I've found myself singing this song to myself the last few days, trying to puzzle out an answer to a question that keeps getting asked. The doctor asked, the friends asked, I've asked- how long has my health been getting worse? I keep thinking of a time, saying "That must be it!", then thinking of a time before that.
I think a lot of it is that many things got worse in tiny increments, and then sometime in the last three years a lot of things got a lot worse at much the same time. During those three years I held a very physically and emotionally intense job, so I blamed a lot of things on that. I also saw a few overworked doctors at the community health clinic who saw what they expected to see, told me to work less, and prescribed painkillers and antidepressants. It wasn't until I stepped in to a less-emotionally draining job that my body really started to get my attention. I tried to keep pushing the way I had been, still working 14 hours a day on a regular basis, but I also started paying a little more attention. The day I fell asleep in the (really gross) bathroom at the farm was the day I called to make the first doctor appointment.
Looking back it amazes me how bad things got before I really started to take notice. I got pneumonia three times in three months and only missed two days of work. I was throwing up from pain, then going back to finish milking. I was waking up 4 or 5 times a night from pain in my hands, tossing back a couple ibuprofen and hoping for the best. I can tell you within a 5 minute window how long I've got until the Percocets make me loopy, and when you can expect coherent thought again.
Maybe it was growing up working in restaurants, where telling the boss you cut your hand to the bone will usually just get you a roll of duck tape and a beer. Maybe it was a misplaced masochistic enjoyment of the pain. Maybe it was proving myself to myself, because I'm pretty sure nobody else was impressed.
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