The Things I Would Say to a Doctor...

if I had one, that is.



I've talked briefly about my mom, but I by no means gave the whole story.



When I was seven, she started getting sick. Sleeping all the time. Catching every cold or bug that we brought home from school. Weird rashes. General exhaustion. I don't remember all the details anymore but I remember that her entire side of the family thought she was crazy, and I remember my father starting to talk about taking custody of us.



I'm pretty sure they had her on anti-depressants for a while, but they didn't take.



All the health issues are kind of fuzzy in my memories at this point in time, because our house burned down at the end of my third grade year and that kind of trumped Mom being sick. But I think it was around the same time as the fire that she saw the specialist who ended up diagnosing her with Lyme's disease. They put her on antibiotics (oral, not IV) and told her that should treat it (she later learned that the oral antibiotics only work in the first six weeks of contracting the disease. She'd had these symptoms for over a year).



So for fifteen years she lived with Lyme's disease. She was for the most part healthy, aside from the rheumatoid arthritis and the fact that when she was under stress, she would almost always get sick and stay sick for weeks, which she was told is normal when your immune system is compromised.



And then last year, when we were all scrambling to throw together my wedding, other things started happening. Her arms would tingle. The muscles in her legs would tense up so much that she couldn't walk some days. She would sleep fifteen hours at a time.



So she went back to the doctor, who put her on antidepressants and referred her to a dentist (because she thought one of her teeth might be infected). So Mom had the tooth pulled and took the antidepressants, which weren't working. So she went back to the doctor, who ran a ton of bloodwork.



Her bloodwork didn't show any Lyme's disease. Now, this stuff, once you have it, doesn't leave your bloodstream. So basically, with one stupid blood test, she found out that ALL. THESE. YEARS. she had been living with this disease, she didn't have it at all.



So she spent another year just surviving. The whole not-having-Lyme's disease thing made her not really want to go see more doctors, so she didn't. And then, late this winter, she got out of bed and tried to stand up, and her legs just didn't work. They were numb, and when she finally regained feeling the muscles were cramping so hard she could barely stand it.



From there she started seeing a new doctor. He's the doctor my stepdad has seen since he was a baby. He's pretty oldschool about a lot of things, but he's thorough and down-to-earth.



So he addressed her headaches first. He tried some different medications and eventually referred her to the dentist (my dentist) to have her jaw looked at. It was there that they started telling her about her joints. How her ligaments appear to be weak, and that the muscles are doing most of the work that a healthy ligament would do.



I'm not sure exactly how it went down, but the dentist was telling her about fibromyalgia, and the doctor confirmed the next week.



And now she's on the road to learning how to live with that, instead.



But we're all a little afraid.



All of the joint/ligament issues that she has, I've got, too. And I've actually got a family history of joint conditions on my father's side of the family.



I know my grandfather has had a knee and a shoulder replaced. My father, who is 45, mind you, has had both shoulders replaced and will start looking at knee replacement within the next five years.



So something isn't right there. And obviously it's something that is genetic. I'm kind of afraid.

It's not a diagnosis I want, but at the same time I feel like I need it. Is this why I'm tired all the time? Is this why if I drive for more than thirty minutes I feel like my hand is going to completely separate from my arm? Is this the reason I can do absolutely nothing and still feel like I've run a marathon at the end of the day? I mean, I'm twenty-fucking-four. Every joint in my body pops when I move. I make a noise any time I have to get up from where I'm sitting because I know something is going to hurt. Like right now, my fingers are achy. I haven't even been typing for very long.

I guess we'll wait and see. I have to finish paying for the chiropractic care and all my dental work before I can start adding a family doctor into the mix.