Ever since I was a kid, my mom was sick a lot.  She was in and out of hospitals – both medical and psychological – a lot of my high school years.  This means that, in addition to having to deal with more grown-up things than I probably should have at that age, as an adult, I have an almost irrational fear of being sick myself now.  Since I dealt with so much illness at a young age, I learned way more than I wanted to about various diseases and, due to my creative mind and the “oh, no, I hope it’s not….[insert scary disease or disorder here]” I constantly heard from my mom any time I had a headache, stomachache or any other ache, I can conjur up some pretty awful scenarios in a hurry at the first sign of a symptom.

Over the past 5 years or so, I’ve definitely gotten better about not going off the deep end just because I’m a little nauseated (vomiting is like the end of the world to me – to be avoided at all costs as much as possible!) or have a headache or a weird spot on my skin.  But, I still definitely prefer to avoid being sick if I can help it.  I still have to occasionally talk myself off the ledge once in a while, particularly if the ledge involves vertigo, which I occasionally get for sometimes completely unknown reasons.

This weekend has been a suckfest of feeling icky which has, of course, brought the whole neurosis I have about all things medical to the forefront of my mind.  Friday night I was lying on the couch and my head started spinning for no apparent reason.  I figured I was tired, had possibly drunk too much caffeine and was going to head to bed.  As soon as I lay my head back on the pillow, the room started to rotate.  My ex had bouts of vertigo and went to the clinic a couple of times for it.  When she had really bad attacks, they would sit her on the edge of the table and hold her head and shoulders in their hands and make her drop her head and shoulders really quickly and back up again.  Her eyes would roll around in her head like a couple of marbles until the equilibrium was restored in her head.  This apparently has something to do with little particles of protein which break off and float around in the liquid inside your inner ear.  When this happens, your brain gets all sorts of mixed signals about your body’s position in space.  So, to counteract that effect, the head is essentially flung back and forth somewhat violently in an effort to get the particle to stick to the sides of the inner ear so it can be reabsorbed.  All in all, still a very unpleasant experience.  When I get mild cases of vertigo, I can be seen performing a similar ritual on myself by swinging my head back and forth a few times and leaning forward at the edge of the bed and then flinging myself almost all the way back.  Still a very uncomfortable procedure!

I gathered all the pillows off the couch and the bed and created a pile on which I could recline somewhat in the bed without having my head leaned back too much and piled a couple under each arm for “armrests”.  I put a movie in my laptop in hopes it would distract me enough to relax and hopefully have the dizziness subside so I could go to sleep.  I finished the movie and slept fitfully, waking several times only to have to try to fend off residual dizziness and re-assume the uncomfortable sitting up sleeping position.

I then spent all day Saturday holed up in the house, feeling weak and just a little off physically and was essentially tip-toeing around in hopes of avoiding a relapse of the previous night’s spinning room events.  That’s one of my other mini-neuroses regarding health issues.  When something happens – I get an attack of vertigo, get sick to my stomach (or, god forbid, actually throw up), have a really bad headache, etc. I tend to stick close to home for a couple of days as I really don’t feel comfortable being away from the house until I know things are back to normal and I’m not going to get sick while I’m out.

Then, I woke up Sunday with a screaming headache which I think was due, in part, to a workout routine I did the other day which left my shoulders and neck strained and, in part, due to the shitty sleeping position I assumed the previous night.  For most of the day today, I’ve felt a combination of headachy, nauseated and generally achy.  I took some ibuprofen and, later, some cold medicine which made me feel better other than a little wooziness in the tummy.

Now, I don’t feel great, I’m tired but I almost feel scared to go to bed – another part of the mini-neuroses which dictates fear of a reoccurence of a recent bout of whatever kind of symptoms I’m desperately trying to avoid having again.

It’s not like I think anyone likes or doesn’t mind being sick.  I’m pretty sure that everyone hates being sick every single time they encounter illness in any form.  The human body is not designed to make being sick pleasant – that’s the whole point – to let you know something is wrong!

The more I stay inside doing nothing, the more I dwell on the slightest discomfort.  Must get outside tomorrow, come hell or high water!

God, I sound like such a psychopath when I re-read all this stuff. It’s not entirely rational, for sure.  But, I do know where it comes from, so I suppose there’s some power and comfort in that.  And, I do know that I have come a long way from being an almost chronically-unwell adult to someone who only slightly wigs out once in a while.  Now just happens to be one of those times.