Maybe it's a story that needs to be told or maybe I'm just a narcissistic millennial writing another blog about my life. Either way I wanted to document my medical history and search for a diagnosis. I chose the name medical anomaly because that's what I've been calling myself lately. Every test seems to say I'm healthy but that's never the case. So I'm an anomaly because they can't find out what's wrong with me. But then I just found out that a medical anomaly is actually a definition for birth defects but oh well. I still think it describes me despite that definition.
But where to start with my medical problems? I had jaundice as a newborn, but that's not unusual. In fact, I think I was a pretty healthy child. I'd get the occasional cold but nothing too serious. When I was about 12, I started getting dizzy spells and had to keep candy with me at all times just in case. My doctor said I was hypoglycemic but I never actually had my blood tested. The dizzy spells haven't entirely ceased, but they happen a lot less frequently now.
My teenage years got more difficult. We moved when I was 15 and that's when my depression started. Again not too unusual. I also started to develop an anxiety problem that my sister and dad have had to deal with that we call TUT, short for throw up thing. But I'll get to that later when it's actually diagnosed. There's bigger problems between there.
My senior year of high school was awful for my health. I kept getting headaches that were increasingly worse. Painkillers didn't help. I slept almost all day as my only source of pain relief. I went to the doctor repeatedly and nothing. She told me it was "normal" teenage headaches and gave me neck exercises. Then I started noticing that I was having trouble balancing and walking straight. It's a good thing that I never had to do one of those drunk driving tests! But still nothing was diagnosed until one morning I woke up speaking nonsense. My dad rushing me to the hospital and I was diagnosed with a pilocytic astrocytoma. A brain tumour in my cerebellum. It was operated on the next day and you'd think that'd be the end, apart from check ups with my neurosurgeon.
Well my anxiety got worse in college. It escalated during my final years of high school from feeling nauseated to occasionally throwing up to throwing up every time I saw, thought about, or smelled food. During my sophomore year, I reached the peak of my anxiety. But we weren't sure what it was at first. But it was a major problem. I lost 10 lbs from my already underweight body in about a month. My doctor prescribed me a medicine that would speed my digestion until we got a diagnosis. Fast forward about a week and I started having muscle contractions and spasms in my leg and neck. Turns out I was allergic and had to go to the hospital to get an IV of antihistamines. A few weeks later we discovered it was anxiety and I started taking anti anxiety medication and slowly bringing food back into my life.
My next trip to the hospital, apart from follow up MRIs and neurosurgeon visits, was about four years later. I started getting headaches. Not like the ones for my brain tumour. These were different. The brain tumour headaches felt like normal headaches but really bad. These were in the back of my head and felt pulsing. My grandma later told me that she had experienced these types of headaches in the past and described the pain similar to that of the contractions during labour and childbirth. That seemed like it'd be pretty accurate although I've not had kids since they were similar to extreme menstrual cramps. Over the course of a few days, they got way worse. Painkillers didn't help and I was waking up in the middle of the night screaming. During one day, it got so bad that my mom came home from work and took me to the hospital. Tests were done. Nothing came back. I had my regular follow up MRI a couple months later and everything was clear again. But at least the headaches did stop and haven't come back.
I still have depression, anxiety, and a bit of insomnia but that brings us up to the last couple of years.
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