Well, the visit to the neurologist has come and gone. And, as predicted, no questions were answered. The doctor said quite frankly he does not know what is wrong with me, though he agrees it has a “neurological flavour.” (And I’m all, was he licking me and I didn’t notice?) All the clinical findings were normal, which means, if I understand it, that my peripheral nervous system is firing as god intended. Pin pricks feel like pin pricks and not like, say, fluffy bunnies, or Jell-O Pudding Pops. My right cheek experiences soft cotton swabs being brushed over it the same way as my left. And some mild shocking with electrodes produced entirely acceptable conductance response curves (which probably have a name but I don’t know it). So much for the fanfare.
So now I have a bunch of tests to do – many involving electrical shocks, one that has to be done after a night with no sleep, one for half my body weight in blood, and one bigass MRI of my brain and entire spine. Which I can either wait several months for, or pay to have it done privately, for many thousands of dollars. Turns out the private MRI clinics charge by the cubic centimetre (or something), because it costs one grand for just your brain, another for the cervical section of your spine, another for the thoracic section, another again for the lumbar section, and you get the idea. My neurologist is clearly a man who likes to cover all the bases because it’s my whole spine or nothing – which I guess means I wait, because I don’t know about you, but I don’t have four or five thousand bucks lying around.
Plus, at the private clinics, it seems just plain old radiologists interpret the scan – and who wants one of those? If I wait to get it at St Paul’s, I can get a neuro-radiologist! Clearly superior! I’m only sort of joking.
Husband is thrilled that the findings yesterday were normal, because, as he puts it, it’s better to have a mysterious ailment and no answers than cancer that will kill you in one year. I suppose I must agree… but I have this rather enormous and thoroughly neurotic fear that I’m perfectly healthy but somatizing like a bastard, and therefore can only blame my own craziness for my problems. Neurological symptoms are the grand high poobah of stereotypical manifestations of craziness in people who convert their emotional problems into physical symptoms. Not that I have emotional problems… or do I?!
So I have this dread of all the upcoming tests. If they’re all normal, does that mean I’m crazy? Or, if not crazy, maybe victim to some dread condition that can’t be treated or cured? But if they do find something, what if it’s a terrible something? It’s kind of stupid to wish for a disease but I think I’m more scared of being crazy than being sick.
But based on this entry, I’m probably already there.
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