"When 'sick' happens to you"

I borrowed the title from an article my hubby found for me today in Indy's weekly entertainment magazine. The article is funny and biting...as it should be since it is written by a woman (Mia Lee Bauman) who is a professional comic.

On a cruise, she developed serious pain behind one eyeball and lost vision in that eye. She describes the experience with "...and I seriously consider calling the ship's doctor to beg him to remove my eyeball. He can use whatever instruments are available to him. A spoon. I don't care. I am in so much pain I can feel the insanity creeping in." I can relate to her pain, although mine is not in my eye, it is behind my left temple. The spasms were so violent that they made my temple slap the strap that was supposed to hold my head still for my MRI on Wednesday. I've never experienced anything like it. After several hours of this, my neck tendons began to seize up, and I began to look like I was preparing for some cross-gender stage role as Quazimodo. These symptoms are still occurring today. I told my high school students that I'm beginning to think I'm about to birth something out the side of my head, but that I don't expect it to interrupt my life too much as its alien father will probably come and take it back to the home planet. One high school girl quipped "...or maybe a Greek goddess will leap out of your head." I told the English teacher he should be proud. He is obviously doing a fine job teaching the Odyssey, and the brighter ones are even finding opportunities to apply what they've learned in a broader context.

Mrs. Bauman's visit to her doctor, and then to her opthamologist proved frustrating. Not until the eye man told her (disgustedly) that she just needed aspirin and a nap in a dark room, but if she insisted, he'd refer her on...and she finally connected with a neurologist--not until then was she diagnosed with MS. The good news is that my MRI, thankfully, showed no such health issue. The bad news, my MRI showed no health issue. So we're assuming (I hate when doctors have to make assumptions) that my fibromyalgia (and its funky work on my immune system) is the culprit. So I'm on prednisone (say Hello, Moon Face!) and we'll see...

(P.S.when I posted that I felt like I was the moon, I meant it poetically, and not that I wanted a big round waxy-looking face...good grief!)