Unnerving

"It's just cold in here, isn't it?" remarked a complete stranger as she glanced around the waiting room. "The wall color, everything. Just cold."

I smiled in reply, trying to appear noncommittal. I didn't care how cold the waiting room. After a few minutes, the woman glanced at the Reader's Digest in her hands and said loudly to her husband: "Caffeine, tea and coffee. Six hours." I must have missed part of her sentence. The husband nodded in a familiar, noncommittal fashion.

A few minutes later, the husband remarked on a newspaper article he was reading. The wife replied, "Well, if we were expected to believe half of what's in the newspapers!" I thought about my blog entry last night, wondering why I was so turned off by this woman who distrusted the newspaper but took the Reader's Digest as Pure Fact. I decided it would be hypocritical to pursue that train of thinking any further and simply tried to look the other way as the woman threw a conspiratorial glance my way. "I am not a sympathetic listener," I thought to myself. "I majored in communications."

After a few minutes, the nurse called me back and performed the necessary pre-interview tortures: weight, blood pressure and even a photo. I pondered on my too-late wish that I had washed my hair this morning. Why should I care if I look greasy-haired and blotchy-skin'd for complete strangers? Shouldn't I be more concerned with inner beauty or at least looking nice for myself and family? These issues would have to be pondered later. The doctor was waiting.

I adored the doctor immediately. Some doctors have a way of saying, "I couldn't care less about you or your so-called illness" without saying a word. Some have a way of saying, "You and I could be best friends if given the chance, so let's work together" with their first smile. I apparently lucked out.

This was my second Very Expensive & Inconvenient Doctor's Appointment in a week. The first one had been extremely frustrating and had led to a referral of this new doctor, a physiatrist. Who in the world has heard of a physiatrist? Sounds like a misspelled psychiatrist to me, but the orthopedic surgeon had assured me he would help with my progressively worsening wrist pain. Two main feelings surfaced: annoyance and reluctance. It took two months to get in to the orthopedic surgeon--he was The Go To Guy Who Knows Everything About Everything. What could a misspelled psychiatrist do for me?

After chatting for a few minutes, the M.D. looked at my hands. It was unnerving. He asked me clench my fists, relax my hands, bend my fingers this way and that and generally tried to cause me pain. But the unnerving thing was the way he stared at my hands, as if they actually meant something to him that I could not see. I looked down at my hands. They were dry and marked by a landscape of miniature valleys. (Yes, I have old lady hands. Just ask to look at them next time you see me and you'll understand what I mean. My dry skin makes my hands look like they're 80 years older than the rest of me. )

My hands also looked incredibly pink compared to the doctor. This surprised me, since I'd always considered my complexion to be somewhat olive colored. (My husband tells me my skin is green, which I find somewhat less humorous than he does.) At any rate, all I saw was very pink, very dry old-lady hands connected to my wrists. But the doctor just stared and stared and would occasionally say, "Hmmm" or "Ahhhh" or "Nice" or "Interesting." I was completely undone by the fact that he could see so much of me that I was completely blind to. I felt my IQ dropping by the second.

After discussing my rather odd set of symptoms, he admitted that mine was a strange case. He'd seen stranger, though, and related some odd stories to me. His stories related to curious symptoms related to carpal tunnel, and he now recommended a Nerve Conduction Study to "rule it out."

"Rule it out, or ... rule it in?" I wondered and agreed to the testing. He had time right away so we went off to the torture chamber. Ahem, place with expensive machines that cost my insurance company a lot of money. He told me he would be sending shocks into my arms to test the nerves. I told him it sounded rather medieval. He laughed and said it wasn't bad at all, then related a very contradictory story of a patient who threw up his hands halfway through and said, "Okay! I give up! What government secrets do you want to know?!?" We both had a good laugh and I tried to hide the fact that my hands were becoming cold and sweaty. And they were shaking.

What can I say about the Nerve Conduction Study? Shall I write a sonnet to the joys of having a doctor send shocks of electricity into your nerves? Again: unnerving. Pun intended, but still relevant. This was followed by an even more evil (ahem, medieval) process of sticking a needle into my skin repeatedly. That would be joy enough for this humble writer, but he then proceeded to tap on the needle. Cliches come to mind: kick me while I'm down, give me a paper cut and pour lemon juice on it, etc.

As he tested my bicep, I had just enough nervous laughter in me to think, "I'll pay you double if you can find any muscle underneath all that fat." I suppressed a laugh and the doctor asked if he was hurting me. "No, no," I said and explained.

So the good news is that I've definitely hit my personal deductible for this year. How lovely to have spent $500 on medical bills by March 6th. It will make those future 2008 visits so much more enjoyable with a mere copay to worry about. The other good news is that I get to wait another two months for an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon, to schedule carpal tunnel surgery.

I'm trying to find some more silver linings to this cloud, but I'm actually much less thrilled than I'd like to be. It's unnerving to get any unexpected diagnosis from a doctor. It's that same sensation that he can see beyond what I can see: I merely see dry skin and he sees carpal tunnel. Yesterday, I merely had wrist pain. Today I have carpal tunnel. (And yes, typing on an ergonomically-challenged keyboard is my favorite way to celebrate.)

Of course it's not true that my wrist pain turned into carpal tunnel overnight. It's been there, festering under the skin, laughing at my blindness. And that is exactly what has me feeling simply tired today: the realization that no matter how much I fight to gain positive control over my life and my health, there are things that I don't even know I'm fighting against.

Time to go listen to that "Happy" playlist on the iPod perhaps? But first I'll have to reattach the wrist splint that I took off in annoyance when it prevented me from typing.