Campfyre Stories

I was apprehensive, and when I told people about my awful experiences with doctors, they understood that.  I spent the past week trying to be guardedly optimistic about my impending doctor’s appointment, but more than anything I was WORRIED.  After the last doctor I saw, I was sure that it was going to be more of the same.

My mother came with me.  Partly to advocate for me, partly to help me fill in some of the family medical history.

I filled out all the paperwork and then the doctor told me that his questions might be redundant, but that he wanted to get a comprehensive head-to-toe history.  It didn’t take long before the thyroid stuff came up.  My mom was talking about her Graves Disease and expanding on that to explain that every woman in my family, on both sides, has had some form of thyroid disease.  One of my great-grandmothers even died from thyroid cancer.  As the doctor asked more questions, I started telling him about the way the last doctor I saw treated me.

"Did you hit her?"  He asked, when I told him about the "fat women looking for an excuse" comment that was made to me.  "I wanted to," I said, in the same moment my mother replied with "She wanted to."

The more he heard about my most recent experience, the angrier and more frustrated he got.  The things he told me in response were things that I had said or asked in my last (humiliating and horrifying) doctor’s visit.  He explained everything he thought and everything he wanted to do.

My exam was routine and the doctor was talkative and friendly, explaining WHY he was doing everything and how I was doing.  Again, I learned, I am remarkably healthy for a fat smoker.  Heh.

We went back to his office and he handed me a prescription to get my blood work done.  It came with a list of the tests he wanted run and what his diagnosis was.  He then gave me 4 weeks worth of medication for what he believes is hypo-thyroid.  He explained that if we’re right and this is a problem, we need to start treatment immediately, but if we’re wrong and my thyroid is ok, then it won’t do me any harm.  I’m to start taking it *after* I’ve had my blood drawn for the blood work.

He wants me to quit smoking, but understands the weight issue.  He said we’ll come back to that once we have the other problems I’m experiencing under control.  I’m at the point where I WANT to quit smoking, but I just cannot risk adding another 50lbs to being already as overweight as I am.  I’m ready to look into quitting once everything else is stabilized.

I like this doctor.  He’s been practicing medicine for as long as I’ve been alive, but he keeps up on new developments, not just in his field.  Years ago, he inherited the patients of an endocrinologist he was going into practice with, and had to learn about thyroid disorders fast.  He did so thoroughly.

Emotionally, I already feel better.  Hopefully the next few weeks will start to give me a physically better feeling.  In four weeks (right around when I run out of the thyroid pills he gave me, I’ll go back, we’ll look at the test results, see how I’m doing and figure out the best long-term course of treatment.

My mother and I both came away with a sense of relief and respect for this man.  I actually trust him, and that’s a really nice thing to have found.

Now I just need to wait and see what happens.  I’ll fast tonight and have my blood drawn tomorrow morning.  By Thanksgiving I should know for sure what’s going on.

Turns out, wanting to know what’s WRONG with me, and trying to find a course of treatment wasn’t too much to ask.  I just had to ask the right person.

I may have blogged about some of this, but I don’t know.  I can’t be arsed to go and look.

As an adult, I have never had good luck with doctors.  I suppose I should start with getting pregnant.  Every doctor I had ever spoken to had told me that the chances of getting pregnant right after stopping the pill are virtually nil.  When I moved to Michigan I had a 1 month lapse in taking the pill…  we used condoms instead, but I wasn’t really too worried.  It wasn’t until after I found myself pregnant at 17 that I learned that you ovulate extra when you stop taking the pill so that your body can catch up with its cycle.  Yeah…  that’s something that young women really should be made aware of, as opposed to giving them information that is the opposite of the truth.

When I was pregnant with Spawn, I was under the care of Certified Nurse Midwives (CNMs).  It was a practice of 4 women and during my pregnancy I saw three of them.  Wouldn’t you know that when I was actually in labor the one that I didn’t know was the one on duty.  Though I intended to have a natural birth, Spawn’s heart-rate plummeted when they tried to induce labor, so they put me on a Pitocin drip and whisked me off to a room.  I was in excrutiating labor for hours when the CNM decided to give me a shot of morphine "so I could sleep."  Yeah, apparently my body doesn’t work like that and the morphine woke me the fuck up.  I had pillows propping me bolt upright in bed while I did crossword puzzles at 3am.  The nurses chuckled and said it was something they’d never forget.  That morphine took my pain away, but it didn’t allow me to sleep.

Once the morphine wore off, I hadn’t slept and the pain was even worse.  They decided to give me another shot of morphine which, this time, didn’t do a damn thing for me.

Keep in mind I had just turned 18 and it was me and my then-boyfriend/future (ex-)husband.  I didn’t really want any of this, but when you’re young and scared and you don’t know what’s going on, you tend to listen to the people with the medical training.

Eventually, they decided that it had to be a c-section.  It may have turned out that way, anyway, all of Dragonmaker’s family have quite large heads, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience for me.  It wasn’t until later that I was told that the CNMs were supposed to be advocating for me.  Not that I would have been really able to get that had I know, my CNM was the one I had absolutely no relationship with at all.

For a long time I stayed away from doctors, but, of course, I had to take my son for his well child visits.  At one point I was talking to one of his doctors, who clearly looked down on me and thought that because I was young I was also very stupid.  She got on my case about Spawn not drinking milk, because if he doesn’t drink milk, he isn’t getting enough calcium.  Well, that’s simply not true.  The boy ate yogurt and cheese and plenty of broccoli.  He had plenty of other sources of calcium, well-researched and validated, but for this doctor it wasn’t enough.  If you’re not drinking milk specifically, you cannot be getting calcium.

Again, putting off the doctors, at least for myself.

But I got sick and needed to take antibiotics.  And I’m a smart, well-read woman who is prone to research.  I KNOW that smoking makes most prescription drugs less effective, but when the doctor told me that if I smoked, the drugs wouldn’t work AT ALL?  That was when I pretty much wrote off doctors entirely, unless I had a serious problem.

And I had a few physical problems.  I sprained my ankle and I sprained my back and both of those were no problem other than the severity of the actual physical damage I had done to myself, but when I started fighting what was probably sciatica, I went to an Urgent Care place.  The doctor there decided that I was looking for drugs and didn’t want to hear anything I had to say about my pain or when it was bad or how much mobility I actually had.  I tried to explain that I didn’t want something to stop the pain, I wanted something to stop the PROBLEM.  She reluctantly gave me some kind of steroid and told me to find somewhere else to get painkillers.  Thankfully it fixed the problem.

My mother eventually talked me into going to her doctor’s practice.  For years my close friends and family had been telling me that they thought I had a thyroid problem for reasons beyond my weight.  And, really, they’ve been saying this to me for probably at least a decade, maybe more.  My mother and my father’s widow had recently been diagnosed with Grave’s Disease and it runs rampant through both sides of my family.  Having heard wonderful things about how progressive this practice is and that they don’t eschew herbal or alternative methods, I decided to give it a shot.

The doctor told me that I didn’t have a thyroid problem.  They’d test it, but she gets 5 or 6 women a week who are fat and want to blame it on their thyroid.  "Unless your hair is falling out in chunks," she said, "you don’t have a thyroid condition."  (Although I have discovered that hair loss is actually only applicable in severe late-term cases.  Way to go with the preventative medicine there, doc.)  In the meantime, she asked me, have you considered stomach-stapling surgery?  I am not a candidate for that surgery.  She asked me if I had tried diet pills.  She went on to tell me that I should stop smoking.  Oh, you won’t gain weight.  Well, you know, my personal history says that I will.  Oh, you want to put me on Chantix?  Well, considering that I ALREADY battle with depression (a hypo-thyroid symptom, BTW), maybe a drug that can cause suicidal thoughts and actions is not the best method for me right now.  She told me I ate too much carbs and, since I was a vegetarian, obviously I was doing it wrong and eating processed and junk foods.  Stop eating carbs and you’ll be fine, she told me.

And I got the blood work done.  Normal thyroid levels are .5-5.0  My levels were .76, so low, but not outside of the realm of normal.  Except that what’s normal for one person isn’t necessarily normal for everyone, and I thought (stupid me) that maybe this was worth looking into and doing further testing on.  No, she said, the real problem is that I have high cholesterol (yet another symptom of hypo-thyroidism)  and I should eat more whole grains (read: carbs).

I firmly believe that this sort of doctorial behavior is exactly the reason that the medical agencies in the US claim so goddamned many undiagnosed cases of thyroid problems.  If you’re fat, then you’re looking for an excuse.  If your hair isn’t falling out, then clearly you’re fine.  Even if your levels are on the extreme end of the low side, you’re making a big deal over nothing.

That was a year ago, and I haven’t gone back.

I changed my diet pretty radically at first, cutting out almost ALL cholesterol.  Most experts say that such a change in diet will cause weight loss, but I’m still holding steady at EXACTLY the same weight I was.  I walk at a fast clip everywhere, unless I’m taking the bus or riding with friends, and even then, I’m often encouraging people to walk with me, walk further.  This doesn’t matter.  I’m at EXACTLY the same weight I was one year ago.

And, probably, my cholesterol is still high.  Certainly I’m still battling depression, still fat and unable to lose weight at all, still having trouble sleeping, constantly exhausted, now having weird hormonal-based things going on…  but, you know, it couldn’t possibly be hormonal or glandular.  Surely my patchy dry skin weirdness, my acne breakouts, my new development of coarse, dark facial hair, my fatigue (that I push through anyway because I haven’t given myself an out of the "no car" thing), my depression, my insomnia…  it’s all the fault of too many carbs.  Or all the fast food that I don’t eat.  Or maybe it’s caused by cooking so much from scratch or the large amount of fruits and vegetables that I eat.  Ya think?

So I had a day with an old high school friend and we caught up.  I talked to her a bit about what was going on and she reminded me that she had problems with hypo-thyroidism in high school.  Similar situation where she was on the low end of normal, but her doctor thought it might be wise to look into it a little further and to see if what was low-normal for the "average" person was actually low-bad for her.  She gave me his name, and I made an appointment for next Thursday.

And I think, considering all the other stuff that I’m feeling and going through right now, if this guy doesn’t take me seriously, or lies to me, or belittles me, or even just brushes me off as a "fat chick looking for an excuse", then I’m going to give up on doctors, too.  Because, at this point, I can’t take another situation of a bad doctor treating me like an idiot.  I need *something* to change, and I’ve had enough bad that I feel like I’ve earned the right to one good doctor.  Someone who will explore the possibilities and help me figure out what’s WRONG with me, because there is something wrong with my body, beyond being fat and a smoker.

I really don’t feel like that’s too much to ask for.

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One of the problems with being a woman in a male-dominated industry is that sometimes, no matter what you do, not matter what you’ve done, no matter how many times you’ve proven yourself, you cannot get a chance.  I honestly can’t tell you if it’s something to do with my gender, my personality or the simple fact that I’m the one who’s in a different location from all the rest of the team, but I feel like I’m considered less of an asset than everyone else.

The problem is that I’m really good at what I do.  I’m a fast learner and I love to learn how to do new things.  I may ask a lot of questions, but once I have my answers, I’ll run with it.  I’ve told numerous employers, much to their disbelief, and later delight, that all I need is a week or two of direct training, followed by about 4 weeks of hands-on experience and I will know whatever product or procedure well enough to train other people and to write an manual on how to do it.  This is something I have proven time and again.

But now I’ve found myself in a situation where I have a role that does not keep me busy for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.  I’ve repeatedly asked for more work, and promises have been made that I will get it.  Unfortunately, they have decided to put all their eggs in a different basket.  Another person (a guy), who has the same amount of ignorance in the roles for which he’s being trained as I do, is being put in a position where the only way I’ll get more work, or get trained is if he learns this stuff well enough to show me how to do it.

That’s right.  They decided to ignore my history of and experience with training, and propped up someone equally ignorant to show me how to do the things that even he doesn’t understand.

Which means I have no work…  and I have no training to go through…  and no one seems to want to allow me to progress, even though this is a prime situation for me to build my skills in areas where I’m lacking.  IN fact, that’s a large part of the reason I was assigned to this team in the first place.

This is a new one on me.  Never before have I found myself unable to get more work when there is work that needs to be done.  This game of waiting on someone who is NOT an expert is not fun for me.  I know that when I eventually do get the overview training I need, that I’ll quickly surpass this person, not because of any limitations he has, but simply because I learn incredibly fast and run with the things I have learned.  In the meantime, I’m waiting around for him to meet some basic level of competence. 

It makes me hate my job.  It makes it hard to fall asleep at night.  It makes me feel like I’m stagnating.

I haven’t picked up my guitar in probably over a month at this point.  I haven’t been writing.  I’m not feeling the flow of creativity coursing through me, and that scares me.  I don’t think I’m depressed as much as completly ambivalent about everything.  I’m numb in general.  I’m not really motivated to do much of anything outside of the routine job duties and whatever busy work I can find to occupy my working hours.  The rest of the time?  My personal time?  I feel lost and uninspired.

I suppose the argument could be made that some disturbing developments with petty personal drama could be affecting it, but the truth is, the petty personal drama is the least of my concerns.  I’m just not interested in much of anything, and I think that it’s due in large part to the lack of challenge that I face every single day.

There are some people who give up when things get hard.  When they face a challenge that is bigger than they are, they simply retreat into themselves.  I give up when things are too easy.  I figure, if there’s no challenge, why bother?  It’s not that I don’t go through the motions, but whatever part of my brain that thrives on new circumstances and figuring out what needs to happen next just shuts down.  At this point, I cannot honestly tell if that’s currently happening or if it’s already happened.

And I don’t know how to change it.  I’ve been wracking my brain for WEEKS trying to figure out what I can change to fix this problem, but I don’t see any way that *I* can affect it without taking a HUGE risk of making things even worse.

So instead, I’m just maintaining, and losing touch with the parts of me that thrive when my need for challenge and my motivation are filled.  It’s not really where I want to be…

So after writing that Facebook thing post, I decided to dig out my old yearbooks and refresh my memory and try to figure out some of these mysterious figures who know me from high school.

What a mistake that was.

See, I had forgotten just how bad high school was for me and reading the comments and signatures in the yearbooks really brought it all back, and in a rather intense way.

You have to understand that I was considered incredibly weird in high school (I know, *gasp*, right?).  I wasn’t from the area, and most of the kids I went to school with had grown up together.  Not only that, but the life I had led up to that point was unique.  Most of the people from that are had no idea what an alternative school was, few people could understand having essentially lived in a VW bus for long stretches of time, the only type of kid they were familiar with who moved as much as I had were Army brats and I certainly was not one of them.  I also wasn’t sheltered from reality.  Granted, my perception of reality was fringey and underground, but I think that was part of it.  Seeing the seedier side of life from time to time and being raised by radical activist musicians didn’t really qualify me for "normal" in the suburban-rural area that encompassed my school district.

I was also pretty self-assured, had a wide range of interests, wasn’t interested in things like makeup and social structures and fashion and I had been raised, when I was little, mostly around adults.  I always related better to people who were significantly older than me than to people my own age.

I gave middle school a go out there and couldn’t function in that social environment, so I went back to the Free School for the last half of 7th grade and all of 8th.  The end of my 8th grade year I also met the Dragonmaker, so upon entering high school, I wasn’t really interested in dating other boys.

To exacerbate what was already a difficult situation, I was put in a gym class with Juniors and Seniors and my one elective had entirely Juniors and Seniors in it.  I didn’t really mind, since I had an easier time talking to people who were about to go out into the real world - a world where I had lived my entire life.  At some point, though, probably near the end of Freshman year, it hit me…  all of these people weren’t coming back…  and I was.

My peers at the time…  I don’t even know how to put it into words.  To say I was "picked on" would be a vast understatement.  I was thrust into the category of undesirable.  The few friends I had made in the area abandoned me for people deemed "cool" by Freshman standards.  I was left to choose from the "dregs", most of whom were very nice people, but fundamentally not all that different from the rest of the school population.  Certainly nowhere near as different as I was.

I suppose that changed in my Sophomore year.  Now my electives had my peers in them.  The people I was thrust into spending time with were actually my age and if they weren’t accepting of me, they at least didn’t completely shun me.  Early into the school year, I ran for Sophomore Class President and, stunningly, shockingly, won.  I was actually qualified, having gone to a democratic school for most of my elementary and some of my middle school education, and I served on the board of directors for the National Coalition of Alternative Community Schools.  I was a good public speaker and I guess they decided to go with substance over style.

I need to be honest about this, even though I know that some hearts changed…  well, one did at least.

The other officers were pretty upset.  Some of the most popular kids in my class were running for the offices, and they won VP and Treasurer.  I, however, had beaten one of their number, and the idea that this close-knit trio wasn’t going to be able to share in this activity started my presidency with bad feelings.

But the thing was, having heard me speak, having heard me talk about a select few of the unique experiences I’d had (and at only 15), people started looking at me less like a pariah and more like a person of intrigue.  I think a large part of it was that people were starting to figure out who they were and come into their own.  The hippies and the stoners wanted to hear about the Dead concerts I had been attending since I was 6 months old and wanted to hear about my travels back and forth across the country.  The burnouts and metalheads wanted to know more about being raised by rock musicials.  The socially conscious wanted to know more about my experience protesting and the radical activists I knew.  The elite popular kids, I guess, figured there must be something worthwhile about me if I beat out Amy for the Class Presidency.

Not all of them.  Not by any means.  It was one or two here and there who made the effort and s-l-o-w-l-y I let my guard down with some of them.

But here’s the thing…  and the reason I started writing this in the first place.

I was reading the comments in my old yearbooks, and so many of them said "I’m sorry I didn’t give you a chance."  "I’m sorry I made fun of you at the beginning of the year."  "You’re a really cool person, I’m glad I *finally* had the chance to find that out."

It still hurts, actually.  I had just forgotten.

Not that I EVER had that "best years of your life" feeling about high school, but I had truly forgotten just how bad it really was.  I was hurt over and over and over again.  I was emotionally cut on a regular basis by people who assumed things about me, who were probably threatened by my self-confidence or world-experience or just plain difference.  I was belittled and tormented by the desirables and I was lauded and praised by the bullies. 

I cried, no…  I sobbed so many afternoons after school, so many nights before I went to sleep in preparation for school the next day.  No matter what I did or didn’t do, I couldn’t win.  What friends I had were a comfort, but most of them remained a grade or two ahead of me, and the torment of my classmates was brutal.  I was isolated or labeled or scorned or mocked or whatever struck their fancy that particular day…

And I had completely forgotten.

And I wonder if they all forgot, too.  I wonder if there’s any remorse, not for having treated me the way they did, but for having lost out on a chance to get to know me when they had the chance.  I wonder if they forgive themselves for having been that person some 15+ years ago.  I wonder if they’re still like that.

I wonder if they had the same experience when they went to college, or took their first "real" job.  I wonder if they ever felt the isolation, loneliness and derision that they inflicted on me.

And then I remember that I don’t actually care.  What happened stays happened, and it all served to make me who I am today…  and for the most part, I like who I am.

But it didn’t stop me from feeling like I had been punched in the stomach just for allowing those memories to come back…  for having sought them out.

You know, for the most part, the people who have added me as a "friend" aren’t people who made me a target.  Even if they were, I can forgive.  That was a long time ago and I’m unwilling to revisit things that can’t be changed and happened before by adult life began.

I know, though, that inside and at my core, I’m pretty close to the same person I was in high school.  If that’s typical of people in general, then probably my best stance on the whole thing is pity.  It’s pretty sad to have to live a life where the only way you can feel good about yourself is at the expense of other people.