Diagnosis-Neoplasm with Uncertain Behavior

Leading up to my Dermatology appointment I doing well.  With the help of drugs, my husband and a very dear friend I made it to the waiting room in one piece.

I don't know what I was expecting, but i wasn't expecting for things to be so...personal.  The nurse and the dermatologist were excellent.  If anyone finds themselves needing to see a dermatologist for any reason, Allina Bandana Square Clinic treated me very well.

I'm not a brave person.  I don't particularly enjoy being nude unless I'm really comfortable with the person.  I'm a person who likes being in control, and when I'm in an open gown with my boob out, I don't feel in control.  She started by doing a general mole check, which involved getting very up close and personable with every inch of my body. "The mole", the reason I was there in the first place came last.

"Now, what in particular brought you in here"
"I have a concerning mole on my left breast"

The microscope came back out and she was right up there.  My boob rarely gets paid this much attention.  My heart was pounding so fast I'm sure she could hear it.  Everything has come down to this.  All of my obsessive thoughts and compulsions have centered around this mole.

"It looks mostly benign, but I'm seeing some other stuff here that I'm just not sure of.  May I remove the mole?"

Several things raced through my head at that moment.  I was mainly struck with the polite way she asked.  I've come to both love and hate this mole, but I wanted it gone.  I just wasn't expecting it to be so soon.

"You can do that?  I mean like now"
"Oh sure.  Lie back"

She applied local anesthesia, which as a needle phobic I would normally pale at, but today was different.  After some slight pressure, the mole was gone and she was telling me I could sit up.  She told me the results should come back in two weeks.  Two weeks is a lot of time to wait.  Since my appointment my world has felt both very big and very small.  Big in that there are some things I can't control, no matter how much I try and small in how alone in this I sometimes feel.  The infinity of time itself and the finite nature of life.

I was left alone with the nurse, who was finishing up the notes, pulling my clothes together in a stumbled daze.  At the time, all I could remember was thinking "I never got a band aid".

We'll just have to see.

Just Say the Word

For several months I've triumphed over my OCD as much as someone with an anxiety order can do.  I've spent less time Googling, the thoughts on dying have been less persistent.  When I looked at the mole, the same one that drove me to an out of control state to begin with, I looked at it in a whole new light.  Instead of seeing a red, glaring lesion I saw the same ugly yet normal mole I've came to peace with long ago.  This all ended with a routine physical.  As a cruel twist of irony my nurse wanted to refer me to a dermatologist, and my downward spiral started all over again.

I really wish I could describe the anxiety I feel, and that is partly the reason I'm writing this.  I've always been better with the written word than the verbal.  Part of me also just feels better explaining my behavior.  I don't expect to gain any more fans, but part of me just wants people to know why I do the things I do.

It starts with the sleeping and the dreams.  This happens in the times where I can still gave a grasp on my conscious actions.  As much as I fight during the day to not be a total crazy person, my dreams remind me that I'm breakable. My favorite dreams are when I'm back at Snyder's Drug Store, and I'm trying to close up, but people just keep coming in.  Or the dreams where all my teeth fall out.  Or the dreams where I get a regrettable tattoo.

Then comes the obsessive searching.  I could probably have my own Cracked article on my Google searches.  In between search results like "REO Speedwagon tour dates MN" and "Winds of Winter release date" I have things like "What does metastatic cancer feel like" and " Melanoma staging pictures".  Bjorn finally disabled WedMD from my computer, which I told him he was silly for doing, but Google was just making me sicker.

Than comes the physical symptoms.  Sometimes I get a sudden fear reaction.  My heart starts racing, I get hot and I literally (and not the hyperbole form of literally) feel like I'm being hunted with seconds to live.  That is how I would describe a classic panic attack.  Other times it is a feeling of pressure, like I'm I have an elephant sitting on my check.  I've named this pressure Roger, and call them my Roger days.

The obsessive thoughts are the most irrational of my behaviors, a hit on the rationality I try to pride myself on.  On these days I can convince myself that not only do I have a specific illness, but a life span to go with it.  On these days I'm prone to crying spells and anger.  In my head, I'm as certain that I have cancer than I am that the earth isn't 6,000 years old.

When I'm like this I'm not fun to be around.  I hurt the relationships I have with those close to me.  I wouldn't want to be my friend.  When I'm my old rational self though, I tell myself that illnesses never happen my kind of people.  Until they do, or at least of the potential.

In my obsessive state, I rarely come to terms with the actual words but think about them in the abstract.  Though I fixate on a certain illness, in my head I'm thinking "I have cancer and I'm going to die before the year is out". Thinking in this way artificially distances myself from any actual problem I may have.  Now that a real medical professional and not the internet is guiding me to see a dermatologist, and going to put on my big girl pants and say the words, even the dreaded "M" word.  I have OCD.  I have hypochondria.  I am going to see a dermatologist for a worry some mole that could very possibly be benign, but also has the potential to be Melanoma.  
   

Small Triumph

Every life has mile stones and triumphs that should be celebrated in their own way.  Mine has been that I've stayed away from "Google Death" for 2 months.

So what is Google Death?  It is a phrase I made up to describe what I did every time I experienced a new symptom, or heard of another passing.  Every time my cough worsened, or my armpit felt tender, I would hole myself up in my room, not eating, not sleeping.  When I found out that someone died, I researched that death extensively, comparing my odds to theirs, studying their journey from onset of illness to ending.

Heart attacks were always comforting.  Hear me out, I know this sounds horrible, but I can live with a heart attack.  I can make peace with a car accident.  It is cancer that gets me every time.  There was a point where I had to leave the room if the word was even mentioned.  Then those around me started getting cancer, and my world started closing in around me, pressing, until I literally couldn't breath.  As the weights on my chest grew heavier and heavier, it was all I could do to keep from suffocating.

I grew depressed.  I was anxious, but I could never express myself.  Every time I tried to talk about it, my throat closed off.  I drank a little to often, mostly with friends.  The times I had wine (often too much) were the times the weight lifted, and my airways opened up and I could talk freely.  This freedom came with a price, and I ended up distancing myself from those I cared about.  I've never fully redeemed myself, and I'm still incredibly saddened when I see the life I once had continue on around me.  I'd like to continue bridging these gaps, but for now it is one step in front of the other.

I'd like to say I did it all on my own, but that is really a nonsense statement.  Anyone that says that mental illness can be conquered completely without medication is dangerous.  That isn't to say that medication should be relayed on.  I try to do as much without drugs, but I can only control the chemicals transmitted so much.  I haven't gotten drunk (though I still enjoy a wine or two) in a very long time, and I've been working really hard on putting my energy back on others (the ones that will have me).

It was my small triumph I had just recently that made me smile.  I just found out that another in my life is gone, and for the first time in a long time, I didn't care why.  I am finally able to mourn appropriately.  More importantly, I can celebrate life the way it was meant to be celebrated.  I know my struggle isn't over, but it is these small things that keep the walls from caving in.

My Bucket List

I just got back from a two week stay at Camp Quest of Minnesota.  During that time, I wrote a bucket list of personal growth and development.  What I came up with was this:

1) Be more trusting

2) Make a positive impact in some one's life

3) Write more

4) Be happy

All of these are going to be difficult, but if I can follow through with all of them, it will result in #4 of my list.  I've grown painfully aware that life is short and I'm not going to be around forever.  By making a positive impact in some one's life, and by writing more, I'm hopeful that that part of me will stick around, long after I have died, an atheist's version of the after life.  I started my bucket list that night by writing of the simplicity of before my life as it is now.

Simplicity

Sometimes it is hard to remember

The times I felt a prayer

The nights I spoke with god

Just to have someone to talk to

When the sky was more than the sky

When hope came in the form

Of simple coincidences

When the stars couldn't be beautiful

For the sake of being beautiful

And happiness

Was the product of

Beautiful naivety. 

On OCD, Roger and the Crazy in All of Us.

I am candid about my anxiety.  I am neither ashamed nor proud of it. It is just there.  It is  a part of me.

Like right now.  I haven't taken my meds.  As I was going up the stairs my heart beat skipped a little.  Today was one of the days I was able to beat my urges "holistically", sans my Lorazepam.  Other days I'm not so lucky.

It starts with a fluctuation.  Has this bump on my neck always been there?  Has this mole always been this dark?  Has this cough lingered too long?  Once this thought enters my head, it typically resides until I take my medication or slowly incapacitate myself.  I become consumed with Web MD.  I prepare for the worst.  Sometimes I can't eat.  Sometimes I can't breath.  Sometimes I drink a little too much.  Sometimes I talk about it a little too much.  I reach out for help.  I try to find that person who will reassure me I'm not dying.  I don't care if they think I'm crazy, because sometimes I think I am.

The thing is I know that I'm not being rational, even when my heart sinks when I read a worst case scenario on some online forum, and this just angers me.  I know it is a chemical in balance, but sometimes I get so frustrated that I can't do much else besides curse my misfiring brain.

My OCD has impacted my personal relationships.  I realize I'm not the easiest to deal with.  I also realize that I've become "that girl" and that my behavior is construed as attention seeking.  In a way it is.  Like the rest of us, I just need someone to tell me that I'll be o.k.  I just need it more than the average person.

I do try.  I've gone to therapy and have learned some tools, other than medication.  I write (see poem below) , I take a walk, or I throw myself into my work.  Sometimes they are successful, sometimes they aren't. I let myself down every time I reach for the Ativan bottle.  Sometimes it is the only thing that will get rid of Roger, that elephant that sits on my chest.  Sometimes it is the only thing that will allow me to breath.

I've been told that anxiety is just an excuse to take medication, and that by succumbing to it I am weak, and I feel weak.  I know this is wrong, and the science backs me up on this, and it is my sincere wish that no one struggling with anxiety were to feel like this.  Yes, there is a problem of over diagnosis and over medication. However, just like taking too much medication is dangerous, not taking it when necessary is dangerous too. I have the battle wounds to prove it.  I think I have permanently damaged the lymph nodes in my neck.  My breasts hurt so much from the constant checks.  My weight fluctuates to the point my metabolism is shot.  This is all because I tried doing it alone.

I admit that I can be irrational , but you know what?  We all are.  We all have vices and life style choices others will deem crazy.  Some people drink too much, and some people take not drinking at all to an extreme evangelism. Some of us hoard, some of us conserve to a point of obsession, and some of us are obsessed with minimalism. I'm not going to apologize that my brain happens to make more Serotonin than average.  Humans are never 100% rational.  That is what makes us human. Sometimes being human just comes with excess ivory.


Ivory-An ode to Anxiety
They like to explain away the pressure
I know really
It is only Roger
The small elephant who keeps me company
Whispering helpful reminders
You forgot to lock the front door
He says
Repetitions will turn the oven off.
Are you sure it isn't cancer?
But one night poachers came
And took his trunk
So that he could no longer speak.
His presence lingered
Reminding me to breath
With his formless urgency.
The next night his ears
His feet
Until finally one day Roger was gone.
I'm pretty sure
My doorknobs are made from his teeth.

Vaccines are stealing all your money (and are kicking puppies and kittens in the face).

Paul Offit.  More like Paul “Proffit”. This is a mantra of sorts for anti-vaxxers.  Part of their deal is that they think vaccine manufacturers and the scientists that develop them are making big bucks off of vaccines, while slowly killing their customers. Sometimes when an argument is so stupid I’m just rendered speechless.  I’d really like to buy the next person that sincerely thinks that vaccines are a huge money making conspiracy a beer and just pick their brain.  Unfortunately, we can rarely get to the point of reasonable conversation with these people.

First I’d like to say that there is money to be made with vaccines., just from the other side.  This world is riddled with charlatans that are willing to make big bucks off the masses that refuse to become inoculated.  Mr Andrew Wakefield of the Lancet fame himself was commissioned by Richard Barr, a lawyer profiting off of families with autistic children, to conduct research linking autism with the MMR vaccine.  He ended up making roughly $750,000 dollars(Deer,2010).  He earned this money by conducting fraudulent studies and conducting some ethically questionable research(which included giving kids $50 for blood at a birthday party).  Furthermore, he was intending to start a company that would make testing kits for autism, which would eventually lead to a complete cure.  Andrew Wakefield is kind of an asshole.

I shouldn’t pick on just him though.  I could go on and on about the alternative “cures” for autism and homeopaths, but that is a rant for another day.  I would however, like to talk about secretin. Secretin is a hormone from pigs that has been said to improve the symptoms of autism. Parents against the MMR vaccine willingly will inject this substance into their children.  By scanning the Internet, I’ve seen people on forums talking about spending up to $800 on these injections or for the oral variety, $60 every two weeks.  This is for a drug that has been all but found ineffective by studies (Molloy, 2012).  If that isn’t making money, I don’t know what is.  The funny thing is that the research on secretin isn’t even complete.  From the couple of studies done, it has been shown to just probably not work.  If someone was so worried about what was being injected into their child’s body that they opted to not vaccinate them, you’d think they’d want to wait until a more conclusive study comes out.  However”secretin” was marketed as being a natural alternative, so I guess we are good to go.

The thing is, from what I’ve heard, the money isn’t in vaccinations .I'm not saying that drug companies are giving them away, but drugs are far more profitable for them.  If drug companies were wanting to profit off of vaccines, why would they pump them full of so many ingredients?  Couldn’t they just inject snake oil and call it a day? That is why there are more and more multiple use vaccines.  Furthermore, it doesn’t seem like good business practice to give your customers something that will kill them if you are trying to make some money.  You kind of want them to keep coming back.  All good drug dealers know this. You give them something to keep coming back for. If it was proven that one of the main ingredients of vaccines is crack cocaine, I'd be a little less skeptical.


I've also heard that the profit actually comes from vaccine mandates. With the population being mandated to receive vaccinations, the vaccine makers are rolling in dough. It couldn't be that maybe vaccines are being mandated because they are good for herd immunity. Maybe the government shouldn't be mandating them. Maybe they should let us go back to the days of polio and small pox in peace.
In an FB argument someone said “fuck the scientific community that profits off the deaths of millions”.  I’d really like this explained to me.  The offer of a free beer and the promise to not call you crazy (to your face) remains on the table.

Sources Cited (a lazy bibliography):
Deer B. Wakefield's "autistic enterocolitis" under the microscope. BMJ: British Medical Journal (overseas & retired Doctors Edition).  April 17,2010.  (I got a lot of information from Deer's reporting, but the majority of the investigative work on Wakefield's enterprises came from Brian Deer).

Molloy, C, Manning-Courtney P, Ulrich II C, Et Al.  Lack of Benefit of Intravenous Synthetic Human Secretin in the Treatment of Autism.  Journal of Austims & Developmental Disorders.  December, 2002 (Also check out Autsim's False Prophets, by Paul Offit)

How Oregano Oil Started a (Blog) Fire

If you know me, then you know the surest way to upset me is by telling me vaccines don’t work.  Recently I started an anti-vaccine flame war on my Facebook page that led to a sleepless night. It all started when I said that "natural antibiotics" shouldn't take the place of real medicine and vaccines.  I lay awake so angry at the willful ignorance of someone so immersed in a ridiculous conspiracy theory.  However, after thinking about it I realized that this FB “friend”, someone I vaguely remember going to highschool with, provided me with an anti-vaxxer gold mine.  Sure it may be crazy gold, but gold nevertheless. This person ended up de-friending me, which is disappointing in that I wanted to hear all the crazy he had to spew.  While frustrating as it may be, it is important to know your opposer’s side.  This is why I force myself to read Jenny Mccarthy and to engage in dialogue with someone I find to be a complete moron.  It is even more difficult to not call said moron a moron in a heated debate.  Because then you lose them forever.  Sure, they are probably already lost, but to personally attack them leads you to look weak.  I have a fortune from a fortune cookie on my desk that reads” Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause”.  However, I feel like attacking their ideas is fair game and should be done so ruthlessly.  Sometimes it is hard to draw the distinction, but I encourage all of you to at least try.

In honor of the upcoming TAM, I want to share my findings with you all, and start (or at least try to) blogging all the arguments I’ve heard over the years, and to do my best to deconstruct them.  For the record, I am by no means an expert, but have done much study on the matter.  I started in college for a research paper, and have absorbed everything I can on the subject, especially after seeing children become ill due to a lack vaccines before my very eyes.  I’ll try my best to cite sources, but after years of accumulated data, I may slip and forget. Much of my research also comes from medical journals I no longer have access to, but I’ll try to dredge up any bibliography I can.  My main focus is to start dialogue and encourage critical thinking.  I encourage all those who disagree with what I say to pipe in.  As long as you can back up your ideas with reputable, science backed sources I feel you should be free to speak.  Just don’t post a link to a crazy anti-vaxx site that promotes colon cleansing, because I doubt they are peer reviewed.  Otherwise, be prepared to be ripped to shreds.

I’m not set out to be a famous blogger.  I don’t write controversial things and will never gain any kind of celebrity status.  However, I do encourage you to pass this along to all that you can, no matter where their opinions and beliefs lie. I’ll be starting with my favorite argument,which is on vaccines and profitability.