I can’t count how many times I’ve been dying.
I don’t remember all of them–I started being hospitalized for asthma when I was two.
I don’t remember my brother being told to say goodbye to me when I was 21 and suffering from pneumonia, but he did. (My illness also came up in a faculty meeting–my department apparently discussed who would represent it at my funeral.)
All the times I’ve struggled for air run together, in a haze of wheezing.
Every winter until I got insurance (in 2000) was awful; even when I wasn’t in ERs, I routinely woke to what I thought was an orchestra warming up. My sleeping brain thought that was what my lungs’ struggle was.
I am incredibly lucky to have access to care now–and treatment for a deadly condition.
And that’s what I think about when people tell me that I’m probably getting too much treatment.
This week, I performed my Chronic Pain: A Comedy show again. Since people routinely try to diagnose me after shows (as if my comedy is just a secret ruse for free medication consultation), I tried to forestall it this time. When I read out the list of things I’ve tried, I said I was doing it so the audience wouldn’t feel they needed to ask if I’d ever heard of pot, etc.
I didn’t get that response this time. Instead, two audience members (independently) approached me the day after the show to say that I was taking too much medication.
For example, a student asked if I’d heard of “medicalization”–an idea that gets brought up when people say we shouldn’t try to treat problems with Western medicine. He told me that he has had mild hypertension for 10 years, but he doesn’t need meds for it.
Ummm, ok.
Do I like taking (and choking on) a bazillion pills a day?
Nope.
But do I like not having to go the emergency room for asthma since I started taking those meds?
You better believe it.
Have I gone off pills that weren’t working or that were giving me bad side effects? Yup–sometimes even when my doctors didn’t initially want me to.
The ones I’m on all do something.
When I don’t take my magnesium and potassium supplements, my face literally spasms. On the left side.
When I accidentally didn’t put one of my GERD meds in my daily pill container and went without it for a few days, I thought I had cancer or that the acid and bile had just burned a hole through my esophagus. The pain was so bad that I couldn’t sleep. For days.
I know both of these gentlemen were trying to be helpful.
But I had to fight to get treatment. And even after I got insurance, I had to fight for treatment for some of my problems.
Your non-medical opinion, based on a comedy routine, is just another way of telling me it’s all in my head.
Want to see the routine? It’s here.
