My Mysterious Illness

A month ago, I threw up. I had been feeling nauseous all morning and had consumed nothing more than a plain bagel and a ginger ale. So there I was, on the floor of my bathroom hoping my roommate couldn’t hear too much.

Why do I tell you this? Well, because since that fateful day a month ago, I’ve been having bouts of nausea several times a week—nausea that comes with dizziness and a stymied appetite, but nothing more. I haven’t thrown up since December 20th, but I have been a frequent visitor to the bathroom, if you get me.

I know, I know—TMI. But I find myself in an interesting place, after visiting my primary care physician, conducting several tests (including collecting my first-ever stool sample), and getting no clear results. I have reached a point, for maybe the first time in my adult life, where I have to decide how best to take care of myself.

I’ve always been good at seeing the doctor. I get my annual physical, bi-annual teeth cleaning, dermatology, gynecology, you name it. I make the appointments that need to be made, pay for it with my own insurance, etc. I’ve managed to get that part of adulting down. But when faced with this mysterious illness, when facing down the potential of visiting a new specialist, one I’ve never needed before, I feel stuck.

My primary care referred me to a GI doctor. But I’ve yet to make an appointment. Part of me wants to get in to see the specialist ASAP, get the answers I’ve been craving. But part of me doesn’t want to see the doctor because I’m worried the answer won’t lie in my GI tract, that I will need to move onto specialist after specialist to seek an answer that will never come.

I can’t determine any discernible pattern to my nausea. I’ve kept a log. It doesn’t happen after each time I take medication. It doesn’t always happen after I eat. It doesn’t follow a schedule of morning or night, doesn’t correlate with my mood or stressors, doesn’t behave in any way, really, that makes tracking it all that helpful. Sometimes it’s more debilitating, sometimes I can work through it. The doctor said that norovirus can last for up to a month, but I had norovirus in college, and it was nothing like this. Am I truly a medical mystery?

I’ve spoken with my parents a bunch of times about my mysterious malady, and of course they have their opinions on what my next step should be. But they are not me. I am me. And I am the one living with this nagging symptom. I just read a book called The Body, but it did nothing to prepare me for when my own rebels against itself.

The truth is, only I can find out what ails me. My parents can’t always have the answers. I just have to take those next steps. I have to make that appointment, schedule those tests. Maybe I am too scared to be staring down a potential colonoscopy. Maybe I am just hoping for the easy way out—that my nausea will go away on its own and that I don’t have to see another doctor, eat into my renewed deductible. The scariest part of growing up in a human body is that something may go wrong and that you might have to do something about it.

So, ultimately, when business opens back up on Tuesday, in a US with a new president, I am going to call the GI doctor. Life is too short to be living with something that makes you feel less than your best. If something comes along and does that, fix it. I say this as much to myself as to anyone reading this.

And I’ve said this before, but if you are reading this, thank you. You make life in a stubborn human body a little more bearable.