Hypochondriac, justified or just plain weird

I’ve always thought I was a bit of a hypochondriac. When most people only see their doctor once every few years (maybe once a year for women), I tend to develop a very close relationship with my doctors. Sure, there’s the fact that I have to see my doctor every three months to follow-up on medication I’m taking, but every time I see my doctor I always seem to have an issue that needs mentioning. Sometimes I even have several issues. Ugh.

I’m seeing my doctor as usual in a few weeks. My current issue? I can barely feel my hands. Currently, I wake up several times a night with my hands tingling and feeling “asleep”. About a year and a half ago my doctor in Stellarton thought it might be carpal tunnel syndrome. The assumption was that I slept with my hands rolled inward which blocks the nerve on the inside of my wrist. Since then I wear wrist braces when I sleep (really sexy). It sort of helped in the beginning, but in the last 6 months it does nothing! I wake up all the time during the night and concentrate on keeping my hands perfectly flat. In the morning my hands are almost painful and I can barely lift anything. Now, in the last 6 weeks I’ve been feeling numbness in my two large toes. It started in the left one and now is in both. It’s not the whole toe; just the outer quarter is completely numb. Weird, huh? Last week I noticed the padding right beneath my other toes is now numb. What the fuck?

So I’m not sure if I’m actually a hypochondriac or not. The fact that I can even identify my potential hypochondriac-ness probably means I’m not, right? The truth is, for as long as I can remember, I’ve always thought there was something “wrong” with me. I always felt that one day I would go see my doctor and he/she would say, “Changa, you have X” and I could finally say, thank you – it all makes sense now. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve always been surrounded by illness and just wanted to fit in or because I’ve always felt so “off” my whole life.

Is it weird that I would much prefer to have my doctor identify all my symptoms as being one thing? In my mind, if at least I had something I could just treat it and move on. Or if untreatable I could at least know what the cause of all this is. Currently I just have “band-aids” to calm my current issues. Night sweats? Remove extra blanket from bed. Headaches? Don’t get so stressed-out. Light-headedness? Don’t get up so fast. Tired out? Sleep more. Can’t sleep? Take these sleeping pills. Numbness in hands? Wear these funky braces and all will be fine. So all these band-aids are somewhat fine and dandy, but it doesn’t actually tell me why all these things keep happening to me. Bah.

You know what? At least if I WAS hypochondriac, they could at least identify it as such and give me a freakin’ pill for it!