Yesterday I had my annual eye examination. I have not been since the brain surgery, so I had to go through the whole spill with the optometrist. I hate even talking about it because people are always shocked and then make all kinds of comments on how great I must be feeling and how great I look. I know that no one means harm, but I cringe because little do they know... I was already in a bad mood, so I didn't hold much back yesterday. I basically said, "No, I don't feel great. I have headaches every single day of my life, some days are so bad that I can barely get out of bed. My memory is full of holes and I can get easily confused. I had to quit working, so now we are broke and struggling. Nope, I definately don't feel any better." And my comments were just met by wide eyed stares because my poor audiance was at a loss for words.
So anyway, my vision has changed some, so the first words out of my eye doctors mouth were, "Let's just look and make sure no eye tumors are detected." Of course that just leds me to freak completely out. Eye tumors???? WHAT?!?!?!? I don't want an eye tumor! I don't want any tumor!!!
I went through a battery of tests, and thankfully no tumor was spotted. However, from now on every visit will include these tests just to "make sure". And of course our insurance renewal period was last year at the same time that we were going through this whole brain tumor/surgery thing, so my husband failed to renew our vision insurance. Lovely. That means that I'll get to be blurry for a couple months until his 2009 insurance kicks in. Fun stuff, huh?
So we get in the car and my husband could not understand why I was upset. Maybe it was stupid, but the fear that caught my breath hearing that the eye doctor wanted to make sure that I didn't have any eye tumors was enough to make me boil with rage. "Normal" people don't have to worry with such things and I don't want to either... And I just get grumpy whenever people talk about how wonderful it is that I'm still alive and doing oh so well. I guess I get grumpy because I do wish their words were true. I wish every day I felt great. I wish that I didn't take 50 medications and tote around a pill box. I wish that hearing my kids talk excitedly and loudly didn't cause my head to split open. *sigh*
I'm being silly, I know, but I just want so badly for this whole tumor/surgery thing to be OVER.
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1 comment:
oh jessica, i know exactly how you feel. people cannot understand that there would be any residual pain/emotion/fear since you're alive. everything must be great now, right?! and everything is not great. the slightest throw-away comment from a nurse or doctor is enough to throw me into similar waves of depression and dis-ease. 'why'd she say that'? 'is something wrong'? 'oh god, something must be wrong' etc etc. i'm about 4 years out from my initial diagnosis and i still struggle w/ it. hang in there and remember that you're not alone in this experience
brian
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