"uh, Oh. Here comes Patient Number 32749.38....again."

I suppose I should have realized when I was a child that I would one day have a collective medical record equal to the size of a set of encyclopedias...or more.  You see, I was always the sickly child, the one who got allergies, strep throat at least twice a year, bronchitis, mono, you name it.  I was put in glasses in first grade, and when I began going to the dentist they decided that my teeth were abnormally groovy and needed sealants put on.  All of them.  So you see, my parents and I had ample warning.  But we did not heed this warning and instead kept muddling through missed school, ineffective medications, and repetitive trips to Dr. A, Dr. B, Dr. C, etc.

As I grew up and we moved to a new town, we realized even more the number of things that we as my family managed to confound doctors with.  We also realized some things that had gone on for years and could have been treated by a simple thorough medical exam.  I had my first surgery at 16, a "simple" sinus surgery.  After weeks of not healing, a second procedure had to be done to remove scar tissue.  Please note that this event should have been surrounded by some faint suspicious music with some effective spotlighting to emphasize that anyone of any intelligence should pick up on the foreshadowing taking place.  We didn't notice.

Fast forward several years, several surgeries.  Scar tissue, it seems, has become a sort of superhuman thing for me.  Doctors laugh (yes, actually laugh) as they try to remove my baby from my tummy, trying desperately to avoid or break through the inpenetratable web of kryptonite that has formed and continues to form inside me.  But alas, this is just the tip of the iceberg.  I have had years of diagnoses that amaze, confound, and clearly defy all odds of mankind.  A rare and degenerative eye disease that renders me legally blind at the ripe old age of 23, scary lumps that turn out to be...scar tissue, unexplained allergic reactions during pregnancy that really throw nurses into a frenzy during labor, gestational diabetes followed by Diabetes Type 2, bleeds during pregnancy, miscarriages, diseases that show up in places they shouldn't on my body, a failed, Lap Band procedure because of my body's intolerance for anything, a growth on the inside of my eyelid (picture a flaming torch coming at your eye as you are required to hold it open), so many visits to the OB/GYN that I am now on Volume II of my overly thick chart there, atypical IBS, atypical presentation of all of the above, the metabolism of a sloth, and that's just to name a few.  I tell you, my doctors only keep me around so that they can one day make tons of money off of an article they will publish on the atypical presentation of every rare and non rare disorder known in their respective field of study.

So it should not have surprised me when I went to the endocrinologist this week to see if maybe my thyroid was not working properly, somehow giving an explanation to the fact that I have been working out like Jane Fonda on speed and eating rabbit food for the past two months and not lost an ounce.  Well, wonder of all wonders, my thyroid works fine.  If anything, it borders on working TOO well, which should make me LOSE weight rather than gain.  Go figure.  Well, that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.  I lost it.  First with the poor PA (obviously they didn't realize who they were dealing with when they did not schedule me with a doctor), and then moving to the doctor when she realized I might jump up and strangle her.  He sat patiently while I went through a very "un-Jesus girl" rage about the unfairness of my obviously unbalanced gene selection since no one else in my family seemed to be vying for medical textbook space with me and what had I ever done to deserve this uncooperative body of mine and, well, you get the point.  His dumbed-down explanation was that I have a metabolic problem that cannot be treated.  My question, after I calmed down, was, "So I have diabetes because I'm fat and I'm fat because I have diabetes?"  He verified this insane logic with a nod.  "So, following this train of logic, I need to lose weight to help my diabetes, but I can't lose weight because of the diabetes?"  Another nod.  Oh, it will come.  Eventually.  But probably not before I get frustrated and give up, as it could take SEVERAL months to see any change on that evil contraption we call a bathroom scale.  Oh, and Trainer Terry is insane if he thinks that I can stick to a 1000-calorie diet.  At least the medical professionals agreed with me on that and gave me some more room to chew.

So I left in tears, frustrated yet again that I once more fall into the 0.00000000001 percent of people that suffer from numerous conditions, side effects, and problems that only 0.000001 percent of people have.  My family and I have learned to listen well when the drug commercials tell of the horrific side effects like heart attack, stroke, anal leakage, fainting, joint pain, foaming at the mouth and uncontrolled urination that affect one out of a trillion people who take this drug for insomnia.  It WILL happen.

So what have I learned?  Well, good doctors are the ones that let you cry and don't lock you up when you do.  That's important.  And I have to be content that, while I will not be losing the fat like my friends who have also begun this getting-healthy journey, my health is in fact improving.  And I must learn to ignore, or at least not resent, my brothers who have run marathons and are training for triathlons and can run for miles while I run the distance of two streetlights.  I will probably be the fat one in the gym for a long time.  But I'll be a strong fat girl.  And that's just going to have to be okay.  For now.