Manic Me

The other night Paige had a nightmare. At 3 a.m. I notice her bedroom light on. When I went to her room, there she is cleaning her bedroom. Because Daren was out of town, I encouraged her to come to my bed to sleep and to leave the cleaning for after school.

She tossed and turned. I scratched her back trying to calm her down and pretty soon, I was wide awake and she was fast asleep. It was 4:45 a.m. The morning bell for seminary was going to go off in 20 minutes. My night was over.

As I lay there listening to her and the dog snore, I noticed pain behind my right eye. I'm sure it is sinus pressure, but because I am tired and a hypochondriac, all of a sudden it becomes an annurism. If they catch it early, with my excellent notes, I can still live.

Are you laughing yet? I am too. I hate to admit it, especially because I hate to give my husband vindication, but I am a hypochondriac. But only with the big stuff. Ya know, like brain annurisms and cancer and weird diseases. But, it's not completely all my fault. It was born out of opportunity. Hey, not all psychological problems are born out of opportunity. Just mine.

When I was sixteen, I was in a serious car accident. The car I was in was sideswiped by a drunk driver. I broke lots of stuff and missed school for two months! It wasn't fun.

On the night of the accident, from the shock my body was in, I kept going in and out of consciousness. I remember snippets from that first night and one snippet stuck. I carefully nursed it and helped it grow into the full-grown psychological problem it is today.

On the night of the accident, my girlfriends and I were out way late driving around. While we were out, I needed some feminine products from the store. It was after we left the store parking lot that we got into the accident. (The photos taken of the car for legal purposes show tampons all over the backseat of the car. The box exploded from impact and tampons were everywhere. Very nice. Your honor, I present, exhibit A.)

Anyway, the scarring snippet of the night was born in the ER. As the nurses and doctors were cutting off my clothes, I woke up and heard them assessing my internal bleeding and ordering an emergency exploratory surgery! I roused and immediately told them, "I'm bleeding because I'm on my period!" Sure enough, when they looked, womanhood was confirmed and because I didn't show any other signs of internal bleeding, the order for the O.R. was canceled. Phew . . . talk about dodging a bullet! Good thing I woke up!

Since then, similar, though not as serious situations, help reinforce the hypochondria. When I was pregnant with Maddi for example, one day toward the end of my pregnancy my blood pressure spiked. It made me really sick. I called Daren and he called 911. Because I felt so faint, I wrote down on a piece of paper what my symptoms were - pregnancy induced high blood pressure, etc. This way, if I passed out and couldn't tell them what was going on, they would know and not do a cesarean right there in my living room. I told Paige to show the note to the paramedics if I was asleep when they came.

The paramedics came and thankfully I was still awake and was able to calm them down as they came running in scrubs ready to deliver my baby. They never noticed the note.

Who will speak for me but me? I could end up being admitted to a hospital and come out missing organs or something! I am not sure how to categorize my obsession/hypochondria. I crave information whenever a situation arises, but I have still to this day have never been on the WebMD site, nor do look online for a diagnosis for any ailment. Most of my information comes from my handy little reference guide I got years ago from our health-insurance company. I'm pretty much self-taught. Insanely feeding the mania one spoonful at a time.

So, back to Paige. There I am . . .pain behind the right eye. In a quandry about not being close enough to the handy reference guide to see if in fact I have sinus pressure or a quiet brain annurism ready to blow. I reached for a pad of paper . .

because after all, if I didn't wake up . . .how would they know?


Chances are . . . if I'm dead in the morning, I will have a written explanation for you on my nightstand.