(no subject)
Nine months after my last entry, a lot has happened (obviously).
I got fired for the first time. I thought that it was because I was irresponsible. Every morning I was so stressed out about getting to work on time this time that I would have horrible stomach aches and explosive diarrhea. I would sit in the bathroom for hours, unable to move from the toilet. I attributed it to anxiety, to a problem in my mind, to an inability to get myself going. I thought that normal, high-achieving people were just better able to schedule their bowel movements. Ultimately, I thought that my own bowel movements were normal. I couldn't believe how I was failing myself, how I couldn't force myself to get to work on time.
I went to the doctor the day before I got fired. Part of me thought that something was wrong: I hadn't had shit anything remotely solid in over a year and the stomach pain was getting so bad that I had stopped eating. But the rest of me was convinced that I was just grasping for an excuse to hide behind. I knew what was coming at my job and, typical Katie, I wanted to absolve myself from responsibility. I wanted my irresponsibility to have a reason and a medical diagnosis. She palpated my abdomen, asked me a few questions about my anxiety level, then diagnosed me with IBS. She prescribed me probiotics and antidepressants, wrote me a note so that I could take a few days off of work (little did I know!). I left feeling vaguely hopeful and vaguely dissatisfied all at once.
Of course, it did not stop there. I lived with the pain and diarrhea, writing it off as the byproduct of stress, until about February, when I went back to therapy. My therapist was horrified that I thought of constant stomach pain, noticeable weight loss, and diarrhea that left an atheist shaking and crying for God, as normal. I have always been the stoic sort of therapy patient. I like to relate the facts, relatively bare and unembellished with emotional commentary. My life is the stage for my excessive emotions to star: therapy is the place where they are tamed into submission. What I'm getting at is that I'd never cried in therapy before that session. It simply hadn't occurred to me that this was not normal, and that something might actually be medically wrong with me--and that was the most freeing idea I'd ever had.
So I went to the doctor and got a referral to a gastroenterologist. He was a middle-aged physician's assistant who seemed uncomfortable with my youthful presence. The waiting room had been lined with elderly patients and walkers, the nurse had made a comment about my age. Literature about retirement and diverticulitis suggested that I was just not a gastroenterologist's target demographic.
Mr. Johns lifted my shirt gingerly, leaving it way below the line of my ribs. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had averted his eyes instead of looking at the sinful swath of skin around my belly button. I went from zero to completely uncomfortable in about four milliseconds. He paused and seemed to bolster himself for what was to come: palpating that lascivious abdomen. Carefully, with the touch of a butterfly and as few of our cells touching as possible, Mr. Johns completed his exam. "You're very young," he said. "It's probably just stress." He ordered some stool samples (rule out giardiasis and C. diff) and an abdominal ultrasound (cholecystitis) just in case. And he prescribed me antidepressants.
A negative abdominal ultrasound and several negative stool samples later, I found myself at the brink of leaving for Washington DC for an internship with none other than Harry Reid. I scheduled a colonoscopy for last Tuesday--and I was supposed to leave on last Thursday, 5/20. I drank the prep solution and abruptly found myself in the worst pain of my life several hours later. First of all, this pornographic dose of lube that I'd just swallowed had not made me shit anything. Not even a fucking splinter of shit, or a delicate brown blush. But that wasn't even the main problem. I spoke here about the pain of my tonsillectomy. This was a hundred times worse. Nothing existed except the pain. I vomited once, twice--all night. I yelled incoherently at the top of my lungs. I had no intelligent consciousness. At a certain point, my parents were called and I was rushed to the emergency room.
It turns out that I had appendicitis. While the doctor was taking out my appendix, he also noticed a lot of bowel that had scarred together into a large ball. And surprise! It was the proximal ileum. Now I have another colonoscopy scheduled to see if there is any inflammation inside my intestine. If not, then there is a slight chance that I may have had chronic appendicitis (so rare that it is basically a mythical condition). If there is, then I probably have Crohn's Disease.
Ultimately, I am not in Washington DC right now and I am sick. I wonder what I did in my past life to piss someone off so badly that a guy tried to off my dad with a sniper rifle and my ileum decided to shit out on me before I even reached 25.
I got fired for the first time. I thought that it was because I was irresponsible. Every morning I was so stressed out about getting to work on time this time that I would have horrible stomach aches and explosive diarrhea. I would sit in the bathroom for hours, unable to move from the toilet. I attributed it to anxiety, to a problem in my mind, to an inability to get myself going. I thought that normal, high-achieving people were just better able to schedule their bowel movements. Ultimately, I thought that my own bowel movements were normal. I couldn't believe how I was failing myself, how I couldn't force myself to get to work on time.
I went to the doctor the day before I got fired. Part of me thought that something was wrong: I hadn't had shit anything remotely solid in over a year and the stomach pain was getting so bad that I had stopped eating. But the rest of me was convinced that I was just grasping for an excuse to hide behind. I knew what was coming at my job and, typical Katie, I wanted to absolve myself from responsibility. I wanted my irresponsibility to have a reason and a medical diagnosis. She palpated my abdomen, asked me a few questions about my anxiety level, then diagnosed me with IBS. She prescribed me probiotics and antidepressants, wrote me a note so that I could take a few days off of work (little did I know!). I left feeling vaguely hopeful and vaguely dissatisfied all at once.
Of course, it did not stop there. I lived with the pain and diarrhea, writing it off as the byproduct of stress, until about February, when I went back to therapy. My therapist was horrified that I thought of constant stomach pain, noticeable weight loss, and diarrhea that left an atheist shaking and crying for God, as normal. I have always been the stoic sort of therapy patient. I like to relate the facts, relatively bare and unembellished with emotional commentary. My life is the stage for my excessive emotions to star: therapy is the place where they are tamed into submission. What I'm getting at is that I'd never cried in therapy before that session. It simply hadn't occurred to me that this was not normal, and that something might actually be medically wrong with me--and that was the most freeing idea I'd ever had.
So I went to the doctor and got a referral to a gastroenterologist. He was a middle-aged physician's assistant who seemed uncomfortable with my youthful presence. The waiting room had been lined with elderly patients and walkers, the nurse had made a comment about my age. Literature about retirement and diverticulitis suggested that I was just not a gastroenterologist's target demographic.
Mr. Johns lifted my shirt gingerly, leaving it way below the line of my ribs. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had averted his eyes instead of looking at the sinful swath of skin around my belly button. I went from zero to completely uncomfortable in about four milliseconds. He paused and seemed to bolster himself for what was to come: palpating that lascivious abdomen. Carefully, with the touch of a butterfly and as few of our cells touching as possible, Mr. Johns completed his exam. "You're very young," he said. "It's probably just stress." He ordered some stool samples (rule out giardiasis and C. diff) and an abdominal ultrasound (cholecystitis) just in case. And he prescribed me antidepressants.
A negative abdominal ultrasound and several negative stool samples later, I found myself at the brink of leaving for Washington DC for an internship with none other than Harry Reid. I scheduled a colonoscopy for last Tuesday--and I was supposed to leave on last Thursday, 5/20. I drank the prep solution and abruptly found myself in the worst pain of my life several hours later. First of all, this pornographic dose of lube that I'd just swallowed had not made me shit anything. Not even a fucking splinter of shit, or a delicate brown blush. But that wasn't even the main problem. I spoke here about the pain of my tonsillectomy. This was a hundred times worse. Nothing existed except the pain. I vomited once, twice--all night. I yelled incoherently at the top of my lungs. I had no intelligent consciousness. At a certain point, my parents were called and I was rushed to the emergency room.
It turns out that I had appendicitis. While the doctor was taking out my appendix, he also noticed a lot of bowel that had scarred together into a large ball. And surprise! It was the proximal ileum. Now I have another colonoscopy scheduled to see if there is any inflammation inside my intestine. If not, then there is a slight chance that I may have had chronic appendicitis (so rare that it is basically a mythical condition). If there is, then I probably have Crohn's Disease.
Ultimately, I am not in Washington DC right now and I am sick. I wonder what I did in my past life to piss someone off so badly that a guy tried to off my dad with a sniper rifle and my ileum decided to shit out on me before I even reached 25.