Wanna know how I feel right now? Press this button!
Because the results from my lactic acid test came in, and they are perfectly normal.
And I was not ready. Sure, I had foreseen the possibility intellectually, but emotionally I was not in any sense prepared for that result.
I was looking for a smoking gun, but the smoke turned out to actually be steam coming off a freshly shat pile of bullshit.
Now it was still wrong of Doctor Andrew Smith to send me home with a lactic acid level of 3.5 when normal tops out at 2.2. So I honestly still have a good case that he made the wrong call there.
But without evidence of long term consequences to my health, it would be a tougher case to make for any lawyer I engaged.
And it certainly wouldn’t get me a conveniently large settlement.
And now I feel dumb for getting all het up about it.
Even though I now that it was a perfectly sensible and smart reaction given the information I had at the time.
On some level, I still feel like I went off half cocked and made a fool of myself.
That’s social anxiety for ya, I guess.
Whatever. The good news is that I am healthier than I thought. I am not, in fact, slowly dying as lactic acid dissolves my muscle tissue.
The question remains, however, as to how I got so weak. Why do little things like getting my groceries make me feel like I ran a mile through snow uphill? Why do I get so tired for apparently no reason at all? Why do I hurt so much?
And I know it will be up to me to remind Doc Chao of the original complaint that brought me into his office in the first place. Doctors have very narrow vision and once they order the tests, the results of those tests are all they see.
If the results say you’re healthy, that’s where it ends. Even if your original complaint remains an open question.
I have another appointment with him in two weeks, I suppose it can wait til then.
Oh, the other good news is that the shots are working and my B12 levels are up to normal. So that’s one less way in which I am dying.
I am still going to add more meat to my diet. My “one animal product based meal a day” plan is still on.
But the steaks are a lot lower. (Ha ha ha. )
All in all, I feel rather tossed about and bruised. Life threw me a curveball today, and the fact that I saw it (potentially) coming only makes it worse.
But this will pass. I will mope for a while but then get over it and move on.
And when I do, I will go looking for answers to my illnesses all over again.
Oh. And finally get around to injecting some goddamned insulin so that I am not ravenously hungry 24/7.
That shit really gets on my nerves.
More after the break.
Stop trying to escape
Here’s another old bone to chew.
So much comes down to panic. Panic changes everything.
Once your internal panic button has been pressed. your mind starts focusing on escape plans to the exclusion of all other considerations.
Considerations like whether or not escape is what you actually want to do. And whether or not you are doing serious harm to yourself or your long term self interest. And whether it will hurt someone you love. And even whether you know, for a fact, that you will hate yourself for the stupid and awful things you do to escape.
Panic doesn’t care. Panic, like its cousin rage, doesn’t care what harm it does. Panic will do absolutely anything to get the escape it craves, consequences be damned. Panic is so selfish and shortsighted that it will rip a hole in your life just to escape through it.
Oh but it gets so much worse. That’s just active panic. That might be somewhat manageable. It’s the passive panic that kills you.
Because it makes you avoid things that might make you panic. And that’s a negatively recursive process because even thinking about something that might make you panic makes you panic a little bit. and that makes you stop thinking about the panic trigger, and then stop thinking about things related to the trigger, and then you stop thinking about things related to THOSE things, and so far and so on until you are completely isolated, can’t do anything, and panic has made you its bitch.
That’s basically how an anxiety disorder works. In a sense, it’s an addiction, and like all addictions, it hollows you out.
And we all know the reward for giving into the addiction : relief. No matter what the long term consequences are for fleeing, the relief is immediate. You go from a very negative emotional state (panic) to a deeply pleasurable one (relief) when you escape,. and that’s what keeps you doing it even when you know it’s hurting you.
The anxiety disorder will even ramp up the panic as fast as it can in order to get to that sweet sweet relief as soon as possible. Over time, this smooths the path to panic os much that even the slightest stimulus can set you off.
No wonder we all end up living the urban hermit life.
And as far as I can tell, the only way to fight back is to refuse to listen to the urge to escape. To stay in the game instead of quitting. I wish I had a less painful and scary solution, but I just don’t.
All you can do is grit your teeth and hang in there even though your panic disorder is going to throw everything it has at you to try to make you quit.
Eventually, it will run out of ammunition, and you will emerge on the other side of it feeling so much better.
And what do you know, you got your relief after all.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.