It's been ten days since the radioactive blood testing. Ten excruciating days of wondering where this whole thing is going to go from here, and whether "the truth is out there." I've had plenty of time to consider all the possibilities, whether good, bad and indifferent. And the bottom line is, I still don't know what's wrong with me, and I still have effectively no treatment happening whatsoever, and based on what I heard today I'm going to still be in this purgatory over the weekend, too.
They said a week. To be nice, I gave them Monday (day 7) as a grace period. Then on Tuesday, I called. I was told that they wouldn't tell me anything over the phone, but would send it in a letter, presumably by elderly mule, which would take several days to cover the 30 miles from Cleveland. They won't e-mail it, either. She said that they would only talk about it on the phone after I've read the letter. Then the nurse would have a copy and I'd have a copy and we could discuss it like adults.
I'm sure this is very efficient from their stand-point. That way they don't have to answer a bunch of questions that will be answered in the letter, and, although this is anxiety talking, they won't have to deal with the initial emotional brunt of someone hearing bad news (if any). The person can read the letter and slump helplessly over the kitchen counter, cry their eyes out, google everything, call their husband, call their mother, and THEN after all that call the nurse in a much calmer and more poised frame of mind.
Anyway, that's what it looks like from my vantage point of helpless waiting.
I've implored Chynna, the seemingly smart and kindly secretary of the wise old doctor, to do something to expedite this mess. I call her daily, only once, after I DON'T get anything in the mail, and again beg her to look into or leave a message for someone. I'm always polite and try to appeal to her sense of sympathy. But the bottom line, she told me today, is that the doctor hasn't reviewed the results and until she does that there's nothing that can happen.
Do you realize that I got this referral, from the doctor formerly known as the vestibular goddess, in early November? Yes, it's true. Then it took until Christmas Eve to get the tilt table test, and another month to get hemodynamics and blood volume. And it's been ten days since then. Which is to say that it's been three full months in this latest phase of the 8-month dizziness ordeal, and still nothing is any clearer. I was thinking today that it's a good thing we don't have socialized medicine, because I understand that those poor slobs have to WAIT for CARE…
Meanwhile, I don't think my condition is getting any better on its own. The migraine diet, for all it's nuisances, is helping take it down a notch. But at the same time, this other thing seems to be happening more and more. It's the nearly blacking out thing. It's the sense that I can't cook a whole meal because I can't stand up that long and it seems I'm lying down for 20 minutes for every ten I'm standing. Dealing with the boys in this condition is really almost impossible.
Yesterday Isaac had a physical outburst at school– I think it was playful, but he did punch his best buddy… in the privates… which caused quite a commotion. Our consequence for that is no screen time for that night, which is if anything too lenient. But for him having no Wii, no video, no iPod, no NOTHING all night is very distressing. (Of course, my sickness hasn't help matters– I NEED him to be that plugged in so that I can cope with Elias from a horizontal position.) However to make matters worse, he went on a sort of rampage when I told him the news. He went outside and got a snow ball, which he brought in and whipped at me right in the kitchen, and when I tried to corral him after that, he ran outside and deliberately broke a ceramic bowl that we had a on the terrace. Then he proceeded to maraud around the outside of the house. At times he seemed to be attempting to break windows with his feet or with a broom, although his efforts were totally ineffective, still, he WAS trying. At that point I was on the phone with Ben, telling him to get home ASAP. (It was coming home time, but he had planned to stop at the grocery store.) The reality was that Isaac has gotten pretty big now and with me as impaired as I am, it was impossible for me to get out there in the snow and hog tie him (if not spank him!) and drag up to serious incarceration.
Frankly, it was sort of scary. Throughout it all, Elias kept pulling on my sleeve and asking me to read him "TAILS." I kept putting him off, wanting instead to focus on the crisis at hand, and he kept interrupting me to ask again. Thus I was as always torn between the two of them and their competing needs.
Shortly Ben got home and Isaac got into his room and there was a SERIOUS talking to. His consequence of no screen time continues today for the bowl, and may go on and on until we're certain that he gets the point. Later on I was in the kitchen and ISaac very slowly and tearfully walking up, placed his head on my hip (that's how tall he is) and started to cry. "I'm sorry mom!" he said, and I accepted his apology. Then he pulls out, "I've just felt so unwanted since Elias was born!"
Please. When I told Ben this he too said, "Oh, please."
Maybe there's a grain of truth in it, but I don't know. Elias adds a lot to his life, although it might not be so obvious now. …I think he just heard that in a movie or something. It smacked of a prepared statement.
Anyway, all this is a huge pain in the butt under the best of circumstances, but here in month 8 of still unexplained dizziness it's really… I don't know. I'm out of words.
Better go. It's one of those common moments in which I'd really best lie down again, but instead I need to go and get Isaac from school. With no screen time today this is likely to be a long afternoon of a very tired mom and a very restless caged animal of a son. Or make that two.
Spring would be good about now. To say nothing of a return to normal health…. or both!