askyermom

Hypochondria was a huge favorite of mine. It was a magnificent distraction until I actually came down with cancer–decades ago. In some fashion, cancer cured my hypochondria.

Imagining a bad diagnosis is just not the same as getting one, or I guess it’s possible I wasn’t imagining hard enough–not for lack of trying.

While hypochondria was my main hobby, I rushed to the doctor repeatedly with rashes and swellings. Memorably, I was diagnosed with fuzzy tongue, which they said was rarely seen outside of Appalachia. This was an error; they just weren’t accustomed to seeing people who had a phobia of dentists because most of those people have a phobia of doctors as well.

I didn’t understand it was my stuffed emotions that made me ill. Okay, they didn’t make me ill on their own, maybe, but they made everything worse. Definitely. It’s not the emotions that are the villain here, it’s the stuffing. I was a little bottle of WTF, like a stick of soggy dynamite.

When you feel like that, it’s perfectly natural to assume that something has gone terribly wrong. When you are hurting and there seems no clear reason, it feels so unfair. Your body seems to betray you. You check and investigate and research and consult and no clear reason can be found. Sometimes you are allergic to your pillow and that provides one solution for one symptom that one time.

I’m grateful that no one gave me a mood pill and annoyed that no one prescribed therapy. In those days, I think they were taught that suggesting therapy was rude. One had to recognize the need on one’s own and by one’s own bootstraps discover the well-worn charts to one’s uncharted interior territory.

It sounds so American to put it like that.

A very kind doctor talked to me after I had seen him for three different mystery symptoms in a row. He said he could run every test possible and they would still not know exactly what was happening in my body.

There is always uncertainty, he said. Paradoxically, this has reassured me ever since.

I gave up the idea that a diagnosis was going to clarify my situation, that somehow I was going to be solved like a Rubix cube. I loved the idea that somehow the perfect set of twists and turns were going to make me whole and complete. It’s a very common fantasy, I bet.

When something terrible happens, you are still in the midst of your life, just like when something wonderful happens. The instant you have a solution or the sensation of big clarity another mystery pops into existence. These are both excellent reasons to enjoy and bask in whatever you are solving, right now.

No time like the present? No time but the present.

Love,
yermom

This is the place where I link to book info and book status info which needs an update of its own. Don’t Eat Your Children might cross the finish line in 2023, but Harlot’s Last Laugh definitely will not.

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