worry-wart

I have a love hate relationship with healthcare. Actually, it is probably just a hate relationship. I stayed home from work today because I couldn't manage to sleep at all last night. My throat kept closing. But that meant that I had to go to the doctor today. Its a good thing too, I have strep-throat. I guess that doesn't get better without medicine.

I do love my doctor. She is smart, down to earth, personable, but unafraid to make big decisions. She is actually pretty awesome. Dr. Nottleson. She is a good one. I just hate seeing her. I have hated doctors / hospitals / anyone in white, for my whole life. I remember when I was really young, my doctor was Dr. Miller in Gardner. His office is a car sales place now. I can still remember his spock-like eyebrows and his genuinely nice demeanor. I would absolutely ball at first mention that I needed to go see him. Actually, I could pretty much hold it together until he took out the dreaded.... tongue-depressor. I would immediately cry and he would smile and laugh... nicely though, and he would call me a "worry-wart" and pat my head. It got to the point where he just gave up using the thing. I just had to open my mouth wide.  I was terrified. I still am pretty terrified if I am to be honest.

I think I have a better grip as to why now though. I have this feeling, it is a deep seeded one too, that my life is just precariously stacked up, and that it could easily be blown over by the first stray breeze. Doctors are the harbinger of that breeze. Plus they are so invasive. I guess this has a bit, though not entirely, to do with that Wolff Parkinson White thing that I had. When that went off, it felt like this massive whir in my chest and then my heart was off to the races. It would go off at up to 300 beats per minute. I always had to try to make it to the hospital when it happened, and most of the time it would drop back to normal before I got there, but sometimes it would still be in arrhythmia and I would have to be admitted to the emergency room. Its funny, I have heard of the nightmares that people have had in ER's, waiting forever and ever to be seen, but that never happened to me. I remember once, this nurse started to tell me to take a seat and I took her hand and put it on my chest. She immediately paled and ran to get a stretcher and a doctor. It never hurt when it happened. My adrenaline would be off the charts, and I would obviously be nervous, but it never hurt at all.

When I would be admitted into the ER, the room would immediately fill with doctors. I mean fill, like doctors literally on tiptoe to see my heart thingy beeping like an audacious blue grass song. I was a total guinea pig. The worst of all of that was the medicine that they would give me to bring me back down,Adenosine... god that stuff. It would literally stop my heart to break the rhythm. It felt exactly like I was inflating, massive pressure all over my body till I thought I would pop, then my heart would start again. Sometimes it would be back to the basic rhythm, other times it wouldn't break and I would have to get another shot. The worst. So... I really don't like the whole doctor thing.

When I get my blood pressure taken now, it is normally super high, and I tell them that I get nervous around doctors. They, I think, underestimate how much I mean that. When they take it at the end of the visit, it is always in the nice and healthy range. Dr. Nottelson knows me well enough now to smirk at my nerves and to look right past them. I like people like that. I have often told Jenny my ultimate way to die would be while hiking somewhere far enough away from a hospital that they couldn't reach me in time. Just let me go out in the woods and stay there. Away from lights and peering doctors, away from all that attention. Let me go out in the quiet and become quiet with it.

and yes... I took a selfie in the exam room while waiting for the doctor.,, probably not an ok thing to  do.