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Wednesday, 19 November 2008 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rosiedoesMy new doctor is awesome.
He's the first person who has actually listened to me when I said to him that I had an idea of what was wrong, and didn't just dismiss my symptoms.
Basically, for years I've had a problem with sweating - not nasty sweating like a late night taxi driver or anything, wet sweat; soaking through t-shirts and make-up running sweat... pretty Patrick-esque, although not quite as severe as his - and as well as that, I've had what seems like really bad circulation. My hands can be freezing hold and stiff, with my toenails going blue, but the rest of me is boiling hot.
People who've known me in RL for any period of time will have noticed this, if only from the fact that my face sweating used to make my fringe go curly and look stupid, and my eyeliner melt.
Well, I brought this up with my doctor, and he was totally cool. I told him I thought it was Raynaud's Syndrome which my great aunt had, a skin condition where your skin's thermostat is basically fucked and your body acts like a big, beige drama queen at the first hint of cold or heat and either cuts off the supply to the skin to preserve heat, or in one variant makes you sweat profusely; and he agrees that there's a very good chance it is. Alas, that's something no one's bothered to look for a cure for, yet.
However, given other symptoms and things (such as borderline high blood pressure and sudden period pains after never having had them for the last thirteen years), he's also testing me for about ten other things, from hormone fuckery, to kidney problems, to a tumour.
I know that when anyone sees the word "tumour" they immediately do that Kermit D Frog panic and run around flailing - and in many cases for good reason - but the type of tumour he's talking about is benign (it's just there, it's not hurting anyone and it's not going to start attacking other organs... rather like a third nipple) but it causes the body to produce too much adrenaline and that makes you sweat too much. It's apparently super-rare, and in his career my doctor has never personally seen it in one of his patients, but as he says, there's a first time for everything. I doubt he would have brought it up unless he thought it was relevant and I'm being tested for it, so I'm sure we'll know soon enough. It would also explain why I have that jerky knee that I can't stop bouncing up and down, wouldn't it?
To be completely frank about this, I think I would prefer to have a benign tumour that can be removed, than Raynaud's, which doesn't even have an established treatment or medication. People with it are usually given pills to reduce blood pressure, which make them so hot they sweat (more!) and their skin glows* like they've been for a run, and it can cause them to faint or have dizzy spells because it reduces their blood pressure...
The best I can hope for with Raynaud's is a medicated anti-perspirant and gloves. If it's anything else, they can do something about it.
So yeah, I'm not scared or anything ridiculous like that, I'm hoping that next summer I will be able to wear light-coloured clothes and not worry about sweating through them, which would be nice. Even if it was something more serious (which I think we can safely say it's not) I wouldn't really mind. In all seriousness, and no morbidity whatsoever, I don't feel like have many ties to this mortal plain and I don't believe in extending human life, so if it was a life-saving treatment rather than one to fix a harmless but bloody inconvenient annoyance, I wouldn't have it.
Voluntary human extinction, ftw!
* Funny story: when the doctor said to me "it makes people's skin glow" I balked at him and it took us about two minutes to work out that I half-thought he meant like something out of Chernobyl.
He's the first person who has actually listened to me when I said to him that I had an idea of what was wrong, and didn't just dismiss my symptoms.
Basically, for years I've had a problem with sweating - not nasty sweating like a late night taxi driver or anything, wet sweat; soaking through t-shirts and make-up running sweat... pretty Patrick-esque, although not quite as severe as his - and as well as that, I've had what seems like really bad circulation. My hands can be freezing hold and stiff, with my toenails going blue, but the rest of me is boiling hot.
People who've known me in RL for any period of time will have noticed this, if only from the fact that my face sweating used to make my fringe go curly and look stupid, and my eyeliner melt.
Well, I brought this up with my doctor, and he was totally cool. I told him I thought it was Raynaud's Syndrome which my great aunt had, a skin condition where your skin's thermostat is basically fucked and your body acts like a big, beige drama queen at the first hint of cold or heat and either cuts off the supply to the skin to preserve heat, or in one variant makes you sweat profusely; and he agrees that there's a very good chance it is. Alas, that's something no one's bothered to look for a cure for, yet.
However, given other symptoms and things (such as borderline high blood pressure and sudden period pains after never having had them for the last thirteen years), he's also testing me for about ten other things, from hormone fuckery, to kidney problems, to a tumour.
I know that when anyone sees the word "tumour" they immediately do that Kermit D Frog panic and run around flailing - and in many cases for good reason - but the type of tumour he's talking about is benign (it's just there, it's not hurting anyone and it's not going to start attacking other organs... rather like a third nipple) but it causes the body to produce too much adrenaline and that makes you sweat too much. It's apparently super-rare, and in his career my doctor has never personally seen it in one of his patients, but as he says, there's a first time for everything. I doubt he would have brought it up unless he thought it was relevant and I'm being tested for it, so I'm sure we'll know soon enough. It would also explain why I have that jerky knee that I can't stop bouncing up and down, wouldn't it?
To be completely frank about this, I think I would prefer to have a benign tumour that can be removed, than Raynaud's, which doesn't even have an established treatment or medication. People with it are usually given pills to reduce blood pressure, which make them so hot they sweat (more!) and their skin glows* like they've been for a run, and it can cause them to faint or have dizzy spells because it reduces their blood pressure...
The best I can hope for with Raynaud's is a medicated anti-perspirant and gloves. If it's anything else, they can do something about it.
So yeah, I'm not scared or anything ridiculous like that, I'm hoping that next summer I will be able to wear light-coloured clothes and not worry about sweating through them, which would be nice. Even if it was something more serious (which I think we can safely say it's not) I wouldn't really mind. In all seriousness, and no morbidity whatsoever, I don't feel like have many ties to this mortal plain and I don't believe in extending human life, so if it was a life-saving treatment rather than one to fix a harmless but bloody inconvenient annoyance, I wouldn't have it.
Voluntary human extinction, ftw!
* Funny story: when the doctor said to me "it makes people's skin glow" I balked at him and it took us about two minutes to work out that I half-thought he meant like something out of Chernobyl.