There's a big part of my story that I left out when I posted it to Medium. It's the medical half of my life.
It started when I was in middle school. I was a cheerleader at my school, which, as anyone knows, can take a toll on your body, just like any other athletic activity (I won't say sport because we're not going there). My knee started to hurt for some reason; when I would walk, when I would rest, when I would workout, etc. and I remember my mom asking me all of the appropriate questions for why it hurt. And she didn't have an answer for me. So I took anti-inflammatory meds regularly, iced it after activity, and wore a knee brace for about a month. It still wasn't changing. We went to our regular orthopedic doctor and no immediate answers. The next step was getting an MRI. Still no answers. Another month had gone by. So we resulted to going to the best orthopedic doctor we knew, in Dallas. He did the exam and pulled up my MRI and sat there; going back and forth through the images. I remember getting more and more anxious because I realized that he wasn't going to have any answers for me either. It had been 2-3 months of pain and no one had any answers for me. After sitting there, going back and forth I don't know how many times, he said, "Oh wait here we go." I was ready to have an answer. But it was not the one I wanted. "There's a small tear in your meniscus here, can you see it?" He was talking to my mom at this point and neither of them were looking at me which was good because as soon as he said that I started to cry. See, when an athlete hears that they tore something in their knee, it almost immediately means surgery and at least 3 months out of athletics; something no athlete wants to hear. But what he said next made me dry up my tears real fast, "It's not big enough for surgery though. I would just recommend physical therapy and continuing to wear a brace during activity." After two months, I finally had an answer to my pain and a way to control it. My uncertainty didn't stop there, unfortunately.
When I was a Senior in high school, I started to have headaches. They happened every day all day, regardless of what I did to try to relieve them. Regular anti-inflammatory meds didn't do anything, migraine medicine didn't help, cutting out caffeine, drinking plenty of water, nothing. The only thing that could make it go away was laying on a flat hard surface (usually the floor) on my back, and/or sleeping. So that's what I did. I remember sleeping on the floor for the majority of the day except when I needed to eat, which meant that when I actually needed to sleep I couldn't because I had been sleeping all day. My brain switched patterns and I ended up with insomnia. We went to our regular physician, where he did an exam and took some blood. When he got my results back and we re-visited, he didn't have an answer. He referred me to a neurologist. So we went to him, he did an exam and took more blood. Still no answers. His next step was getting an MRI. Still no answers. The next step was getting a CT, with and without dye, which means I was getting stuck with a needle yet again. It was never a straight conclusion but he had an answer and hopefully a solution. He concluded that it was probably tension headaches and gave me a medication that would help to relieve them and help me sleep better. The only downside was that it was an anti-depressant. He warned me that it could cause me to have mood swings because I was taking a drug to "treat" something I didn't have. That was an adjustment, but I had an answer and a solution and that's all I cared about. Not long after that, I had my third medical mystery of my life that I still struggle with today.
Near the end of my senior year, I was taking anatomy, where we were learning about the circulatory system. One of the exercises was to take our resting heart rate. As an avid athlete, I expected mine to be in normal range, at least, or lower. Instead, mine was at 90, just sitting there! I decided to brush it off, but as I got into working out, I realized it was very difficult for me to do cardio because as soon as I did anything other than sitting down, my heart rate went up to 120! So I decided to go to the student wellness center and get it checked out. They took an X-ray, an EKG, and, surprise surprise, more blood! And guess what, no answers. All they could tell me was that it was a little high but still in normal range. I refused to take this as an answer because I'm an athlete and an active person. There is no reason my heart rate should sit at 90 and shoot up to 120 the minute I stand up. After a few months I got an appointment with a cardiologist. She said the same thing but agreed to give me a heart monitor to track my heart rate for a month. It was the most annoying thing in the world but when she called me with the report, all I could do was smile. "You're right, it is very high all of the time. There's only a handful of times it went below 100 in the entire month," was what she said to me. I had finally proved to someone that I wasn't being dramatic and what was going on was real. She still didn't have a diagnosis as to why this was happening, especially because of my circumstances, but she agreed to prescribe me a drug that would help keep my heart at a more normal rhythm. So far it has helped, but my heart rate still jumps dramatically when I am active so I am actively trying to reduce that by doing a lot of cardio training.
Since all of my doctor's visits, and poking and prodding, my knee is almost pain free, my headaches are basically gone (with the help of my meds) and my heart rate sits at a more normal rate when I am doing basic activities (also with the help of my meds). I still don't have a clean cut diagnosis for those last two, but the fact that medicine can help relieve my symptoms despite a diagnosis is something that I am incredibly grateful for.
I remember referring to myself as "the problem child" in our family because I was always having some sort of medical issue that no one could figure out which meant endless doctor's appointments and wasting other people's time. I remember thinking that I was just going to be in pain forever and no one would ever figure out what's wrong with me. It was hopeless. But they did and they gave me solutions. Sometimes it's a pain in the ass to take all those meds, but I'd take 10 different medications a day if it meant that those headaches didn't exist and my heart rate didn't make me out of breath just getting out of bed.
Comentarios