Throwback Tuesday — Aging isn’t for sissies or hypochondriacs revisited

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This post is from 2017. I’m not surprised my attitude on these things has not changed. Nor has my way of dealing with them. Wait a while; eat more chocolate; and drink more margaritas. Oh yes, rewrite your will weekly. All that works.

This can cure a lot of things. Source: Google

Aging is not for sissies. Weird stuff happens to your body. Stuff you can’t explain.

For years you are a healthy person then all of a sudden you feel something when you swallow. Or there’s a suspicious looking thing on your leg. You swear it grows as you look at it.

There are two kinds of people. Those who ignore this stuff and those that freak out. Can you guess which group I belong to?

I have been taught to “get things checked out.” Easier when caught early. Get it fixed and move on.

I have a new rule. Unless it appears life threatening (and everything does for me) I try to hump it out for two months. Then maybe go to the doc. Or google. Or check with one of my friends.

Courtesy of massdistraction via Flickr — This is my other favorite medication!

Things disappear. The body heals itself. That ache where my kidney is, turned out to be muscular rather than any deadly disease. (No worries though. I did get someone to donate a kidney. It took a couple of margaritas and I don’t know if she remembers. I’ll have to get her to sign a paper next round of drinks.)

Have you ever googled symptoms (of course you have, come on! Fess up!) So far I’ve come up with some pretty scary diseases for what turned out to be…well…nothing.

So how do you know when to wait? You don’t. That lump when I swallowed turned out to be nothing (after some invasive tests involving nasty tasting stuff the memory of which could only be wiped away by many mocha lattes.) I still feel it occasionally but I don’t worry about it. Could be stress. It’s no longer taking over my life.

I am subject to heart beat irregularities. I’ve had them since I was in my 20s. (Ok, I’ve always been a hypochondriac.) I have been tested and retested by the best of the best. Nada. Could be stress (is there a theme here?). I have an extra heartbeat. A lot of people do but I can feel mine. That makes my EKG abnormal and I have to receive an “ok” from my heart doc before any procedure. (It also means I need a heart doc although there is technically nothing wrong with my heart.)

Doctors are humans. They are not gods. They do not know everything. I suffered from undiagnosed chronic appendicitis for years until a very enterprising young doctor decided to cut me open (they called it exploratory surgery back then) to see why I was having excruciating pain. My inflamed appendix was in the wrong spot so it went undiagnosed. Bingo. All fixed. After seven years of rewriting my will every week.

Women who have had radiation after breast cancer can get intercostal neuralgia. Many times it’s years later so you don’t get the connection. It is painful as hell but the worst part was that the docs didn’t know what it was.

I thought it was the big “C” making a comeback! (Insert emoji for psycho patient here.) Intercostal is the muscle between the ribs. One of my ribs eventually fractured. (Ouch!) My chiropractor figured it out. I rarely get it these days and when I do, it’s not severe. (It still requires chocolate or a margarita!)

New protocol is to wait two (very long) months before freaking out and increase my chocolate intake immediately.

Aging is not for sissies. (Or for hypochondriacs!)

36 thoughts on “Throwback Tuesday — Aging isn’t for sissies or hypochondriacs revisited”

  1. I don’t have a heart doc although I do also have an abnormal EKG, it looks as if I’ve had a heart attack in the past and I have not. My PCP signs my EKG each year and gives it to me so I can show it to anyone who asks.

    For me, I go to the doc once a year for a very thorough exam and take all the tests he tells me to take, and that’s enough, I don’t worry about the rest.

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    • Actually my PCP ok’d my last procedure so I’ve dumped my heart doc. (Actually he moved so I am without and decided not to get a new one until I had a reason.) I do the tests too but I have GI issues that occasionally roar. Overall I’m healthy except for the old age weird things that pop up.

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  2. I am amazed your appendix did not burst when you had trouble for years. My husband’s appendix did burst. Thank God for antibiotics and a good surgeon. I am glad you survived all these things.

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    • The doc was too. That pain is the worst. There is nothing you can do except wait it out. My episodes would last about 12 hours. By the time I could get into a doc (this was before ERs and walk-ins), the worst was over. Even the last one when my doc told me to go directly to the hospital, by the time they took the bloodwork and the surgeon came in, it had subsided. He couldn’t do the surgery as an emergency. I had to be “scheduled.” Fortunately this was on a Friday and I was scheduled for Monday.

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  3. My mom had a lot of medical issues, primarily orthopedic, as a result of being in a car accident at age 11. I knew she was in constant pain, but I don’t think she was a hypochondriac, however, my father was at the doctor’s office all the time, for imagined issues … I say “imagined” as he would come home from the doctor’s office and say nothing was wrong. Or he’d go for blood work or tests and they’d call the house with the test results – nothing was wrong. My mom had horrible morning sickness the first trimester and couldn’t keep anything down except Arrowroot biscuits. She told me years later that my father would stay home from work saying he was nauseous and couldn’t keep anything down and therefore he couldn’t work. She told him he had sympathy pains and he got mad. :) You, on the other hand had legitimate medical problems over the course of your lifetime, so you have a right to be concerned when something happens. As to appendicitis, my father for all his imagined ills, told my mom he had sharp pains. I wasn’t very old, maybe three or four and Mom didn’t drive, so the pain was severe enough to call an ambulance and he had a burst appendix! I remember the ambulance coming and taking him away.

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  4. At least you get it checked out. Twice I’ve ended up in the Intensive Care of the hospital because I think I can walk off the pain. (which is much harder to do these days) I don’t want to be a bother. I don’t want to make a fuss. I’m pretty neurotic, so while I spike my anxiety over what the pain is, I also know I’m neurotic, so I don’t make a fuss. I will go for years with an undiagnosed pain. The last one I wrote off for 5-6 years as acid reflux. It was my gall bladder. By the time I was admitted into the hospital, it was so infected that they were afraid to do the surgery, as it was mostly just a blob of goo and they thought it might explode into my body cavity. Possibly I should have mentioned the pain to my doc earlier.

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  5. Aging stinks! I feel much better when you post about it and I read comments. I am not alone!!!
    The chronic appendicitis is freaky. Thank heavens they finally figured it out, Kate! Did they find cysts on your ovaries or did they just guess? At 25 I had a ruptured dermoid in my right ovary. That was freaky too. It was a mess. I always have the not so good luck of a 1 in a million chance of getting something weird! There’s more but I will stop here… I never had tonsils or wisdom teeth.

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    • Nothing was wrong with my ovaries. They didn’t do any exams or testing back then, just guessing based on what I said. New doc ran blood tests and x-ray and my white blood cells were through the roof. They knew there was an infection somewhere. This was in the late 60s. Hopefully they’ve come a long way. I never heard of a dermoid!

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  6. Wow, I haven’t met anyone else who had chronic appendicitis before! I had it when I was 20, and yes, it was awful! Was so glad when they finally took it out!

    Yes, to googling, not that I need any help adding to my imagination, but ….!

    Yes, to aging not being for wimps, and thanks for keeping the humor in it for us! 🙂
    Time for Chocolate 🍫

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  7. Love this repeat post – why? Made me re-examine all my various aches and pains and try to be realistic about them. I have had my share of ACTUAL serious body “stuff” but at almost 80 I’m sort of re-prioritizing my list of worries and discarding a bunch of them. “What will be will be” is my new mantra. I have a great primary care doc but I will totally admit that years ago he seemed more interested in my reported aches and pains than he does now that I’m ancient. I think it’s one of those “you should be feeling lucky you’re still here” things. LOL Actually – truth be told – I AM lucky. Very.

    Hugs, Pam

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  8. Yup, it seems like all health concerns that develop after a certain age, require copious amounts of chocolate and/or margaritas. Thank goodness for that. I am reminded that it occurred to me that we rely on a doctor’s ‘practice.’ No one ever calls it experience. Makes you wonder why we turn our health over to people who practice, as opposed to those with expertise. ;)

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  12. I hear you… and to ask dr. google can end not so good… I thought there is something wrong with stomach, bought everything ki suggested while waiting for docs appointment… its a thoracic spine syndrome… but its good to have many stomach meds… just in case ;O)

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  13. I just googled chronic appendicitis because I never heard of it before.

    (I must have skimmed over that paragraph back in 2017. Not too surprising since my mom was not doing well. She died July 31, 2017. From old age, nothing “serious.”)

    That reminds me of a joke: You know all those health nuts who refuse to drink margaritas and eat chocolate cake for breakfast? Some day they are going to feel so stupid being in the hospital dying of nothing. :D

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        • Did they ever find out what it was? They told me I had cysts on my ovaries. Equally scary diagnosis as it started when I was 13. It wasn’t until the new doc had x-rays taken and could not see the appendix that they figured it out.

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          • Yes. After several visits to the dentist, a visit to a neurologist (brain tumor?), a brain scan (tumor?), speculation about psychosomatic injuries, numerous visits to the campus dispensary where they would give me ONE pain pill at a time . . . they finally figured it out. A tooth abscess that the dentist hadn’t found after doing “full x-rays” (twice) because he didn’t bother to film the roots.

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          • Thank goodness the new doc had the sense to look for your missing appendix. At 13, that would be even scarier than for me at 22.

            Although being worried about having a brain tumor (or a psychosomatic illness) during my senior year in college wasn’t much fun.

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