Overdetermined hypochondria

EVENT: the morning I was going to drive to Weatherwood, I woke at dawn, soaked in sweat. My stomach and bowels were both unhappy. I kicked off a blanket, tossed and turned for 20 minutes, and went back to sleep.

HYPOTHESIS ONE: A perimenopausal estrogen-deficient night sweat. Particularly scary because it's mid-follicular. Will this be a cycle where I don't ovulate?

Scare factor: 10. I wish I'd never heard of premature ovarian failure. Right now day 3 bloodwork (never previously done) is my next chance to be told, "no, never, nammy-nammy-poo-poo," and I won't be able to get it done until late July, probably, due to previously planned travel. I am obsessed. I am terrified. I am powerless.

HYPOTHESIS TWO: Usually people talk about SAD (seasonal afffective disorder) as a depression-in-winter thing. But, I've had insomnia during the summer for as long as I can remember. Is this a symptom of a shadow syndrome of something truly awful?—and do recall my mother's major mood disorder...

Scare factor: 9, but it's only not 10 because it's an old worry.

HYPOTHESIS THREE: My ongoing anger with the pharmaceutical industry over their continued emphasis on big-ticket lifestyle drugs (instead of, say, anything that could actually help any member of my family live longer or more happily) has exhausted my digestive resilience. Bring on the purple pills before my esophagus is perforated!

Scare factor: 2. It's just that I never ever used to get indigestion.

HYPOTHESIS FOUR: Let's look at a bit more context. The last several weeks, which were supposed to be the peaceful start of my sabbatical, have actually been a stress-fest. Beaker's been working so hard we scarcely see each other. My mother and grandmother are both sick. And we've been trying to make the reproductive options decisions, and we've had houseguests most of the time.

Perhaps I was scared about my mother being in the ICU with a drug reaction that can be fatal?

Or, a bit worried about the impending trip, well beyond my ordinary driving capabilities? ("Are you going to do it in one day? That's really hard," said Beaker.)

Perhaps the wonderful but unusual food prepared by our last houseguest, on whom I have such a friend-crush that it's almost painful to talk to her^*, didn't entirely agree with me?

Perhaps the three blankets I'd put on the bed, more than I use during the worst of winter (the heatwave broke, and I felt cold when I went to bed), were just a bit too much?

Scare factor: 1. But it's no fun to simply be human.

EVENT: by the time I arrived in Weatherwood, I felt like someone had slipped an especially fast-dividing strain of Heliobacter pylori into my breakfast smoothie, then taken me out back and applied Justice-Department-sanctioned interrogation techniques all day. I curled up in an overheated room and whimpered as my stomach churned and my sore muscles twitched. Then slept all night, uninterrupted, and woke up feeling human.

^*The term "crush" is so appropriate here. I'm clumsy around her like a teenager in love: forgetting to turn on the car's headlights, trying to pour laundry detergent into the dishwasher, etc.

Comments

[Barb]

I came across your blog in a google search on "overdetermined" (in the post-colonial/post-structuralist sense) and was delighted to be pointed to something more real. Thanks from a fellow academe for sharing your daily journey in balancing the personal with the pedantic!
Barb