My Body is a Wonderland

When I was young, my parents purchased some helpful reference books from some traveling encyclopedia salesman. One of these was a big book of medical facts - symptoms, treatments, etc. The BEST part about this book was the large appendix in the back that had flowchart after flowchart, to better enable those of us at home to indulge in hypochondriac hysteria. I loved these flowcharts. Anytime anything even remotely unusual happened with my body, I would haul out the Big Medical Book and diagnose myself with some terrible disease, often cancer. Then I would go to my parents and explain to them that I had cancer, and desperately needed to see a doctor immediately. This went on until my parents disappeared the Big Medical Book, and my flowcharting was put to an end. This was, of course, long before I knew that the internet could help me to diagnose myself with cancer in half the time, and with snazzier graphics.

These days, I am just as much of a hypochondriac, but with the charming twist that I refuse to go to the doctor. I don't really want the attention of a doctor, because that requires time and money and sitting in God-forsaken waiting rooms and extremely boring examining rooms for hours and hours. No, I want the attention of my friends and family, who I can reach with a simple phone call. Over the past year, this has led to a lot of conversations between Lee and I that go something like this...

J: "My armpits really itch."
L: "Still? Haven't they been itching for, like, a month now?"
J: "Yeah... maybe it's some kind of infection."
L: "Maybe you should go to the doctor."
J: "No, I don't think so."

Lee has become so accustomed to this that now the conversation is truncated: "My armpits itch." "Well, I'd tell you to go to the doctor, but we both know that you won't, so I guess you'll just have to deal with it." This kind of conversation, by the way, is much less gratifying than the kind where people love you and feel sorry for you. Mine is a very difficult life.

Sadly, the "itchy armpits" symptom that I mentioned above is not something that I made up for comedic effect, but is rather an actual problem that I've been coping with for some time. Lee thought this was kind of funny, and suggested that maybe I had athlete's foot in my armpit, and that I should go to the doctor since, after all, it had been bothering me for a couple of months. I suggested that maybe if we continued to ignore it, it would go away. After I had spent a lot of time ignoring the itchy armpits, some kind of weird lump showed up on my left wrist. Since I could still move my hand, I deduced that my wrist was not broken, and that this was a condition that could also be ignored, thank goodness. But then a coworker told me that a friend of hers had had a similar lump on her jawline, and that turned out to be cancer. Now that I am older, cancer seems far less glamorous than it did in the old flowchart days, so a few weeks ago I decided to shut up and go to the doctor.

Before I tell you about my doctor's visit, though, I want you to look at this gross wrist lump. Because I just want you to appreciate what I'm dealing with over here.




Ok, so through the magic of the written word, I'll skip the waiting around nonsense and just tell you what the doctor told me. (Man, aren't you lucky!) The thing on my wrist, according to a professional, is a ganglion cyst. It's completely non-threatening and non-cancery, and not a problem, except it kinda hurts when I do push-ups. So, once a year, I have to worry about that. If I want, I can have it drained or something, but I can also leave it alone. Choices! I'm thinking that with the phrase "have it drained," this post just crossed into grossness, but maybe that already happened back when I posted those pictures. Anyway, the official reason for the picture is to tell you that I was not shocked at all by this diagnosis, because I had already figured it out myself, through the magic of google. Here, go look at this wikipedia page and tell me that my picture doesn't represent a textbook ganglion cyst. (Or, you know, don't go look, if you're already grossed out enough.)

What's that you say? What about my itchy armpits?? Well, I'll tell you!

The doctor said that it looked like I had what's called "a fungal situation." (Doctor-speak, what can you do.) He told me that he could prescribe me some cream to put on it, or that I could just go to Wal-Mart and get some of this:



You know what that stuff is generally used for, right? ATHLETE'S FOOT. So, yes, I have athlete's foot in my armpits.... or, more accurately, I have athlete's armpit. Which is doubly funny when you consider the fact that none of my body parts are particularly athletic, least of all my armpit. But I'm guessing that my armpit decided after several months of a gym membership that it would just go ahead and BE ATHLETIC, DAMMIT, and then maybe the rest of my body parts would jump on board. But now I'm no less a spaz, I'm just a spaz with itchy armpits. Thanks, armpits. Really, that was swell of you.

Anyway, the point (well, one of the points) of this 90-page post is to tell you that ha! I don't need to go to the doctor ever again! I spent an hour and a $15 copay to find out what google and my boyfriend had already told me for FREE. So take that, healthcare system! You just can't beat a girl that mastered flowcharts before the age of 10.