Scars Seen and Unseen

Posted on January 6, 2006 in Anger Body Language Psychotropics

REVISED

First time visits to any kind of medical practioner — from the dental hygienist to the facial surgeon — chute me into a place of tears. They want your medical history, a list of medications. You give it to them. They scratch their heads and wonder if there are any drugs that they can prescribe which don’t interact with all the other meds that your psychiatrist, your cardiologist, your endocrinologist, your periodontist, and your internist have prescribed for you.

I went in to see about my headaches. Migraines. The “let’s take an icepick and ram it through your eye” kind of headaches, accompanied by sweat pouring out of your forehead, the shakes, and nausea deep enough to fill the Marianas Trench. The nurse practioner looked over my records. I could see it. You are one sorry boy, Mr. Sax. Should we donate your body to Science now? You can board the meat wagon out back….

Actually, it did not go uncharitably at all. She listened. Asked good questions, accepted my answers. I begged her for nonpharmaceutical means of lessening the frequency of the episodes. She sympathized. I might be able to keep taking tylenol as long as my liver doesn’t start throwing enzymes into the blood. As for the Tagamet: yes, it might be a good idea to try something else for the nausea. Which do you want? The stuff that works on the gut or the stuff that works in the brain?

I couldn’t make that decision. I took down the names of the meds which might be prescribed so that I could run them by my psychiatrist, my cardiologist, my endocrinologist, my periodontist, my internist, and drugs.com. Odds run high that my psychiatrist will nix the brain stuff. After all these months of getting me stable, I can’t imagine that she wants to throw a new bit of randomness into the cocktail.

Once I got the med business unsettled, she asked me if I had ever had a CAT scan done.

A fear that dominates my health-seeking is finding out that I have brain damage. Not the inchmeally-reparable harm that sufferers of bipolar disorder enjoy, but hard core Dad-whacked-me-on-the-side-of-the-head-and-I-thought-my-head-was-inside-the-biggest-bell-at-Capistrano-induced lesions. The kind that would cause me to erupt in bitterness, buy a ticket to Portland, and hire someone to beat up my brother for being a complete sell out and helping with the merry project of filling Joel’s head with cheese-holes. I would just inflict guilt and a lonely old age on my mother.

Or, more likely, declare myself a proxy for these and beat my head against a pillow or something harder because extra-personal violence is not the Bipolar Way. Hurt yourself before you hurt others.

This isn’t the kind of information that would settle my nerves and keep me walking the way of stable righteousness. I would flip and I would probably check myself into a psych ward for long term care.

Musing over these things, I came to a decision. My eyes rose and found those of the nurse. I told her my reservations, my reasons and my conclusion. “No,” I said.

“I understand,” she replied.

Even with the scars, seen and unseen, I am free.