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Take Control of Your Health – How I Took Control of My Health
My Health Struggle
After my 40th birthday, I began to reflect on my life. I think 40 is the age when most people stop to think about where they’ve been and where they’re going. For me, it was a short thought process. I know where I’m going with my life, and I know where I’ve been. But if I really stop to think about it, if I really stop to think about what in my life was most important/monumental/life-altering, there’s one thing that I can say truly shaped me into the wellness fanatic I am today.
The short story is that when I was 25, at an age when I thought I was invincible, I received the biggest wake up call of my life. My health, which up until that point had been good, took a downward spiral and threatened to take control of my life, if not my life itself. My rapidly deteriorating health totally took me by surprise. There was no warning sign, no flashing light, and no time to prepare. I remember waking up day after day thinking, “Something just isn’t quite right.”
My mystery symptoms spanned every major medical specialty you can think of: gynecological, immunological, dermatological, gastrointestinal – the list goes on and on. I wasn’t sure if waking up at 2am each morning soaking wet with sweat was better or worse than the hives that itched so much I wanted to tear my skin off. Eating became a chore because I wasn’t sure what my body would or would not react to. I suffered from unpredictable eczema and food sensitivities, and to top things off, my period became completely erratic, sometimes not even bothering to show up at all. Perhaps most uncomfortable of all was my skin. It was so dry and thick that doctors later had trouble getting through to my veins to draw blood. What annoyed me the most was that I shed like crazy into massive piles in my bedding and clothing. Believe it or not, these are just a handful of symptoms that rocked my world on a daily basis.
Dr. Do Nothing
Like most people, I figured I’d see the specialists who dealt with the symptoms I was experiencing, right? So, all I needed to do was open up my employer’s health plan booklet and select a doctor, right? WRONG. To add to my misery, my employer at the time didn’t offer PPO coverage; we had – you guessed it – an HMO.
I remember sitting in the office of my primary care physician, crying while explaining my symptoms. He took me by the hand and told me that he knew I was very ill, but there was nothing he could do. You see, his hands were tied because in an HMO patients who are seriously ill have to jump through quite a few hoops to get any type of treatment.
Determined to prevail, I found another job that offered PPO insurance and kissed my then-current employer goodbye. This time, I opened the health plan booklet and starting setting appointments with a string of specialists. I saw every type of doctor imaginable, including a dermatologist, internist, endocrinologist, a medical doctor with a holistic approach, a chiropractor, a gastrointerologist, an immunologist, and a doctor of Chinese medicine (whew!). One of them even looked me straight in the eye after I listed my many mystery symptoms, slowly closed his folder, told me I needed to see someone else, and asked me to leave. You would’ve thought I had the plague!
Aside from feeling like one doctor just passed me to another, I remember thinking that none of them had a clue. They'd console me and made me think I was getting something out of the visit, and then they’d shoo me out the door. Some of them ran test after test, only to tell me that I was as healthy as a horse. Funny, not one of them could look me in the eye while telling that lie.
Others argued with me about my own symptoms and belittled me when they came to a conclusion that I knew to be false. For example, I remember getting a colonoscopy and the doctor telling me that he knew I was abusing laxatives because my colon was so black throughout. Imagine his disappointment when I told him that I’d never taken a laxative in my adult life. (My mom used to give us prune juice on occasion when we were kids, but I haven't had any laxatives, natural or synthetic, since then.) The doctor seemed more interested in proving me wrong than digging deeper to find the real problem. Most doctors won’t treat a condition that they can’t diagnose. The problem is that most give up when they can’t readily diagnose a problem. Or, they give it some nebulous title like "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome." Give me a break! Is telling someone who complains of being tired all the time that they’re tired all the time a real diagnosis??
I wasted countless hours and spent thousands out of my own pocket to see one Dr. Do Nothing after another. It still brings tears to my eyes when I think about the countless hours, days, weeks, months, and years of discomfort I experienced during that time. The specialists couldn’t help, and so I felt as though my hands were tied. I mean, what could I do? I’m not a doctor.
So, I suffered. I suffered silently and did my best to live a normal life. I let the symptoms and whatever illness I had control my life while I tried to hide it from others. I wore long sleeves in the heat of the summer to hide my eczema. I wore jackets, turtlenecks, and long johns at the same time to hide the fact that I was freezing in an office that was approximately 70 degrees. I ate lunch alone so that no one could see that my diet had been relegated to baked fish and steamed vegetables day after day. I smiled and politely said "no thanks" whenever anyone offered me anything to eat. I excused myself from family gatherings early because I just couldn’t keep it together. I went home day after day, curled up on the couch and waited for sleep to come. I hoped that each day would be better than the last.
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