Don't Ask

I'm a freak. I love it when I have to have medical tests. I like the little ones -- blood and urine tests -- but I'm particularly fond of the big ones. The ones you can't just do any old day. Ones that require large, expensive toys. EKGs, CT scans, EEGs, Lower GIs, X-Rays, ultrasounds. I've had them all, and I love the whole thing. The sounds, the smells, the unique stamp it puts on a day. Of course, that's probably because I've always been healthy. The tests have always eliminated serious diagnoses; only one has ever found anything worse than a broken bone or pneumonia.

That one, a GTT (glucose tolerance test), found a real problem. One I knew about before the doctors did; one that sent the doctors back to school before they'd believe me. In fact, most of the other tests I've had were part of the process of eliminating everything else before a doctor would run the test I knew I needed. I knew because I'd seen my father suffer my symptoms. My problem was inherited.

Don't get me started on the number of people who SAY they're hypoglycemic. Who taught them this word?

I have a soapbox. One on which I frequently take stand when it comes to this issue. Because everybody is little-h hypoglycemic at some point in most days. It's part of the body's system of checks and balances. Your blood sugar drops; you eat. That's what hypoglycemia means: low sugar. Perfectly normal little-h hypoglycemia. It's the big-h variety that'll get you. Hypoglycemia is the pancreatic flip side of Diabetes... creating too much insulin rather than too little. Or, in my case, way too much insulin rather than way too little. There's no danger of over-administering with a needle -- the body does so without help. And don't keep candy around for the insulin overload to work on because, unlike the Diabetic body, the reactive Hypoglycemic body will make more insulin in response, dropping the blood sugar still lower. Hypoglycemic shock? A daily possibility. Without a prescription!

Now, to be fair, there are people whose blood sugar tends to run a bit low, but there are very few of us who so overproduce insulin as a response to ingesting sugar that the mistake could be fatal. I think the disease needs a new name to distinguish it from the normal little-h drops in blood sugar. Hyperinsulinism, for example. Not that a new name would help. Maybe one percent of one percent of the population actually has this problem, so no matter what you call it, no one (even many doctors) knows what it is. Or at least, they don't know what the real thing is. The one with the big H. If they know the word at all it's because they can point to ten people who claim to be hypoglycemic because they needed a biscuit one day a few years ago. So many have cried wolf that no one takes the real thing seriously. Like I said... don't get me started. But your friend who likes to walk around saying he's hypoglycemic as if he has a disease is part of my problem. Don't let him talk to me until I've seen his GTT results.

Told you I had a soap box. But I digress.

Yesterday I went in for a cat scan of the kidneys, bladder, and the ureters that connect them -- the whole urinary system -- to once again rule out serious diagnoses. I was laid out on a table, hooked up to an IV full of warming contrast dye, and shot into a tunnel of x-ray equipment. With my arms stretched over my head, I listened as a computerized voice told me when to hold my breath and when to exhale while cameras shot pictures of my guts. I loved it.

In the years since I last had a cat scan the machine and the test have changed. Once a 45-minute affair, this process took roughly ten minutes. And the tunnel of x-ray equipment was much more compact than I remembered. Rather than a room unto itself, this was merely a fat ring in the middle of one. It was an in and out, over and done with affair, much too quick for my fascination. Almost anti-climactic. Like giving all of your ride tickets at the fair to one that ends too soon.

The problem with the big tests, though, is that no matter how healthy you might be, no matter how fine you might feel, the fact is that there is something wrong with you. Maybe not scary, probably not life-threatening, but there's something that the first little tests picked up on. And so there's a natural tendency, I think, to want to play into test day and feel sick. There's a drama in lying on the couch, the IV bandage and patient wristband on your arm, feeling all oogie and wanting someone to bring you a cup of soup and feel sorry for you. It's one of those rare days that just screams for a little pampering. And it's a hell of a bummer to spend it alone. By noon yesterday, I'd gone home to a quiet apartment where no one waited. I spent the rest of the day watching TV, eating sugar-free popsicles, and staring at the phone, which didn't ring.

So today I'm going out to pamper myself. And if Dr. AWOL calls while I'm out... well... I hope he leaves a number where I can reach him this time.