Me, an Absolute Abnormality

The medical spawn of unknown weirdness

I was not an attractive baby.

I’m not stating this for sympathy; it’s a known fact.

I was born with a goofy looking face, dark hair all over, including on my back, and my feet smelled no matter how often my parents bathed me.

You know how older siblings tell their younger siblings they were adopted?

My older siblings told me I was adopted from a gorilla family and since they had the pictures to prove it, I believed them.  If YOU don’t believe them, believe my beloved grandmother, now deceased.  When I came to her and told her what my sister’s said about my infant unattractiveness, her response was, “well Yvonne, pretty babies aren’t everything…”

What has me thinking about this is that now, more than ever, I’ve got some unexplainable, bizarre medical stuff going on in my body.  Yes, that is usually the nature of multiple sclerosis.  But I don’t think that I, someone who blames MS for everything, can even label it MS weirdness.

So perhaps my sisters’ were right and there really is something to that ape thing??

It started small and early in life.   At some point I realized that the first joint of both of my ring fingers didn’t have full range of motion.  I can’t bend them backwards and can only bend them forward half the distance of my regular fingers.

I’ve never seen or heard of this.

Though odd, it’s not a difficulty in my life.  Turns out, you don’t really need to bend that part of your ring fingers too much and I’ve gotten by.

(All you poor, regular folks carrying around complete joints on that finger? Suckers.)

Lately though, these abnormalities have increased and it’s just too much.

Let’s start with sleep. If, for some reason, such as stress or too much caffeine or a Dateline marathon on the Oxygen, channel, I don’t get my usual 10-12 hours of sleep, I get a 36 hour, full-on cold the next day.

Yes, it’s exactly 36 hours, to the minute. It will start with sneezing, usually in the middle of the night, and I know, for the next day and a half I will be a sneezing, sniffling, body aching, congested, germy mess.  I’ve literally gone through two boxes of Kleenex during this time.

(If you want to get rich my friends, put a ton of chocolate and a DVD of Law and Order reruns in front of me and then invest in Kleenex.  That stock will soar in no time.)

Has anyone ever heard of a lack of sleep leading to an instantaneous cold?

When I do get enough sleep, I have incredibly involved dreams.  I can dream about going to the movies and the dream will create a whole movie script within the ongoing dream, complete with plot twists, compelling story lines and a cliffhanger in case my brain wants to create a sequel.  My dreams are multi-layered and whenever I share them with someone, they always shake their head at the details.

But, according to the medical field, dreams only happen in the REM state of sleep and according to my Fitbit, I only get 1 hour of REM sleep.  It’s impossible that all of my dreams fit into that lone little hour.  It takes me three hours just to describe them!  And I know the Fitbit can’t be wrong as it employs the latest in technology and magic.

Some helpful folks have suggested that if I’m dreaming that intensely, I can’t be getting restful sleep and perhaps should try a sleep study.  I’ve taken pretty much every medical study available, and I think insurance would definitely put their foot down on that one.  Plus, even if I brought my most comfy pillow and my favorite teddy bear to a sleep study, I can’t imagine I’d actually fall asleep with all of those doctors watching me.

Unless they had a true crime channel on the sleep monitor.

And then, three weeks ago the hospital called to tell me that Dr. Marcial Silva wanted me to have an infusion.  What’s the problem?  I don’t see a Dr. Marcial Silva.

To make sure, I pulled out my doctor rolodex, flipped through all 430 cards and not one was named Dr. Marcial Silva.  Marcial Silva is a Portuguese name and I’m Portuguese; could his nurse just have randomly picked a Portuguese person to fulfill his infusion request?  Could I be the only Portuguese person who visits the hospital?

What was even more confusing is that I did recently visit the infusion center, six times to be exact.  But the mysterious Dr. Silva seemed to want me back.  Perhaps the nurses missed me?

Lately, I’ve been having random chest pains.  Well, hardly pains, more like random chest aches.

Yes, I know that is bad.

Yes, I know that should be looked at.

Thing is, I’ve had them before.  And while I don’t remember what I was told about them, I’m still kicking around so I didn’t think about it too much.  But during a follow up to one specialist, #317 in my doctor rolodex if you need to know, he specifically asked about chest pains.  I told the truth.  Then they asked a bunch of other questions and insisted I see my primary doctor right away.

Sigh.

My primary was able to see me directly after a visit to another specialist, #389 to be exact.  That specialist had ordered some tests that came out fine but the minor female symptom she was checking (sparing the details, men read my blog too-don’t want to scare them too much,) isn’t normal, so she wants to do a quick surgical procedure, just to be sure.

Before she can do that, I need an EKG.

At my primary doctor’s, with an EKG request and now a report of random chest aches, an EKG was done immediately.  They stuck me all over with stickers and then put these electrodes all over me.  Then they threw the stickers away before I even got to see them!!

Were they unicorns?  Superheroes? Flowers? Stars? Stripes?

What’s the point of getting stickers at the doctors office if you don’t get to stick them yourself?

Anyway, the EKG came out, according to that doctor, “not perfect but no one’s EKG ever comes out perfect.”

Phew, finally something normal with my body.

“Ok,” I thought, “EKG says I’m good.  Catch you later!”

But no, chest pains are still abnormal so, just to be sure, the doctor ordered a stress test.

Why do I need a stress test?  I know I’m stressed.  I’m stressed with all of these appointments and tests.    I take stress tests all the time.  I call them life.  Can’t we just put an A on the test, note my abnormalities and be done with it?

Even when I’m normal, I’m abnormal.  A doctor asked me once if I’d ever had an abnormal pap smear. When I said I hadn’t, she said that’s good, women often get them from time to time.  Apparently, it’s normal to have an abnormal pap smear but since I never have what does that make me?

As far as I can see, an absolute abnormality.

And of course, there’s all that MS weirdness that continues daily but, in my mind, has actually become somewhat normal.  The one thing that is normal about MS is how abnormal it remains.

So, again, thinking of all this abnormal stuff has to make one wonder where it comes from.

If anyone sees an ape family looking for their long lost chimp, can you please give them my number????

 

March is National MS Awareness Month my friends! 

And while my blog here at Yvonnedesousa.com doesn’t focus on specific, factual information about MS, there are some excellent resources available.  Also, when I became an MS blogger, I joined a group of special people who have lots to share about their own MS journey.  For a list of websites and blogs that will definitely help you with multiple sclerosis awareness, please check out my links page!