Tag Archives: ailment

Biopsy

Biopsy: (n) an examination of tissue removed from a living body

Dictionary B

I got sick.

I mean, really sick.

There are so many times that we are convinced that we are ill or have contracted some mysterious disease, or contend that we are presently “under the weather” that we fail to recognize what it means to be in trouble.

The body is a great megaphone of its own condition.

In other words, when you’re ailing, every single part of your anatomy sends a memo, an email, and even tweets, “Danger.”

There’s little doubt.

I found myself in the hospital under the care of a lovely female doctor from China. She was beautiful in all ways. We immediately struck a chord of friendship, even though by cultural standards we had little in common. For some reason, she liked me, and I certainly appreciated and loved her for her soul and gifts.

She scheduled a series of tests. I could tell by her demeanor that she was worried that I had cancer and that we had caught it too late.

I will never forget lying on my hospital bed the night before my colonoscopy, alone in the dim lights with a few machines whirring and tweaking in the background.

It was just me…and me.

I thought about my own death.

I thought about dying soon.

I realized that to a barbarian fighting in Gaul in 32 B. C. that my death was insignificant, whether it happened next week or forty years from now. After all, what’s forty years to a Gaelic barbarian who’s been dead for over 2,000?

Of a certainty I was going to die. The question was, which ailment, disease, condition or speeding bus was going to perform the task?

Gradually, peace settled into my soul. It was a peace accompanied by an unexpected comedic, jovial sense of well-being.

For certainly, unless an angel of God was going to enter my bowels and produce a miracle overnight, what was in me was soon going to be made evident–and all I had left was the class and style that I could muster, to deal with the biopsy.

As it turned out, there was no problem and my young doctor came bouncing into the room with tears in her eyes, speaking half English and half Chinese, which I translated as “all is well.”

Yes, my friend, all is well until all isn’t well.

Between those two stations lies the possibility for some beautiful living.

 

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Autism

Autism: (n) a mental condition, present from early childhood, characterized by difficulty in communicating and forming relationships

I sit here this morning wondering if it is worse to be ignorant or stupid.dictionary with letter A

For I will tell you of a certainty that history is not a book. It is a look.

History is the expression on the face of the future generation peering back on our actions, wondering why we were either so ignorant, or pursued such stupidity.

With that in mind I approach the subject of autism.

Let’s start with a question: do I believe there are more autistic children today than when I was growing up?

I would have to say no. What would be the basis for it? Why would there be more autism today than in my youth?

So why didn’t I hear about autism as a kid? Why was it handled differently? And was the way it was handled in the past better than how we handle it today?

I’m happy to report, I don’t have any answers. But I will tell you this–merely having information about a problem and elaborating on it in great detail rarely solves the situation.

Likewise, ignoring a dilemma and pretending it doesn’t exist certainly does not cause it to vanish.

My contention would be that most things in our present health-conscious society are over-diagnosed. I do not know if the average American, if he or she were given a blood panel once a month, would be considered healthy when the work was analyzed, or whether they would be put on so much medication that they would get sick from the treatment.

Somewhere along the line you have to deal with the word “manageable.”

When I read the definition and the symptoms of autism, I can certainly remember kids in my class who would have fallen within the spectrum of this malady.

  • But we did not call them autistic.
  • We did not medicate them.
  • Instead, we attempted to draw them out of their shells and include them–and rebuke those who ridiculed them for being dead-heads.

I’m not saying this was a good practice. I’m just saying that continuing to diagnose more people with autism does not give us the solution to autism.

Somewhere along the line we have to come up with a way of dealing with this problem that is manageable–which has enough science to be helpful, but also enough human commonsense to be practical.

Otherwise, future generations will deem us ignorant because we refused to deal with the problem, or stupid because we made too much of it.

Where’s the balance?

I think the balance is always achieved by giving our fellow human beings as much room to feel normal as possible. In doing so, we open the door to a more enriching life … instead of having our comrades identified by their ailment.

 

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Anoxia

dictionary with letter A

Anoxia: (n.) an absence of oxygen.

I felt like crap, if by saying that, you mean a discarded pile of useless waste lying in the corner, needing disposal.

I didn’t know why.

I knew I was sick. That doesn’t help very much. Being aware of illness only makes you clamor for a quick solution to get back to normalcy.

Sometimes that’s possible. A good night’s sleep is often the perfect elixir. But I had several opportunities to sleep and felt no better.

So I went to the doctor, who sent me to the hospital, and the first thing they did was put oxygen into my nostrils.

I felt very stupid having tubes coming out of my nose.

They explained that my oxygen level was not sufficient for me to get the air I needed to recover from my physical ailment. I tried to argue, but after a while felt silly objecting to something as simple as a breathing mechanism.

It was astounding.

Within an hour, just having oxygen put into my body and having the levels rise, made me feel so much better. It gave me the will to want to get well again instead of commiserating over a gloom of pending doom.

It was just oxygen–yet I needed it. I wasn’t getting it from the air. My lungs apparently had decided they were part-time labor.

But the introduction of the good stuff set in motion “good stuff” for my healing.

It got me thinking.

We’re so critical of people who are depressed, angry, poor or unmotivated.

  • We never consider that there’s a certain emotional oxygen required, the ability to tell the truth without fear.
  • How about spiritual oxygen? God is our God so we can find out how to be better people.
  • Certainly there’s a mental oxygen, which clears out the cobwebs in our brain, allowing fresh ideas to seep through.
  • And the simple physical oxygen of breathing, exercising and eating well can make us feel invincible.

I’m no longer afraid to be in need–because discovering the better things I can breathe in empowers me … to be made whole.

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Anosmia

dictionary with letter A

Anosmia: (n) the loss of the sense of smell, caused by injury, infection or the blockage of the nose.

There’s a name for it!

One of my greatest joys in doing this daily essay is discovering that there are words that have been set aside to describe much of the weirdness that I’ve experienced in my life.

I probably won’t remember the word in the moment that I need it, but it’s still nice to know that my predicament is common enough that somebody “worded” it.

Several years ago I had a sinus infection. I didn’t know it was a sinus infection, but all of the amateur doctors I’m acquainted with (who also double as friends and family) let me know that I did not have a common cold, but rather, common sinusitis.

I convinced myself that I got the condition from sleeping in a house where construction was going on and that sawdust had stuffed up my beezer. Of course, this is highly unlikely, but it sounded cool when relating my malady to others.

But one of the things I remember about the experience was that I stopped being able to smell anything. Food, bathroom aromas and even my own particular scent evaded my scrutiny.

At first I wasn’t bothered by this side effect, but then I began to wonder if I was stinking to other folks, and was unaware of it.

I did what every human being would do. I overcompensated:

  • Instead of splashing myself with cologne once, I did it three times.
  • A double application of deodorant.
  • And an extra minute or two in the shower, scrub-a-dub-dub.

It was at this point that I noticed that people were wincing as I walked by, so I decided I must be stinking horribly, so I doused myself even further.

Honestly, I’ve never had all my friends so glad to see me get over an ailment.

So I guess the moral of the story is: when you can’t smell yourself, it’s better to assume you’re okay. 

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