Not necessarily upward

(Written on March 31st; finally typed up today. The following remains the same. Since then, I’ve had radioactive thyroid treatment, which has left me exhausted yet semi-feral. They warned me about this part, so I will wade on through. I have also been told that there is a light ahead.)

Ultimately, this is a cool medical mystery. It’s cool because I’m 90% sure it won’t kill me before I’m 40. It’s also cool because I’ve seen more than a handful of doctors and there is not a definitive diagnosis. They seem like well-educated people; they agree with one another’s blood tests and have more than one diploma each. They just don’t agree on what I have, and more frustrating for me, how long it will last. My endocrinologist is sure it’s an allergic reaction to the medication I took for my thyroid, so I’m going with that. I’ve filed a report with the FDA and I’ve added it as a status on my Facebook wall, so you know it’s for real. Apologies to the allergist and rheumatologist who think it could be any number of things. I can’t exist like that.

The heavens and Oprah were clearly looking out for me when I got laid off, because otherwise, I wouldn’t have had the time to get sick. It’s a semi-full-time job, the affliction, one that requires daytime doctors’ appointments more than 10 miles from home and a state away. Forget the days in the hospital and the weeks that followed under the care of my mother; it’s the upkeep that taxes.

The lingering issue is pain in my knees, and while I was never going to scale Everest, it’s irritating to feel strain each time you stand or sit. I’m trying to lose weight in an effort to take pressure off of my joints and build upon the weight loss momentum an overtime thyroid and illness provide, but am more often than not giving in to the call of the Wicked, the Cadbury egg and the Twizzler. I don’t even like candy that much, I would have told you a year ago, and it would have been the truth. Now my hands serve as shovels for Sour Patch Kids and Mike and Ikes and Mary Janes. I have been keeping a hidden stash in the linen closet, in an oversize gift bag someone brought to the hospital. If we could have periodic superpowers, candy consumption would apparently be mine.

Other things – similar sensory experiences – have changed at the same time, leaving many smells newly overwhelming. When I was away from home, a bulb of garlic in the cabinet closest to the window warmed itself for a full month, probably turning over and around, placing each of its parts closer and closer to the sun. When I got home, still unable to navigate the stairs to take out the trash, the smell inside that cabinet was so pungent, so horrifying and crippling in its intensity, that I dry heaved as if I’d found a dead person. A dead person left in my Florida apartment in the middle of August. Ten years ago when I lived there. It’s like this with so many other scents too, which is disappointing. A neighbor cooking a strongly-spiced dinner, a leftover burrito pulled from a dinner container. I gag, deeply in the thick of my throat, the most attractive kind. It’s as if I’m pregnant, but I don’t have sex. Exactly like that.

***

I’m doing my best to ensure that I have sex again this decade by starting to date again. This is a relatively time-intensive activity, as well, one that involves looking through online mug shots and attempting charm and spontaneity and wholehearted uncrazy through the exchange of light emails. It’s not really an adventure, as more than two of my coupled friends have described it. It’s a soul-sucking and constant reminder of your singleness and the pool (of shirtless men posed on shag carpets) in which you’re now swimming. But that doesn’t make for good ad taglines.

The last date was a really nice guy. We met for dessert and had good starting conversation, staying clear of the weather and opting instead for DC local talk and favorite food indulgences. I’d canceled our earlier date due to my stay at the Medical Resort, so I gave him some background on the suspected med reaction, the hospital roommate who told me about selling crack to pay off her house – you know, the basics. He in turn shared an anecdote about his experiences with hospitals, and in what I will call my empathetic fervor – not to mention the eagerness associated with not having been in a social situation for more than a calendar month – I pushed him to share more. Which prompted talk of his most recent health crisis. Which led to a frank discussion of his imminent organ transplant. He wins.

Turns out living as a medical mystery does not great first date fodder make. I did wonder for a split second how we’d look as caregivers, him driving me to endocrinologist appointments and me telling him those extra organs don’t make him look fat, but it was not to be. He wished me good luck in my job search and I thanked him for the cake. Lesson learned: add bodily failures to the list of second date topics. Next.