Present
Chicken soup for the hormonal soul
I have written before about how I don’t like doctors. I don’t trust them, for the most part. I wonder what the benefit is in feeling worse after going to one than you do not going to one. I’m sure that, while most of my doctorphobias go back to that mean gyn when I was seventeen-ish years old, watching my grandmother die of lung cancer didn’t help how I felt.
So anyway, I bit the bullet and made my first doctor’s visit last May (on what would have been Nanny’s 75th birthday, ironically), where a much nicer gyn assured me there wasn’t anything too wrong with me and sent me to the endo. After several months of tweaking the thyroid and hormones, I am off the hook with him until I need my prescriptions refilled. Hooray!
For the past couple of months, at the beginning of the month, I get nauseous for a couple days. You’d figure I’d think “Gee, maybe it’s just the meds.” No, I needed my concert buddy/co-worker to plant that seed in my head. “It’s probably the meds.” A quick check on Google (and, y’know, in the literature that comes with the pack every month) confirmed that diagnosis. Seeing as this is the beginning of the third month on this pill, it makes absolute and complete sense. And I hope it goes away with the first week of active pills next month.
Anyway, aside from the couple of days of nausea each month, I have the awesome side effect of hormonal overreactions. No, seriously. The other day? I read about The Swayze having pancreatic cancer, and the Enquirer being a bunch of douches with their five-week death countdown. Then I got some mail from Memorial Sloan-Kettering asking for donations for cancer. Then I called my mother. “Did you hear about Patrick Swayze? He’s got cancer.” Proceed to burst into tears.
Listen, anyone who knows me even a little bit probably knows that I hate cancer with the fire of a thousand suns, for what it has done to my family, and to what it’s done in ways large and small to nearly everyone I know in some way or another. But I do not normally cry over celebrities. Hey, I love Dirty Dancing (I did grow up in the 80’s, after all) and Ghost (’Molly, you in danger, girl!’), but my reaction was pretty over-the-top. That said, I am really sad to hear that Patrick has the least treatable form of cancer with a 4% survival rate, and I hope that his quality of life isn’t made toxic by the treatment they’re hoping will prolong said life.
Last night, I was watching the first disc in Oprah’s 20th anniversary set (thanks, Netflix!), and crying like a baby once again watching mothers with breast cancer videotape advice for the daughters they wouldn’t raise, and victims of abuse shattering into 95 personalities, and poor Mattie Stepanek, who’s been dead for three years already, and thinking how lucky I am to be alive, and how sad it is that I’m not savoring every moment like I should be.
So, yeah. I’m hormonal, and nauseous (I think I’m more hungry this morning than pukey), and bitter about cancer, and I know that rain and winter are definitely playing a big part in my mood as of late. The warm weather and sunshine that spring will hopefully bring around here soon is definitely going to be a good thing for my soul. If there’s anything I’ve learned from Oprah over the past twenty years, it’s that my spirit needs remembering, dammit!
I need to get dressed and do something today. In the rain. Damned winter.
Discussion
2 comments for “Chicken soup for the hormonal soul”
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Aw. It will be okay. I cry when I watch the 3 Day video! I cry at tv commericials. I cry when my husband says something mean to me. (What I perceive to be mean!) I was crying today thinking about my future maybe someday grandchildren! I’m not even on medications!
I hope you feel better. The Dairy Queen is open so that is the first sign of spring. Screw the Robin! ; )
OMG…I was totally weeping during the Ope Mattie Stepanek interview. That’s not hormones…that is just the saddest and simultaneously most inspiring story ever. I was watching it, sniffling, and saying “He finds joy and I’m bitching. I SU-U-U-U-CK! And he RU-U-U-LES!!”