Today I went to the doctor to ask about the weird weakness and heart skippiness I’ve experience for the last few days. As expected, it’s probably nothing serious. (I’ll be scheduling a follow-up test soon, but the doctor is talking about getting baseline data, not looking for anything scary.) But sitting in the waiting room and trying maintain a lack of eye-contact with my fellow patients, I found myself contemplating why this is such a nerve wracking experience.

I suppose few people enjoy going to the doctor, but I’m not normally an anxious person, and I was decidedly anxious. So much so, in fact, that the nurse later commented on my blood pressure and heart rate. And no, this was not reassuring.

Letting my eyes wander across the four different patterns of chairs lined up in the waiting room, I tried telling myself that I was nervous because this is the only time I’ve gone to the doctor for anything other than a check up (except for one strep test when I was 9 or 10-ish). But then I realized that it probably has more to do with what has thus far been the majority of my interactions with doctors: traumatic injury, surgery, and rehab, followed by more surgery… and all of this twice before the age of 14. For whatever reason, ever since blowing out my elbow when I was 9 and similarly destroying my hip when I was 12, I guess I worry that most doctors really just want to cut me open and fill me with pins, plates, and screws.

“This doctor is not an orthopedic surgeon,” I told myself as I sat there in the waiting room, staring at the bewilderingly pattered rug and consciously unclenching my fingers under my folded coat. “She’s not even interested in my bones or in looking directly under my skin. And she certainly won’t want to knock me out.”

A tiny woman walked in and sat down, maneuvering a walker that was easily twice her size. She looked calm and collected.

“Nothing’s broken… I’m not even in pain. The worst they’ll do is stick me for blood, and that’s certainly not scary.”

A woman and a man walked in, arms entwined, and announced that they were there for a prenatal appointment. They looked downright happy.

The tiny woman got called back for her appointment.

“It’ll probably be a really quick appointment, since I’ve been feeling better yesterday and today. They’ll say, ‘Huh, that was weird. Let us know if it comes back.’ And I’ll leave.”

…

None of this helped. But I suppose I have to go to the doctor so rarely that maybe it’s ok just to say that this is one of those things that will scare me.

2008 has been an odd year so far, and not an entirely pleasant one. Of course, most distressing things in life seem to either work themselves out or become unimportant over time. I just hope that this happens sooner rather than later this time.

Of course, if I could figure out what caused those spells of weakness I had over the last 5 days, and if the weather would stop swinging 60 degrees in the space of a day and a half… perhaps I’d be able to turn down the volume on my imagination and get back to being content with reality.

An imagination is a terrible thing, sometimes.

Yesterday was weird. I had a headache in the morning, was listless all day, and had a weird pounding pulse at night (but no fever or anything).

Today I got up and got myself to work. I didn’t feel ill at all, but I can’t remember being so lacking in energy in my entire life. At one point I caught myself deciding not to write an email because doing so would require me to lift my arms. That’s when I got a little concerned.

But there was a lot to do, so I figured I could sit there and do it. And I did. And all of a sudden, just before the end of the day, I realized that I felt fine. I was working through all sorts of projects that would have been unthinkable just hours before. And now, as long as I don’t do something crazy like walk up a flight of stairs, it’s as if nothing had happened. What a relief!

[update: well… until later. Now I’m back to being utterly limp.]

I should be asleep. I should have been asleep long ago. This would be true of any week night, but it’s especially true tonight. You see, I spent the whole day lying listlessly on the couch, not well enough to get up and do anything but not sick enough to feel entitled to such laziness. It was such a waste of a day off of work (though P seemed to really enjoy the excuse to laze around with me all day). So I should have been asleep tonight of all nights because I need to rest up and be well for work tomorrow. There’s so much that needs doing.

And yet, even after lying perfectly still for what seems like an age, sleep simply will not creep in and take hold. Now, I’m not one of those people who normally falls into bed and sleeps instantly. I generally lie awake long enough to process the day’s events or imagine the possible futures of characters in books. But I almost never find myself unable to turn my brain off and sleep. Tonight, though I find myself dwelling on some of that kind of drama that no doubt lurks in the recesses of everyone’s minds, just waiting for a quiet moment to leap out of its quiet corner and grind its heals into the softest, most tender parts of the imagination.

I’m anything but a drama queen, and I lead a pretty boring life, actually. But even so, there are a couple of lurkers that seize any opportunity to make me question myself, my life, and my future. Lucky me… the last couple of days have been chalk full of these little opportunities. Most of them involve other people, so I won’t go into them here, but I’m realizing that I’ll have to work a little harder to remind myself that none of this really and truly counts as “drama” in the grand scheme of things. None of this shakes any foundations.

So rather than play conversations or events over and over in my mind, I’ll lie here with my laptop propped up on a pillow. I’ll write. I’ll consult Dr. Google to learn more about why my pulse is fast and hard even though I’ve been lying perfectly still for 3 hours. I’ll poke my nose into the social networking sites I keep up with. I might even plug in my earphones and listen to part of a book on tape. Anything but lie still in the dark.

After my last post, I’ve talked to friends who have felt the need to apologize for ever telling me they weren’t feeling well, or or else they tell me they’re not feeling well and then saying something like “Oh no! Did I just hurt you? I’m sorry.” (Please note, this is not said sarcastically, or anything.) So I think I should clarify: I have never thought of these little pains as bad. It’s kind of like how stubbing your toe hurts and stretching hurts, but stretching is a good thing while stubbing your toe just plain hurts. If you don’t feel the stretch, something’s wrong and you’ll never increase your range of motion. It’s just sort of pointless. This is exactly how the empathy pains work. If I don’t feel them, something’s wrong. (Incidentally, I’ve known two pathological liars in my time, and while both could tell stories that would make me cry in sympathy, neither could excite these empathy pains… maybe that was my first clue that these people weren’t for real.)

Not only do I expect and hope to “feel the burn,” that constant connection to the people around me, I have historically sought out that feeling. It’s true confessions time. I’ve only told one other person in my entire life about this stuff, and that was just last night. So rather than step things up gradually I thought I’d just blab to a few million of my closest internet buddies…

So what’s this great secret? I used to read passages in books where a character gets sick over and over and over. That part of Oliver Twist where Oliver faints in the witness stand? I must have read that hundreds of times as a kid. Frodo struggling forward with that wraith knife in his shoulder…. ecstasies of agony. Sometimes, I’d peruse our bookshelves at home and read only those passages from each book that twisted my guts the most. Not only that, but I’d copy particularly affecting passages into a little notebook so that I could study them later.

Looking back, I don’t understand two things: why was this so important to me, and why was it so private that I’ve never EVER let on that I’d do this? I’ll probably never know.