body pains
just got home from our team photoshoot at the studio; i have my solo shoot scheduled for later today. i was so looking forward to it, and i had a nice time, but yesterday was brutal and i still haven’t completely recovered.
i have one of those mystery conditions that seems to be linked to my menstrual cycle except when it’s not – the kind that one doctor will call anxiety, one will call endometriosis, and one will call normal, but they will all agree that if you don’t want to commit your body and wallet to experimenting with varied methods of hormonal birth control for the rest of your fertile years (life?), well, then, it must not be too bad, hmm?
except that it is, and it’s getting worse. more severe, more frequent. google always points me to vasovagal syncope, which is a very broad umbrella for which the recommendation is to “avoid triggers”; applicable triggers include pain and stress. um…!
yesterday’s episode was bad enough that i’m kind of emotional about it. so many things seemed to be wrong at one time, down to each individual finger radiating a different kind of discomfort or numbness. it scared me. i took a long nap, but was still shaky on my feet until this morning.
i’ll go to the doctor if it happens again, but from everything i’ve read, all they can really do is offer me fluids – at that point, i’d rather be able to breathe and move through it at home than try to brave the ride to urgent care where Pedialyte Pro is the best case scenario. it would be more appealing if i thought i’d at least get some good bedside manner out of it, maybe some ice chips, but if i get charged $100+ to be asked if i have depression one more time, i will crash out, so it’s currently a last resort.
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perhaps the only thing i wish i could do over in life is how i’ve treated my body. i haven’t nourished it well, or tended to it carefully; there are a lot of reasons, none of them worth the mindless deterioration of my physical person.
a few years ago, i heard a doctor explain that living fast / dying young doesn’t work as well with modern medicine; it’s more likely that you’ll live fast / age uncomfortably. not like i was living particularly quickly anyway, but it hadn’t occurred to me that having one heart / one brain / one set of lungs doesn’t just mean “don’t screw these up”, it means “these may need to last you a century”. something-something-prefrontal-cortex. i’ve reached a point, thankfully, where that’s an ideal and not a threat.
i’ve also been reading and watching more about disability policy and advocacy and a common theme is how optimistic people are when it comes to their body's sustainability; the social security administration says today’s 20-year-olds have a 25% chance of becoming disabled before retirement. that percentage is decreasing, but it’s not zero.
eating more vegetables and walking more often won’t prevent the varied changes my body will experience during my life, but they might make me more comfortable while i have the option.