Ab Initio

I am having a hard time placing myself on the health continuum. I used to think of myself as very healthy, but in retrospect, after learning about hormones and their effects on the body, I am increasingly viewing myself in the past as having been sicker than even I have ever suspected, with the generous help of my numerous uninformed doctors.

And boy, have I seen doctors in my life! All eager to label me as this very healthy chick, rather spoiled, who was wasting people’s time.

So: I was sick, dismissed as a hypochondriac nine times out of ten and led to believe that I was, after all, A-OK.

Maybe that was a good thing. Thinking you’re healthy must be a positive element, an important attitude — we all know the famous examples of cancer patients becoming well and of healthy people developing cancers when their results were accidentally switched in a hospital lab, etc. However, I can’t help but ask myself what my life would have been like had I met a doctor who had a clue when my hormone-fueled engine started to cough and sputter. Someone who would not lead me to dismiss my symptoms as probably related to “lack of exercise”, “bad luck”, or worse, “my own head”.

It is hard to come to terms with a reality in which you’re really on your own, health wise… In which you pay thousands of dollars to doctors who do nothing for you and can’t or don’t know how to cure you, on labs that may be irrelevant or simply botched and careless work. A reality in which you think you find your way following diet gurus like those possibly leading the Paleo lemmings into the metabolism precipice… In which you put your precious health into the hands of folks more or less trained who seem to have gleaned a different truth beyond the current noise, and then you end up feeling worse than before — albeit, even more informed on the gazillion things that can and do go wrong in the simple process of feeding yourself in this day and age if you are not a self-sufficient farmer… Is the Peat experience one more bitter experience, or is it the answer to my quest for health? Stay tuned, I guess...

After fourteen months of Paleo cavorting, I felt incredibly unwell. One doctor led to another, one lab result to another exploration, and that’s how I “survived” two cancer scares and one lupus fright, while dealing with Hashimoto symptoms and hormonal changes — in God knows which order. I disbursed thousands in health care bills, for nothing. I am back where I started, less trusting of the medical community than ever. I see them as business people, briskly taking advantage of our sickness or fear of sickness in order to keep their businesses rolling. In theory, it all may be very lofty — they are trying to make us better. And sometimes in practice that does happen, too. What are the percentages of that? I guess it depends wildly of the person in question and no studies are available to clear such aspects. In my case, most of the time, I discover it has mostly been a huge waste of my time and useless aggravation. I seem to float between under-analysis/treatment and over-analysis/treatment, not finding a good middle ground. That’s why I feel that, more than ever, I need to understand what is happening to me, to inform myself as best I can and to try to be my own doctor. And my own nutritionist, which is in itself a severe challenge, as anyone who has read a couple of articles and blogs, if not books on this subject, can attest.

Maybe all this is detrimental and will end up just engulfing days, weeks, months of my life. I am already something of an authority when it comes to many medical issues. Do I like it? No. Although sometimes I feel I can help, my lack of credentials doesn’t allow me to dispense credible advice — and so I just have to sit, simmering inside, and look at my preciously vegan friends and their desperately malnourished children, drinking soy milk while their mothers distribute PETA ads on Facebook. It’s OK. As I order my steak and wine I hear them sigh audibly and then go about eating their bread and salad, complaining about the fat in the dressing… I used to enjoy the moment and the conversation, regardless of what was in our plates, now I cannot anymore, the feeling that they are harming themselves under my eyes is too strong, I end up depressed after each of our meals together. Going out with a vegan or even a “mere eater” has become a cortisol fest, so I would rather not have read all those studies.

Most times, I am out there, staring at people and representing them mentally like I never have before: their corpulence, their hair, nails, teeth, skin all “speak” to me. I can tell who is in trouble, from a health perspective. I can guess who is hypothyroid — so many! Who is in menopause. Who is taking hormones. I can almost imagine who eats and drinks what… All kinds of bizarre elements that were never a part of how I saw the world. Frankly, I don’t like to “look through” people that way, I preferred it when their looks didn’t give me such thoughts. Or “noise”.

Sometimes their symptoms are so obvious I can’t help but mention something. The looks, the incredulity on their faces! No way, I am not hyperthyroid, says the man whose eyes are bulging out, smoking feverishly, so happy to have lost weight more easily than he thought possible, while still drinking and eating heartily… The woman talking to me about her menopause cannot even see how her thyroid is desperately holding on to her neck like a puffy doughboy, so fragile under the sagging skin. I ask her how long has she been hypo? She looks at me like I am some shaman. Are people so oblivious to what they look like? I can tell that what she tries to fashion into a trendy coiffure is just some remnants of a once glorious blond mane. “I see sick people”, and that should not have been my lot. Or maybe it should have, maybe going through this phase of life and its discontents makes us all aware of what health really means and how precious it is and what it translates into.

I (think I) can tell when a man could use some testosterone, a woman some progesterone. I can tell when everything is gloriously in order, I can admire those nicely humming human machines in top notch form and I wish them well and hope they will never ruin that exquisite equilibrium. Because I can’t help wondering, can we really climb back from under a failing thyroid? Can we really fix the hormonal balance once it starts to fail? Can we avoid serious diseases when something goes wrong and we don’t know exactly what it is and every set of lab tests results comes back imperfect in a different way and you just know your body is doing some serious adjustments, groping in the dark for its lost mojo, and maybe you could help, but you’re most likely getting in the way with all the stuff you offer it in terms of food and environment, limited as you are by your knowledge, and by everyone else’s knowledge on what may be going on?

As we lose our health and our beauty, we begin to know what incredibly precious and fragile gifts we were enjoying.

(the initial posts of these diary were written before the date of their posting)