Borderline

My sister said to me once that she thought my mother complained about her health (fatigue, minor aches and pains) at our age because she had a 15- and 17-year-old so maybe she just felt older than she really was. Maybe, I thought, but geez, I've felt crappy since my late teens/early 20s. Haven't you?

My sister is a person that I categorize as "hyper-healthy." D has a hyper-healthy brother and my father was too for most of his life, but now age is causing him some relatively minor health problems. Hyper-healthy people have never been hospitalized, never had a serious illness, never had problems with chronic pain, and very rarely even get a cold. And if they do, it tends to be mild and they get over it quickly. They don't seem to have trouble sleeping or eating. Their periods are exactly 28 days apart, they don't have cramps, and they ovulate on day 14. They never get accidentally pregnant while on birth control but then get suddenly pregnant the very first month that they start trying.Their weight never fluctuates more than 5 pounds. They have boundless energy. They wake up spritely in the morning and don't stop until their predetermined bedtime, where they fall asleep in less than 20 minutes and sleep all night. You get what I'm talking about, right?

Now my sister, who is all down with the meritocracy, would say that this is an earned privilege. Nearly anyone who wants to be this healthy can be if they sleep 8 hours on a regular schedule, eat healthy foods in moderation, and exercise daily, don't smoke, etc. And of course she is right to a point, doing all these things will only help you and make you healthier. There is no downside to living a healthy lifestyle. We should all strive to do that, and I'm not going to argue otherwise.

But I think a lot of it depends on where you are starting from. Whether it be genes or something in the environment that is affecting you, some people seem to start in a position of hyper-health. Others have to struggle and work from a more compromised position. My sister leads a pretty darn healthy lifestyle. She has a lot of discipline and that's great. She doesn't drink or smoke or do drugs. She doesn't eat the greatest diet, but she does eat in moderation. She walks, I think, around 3 or 4 miles a day, or rides an exercise bike for around 30 minutes or something. All that is great stuff, and it all positively contributes to her hyper-healthiness. But then we all know people that drink, smoke, eat crap and never get off the couch and live to be 100 with very few health problems. And then we also know people who are eating organic wheat germ everyday and doing everything right, but get cancer or something.

So, I think that lifestyle does have a factor in health, perhaps a large one. But I don't like it when people do the blame thing when someone else is struggling with health issues. Even if their struggle is trying to implement a healthy lifestyle. How much harder is it to get up and get yourself on the exercise bike when you have chronic aches and pains, vs. someone who feels great and energetic all the time. Or when you've worked all day as a nurse or a teacher and just stressed out your back and are exhausted compared to someone who drives to work in a cushy office all day. (Then there is a whole socioeconomic component to this, but I'm not going to get into that today.) I'm not saying that some people should be "excused" from trying to live a healthy lifestyle, I'm just saying that good health is a gift, not an entitlement based on the fact that you have the luxury of eating well.

I had a bad bought with kidney stones a few years back. I ended up having several failed surgeries and one partially successful one. After it was over, my sister asked me what I was going to do to prevent this from happening again. Um, pray? I can't control everything in the universe. Especially how my kidneys decide to process calcium. The only recommendation I ever received was to drink several quarts of water a day, but this was contraindicated by my chronic nephritis (kidney disease) that necessitates that I limit water to the usual 6 or so cups a day. She accused me of wrecking my metabolism because I had these two or three periods in my life where I lost a ton of weight. (Not anorexia, but just a very nervous anxiety ridden g-i system. I've since learned to manage this to a great extent.) I remember her saying, "Remember how when you are a little kid, you'd barf all the time? I don't think I've barfed in 25 years." I was like, um, okay. Count me as having barfed last week? I may have screwed my metabolism, but I surely didn't do it knowingly and intentionally. I think it is a control thing. If you get sick, you might have been able to do something to prevent it. She said that when my mom got cancer, she learned that you never really can tell that you are truly healthy. Well, duh. (I'm picking on her here, but I'm just using her as an example of this mindset. I think a lot of people have it.) D's hyper-healthy brother has done the same thing to him. Once, he fell out of his wheelchair in my driveway and broke his leg. It was one of those things where, had a healthy person fallen the same way, they probably would have just suffered a minor bruise. His brother asked him how he could prevent the loss of bone density that caused the break. D said, um, not be a quadriplegic? Sometimes you can take an internal locus of control too far.

Anyway my health has hovered around borderline. I don't mean that I'm incredibly sick. I mean that I'm in between blindness and low vision. I'm in between deafness and hard of hearing. My kidney functioning hovers right on the border of what they consider a serious problem. My blood work is always either a little over or under the range of normal. I have some but not all symptoms of retinitis pigmentosa. I have some but not all symptoms of Stickler's Syndrome. For a while it was Ushers Syndrome, then Alport's Syndrome. For a while I was diagnosed with lupus. For a while I was diagnosed as anorexic. For a while I was diagnosed as having rheumatoid arthritis. For a while I was diagnosed with having Epstein Barr Syndrome. All were refuted by subsequent doctors with a different take on it. When I was trying to get pregnant, none of the usual pee stick tests worked on me. I was always ovulating (according to the tests). I was simultaneously always menstruating. Maybe I have Stein-Leventhal, maybe I don't. The markers are kinda there, but not definitively. Doctors always tell me that something isn't quite right, but they aren't sure what it is exactly. It is all idiosyncratic, and since I'm not deathly ill, I just have to deal with it. I'm borderline. Either right on the edge of lab work that would give me a diagnosis, or right beyond it. I hardly ever go to the doctor, except to get the usual kidney and retina checkups. There is not much point.

So, now...supposedly, I have hypothyroidism. This is a new one. When I broke my toe last fall, I finally went to the doctor. I haven't been since my post partum stuff. I got a complete physical and blood work while I was at it. And I half-heartedly complained about all my usual aches and pains, my fatigue coupled with weird insomnia, and the fact that I can do weight watchers perfectly for 2 months straight and not lose a pound. So, suddenly I have this thing. And I'm like, well why did I suddenly get it. She said it could come from being pregnant. But then she looked over some of my past blood work over like a 10-year-period and said, "oh, I'm surprised no one has said anything about this to you before. All your blood work is just teetering on the edge. And since your pregnancy, you've gone just below the normal range." Borderline again.

So, fine. No big deal. She tinkers around with some prescriptions and iron supplements (heh. cuz I'm on the edge of being anemic and these other drugs might make it worse.) I don't know if it has been long enough yet. Maybe it is psychosomatic, but I already feel better. I am starting to sleep at night in longer than half-hour intervals and I have more energy during the day. And I've lost 4 pounds before even starting weight watchers yet. All well and good.

I don't know if I have a good point to make. I think mostly I'm just whining about my health. I know that comparatively to many people, I'm very healthy. And it isn't something I even think about too much each day. I guess I've just been told all my life that I was being a terrible irresponsibly lazy ass and that was why I was sick all the time or missed class/work or whatever. I remember being in third grade and being sick a lot (and being too skinny, my first major eating/anxiety problem) and I was put in the hospital for four days and they ran all these tests. When I left, I asked my mom what was wrong with me, what they found in all those tests. She just said, "Lisa, you've just GOT to start blowing your nose more often. You don't blow your nose and that makes you sick and then you go into the hospital." I was just like, what? I went through all that to find out it was all my fault for not blowing my nose right? What I have realized is that I work a lot harder than many people to get a lot less results. So be it. I can do that. But I'm not going to be made to feel ashamed of it. There were days, many days, that I went to work in conditions that most people wouldn't even step out of their houses with. Severe kidney pain that makes you want to pass out. Being so dizzy that you wait till everyone else has left the meeting so they won't see you if you stumble when you get up. Stitches and drainage tubes coming out of my back from kidney surgery. Eye patches where I have to make sure the goo isn't leaking out all day. Days in high school where my contacts weren't working and I wore contacts plus glasses so there was no back up. I had to take them out and walk around seeing next to nothing. Reading books with all the way up to my nose. Sure, I've taken a mental health day or two. And a flu day at times. But I've also shown up and worked when other people would have been too embarrassed to or felt they were too sick to. I absolutely know that I've gone to work many times on days when my sister would not have even thought of it if she were in the same circumstances.

As far as that goes, you can only do your best. And I often see people that are successful, like really successful famous people who are doing 29 million different jobs (Kelly Ripa comes to mind), and I wonder, how much of where they are has to do with simply being born with amazing health? Not that they don't work hard and also have talent, but being able to work hard and produce from your talent takes good health to start with. It is a privilege, a gift that should not be taken for granted.

Like many people, it is hard for me to live a perfectly healthy lifestyle (if there is such a thing). It is hard to eat right when you feel nauseous every morning (which I have since jr. high). It is hard to work out when you are in pain from lifting kids and the crap you have to carry because you can't just put it in your car and sometimes even quadriplegics and their assorted accouterments. It is hard to deal with irregular sleep patterns that you don't understand and can't seem to control. And to plan your life around vision and hearing changes and never having a set routine for longer than a few months, because that's the way your life is. These are all truths that could be used as excuses, but still I try to improve all the time. I figure that the more days I do well, the more it can help overall, even if I do have days where it all goes to crap.

So, I'm doing Weight Watchers, because my doctor suggested it and it seems to be the most reasonable of all the craziness out there in the diet industry. I had several minor injuries in the fall. Sprained wrist, broken toe, a still continuing problem with my ankle. I took the six weeks off from the gym as requested, but could not take off from the walking. Still, most of my injuries seem to be healed or healing. I have started back at the gym again. (I sometimes took the kids there during my time off just for a break and so I could sit on a couch and put my foot up as directed. So if you heard me mention the gym, I really did go, I just may not have actually exercised.) I'm checking my blood sugars and they are good. (Oh, did I mention? I have this weird low blood sugar thing. I've had it since I was in my early 20s. I can check my blood sugar and it will be from 40-60 all the time. Which is really low, yet I will just feel tired. Once, in college, I did a demonstration assignment where I produced a video on how a glucometer worked and my blood sugar was 40. I got counted off for "inaccurately" saying that normal blood sugars were between 80-120. Doctors have done it too and can't understand why I'm not more affected. They just tell me to eat several small meals all day long and try to keep tabs on it. I've since been able to control it pretty much, and I haven't seen it get below 80 for a while.) I'm trying to figure out how to increase my exercise on the off days. I'm hoping that if I really do have a hypothyroid type o'deal, that the medication will really help with all this. My point is, I am working to do my part, but it is only a small part that I can control. The rest I just have to deal with (and by deal with, I usually mean blow off and deny.)

I look at my two kids who share an almost identical environment and lifestyle and I see the differences with them as well. Aaron always gets sick first. It lasts longer for him and is more severe than Naim. Aaron has the febrile seizure problem like I did as a child. Aaron has more trouble sleeping and eating. He needs to take breaks where Naim is just go-go-go. He's a healthy kid so far and I hope he doesn't inherit all my wacky lab work. But he just seems to be genetically a bit more prone to health issues than Naim.

I think the point I'm trying to make, if there is one, is that people shouldn't feel all entitled to good health, they should feel lucky. Much of your success might come from the lottery of your genetics rather than how much harder you worked or smarter you are than someone else. And although everyone should strive to live as healthily as possible, because this can only help you, people shouldn't be all holier-than-thou about their health as if it is all of their own doing.

Okay, I'll quit whining now and go count up my damned WW points.

Comments

[leslie]

Ok - you finally got me to delurk with this post - been reading (and enjoying!) your blog for a while.

I agree with you about people who are totally healthy often assuming that it has something to do with virtue on their part. So much of it is just plain luck. I look at my friend who is struggling with a nasty aggressive cancer after having been a vegetarian yoga teacher for her entire adult life - no lifestyle factors there, she just got profoundly unlucky.

Hope the thyroid hormone helps. I was diagnosed hypothyroid 10-12 years ago and it definitely helped my energy level, immune response to whatever bugs my kids bring home and weight maintenance. Not a cure-all to be sure but it was an improvement.

[Emmie (Better Make It A Double)]

Thank you for this post. I feel like crap much of the time, there is little I can do about it, and it is all invisible (a bad back, insomnia, and endometriosis). I tend not to complain because what's the point? People who are always healthy always seem to think it's because they do everything right. My MIL told me just the other day (when talking about my SIL's pregnancy) that she felt that morning sickness was "mind over matter". I can only hope she wasn't thinking about who she said that to, since I spent over 7 months in an intimate relationship with an emesis pan. Drives me nuts, but it also hurts.

[Kathryn]

Nice Post Lisa. And you are right, good health is something to be grateful for. I am still thinking about your post about when you were a new mom and at home alone with twins and recovering and on the floor feeding them because you were too weak to stand up. And I think that you are one of the strongest people I have ever heard of. I think your perfectly healthy sister has chosen to take on a much easier life this time around than you. And I think you have taken on a lot and are handling in with the most amazing grace. You inspire me on a regular basis.

I am glad to hear the meds are working for the Thyroid thing and I hope you teeter on the right side of the edge with all of your scary health issues. I have had some health issues too that have led up to the problems with Ellie's birth. Having health problems is not mind over matter it is usually, like you said, the DNA lottery. You can think there is no reason, it's all random or you can look for a spiritual explanation, which is what I do - just because it helps ease my mind and heart.

Great post. Hang in there.
Kathryn

[artsweet]

Living with a chronic illness, I don't ever expect my body to work. And I'm not surprised when it doesn't. My partner, until recently, was one of those healthy types.

She wants to go to the doctor and get antibiotics (argh!) when she has a cold. Because medicine must have a treatment for everything, right?

Her infertility felt like a shock to her. It felt totally unsurprising to me. Does this make sense?