Lent Day 9 - Health

“If you don’t have your health…” I had intended to write something different today, but then I spent the better part of the day visiting and being probed at several of our health institutions in town. Several people who have been keeping up with my Lent writing journey noticed I had apparently dropped the ball for a couple of days. Alas, I had merely fallen victim to some mystery malady. Today was to be my triumphant return. Instead, I had multiple needles jammed in my arm, had a year of my life removed due to radiation, and had a cat scan me. 

All of that may seem a bit of overkill for a bout of gastrointestinal expulsions. (I thought that was better sounding than what actually happened.) It would indeed be overkill, if not for the fact that eight of the last twelve days saw me suffering with those symptoms, and the additional fact that it came back after I supposedly had recovered. And there is the general overarching issue of being immune-compromised. That is the fun tag that you are assigned when you are diagnosed with a chronic illness that makes you susceptible to other more minor illnesses. My ticket was punched to the club with my diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis back in 2005. For those of you not in the know, rheumatoid arthritis (heretofore referred to as RA) is not normal arthritis.  People will try to be sympathetic when I say I have that by responding with “oh yeah, my mom has that. Her fingers are all swollen when it rains.” Not the same thing. RA is a disease where my dumbass immune system decides to attack my joints. As a result, I have a bunch of damaged joints with what the specialists call “erosions” in them. How does one treat a disease where the body’s own security system pulls an Order 66 and tries to kill its host? You have to kill the immune system. Nothing bad can happen there, right? (Insert Anakin/Padme meme here.) Nothing bad can happen there? Right?!? Sure, let’s go with that. Obviously, when you have your immune system killed off, that means you have trouble fighting off illnesses. So RA people are more likely to catch regular old infections and viruses. Every year, my doctor would remind me to get a flu vaccine. Then I would reply with, “I’m allergic to eggs.” And the doctor would look at me oddly and say, “I can’t process dairy.” And then I would remind him that the flu vaccine is grown in eggs. “Oh yeah,” he would laugh. “Sucks to suck.” Then we would have a good laugh. Then one year, my pharmacist told me there was a non-egg flu vaccine that was grown in insects. I’m not even kidding. I was the happiest idiot in town when I was able to get my bug-grown flu shot. Now they’ve actually somehow eliminated the egg component, so I can get the flu shot every year. And the Covid shots. 

That is one thing about having a compromised immune system: you jump to the front of the line for treatments. When the Covid vaccine started rolling out, I got an invitation as soon as the door flew open. The weird thing? I’ve never gotten Covid. We have had it in our house four times. Somehow, I never caught it. But this mystery GI thing comes along every few months and kicks my butt. So now we have to investigate to make sure it isn’t something more nefarious flitting around. I joke that I probably should stop eating food I find on the street. Because that is what this is like! It is like having food poisoning for six days. Have you ever had food poisoning? Cause I have. And not once. Not even twice. I have had food poisoning no less than five times. Now, you might think that is a sign of a serious lapse in judgment when it comes to choosing food. But it isn’t like I’m ACTUALLY eating food from in the road. These were all accidents. Food poisoning is miserable. The REALLY fun thing is that my egg issue acts like food poisoning when I have eggs. The same late night intestinal cramping, sweating, crying out to every deity I’ve ever heard of. The first time I had this stupid GI thing in the summer, I was convinced it was food poisoning … until it wouldn’t go away. I had it again in November. Then last week. It’s hard to stay positive when you feel like you’re being deflated. In the wise words of Joey Tribiani, “Vomiting stories aren’t funny.” 

Having a chronic illness is rough. People don’t really know what to say when it comes up. There is usually the sympathetic look and the “That sucks.” Followed by a lame joke by me. “No, it’s actually awesome.” People don’t like talking about illness. It is probably something to do with fear of death and stuff. I get it. I don’t want to talk about it either; it’s just a part of my daily life. I almost feel apologetic when it comes to mentioning symptoms. Nobody likes being around a whiner. You know that person, right? The one who always has something terrible going on. I am constantly terrified that people see me that way. (If you do, I’m really sorry.) My mother was like that. I would love to blame her wholeheartedly for this issue. It seems unfair to cast all of the blame on her, though, but she deserves at least 62% of it. She was a perpetual downer. I know some people over the years have called me Eeyore due to my melancholy nature. Compared to my mom, I was  Tigger who just ate that bundle of cocaine the bear in the movie found. She always had something awful going on. But, truthfully, she got that from her mom. I do a dead-on impersonation of my Grandma where she starts talking about how Quick Check didn’t have her beans and that no good so-and-so ate her leftovers and her bursitis was acting up. Let’s just say if I’m Eeyore, I come from a long line of donkeys with their tails nailed on. (By the way, the computer keeps trying to correct Eeyore to Eyesore. Which, to an Eeyore, is just adding insult to injury. “Not only are you downtrodden, but you're ugly too!” Friggin spellcheck.) So people with chronic illnesses tend to just learn to deal with things. If you hear them complain, things must REALLY be bad. 

Just to kind of give a picture… I never have a day where I don’t hurt. Never. I don’t even know what that would be like. And I’m not talking about pain that would be isolated to bumping my elbow or stubbing my toe. I wake up and (after determining what song my brain will play) I start the game “What is going to hurt today?” It’s a terrible game. Lately, the game isn’t even fun because the answer is always “my back.” My back hurts all the time. This, in a especially fun twist, is NOT due to RA. It is due to regular old osteoarthritis. And a bulging disc. And some pinched nerves. So, for the game to be fun, I just have to assume my back will be hurting and find what else is hurting.  Some days, it is my hips. Others it is my knees. Or my wrists, shoulders, ankles, fingers, toes. It can be a combination too.  And it doesn’t stay the same. It floats around day to day. If I do something physically strenuous, I will pay for it the next day. It will be like my body short-circuited or something. If I work a lot in my desk chair one day, my back (obviously) will be worse. But so will my hips and knees. If I type a lot, my wrists will hurt. Then there are some days when things just hurt for no explicable reason. The pain is irritating enough, but RA also saps energy. So I’m fatigued a lot. And people with chronic illnesses are more susceptible to depression, since there is a constant drain on their physical wellbeing with no hope for change. And it (or its treatments) can damage your heart and kidneys and liver. I’m not saying all of this for sympathy. And I’m fairly certain I’ve explained this before - so some of my veteran readers might be getting deja vu. And that’s EXACTLY what having a chronic illness is like: deja vu.  Same crap, different day. 

There is some sort of shame associated with illness, too. Like I should have done something different to avoid it. I know when I was diagnosed with diabetes eight years ago, I was horribly ashamed. I still am much of the time. I will tell people about my RA, because I didn’t do anything to cause that. But the diabetes? There’s my lifelong love affair with Mountain Dew to bite me in the pancreas. Except it isn’t as easy as all that. My dad had diabetes. There is a strong genetic component to that disease that has nothing to do with food choices. My food choices over the years didn’t help matters, but I would have probably ended up with it either way. It may have been when I was 60 instead of 40 - I don’t know. Maybe not. There is definitely a judgment attached with diabetes, though. It is one of the “obesity diseases.” When there is a news story about the obesity epidemic with a stock video clip of some fat dude walking into a Burger King, diabetes is one of the first things mentioned. I already feel judged much of the time (hence this writing project), so I don’t want to provide MORE reasons for someone to judge me. I didn’t make great choices for a long time, and I didn’t get on board with treating the illness for a while out of shame and denial. But I take all my meds now. And I’ve changed my eating. I’ve lost over 90 pounds - well closer to 100 when I finish a bout of my GI issues. But it is also part of my life now. 

If you ever try to identify the world’s most annoying phrase, I would like to nominate “Ooo, you know what you should do?” Rarely does that phrase lead to anything anyone wants to hear. That’s another thing about health issues. Everybody is a health expert. They all have the cure and treatment for whatever ails you. My RA would be under control if I drank apple cider vinegar. Or elderberry juice. Or used essential oils. Or drank alkaline water. Or didn't eat meat. Or sacrificed a bat on top of a cat under a full moon down home on the range. I’ve had so many well-meaning people (I hope they were well-meaning and not just being annoying on purpose) tell me what I should do to fix my health issues. What is funny is that I live with a literal health expert. My wife is a brilliant doctor with a decade of formal training. She is like the smartest person I know. And SHE won't tell me what I should do. She refuses to give me medical advice. I hang around doctors all the time, since those are my wife’s work friends. When we go out to lunch after church on Sunday, even though I am CPR and First Aid trained, I am the fourth most qualified person to help someone who falls ill - just above the kindergartner and three year old at our table. I am good friends with TWO rheumatologists. They tell me to go see my doctor. Because they don’t want to just say something that isn’t right. The average person isn’t like that. We love giving advice all the time - even if it isn’t right. If you found something that works for you, awesome. That doesn’t mean it is a universal remedy. And me not using it doesn’t mean I don’t like you or think you’re dumb. It doesn’t mean I have poor faith in God. It doesn’t mean that I’m a mindless robot slave of the medical industry. It’s just that, if there was a quick fix to the issue, then it wouldn’t be considered a chronic disease. Somewhere along the line, someone would have realized that bathing in cod liver oil and then dusting yourself in powdered sugar solves RA. Then it would have been tested and reported, and they would have closed the book on that disease. Sure, maybe that one thing worked for your aunt. But I’ve been fighting this thing for a loooooong time. I’ve already outgrown the usefulness of a dozen pretty potent medications. I would LOVE to find a miracle pill to take to fix this - instead of the bevy of pills I take every day to function. It just isn’t very likely to happen. 

Sorry if today’s entry was a downer. It wasn’t meant to be. And that isn’t the point of this project anyway. It was something I dealt with all week, and I wanted to put it down on (virtual) paper. Not everything is positive. There are some things in life that stink that we can’t solve. And that’s okay. I have the health issues. Maybe somebody else doesn’t have health issues, but they don’t have the charming personality, rock hard abs, and dazzling smile that I have. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve sat in this position too long and I need to move around before my hip locks up.