Boxing the Shadows

I mentioned my health problems in my first blog, and I promise you that I haven’t begun writing to the world only to find an audience for my own incessant complaints. However, my health issues have really been a huge impetus for many of the changes I will be writing about, so I think it’s relevant to provide that background. If you care enough to read this post, you’re probably waiting for the BIG diagnosis. What is It? What do you have? --- “Fancy-Unpronounceable-Latin-Term-inoma?” or “Arrogant-Doctor’s-Name-itis?” Why do you need the name? Because that is how we, as humans, understand our world. We need to name things, then lump them into groups, so that we can deal with them in the same way we deal with all the other things in that group. God forbid something doesn’t fit into one of our nice, neat little groups, and we’re required to stretch the usage of our total brain capacity from 10% to 11%.

If I told you I have cancer, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in my Abdullah oblongata or my pinkie toe. Your brain will still tell you the same thing—“she has a potentially life threatening disease that can spread. She needs chemotherapy, radiation, and/or surgery.” If I told you I have dermatitis, you’d think, “Ah. A skin problem. She needs special creams and to stay away from toxins, stress, and allergens.” If I told you I have anaphylaxis, you’d think, “An infrequent, but serious allergic reaction. If she stays away from the allergen, she’ll be perfectly normal and fine.”—This isn’t because You, the individual, want to minimize my health concern, it’s because you as a human have a human brain, and that’s how human brains process and understand the huge amounts of information they take in every single day.

And guess what? Doctors have human brains, too. Doctors look at an array of symptoms, cognitively sort through the data they studied in medical school, and magically (at least it seems that way to us- the uneducated patients) pull out the correct diagnosis. If some of the symptoms don’t fit into the diagnosis drawn from their hat, maybe the ill-fitting symptoms aren’t real, or are unrelated, or are being exaggerated. It isn’t because they’re bad at being doctors. It’s because they’re good at being human beings. That’s why, when presented with my symptoms, Doctor #2 said, “Sometimes, as doctors, when we don’t understand something, we just hope it will go away.” He didn’t really mean, ‘as doctors,’ he meant, ‘as humans.’ Regardless of the semantics, though, I went away-- on to Doctor #3 and Doctor #4.

Yet, I still have to get up and look in the mirror every day. I can’t just hope I go away. I am a human, too, and I struggle daily to deal with the fact that my health problems don’t fit simply and neatly into any obvious diagnosis. I often think I’m just crazy, even though my symptoms are very visible, predictable, and observable. I’ve been told by specialists that I’m not what medical professionals term the “worried well,” but I still worry well.

I have something going on—an unnamed and misunderstood array of symptoms that are very real. I might have all of the things listed above—cancer, dermatitis, and anaphylaxis. I at least have the last two, and a few more “itises and isms” to go along with those. However, the reason that I experience all of those things is yet to be determined. So, I spend much of my time playing what I’ve affectionately termed “Lab Test Whack-a-Mole,” trying to find the underlying cause of all of my daily challenges.

For the time being, I’ve been left to fend for myself against that unnamed and uncategorized thing that drives my poor human mind mad. Since I’ve been left to box the shadows, I might as well illuminate the rest of my world in the ways I know how.

So, while I wait for the answer to come down from on high (or at least from a lab tech’s microscope), I’ve decided to eliminate as many “what-if’s” as possible. One of the places I’ve focused my energy is on eliminating as many chemicals from my life as possible. I’ve found that my skin is much kinder to me when I eat more whole foods, and the more fundamental and additive-free the soaps, lotions, and fabrics I place on my body. And it is also so much cheaper! A little olive oil and beeswax is so much kinder to my blistered and peeling lips than a petroleum-based commercial preparation, which leaves me to wonder what it might have been doing to my skin all this time. It wasn’t until my skin fought back that I ever considered, “Why in the world am I slathering petroleum on my lips anyway?”

And this is how itchy skin, fatigue, migraines, vision changes, a fire engine red face, and a multitude of other bizarre distortions of my body’s normal processes just might change my life – for the better!