Cyberchondriacs

Nice weather today, cooler, low humidity, perfect for dog walking.  I’ve been having a hard time walking on hot, humid days.  I feel overheated when I’m done.  I’m sure the dog does too.  Today was much nicer, and has me looking forward to fall days. 

There was a segment on the Today show about Cyberchondriacs.  They described me perfectly:  the mother who goes online, pops in her own or her child’s symptoms, and scares the piss out of herself.   I over-researched Esther’s cancer, and would have been better off simply listening to her surgeon.  Now, I look at menopause websites, or try to find illnesses that match my symptoms:  sinus headaches, migraines, wigginess (www.power-surge.com has a bunch of women describing a sort of internal vibrating, some taking Xanax), hot, cold, sweating like a monkey. 

Anyway, I’m definitely a cyberchondriac.

 I was thinking of the movie “My Girl”  in which the little girl in the movie, (whose mother is dead) whose father runs a funeral home, goes off to her family doctor all the time, complaining of various symptoms, afraid she’s going to die. I can identify with that lately.

Nervous about classes starting–standing in front of all those students who want to be taught how to write.   Every fall before classes begin I start having bad dreams:  kids walking out of class in droves, me walking all over campus to look for the classroom, showing up an hour late, or not finding it at all.  The semester being half over and still having not found the class room, hoping I can still salvage the semester.   Crazy dreams. 

Coping with near disaster (and disaster)

I think I’m beginning to understand my re-fascination with the train accident video, having been to see my nurse practitioner, who thinks I may very well be perimenopausal, but also wonders if I don’t have a little post traumatic stress from Esther’s cancer adventures, though I may as well be neurotic, psychotic and a paranoid schizophrenic too), AND having read a friend’s essay, similar to my train essay, his about trying to desperately reach his children pulled out by a riptide in deep, rough ocean water, AND, maybe partly, the nearing of the anniversary of Brandy’s death, though I haven’t even thought about that in years (15 years now!)  I watched a hellava lot of Rescue 911 after he died.  Another friend of mine said that after his oldest daughter made it through her cancer treatment, the new version of “Titanic” had been released, and he had become similarly obssessed with the sinking of the ship.  Reading my friend’s essay hit a nerve.

 I don’t know about post traumatic stress.  Maybe a little.  I guess we all (family) had a little of that in our own way with Brandy, and I can’t remember it very well, except the grief was HUGE and deep and heavy and I was pregnant and extremely tired and had weird dreams.  I felt physically okay during Esther’s cancer treatments, scared to death, but very focused.  And for the last 3 weeks, just sick and foggy and miserable, but focused on every ache and pain, and really tired.  I feel better, but still very tired (And not pregnant.  Did I want to be?)  

I am surprised to see so much stuff on parents of children with cancer, even for those whose kids survive cancer, and PTSD.   Check this out:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-12/chop-poc121205.php

I bet I could find a whole bunch of them suffering from neurosis, pychosis, paranoid schizophrenia and ectopic pregnancies, too, if I looked hard enough.   I betcha a bunch of them are taking Xanax like mad.  I think I’m just mostly insane.  Always have been.