Now, if I'd had a regular PCP, maybe they would have been monitoring this, but I didn't. When I finally got one, several years later, they just continued the two drugs I was on.
When I tenatively mention that I'm having these weird attacks, no one connects them.
Conversation
And I didn't connect them because as I say, they started slow, and were at first easily confused with either low blood sugar, or silent migraines, both of which I occasionally suffer from. It's only in the fullness of years that I get the full spectrum of exciting symptoms.
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IN fact the only reason that they were EVER connected is that I switched to Kaiser Permanente, an HMO, and they like you to meet your doctor. So I go in, and as I recall, my BP was a little high at first--normal for me, if I've just sat down. Nurse said they'd take it again.
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Nurse looks up with a very funny expression. "It's 80/40. Do you have low blood pressure?"
"No, I have high blood pressure."
Suddenly there are a lot of people in the room, and someone is asking if I feel dizzy.
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"Why yes," I said, and realized I was in the early stages of an attack. I think I said something like that, but they were all about ordering a gurney so they can get me downstairs and run an IV.
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For the first time, i'm more chill than my doctors. It's an attack, I'm sitting down, it's fine.
In fact, when the gurney was delayed, I said "I can walk". I knew if it got bad, I could just sit down.
Nurse looks at me like I'm crazy. "No," she said. "You can't."
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They run an IV, my BP pops back up into normal range, and eventually a doctor comes in and we do some spelunking in my medical history.
"Why are you on [name of drug]?" she asks.
"I don't know, some urgent care doc put me on it years ago."
And finally, I know what's wrong.
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We take me off the drug. It is a miracle cure. That was the last such attack I ever had.
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So why am I telling you this story? To blame the health system? No. I should have pushed harder to figure out what was wrong instead of timidly accepting the rushed verdict of a handful of doctors who saw me for ten minutes each.
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The occasion was the publication of "The Deep Places", the memoir of his struggle with chronic lyme--a disease doctors doubt exist.
And maybe it doesn't; I see both sides. But here's what I also see: how easy it is to write off pain you can't feel.
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I was thinking about 's story as I was reading your thread, thanks for sharing. People can hear him tell his story to here: