Cognitive Dissonance...

Cognitive Dissonance.. I've always liked the term. It has a cool sound to it... "dissonance" especially sounds like a sound. If you know what I mean.

Anyway, I've been struggling with a bit of cognitive dissonance recently. A struggle between my image of myself as a healthy person (a marathoner who generally takes care of herself), and this new experience of being a person who goes to the hospital "a lot". By "a lot" I mean more than never. Or more than visiting others who are in the hospital. Before 3 months ago the only time I was in the hospital for me was the birth of my daughter, a happy, healthy, planned event. Tuesday, December 16, 2008 all that changed.

I feel sorta selfish taking up the bits to type out this whole thing, but its been bugging me and maybe writing it out will help. So skip if you want... or read on if you like.

The weekend before was somewhat typical. Run 10 miles Saturday, manage a software release Saturday night (that took a lot of extra time due to system problems), get up early Sunday and run 17 miles in the forest. Breakfast with friends, chew out the husband for not being healthy because he had been to the hospital a couple times with various unknown and undiagnosable ailments over the years and now his leg hurts just from being alive. Get a bit of rest and go to work the next day. Work the next day is supremely stressful (as normal). And I'm hurting pretty bad and taking a lot of ibuprofen (also normal after running so much over the weekend). Pick up my daughter from school, get bad Chinese food, bring that home, eat the bad Chinese food and drink wine to try to relax. Sleep.

Tuesday, wake up early for a 7 AM con call. My stomach and back hurts, I figure the stomach problem is from bad food, back problem probably from running. So I have some tea, pop some tums, eat some oatmeal and wait for it to go away. It just gets worse and worse. But stupid me, I keep working, keep calling into conference calls, etc. Stomach and back keep hurting, ibuprofen doesn't help. Then the nausea starts... I throw up, but its not blood, so I figure its not urgent. Keep working, keep puking, finally around 3PM after I delay a con call and then have to drop off a couple times to throw up, I figure maybe I should stop working and try to rest. I call my husband and ask him to bring home some pepto and chicken soup as he picks up the kiddo from school. He gets home some time after 6 and it keeps hurting more. Finally I figure, maybe I should do something about this. I call the nurse help line, describe the symptoms and she says I should head to the ER. So we pack up and head to the ER. I figure they'll tell me I have indigestion and to go home.... we get there around 8:30, they actually "see me" at 11:30. I'm admitted to the hospital at 1:30 AM Wednesday with a diagnosis of acute pancreatitis.

So I spend the next day and a half in the hospital on IV drip and no food, letting my pancreas rest and recover. They do ultrasound and MRI and various blood tests. They suspect gall stones, but can't find any. The other common cause is alcohol abuse, I don't drink that much but gladly decide I'll not drink for a very long time. While they do the US they find something they think is a mass on my kidney. Hmmm.. not related to the pancreas, but they strongly suggest I do something about it. I get out of the hospital on Thursday the 18th. Fly to Denver on the 19th, have my first ever bout of heartburn on the 20th, watch the Bronco's play with my dad on the 21st, more heartburn on the 21st and from that day to this, if I'm not taking strong PPI drugs (Nexium is the one I'm on now which works great) I have the worst heartburn and chest pain, no matter what I eat.

Anyway, back to the timeline, hospital, trip to denver, a day at work, visit doctor to get a referral for a CT scan to see if there's really a mass on my kidney, christmas, trip to new mexico to meet my sister's lovely baby, back home. CT scan is finally done after new years eve. The CT is fine, nothing found. No mass, nothing. But heartburn continues, daily pain, nothing seems to work, I try all of the OTC stuff and nothing seems to help. My doc says I may just have to live with it for a year. But she does refer me to a GI doc to followup on the pancreas thing and talk to them about the heart burn. Oh yeah, somewhere in this timeline I run Goofy's race 39.9 miles in 2 days in FL and turn 39.

Go to the GI doc who saw me in the hospital. She is surprised that I haven't had a re-occurrence of the pancreas thing. And she says the heart burn isn't normal. She's also surprised about my blood pressure, it was 150 over 100something. She asks if I'm stressed.. of course I'm stressed. Its crunch time at work. I was working 56 hour weeks not counting commute. She asks how my kid is doing. I say "Oh she's great!" I was wrong. Anyway, she prescribes Nexium and three outpatient procedures to find out about the heartburn and the pancreas.

So the next day I find out the my kiddo is not doing well in school. She's skipping homework assignments and not paying attention in class. I had been so busy with work, that I totally ignored her needs. That's the final straw. I tell my boss I'm not going to be working those hours anymore. And he supports that. Husband and I focus on working with her every night and she seems to be doing better now.

Getting closer to present day... this last week I went in for the outpatient procedures. Tuesday was an EGD (tube down the throat with a camera to look around the insides) and they implanted a Bravo chip to monitor the pH in my gullet and relate that with my heartburn symptoms. For this procedure it was IV sedation. I will hear the results of that in a couple weeks. Thursday was another tube down the throat procedure... an Endoscopic Ultrasound. They did general anesthetic this time. THIS ultrasound found "sludge" in my gall bladder. This sludge could be a cause of acute pancreatitis but its not abnormal to have in the gall bladder. And as a result of all of the sedations, etc I haven't run in a week. I've been feeling a little ill since the last test.. could be my period, could be the anesthetic, could be coming down with a cold.. could just be tired. Who knows? but it sucks.

Anyway... I need to go to the doc again in a couple weeks and find out what she suggests. In the meantime, here's the cognitive dissonance. I'm a healthy person... I run marathons, I never get sick.. I have hundreds of hours of sick time. But here I am, doctor's visits, hospital visits, not feeling good, not running. Daughter needs help in school. Part of me wants to be laid off from work so I can rest.. another part knows that if I was I would be even more stressed because of finances.

I feel like if I accept this as "reality" it means I'm an unhealthy person... I'm afraid to be unhealthy. Afraid to be sick. Or maybe the fact is just that I'm human and sometimes humans break down a bit.

I'm writing this note from a hotel room in Novato, CA. My hubby and daughter are out for dinner with some good friends of ours. I've been feeling too crappy today to go out. This weekend is a race weekend, NASA is the organization that we've been racing and volunteering with for almost 9 years now. Tomorrow may have 5" of rain! We're looking forward to it. Even more I'm looking forward to Monday. Its a day off and we don't have any plans. Perhaps I can sleep. I'm looking forward to next week when I can start running again. It does add to my busy schedule, but as they say "running is cheaper than therapy" and.. I'm hoping to PR in May, I doubt I will, but I'll take being able to run another Marathon as a large victory... and being able to run this week as a small one.

That's a story for another day... and I do feel better after writing this. I guess its OK to admit I'm afraid.