Embrace the Chaos

Embrace the Chaos. I saw a card today in a gift shop that said this on the front. Granted, it was a birthday card, but it so appropriately captured my feelings right now that I had to buy it and proudly display it in my room. Turns out, I'm really rather fantastic at figuring out what's NOT wrong with me...like maybe even at a professional status. New business card: 4th grade teacher and professional anti-diagnostician.

Today started with an appointment with neurology. My appointment started at 8:15 and I left around 12:15 and to be honest, the biggest thing I remember is that my brain hurt (no neurology pun intended...OK maybe a little bit intended.) In any event, a team of doctors thoroughly went through my case. They asked questions, poked, prodded, asked more questions and then left for awhile to talk it over. When the team came back, it was a little bit like being on the stand in the courtroom. (Disclaimer: I've never actually been on the stand...or in a courtroom for that matter. However, my husband and I are expert viewers of Law and Order, which is clearly a representation of real life. So I know what I'm talking about.) They fired questions, I stammered awkwardly, they fired more questions...you get the idea. The verdict? I don't have autonomic disfunction and I don't have POTS. Well...at least not all the time. Sometimes I have POTS, but sometimes my body doesn't feel like it. So I have occasional POTS...ya know, maybe on Mondays, Tuesdays and every other Friday.

Totally straight forward, right?

SO. The good news? I don't have permanent autonomic disfunction and POTS. WOOHOO!!

The weird news? I don't have permanent autonomic disfunction and POTS...but I present with classic symptoms of POTS and they don't know why. Gold star body.

At this point, I also feel the need to publicly apologize to my autonomic nervous system. I've been giving it a bad rep and I feel like I need to clarify. Your autonomic nervous system responds to directions from your brain, in order to run several systems in our body. Turns out that my timing isn't only off in my tennis game (however, my camp friends can all agree that it is REALLY off in that game). My brain tells my autonomic nervous system to do the right thing, but just at the wrong time. Timing, therefore, is the issue and not the cause. Phew, glad I got that off of my chest.

In other news, I also met with endocrinology today and I'm pretty sure that the doctor and I have reached BFF status. I met with endocrinology because of my history of Graves Disease (hyperactive thyroid) and to see if any of this chaos is possibly caused by additional imbalances somewhere in my hot mess of a body. My doctor was fabulously friendly and he told me all about his family, where they live, what they do, their favorite holiday foods...ya know, the usual. I'd like to add at this point, that the man was casually chatting with me like an old pal from med school, all while I lay completely topless and dangling my 6 feet over the edge of the 5'9" examination table. Ya know, perfect time to tell me about his son's travels to Indonesia.

So where does that leave me? Embracing the chaos. Going for more tests and stumping more people and seeing if I get a discount for visiting literally every floor of the Mayo Building.