Infections & Reflections

Today was my appointment for a second opinion on what it is that may be ailing me. I didn't get an official diagnosis and I didn't really expect to. Hopefully that comes by the end of the week though. I had yet another morning of needles and conversations with health professionals. I think I was just scared today and that manifested in my asking everyone in a lab coat that looked at my chart what they think I have. And I must have been annoying cuz they shot me up with anti-anxiety drugs to shut me up. But fortunately the the doctor understood how I felt and took the time to explain stuff to me. And I liked the way he went about it; he was honest and said there's a chance the diagnosis will not be good, but that there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic about it and that whatever it is, there are people living with it and there's no reason I can't be one of them. Before I left he laid out the most likely diagnosis (I don't know the plural for that word) and gave me at least a ballpark estimate of what I'm dealing with. It's still a very broad range of stuff though. I was asked a million questions about my habits and past health issues (which, as you can imagine, took a long time to recount), which prompted some unsolicited medical advice about me needing to get more sleep and reduce my stress level and so on. But there was also good news today. My fever, which has been holding steady at about 100 since the ER visit, is down and my spleen is not as swollen as it was previously. Also, my white blood cell count is lower than it was a few days ago but is still higher than they'd like it to be. There were other abnormalities in my blood last week that also don't seem as severe this week and that's obviously a good thing. And I'll take all the good news I can get at this point.

Since I have vowed not to Google until I have an official diagnosis, I haven't really gotten to research what the contenders are illness-wise. There was some info the doctor gave me (and what he explained to me) but it was all just basic stuff. It could still be leukemia but not in an acute form, which is good since that type is more aggressive than a chronic type of leukemia. I don't even like using that word though because an acquaintance was diagnosed at my age and died three years later from leukemia and that's where my head goes when I hear that word. Another possibility is a form of anemia that can either be genetic or was acquired via a blood transfusion (I had two of those post-accident). Then, in a weird irony, it could also be a disease that may require multiple blood transfusions as treatment. And of course it could still be what the ER doc originally thought it was when I walked in the door, which was a couple of infections my body had trouble fighting off that were made worse by stress and/or anxiety. But even if that's the case the doc today pointed out there's a reason my body is not fighting off infection as well as it should be and he wants to know what that is.

Already a casualty of this medical mess is my anxiety level. I had terrible anxiety, depression and PTSD in the aftermath of the accident and it got a bit out of control because I refused to acknowledge any of it. Once I got treatment I overdid it with the meds and decided the best thing was to stop taking those altogether. And when I stopped, I stopped EVERYTHING (for years I didn't even take Advil if I didn't feel well). I found other ways to deal with my anxiety and depression and I got better without any meds. But now I may have to take some anti-anxiety meds for awhile and I don't know how I feel about that. I know it's temporary and I doubt things will spiral like they did the last time I was on them. But I've grown quite accustomed to this whole 'clean living' thing where my biggest vice is sweets. So I don't know. I'll have to think on it and figure out if it's worth it or not. But I feel more optimistic about the overall outcome of the medical stuff than I did before today. And that's something.