TO THOSE OF YOU WHOM I MAY HAVE TOLD OF MY IMMINENT DOOM:
So I'm not dying.
EXPLANATION:
One day I was reading in an undershirt and discovered that one section of what seemed to be my rib was very much not symmetrical to the other side. It was on the right side of where the ribs meet the sternum and I felt either side and the right side was very much larger than the left. My bones, however, are extremely easy to feel, and I realized many other people could have this exact problem and not know it because they could not feel their sternum-ribs on their chests.
DIAGNOSIS #1:
My mom is a midwife. She used to be a biology teacher and then she was a mom and now she's training to become a midwife. This means 1) we cannot eat dinner without the word 'vagina' being spoken aloud, 2) we cannot have people over for dinner without the word 'vagina' being spoken aloud, and 3) every problem can be easily fixed with aromatherapy oils and vitamin D.
This means that my mother is the first physician I ask.
I try not to go to my mother about medical things, because 1) most of what she says is what doctors would call "uncredited" and 2) I am only slightly less uncomfortable than a twelve year old boy at the word 'vagina' being spoken.
But I went to her and described my condition and unbuttoned my shirt and showed her and she said
"Oh, you must've inherited that from your stepdad."
"...I don't think that's how it works."
"Does it hurt?"
"No."
"Have you been taking vitamin D?"
"No."
"Take some vitamin D."
"Okay thanks."
DIAGNOSIS #2:
The next day I rode my bike to the library because I had signed up to volunteer and nobody was around so I had to take myself there and the bike was really the only option.
I ride there all the time in the summer, and hadn't been expecting 1) the cold, 2) the pollution, or 3) the fact that I was not as "in shape" as I was in the summer.
It was bad. The cars were bad. The city was bad. The cold was bad. My lungs were even worse and that was when I decided I probably must be dying.
I went to my mother again.
"I think I'm dying."
"Why would you think you're dying?"
"Because there's an abnormality on my rib and it hurts to breathe and I need to study for Spanish."
"Oh. How about lavender oil?"
"I have learned from past experiences not to trust you with lavender oil." (this would take too long to explain.)
"Here, let me feel your sternum."
"I have learned from past experiences not to trust you with my sternum." (her favorite thing is to make fun of my sternum)
But she thought it was funny and laughed and sat me down on the couch and shook me around by the shoulders and told me to close my eyes and "relax", which is extremely hard for me to do considering I can barely stand hand-holding in the hallways, which is a miracle in itself.
"I need to study for Spanish," I said.
My mother shushed me and continued rocking my shoulders. She pretended to be a chiropractor and know what she was doing and felt each bone in my ribcage and said, "Yep. You've got a problem."
"I think it's called imminent doom."
"You sound like Jacob."
"I don't want to be a hypochondriac but I also don't want to die."
The house was quiet and all the kids were asleep and my older sister was at work and my stepdad was finishing cabinets in his workshop and it was dark and quiet and I appreciate that I have a mother who can also pretend to be a medicine man from the fifteenth century. She was picking up little black bottles and boxes of homemade skin butter.
"My lungs hurt."
"Your lungs?"
"Yes."
"Hmm."
She stared at me. "Your right boob is bigger than your left one."
"Why do I come to you for this?"
"No shh. So your lungs hurt?"
"Yeah. But that could be from breathing in the toxins from the roads while biking. Or from not biking for so long. Or whatever. It's probably nothing. I'm probably not dying."
I honestly believed I was dying.
"Okay." She held me by the shoulders and looked up at me. She smelled like too many good things. "So. You have a very strong belief system running down your core, where your spine and sternum is, right? That's your belief system. And you're trying very hard to keep it straight and something is tampering with it and you're questioning it. Right? Your beliefs are held in your lungs. When your lungs hurt, your belief system hurts."
"...Okay."
"Also, you're nurturing too much. That's because of your bone seeming to be pulled bigger. You're trying to provide for more than you can give. You don't have to babysit for me all the time or do all the stuff I make you do. You just have to take care of you. Okay?"
"I don't really get how you could get all that just from - "
"You know what would help you? Lavender."
At this point the feeling of death and doom and destruction was so close I figured lavender was not the worst thing that could happen. She started pulling out little black bottles and shaking them.
I was laughing.
She started dumping sleep scents on my sternum that I didn't know how to pronounce and kept spilling too much and took out vegetable oil "so the strength of the rose's energy won't burn your skin" and I actually became so tired by the hippie medicine I didn't care to fight it and just sat there and leaned my head back and laughed at the absurdity of the logic and thanked her for her help.
Fortunately, I didn't study and sleep came far too easily and I still thought I was dying.
DIAGNOSIS #3:
After the original diagnosis, I asked if I could be taken to a real doctor to make sure I don't have cancer instead of a tampered belief system. Even though, with Medicare, the visit would have only been five dollars, my mother's strong distaste for professional medicine brought me to a chiropractor with boxes of tea and a small fountain in the waiting room.
There is an extreme fear associated with chiropractors. It's almost up there with my fear of intimacy, swimming pools, and construction sites. Touching is at the very top of my fear list. Chiropractors do the touching thing for a living. It's not just harmless touching either. It's like cracking your bones touching. Like, Not only do I have to touch you, which you don't like anyway, but it's going to be while you're not looking. And it's going to hurt.
I used to have scoliosis, and mentioned it to the lady working there, who felt my back and told me I was only as crooked as most people are, which I found only slightly less than comforting.
The diagnosis was, in the end, that I was leaning a weird way when I write and should stop. The cartilage connecting the ribs to the sternum was getting bunched up on one side, which could be fixed by stretching and breathing through my belly instead of my chest.
Also I was diagnosed as being insecure.
But because chiropractors, no matter what anyone says, are at least a little more qualified than my mother, I took it and ran with it and thanked the sky that it was over.
The conversation with my mother in the car:
"Do you think I still ought to, you know, go to a doctor?"
"Why would you go to a doctor?"
"Cancer?"
"You don't have cancer though. You have a conflicting belief system and an overfilled heart and are insecure in the way you breathe because you're not sure how much oxygen you deserve to take in with the space you occupy on earth. Also you lean on your elbow when you write."
"Okay, okay." I didn't say anything for a while. Then, "But I'm pretty sure my beliefs are okay."
"Nothing's messing with them?"
"Nope."
"..."
"..."
"He's really pretty, that boy with the bare foot that-"
"Alright fine, I don't have cancer! I'm just writing weird."
"Make sure to take vitamin D when we get home."
"I'll take all the vitamin D in the world. I'll hook myself up to an IV of vitamin D. I'll inject it into my veins like narcotics. I'll be a vitamin D pill-popper. Vitamin D dealer. All the cool kids will start taking it. Vitamin D will cure the ailments of the world."
So just in case I told anyone who's managed to scroll all the way through this about how I'm probably dying, I'm probably not. Don't go writing any eulogies yet.
Have a nice Wednesday.
Egg nog.
EGG NOG.
EGG NOG WEDNESDAY.
So I'm not dying.
EXPLANATION:
One day I was reading in an undershirt and discovered that one section of what seemed to be my rib was very much not symmetrical to the other side. It was on the right side of where the ribs meet the sternum and I felt either side and the right side was very much larger than the left. My bones, however, are extremely easy to feel, and I realized many other people could have this exact problem and not know it because they could not feel their sternum-ribs on their chests.
DIAGNOSIS #1:
My mom is a midwife. She used to be a biology teacher and then she was a mom and now she's training to become a midwife. This means 1) we cannot eat dinner without the word 'vagina' being spoken aloud, 2) we cannot have people over for dinner without the word 'vagina' being spoken aloud, and 3) every problem can be easily fixed with aromatherapy oils and vitamin D.
This means that my mother is the first physician I ask.
I try not to go to my mother about medical things, because 1) most of what she says is what doctors would call "uncredited" and 2) I am only slightly less uncomfortable than a twelve year old boy at the word 'vagina' being spoken.
But I went to her and described my condition and unbuttoned my shirt and showed her and she said
"Oh, you must've inherited that from your stepdad."
"...I don't think that's how it works."
"Does it hurt?"
"No."
"Have you been taking vitamin D?"
"No."
"Take some vitamin D."
"Okay thanks."
DIAGNOSIS #2:
The next day I rode my bike to the library because I had signed up to volunteer and nobody was around so I had to take myself there and the bike was really the only option.
I ride there all the time in the summer, and hadn't been expecting 1) the cold, 2) the pollution, or 3) the fact that I was not as "in shape" as I was in the summer.
It was bad. The cars were bad. The city was bad. The cold was bad. My lungs were even worse and that was when I decided I probably must be dying.
I went to my mother again.
"I think I'm dying."
"Why would you think you're dying?"
"Because there's an abnormality on my rib and it hurts to breathe and I need to study for Spanish."
"Oh. How about lavender oil?"
"I have learned from past experiences not to trust you with lavender oil." (this would take too long to explain.)
"Here, let me feel your sternum."
"I have learned from past experiences not to trust you with my sternum." (her favorite thing is to make fun of my sternum)
But she thought it was funny and laughed and sat me down on the couch and shook me around by the shoulders and told me to close my eyes and "relax", which is extremely hard for me to do considering I can barely stand hand-holding in the hallways, which is a miracle in itself.
"I need to study for Spanish," I said.
My mother shushed me and continued rocking my shoulders. She pretended to be a chiropractor and know what she was doing and felt each bone in my ribcage and said, "Yep. You've got a problem."
"I think it's called imminent doom."
"You sound like Jacob."
"I don't want to be a hypochondriac but I also don't want to die."
The house was quiet and all the kids were asleep and my older sister was at work and my stepdad was finishing cabinets in his workshop and it was dark and quiet and I appreciate that I have a mother who can also pretend to be a medicine man from the fifteenth century. She was picking up little black bottles and boxes of homemade skin butter.
"My lungs hurt."
"Your lungs?"
"Yes."
"Hmm."
She stared at me. "Your right boob is bigger than your left one."
"Why do I come to you for this?"
"No shh. So your lungs hurt?"
"Yeah. But that could be from breathing in the toxins from the roads while biking. Or from not biking for so long. Or whatever. It's probably nothing. I'm probably not dying."
I honestly believed I was dying.
"Okay." She held me by the shoulders and looked up at me. She smelled like too many good things. "So. You have a very strong belief system running down your core, where your spine and sternum is, right? That's your belief system. And you're trying very hard to keep it straight and something is tampering with it and you're questioning it. Right? Your beliefs are held in your lungs. When your lungs hurt, your belief system hurts."
"...Okay."
"Also, you're nurturing too much. That's because of your bone seeming to be pulled bigger. You're trying to provide for more than you can give. You don't have to babysit for me all the time or do all the stuff I make you do. You just have to take care of you. Okay?"
"I don't really get how you could get all that just from - "
"You know what would help you? Lavender."
At this point the feeling of death and doom and destruction was so close I figured lavender was not the worst thing that could happen. She started pulling out little black bottles and shaking them.
I was laughing.
She started dumping sleep scents on my sternum that I didn't know how to pronounce and kept spilling too much and took out vegetable oil "so the strength of the rose's energy won't burn your skin" and I actually became so tired by the hippie medicine I didn't care to fight it and just sat there and leaned my head back and laughed at the absurdity of the logic and thanked her for her help.
Fortunately, I didn't study and sleep came far too easily and I still thought I was dying.
DIAGNOSIS #3:
After the original diagnosis, I asked if I could be taken to a real doctor to make sure I don't have cancer instead of a tampered belief system. Even though, with Medicare, the visit would have only been five dollars, my mother's strong distaste for professional medicine brought me to a chiropractor with boxes of tea and a small fountain in the waiting room.
There is an extreme fear associated with chiropractors. It's almost up there with my fear of intimacy, swimming pools, and construction sites. Touching is at the very top of my fear list. Chiropractors do the touching thing for a living. It's not just harmless touching either. It's like cracking your bones touching. Like, Not only do I have to touch you, which you don't like anyway, but it's going to be while you're not looking. And it's going to hurt.
I used to have scoliosis, and mentioned it to the lady working there, who felt my back and told me I was only as crooked as most people are, which I found only slightly less than comforting.
The diagnosis was, in the end, that I was leaning a weird way when I write and should stop. The cartilage connecting the ribs to the sternum was getting bunched up on one side, which could be fixed by stretching and breathing through my belly instead of my chest.
Also I was diagnosed as being insecure.
But because chiropractors, no matter what anyone says, are at least a little more qualified than my mother, I took it and ran with it and thanked the sky that it was over.
The conversation with my mother in the car:
"Do you think I still ought to, you know, go to a doctor?"
"Why would you go to a doctor?"
"Cancer?"
"You don't have cancer though. You have a conflicting belief system and an overfilled heart and are insecure in the way you breathe because you're not sure how much oxygen you deserve to take in with the space you occupy on earth. Also you lean on your elbow when you write."
"Okay, okay." I didn't say anything for a while. Then, "But I'm pretty sure my beliefs are okay."
"Nothing's messing with them?"
"Nope."
"..."
"..."
"He's really pretty, that boy with the bare foot that-"
"Alright fine, I don't have cancer! I'm just writing weird."
"Make sure to take vitamin D when we get home."
"I'll take all the vitamin D in the world. I'll hook myself up to an IV of vitamin D. I'll inject it into my veins like narcotics. I'll be a vitamin D pill-popper. Vitamin D dealer. All the cool kids will start taking it. Vitamin D will cure the ailments of the world."
So just in case I told anyone who's managed to scroll all the way through this about how I'm probably dying, I'm probably not. Don't go writing any eulogies yet.
Have a nice Wednesday.
Egg nog.
EGG NOG.
EGG NOG WEDNESDAY.
Note from papa and nana: Reading this story was like a visit with you and your family, which usually leaves us smiling but slightly off-kilter. We are genuinely glad you are not dying. Also, we're glad your mother loves you enough to try to make you feel better. We are sure your belief system is just fine.
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