don’t need to tell you that “something” showing up in a chest X-ray is alarming, even if the nurse is telling you she doesn’t want you to be alarmed. Even more alarming is what she says next, “It could just be an enlarged heart. But it could also just be a bad X-ray.” Yeah, right. A bad X-Ray, in this day and age of technology, and with that extraordinarily meticulous X-ray technician I thought was never going to let me go?

Again, even if you only have a fleeting acquaintance with Web MD, you’ll know that an enlarged heart is not a good thing. It’s not a problem in and of itself. No, it’s a symptom of all kinds of horrible things, from Lupus to heart valve problems to lymphatic cancer, just to name a few possibilities, although I wouldn’t want to alarm you.

So, off I went for a CT scan. The results? Still inconclusive. Seems something was going on in an unclear area that could be my heart or my lungs. Discussing what sort of funeral I’d like with Bob and calling up friends I’ve been neglecting for way too long, I made my appointment for the MRI.

Finally, some results. It wasn’t my lung. Nor was it my heart. I have multiple benign cysts on my thoracic spine and a protrusion that could point to disk problems in the future (God, I sound so old). The solution? Go see an orthopedist.

And here’s where my bubble gets burst (but I’m also vindicated). The first thing this rather humorless orthopedist and I discuss is my mysterious right arm and its seeming need for at least six hours of sleep every 24 hours. Here’s the vindication part: he suggests it might be carpal tunnel, explaining to me that we have a tendency to hold our arms in curled positions when we sleep, which can cause carpal tunnel (take that, Mr. Know-It-All Doctor #1). He prescribes a wrist brace for nighttime wear. He then, after a series of tests, in which he asks me to bend in different ways, prescribes physical therapy for my back (phew! No surgery).

Then he poses the big question, “What do you do for exercise?” When I proudly announce my routine (you know, the one that Dr. #1 thought was so terrific), he immediately dismisses me with, “That’s nowhere near enough.” (Mandarine, what were you thinking?) He goes on to say, “You’re not 80 years old, you know.” I’m walking an hour a day, brisk walks too, up and down hills. How many 80-year-olds do you know who do that? I wonder what he says to those people who come in and say, “Exercise? Well, I push the buttons on my remote to change channels.”

So, now I’m being told I need to get back on the exercise bike and the Nordic Track. I need to add weights back into my routine (I’d rather have surgery than to have to engage in the excruciatingly boring activity of lifting weights). Yoga’s good, but only when combined with many other activities. My morning and evening “commutes” had better be by means other than walking. There goes what I thought had been the perfect answer to my hatred of exercise for the sake of exercise. You can see that big, oh-so-beautiful-and-perfect bubble exploding, leaving me with nothing, can’t you?

You may be wondering why I mentioned pain in the first paragraph. None of this seems like it would be very painful (at least not physically), especially since I have yet to start the physical therapy, thanks to a huge snow storm last week and the fact I’m now on the road. Well, on top of all this, my tooth began to ache. Not ache. Pound and scream at me that it wanted my undivided attention. A visit to my dentist revealed that I had an infection under my tooth. Solution for this newest calamity? Oral surgery (which, by the way, may or may not work. I still might have to have my tooth pulled).

So, the day after my visit to the jolly, bubble-bursting orthopedist, I was sitting in a chair at the oral surgeon’s, hearing him, through a laughing-gas-induced haze, discuss with his assistant whether he should buy jewelry or give a spa gift certificate to his wife for her birthday. Before I can pipe up with “go with the spa gift certificate,” which he seems to be leaning against, I’m waking up, and he’s telling me the surgery has gone fine, and I’m asking one of the most idiotic questions I’ve ever asked in my life, “So, can I chew on this side today?” Luckily, he must be very used to idiotic questions from half-anesthetized patients, because he didn’t laugh at me.

Ahhh! for anesthesia and Novocain. Eeeek! for Novocain wearing off. Ahhh! again for Percocet. Will I ever be able to chew on that side again? Or eat hard, cold, crunchy foods? The verdict (a week later) is still out.

The spring and summer months are somewhere way out there on the horizon, right? I’m a winter soul at heart, but even I could use a little change in the weather these days.