"A woman walked into a Doctor's surgery and said..."

Day 325

No news is so often good news, but not when it concerns one's health. I am so tired of feeling shitty as all hell, then giving in to pressure and going to the doc's, only to have tests that reveal absolutely nothing.

According to all the tests I have ever had, I am not only fine, but also possibly, in the very peak of health. Nothing EVER shows up as being wrong. The fact that I am also registered as disabled would seem to counter this notion, but there you are.

Now, normally this would not bother me. I lean towards an holistic point of view, and regard my healing as a personal matter. My body is communicating 'dis-ease' and I look for alternative ways to re-balance and heal.

Sometimes, however, I need a bit of traditional help. I'm not above taking Ibuprofen when I have period pains or having surgery when my appendix burst, to name two extremes.

Right now I know my hormone balance is so out of whack that my Thyroid is being beyond troublesome. That this is due to the menopause pushing me further out of kilter than usual is not unreasonable, but the chances of anything showing up on a blood test are zero - I know because I have tried many times before.

In the meantime, my weight has rocketed, I could sleep for England and win gold (even over teenagers!), and I'm so exhausted I can barely lift my arms to drink a cup of water half the time. Walking slowly up the stairs has me puffing and red in the face, shaky, dizzy, and needing to lie down.

But none of my symptoms count unless a blood test confirms them.

Which it never does, (even when I had a goitre that stuck out of my neck for a full inch).

I don't go to the Doc's for attention. I just want then to work with me to find a way for me to feel better.

Or even just to function adequately.

But they view patients with suspicion and condescension, in my book. I remember when my eldest son was crippled with constipation as a young, premature baby. He would scream with pain most of the time, eventually causing a hernia in his groin.

At the time, I had not heard of milk allergy - it was not common then. I only knew something was terribly wrong. The doctors treated me as if I couldn't possibly know my own baby better than them. I was sent away over and over.

Eventually I figured it out, with no help from them, but not until he had suffered nearly a year of pain and sleeplessness, and endured two operations.

What struck me most about it was not how long it took to find out what was wrong, but how I was continually dismissed as having no information worth considering, being 'only the parent'.

Since Sam was born and I became ill, I have faced the same attitude over and over again - my experiences, and the records I keep of my symptoms, are often considered irrelevant, or even unnecessarily intrusive. Certainly, they are rarely taken into account and mostly ignored.

So here I am again. Needing a bit of help with my Thyroid until the menopause is over.

I will go to the doc's again. I will take their tests again.

And then, I strongly suspect, absolutely nothing will happen.

But wouldn't it be nice if this time it did?

Fingers crossed, everybody, please.