My Weekend

There are times of the year when it just feels like everything is threatening to fall apart and I am struggling with one of those times right now. My anxiety around health-related things--most things--is off the charts. One of my friends who is a recovering addict of many years (decades!) says that the struggle goes on, still. And I feel that way now, that the struggle goes on. Even with a relatively clean bill of health, I can't help but feel that horrible things are happening.

When I was rotating through the acute care psychiatric facility, the psychiatrists there would speak somewhat disdainfully of those patients who they claimed where "somatizing." (That is, their psychological difficulties were manifesting as physical symptoms.) That happens to me. I think it happens to a certain extent to everyone. You get stressed out, you get a headache. You get upset and your stomach starts to hurt. I know I do that to a great extent. But sometimes I don't. Sometimes I'm really in physical pain.

Last Wednesday night, for example, I had a sudden, severe, burning pain in the left side of my jaw. Massaging it made it worse. Stretching the muscles in my shoulder and neck made it worse. I took some ibuprofen and it felt a little better, so I went to sleep. I got up around 1:15 and the pain was back, so I made an appointment with urgent care for the morning. I didn't have any other symptoms and I didn't think the pain was severe enough to call 911 or to go to the ER. At my urgent care appointment, I was given an EKG and other tests, looking for symptoms of a heart attack. There were none, but they wanted me to go to the ER to get it checked out further, so I did.

In the ER, I had another EKG and some other tests. I was admitted to the hospital for a stress test. Everything was normal. I came home on Friday afternoon and the pain in my jaw was gone then, but it returned later.

The pain in my jaw came and went over the weekend, but my shoulder was so tense that I assumed it was exacerbating whatever was happening, so I took some extra strength motrin that the doctor had prescribed for me the last time I had shoulder trouble. That seemed to help, but it knocked me out and I spent most of the weekend sleeping. (I so rarely take any kind of pain reliever that I only took half of a pill at a time and only two doses of that and even that reduced amount was enough to knock me out.)

Monday I went to the dentist to have my jaw checked out. He thinks that it may be a damaged nerve and referred me to an endodentist to have it further checked out. I made an appointment for yesterday but didn't keep it because of insurance problems, so I rescheduled for today.

Of course it's snowing today and the city is mostly trying to shut itself down, so the endodentist's receptionist just called to see if I could come in tomorrow instead. Of course.

The pain in my jaw is back, but to a much lesser degree. I guess I'll just tough it out until I can get in to see the endodentist.

And that was my weekend.