A Mother's Musings and Mumblings

I’m not going to whine. At least that’s what I keep telling myself and what I’m going to tell y’all now. I am NOT going to whine.

I’m just going to ponder for a spell the trials and tribulations of getting older, the joy of statistics and the agony of medical non-compliance. What do those topics all have in common? Me.

A little over two years ago I turned 40. Several things happened then – I had a party, the warranty ran out on the core body systems, and generally my health went to hell. The funny thing is that I was looking forward to 40 so I can’t even blame this on the placebo effect. My “problem” birthdays have always been the “9′s”. Something about the anticipation of the next decade is worse than the actual change. Thirty-nine wasn’t much different so I was kinda grooving on the idea of turning forty. I hear it’s the new twenty.

Shortly after the clock struck 4-0, I was diagnosed with IIH. Well, not shortly. It took nearly six months to get to the diagnosis but the first MRI was right after 40. I had a total of four MRI scans that year – all brain. Seriously, they need a punch card for that because I should have gotten a discount on the fifth (taken at the ripe old age of 41).

But I digress. 

IIH won’t kill me, in fact the worst things it can do are to take my vision (30% chance) or give me pain that doesn’t respond well to pain killers (already there). I can live with that, and I do. I see my Neurologist regularly and she tweeks my meds. Sometimes we have to have difficult conversations about side effects that I just cannot live with but generally it’s not bad. For this little issue, I take a total of 10 pills a day. Which brings us to the topic of medical non-compliance.

As a physician one of the more frustrating issues is patients who just will not take their med or follow a plan to help themselves. In this post-40 world I find myself embedded in that camp – playing the role of the patient who is just sick and tired of being sick and tired and taking over 10 pills a day. I find myself wondering what would happen if I just went on strike and quit. Stopped taking everything. Don’t worry, I know better. The part of me that lived through the last spinal tap off meds is still sitting over in the corner rocking back and forth having flashbacks of wanting to jump under a bus because the pain was so bad. So I won’t do it but from here, I can sure see how people could end up not taking their medications as prescribed.

At this point, if you’re still here, you’re wondering why I’m whining about an issue that’s been going on for two years. The simple answer is that I’m not whining, I’m settng a backdrop. A backdrop for my more recent adventures in Health Hell.

Not taking my meds means living in really bad pain. Taking my meds means my gut is in a perpetual state of angry. So any “complaint” related to my gut for the last 18 months has been blamed on my medications. That worked fine for quite a while until the complaint involved actual blood loss. At that point it became harder to blame it on meds. Nope. Time to bypass my Neurologist and go back to my Primary Doc and come up with a plan.

This did not thrill me. I know enough about medicine to know that a plan under these circumstances would involve a Gastroenterologist and a hose. And I was right. What I neglected to think about is that my Primary Doc is a damn good doc. So going to chat with her about this one issue wasn’t going to work in March when I was due for a Pap in January. Nope. She wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily.

Paps don’t bother me. Maybe it’s because I’ve done them (10 years at a free clinic and I can say I lost count) or maybe it’s because I just refuse to let them. What does bother me is when Doc quits joking and gets serious. Particularly when she’s feeling up my boobs. And telling me there’s a lump.

So at this point, I’ve seen the GI doc and have a date scheduled with a hose (in about 3 weeks) and I’ve had both my mammogram and my ultrasound which confirm a 6mm lump that needs to be biopsied. And I still know too much. I know that my gut is likely giving me grief from a mild case of colitis that will be diagnosed with biopsy taken through the hose and treated with…….more pills! And I know that the chance of this lump containing cancer is only about 2% so taking some of it out is really more for my mental health than my physical health. And I know that statistics don’t mean jack for any individual. And that my mental health needs to know. And that I’m sick of finding things wrong. And that stopping all my meds and pretending none of this ever happened may not be the answer, but right now it’s sure tempting.