Tremors from the Underground
I have been thinking that I might have a debilitating disease. I scared myself because I've been feeling rather peculiar lately, and started looking up my excessively vague symptoms on this here internet. This is what I've learned:
The internet is the hypocondriac killer. It will destroy the paranoid mind with possibilities and if one's mind is fertile for planting the worst ideas, then look no further than Google to help seed the garden of fear and dysfunction. The mind is a powerful thing, and when it gets to worrying about certain conditions, there are often times when the symptoms begin to adhere to the e-diagnosis. Then, you've proven the web right, you get more frightened, which causes the mind to project even more similarities to the worst case scenario, and on and on....
On and on until you either a)die from your own imagined ailment b) die from your actual ailment or c) a friend can help you slice through the disillusioned weeds and thickets with a machete of reasonable analysis.
Well, that's my metaphor quota for the day.
So, what's really going on? I'm not sure, to be honest. I've been tired and light-headed, excessively hungry, and had other odd discomforts. The good news is that my garden has been de-weeded (for now) and I can candidly talk about my fears without living them.
You know this could be some horrible random genetic disease. Or just low blood sugar. Or stress. (Not that I've never been insanely stressed before, but all of these symptoms did arrive right when I was doing phone interviews with a big company in NYC...an internship which I consequently did not get.) The doctors have been fairly useless, except for ruling things out...which is the most nerve-wracking thing. In the last two weeks I've been hoping for kidney disease, hyperthyroidism, and diabetes. But according to the blood tests...no such luck. That means, I guess by definition, that it's either something considerably less horrible. Or signficantly more.
Erica gave me a rather insightful speech yesterday as I confessed to her (upon gazing into this infoweb of horrors) that I was probably a goner. She told me to stop thinking about putting a label on my problems, and just listen to my body. She said that she thought our organic systems were still so complex that the medical community's best guesses in the modern era are still often shots in the dark. Despite the size of many medical texts, it is hard to refute. She told me to just calm down, because our minds can eat us alive a lot quicker than anything else and she made me some soup. I cannot tell you how glad I was that she was around.
Perhaps I'm dependent, but hey nobody's perfect. And knowing is half the battle ("G-I-Joe!") so perhaps I'll be able to handle it more now. It's clear that when my mind runs away with something, it flies. Worrying seems to be a mental loophole for my fears, which have seized on this opportunity for an attack on my brain. Having my best friend around was something no doctor would ever think to prescribe. And that was the most effective treatment so far.
I cannot say how I will feel tomorrow, or even how I will feel when I get up from this chair. But I do know that some unknown band said something like "I get by with a little help from my friends."
