through my anxious mind. Could stress cause me to develop breathing problems? What else led to asthma for the first time in thirty-five years?
I didn’t get much reaction from my husband. I wished he would help me figure this mystery out, but he was very non-committal. The boys were, of course, too little to help me. I was on my own with this one.
My physical appearance continued to deteriorate. I gained more weight and developed more puffiness. My eyeballs now protruded, causing difficulties with my vision. I’d worn hard contact lenses since I was fifteen years old, but other than that, my vision had been stable. I visited the eye doctor trying to find what could be wrong. “Why am I having problems now?” I questioned the eye specialist. He didn’t know, but he did find some deterioration of the retina in both eyes.
My symptoms worsened. And so did my marriage. My health deteriorated from the inside-out; what I called the “silent kill.” Slowly. Silently. The body deteriorates cell by cell, but you don’t know what’s happening because you can’t see it. You feel bad, but nothing shows up in laboratory tests. Finally, over time, the symptoms manifest into a major disease you can see. A degenerative disease.
“I know something is very wrong,” I voiced to myself. “But what is causing these problems?” I didn’t realize these symptoms were all connected somehow. Headaches. Eye problems. Mood swings. Weight gain. Hair loss.
By now, my periods were so deranged I thought I was pregnant every other month, even though I’d had a tubal ligation a few months after Brian was born. Something was definitely awry, but I still blamed it on stress and my busy schedule. I frequently scheduled appointments with my gynecologist. Every time I saw him with the same complaints of spotting throughout the month and bad cramping for the first time in my life, I was relieved that I was not pregnant. “So what’s the deal, then?” I questioned. “I suspect I am developing endometriosis.”
He disagreed. In fact, the doctor never found anything wrong with me. “You have all the textbook symptoms,” he said, “but I can’t find anything wrong.”
“Okay, Doctor. I’ll stop worrying about it and move on.”
And that’s just what I tried to do. I kept teaching at the university along with teaching aerobics and taking my morning jogs. The boys grew bigger and became more demanding. I kept gaining weight and continued having headaches. My husband still worked marathon hours and was home very little. The impasse between us deepened. And, every afternoon before I left the campus, I grabbed a diet drink for the ride home. . . .
My symptoms kept mounting. I assumed things couldn’t get much worse, but I was wrong. My emotions transformed from disagreeable to hysteria to my and my family’s horror. “Have you gone to the doctor lately?” Chuck asked. “What does the doctor say?”
“Nothing,” I replied in frustration. “No one can find anything wrong with me.”
“Well, I wish somebody would,” he said under his breath. But I heard him anyway, and silently agreed.
I knew I was hard to live with these days. I couldn’t help it. Not only did I feel horrible and look like hell, but I rode an emotional roller coaster from the minute I woke up until the time I went to sleep.
One day while cashing a check at the bank, the teller asked me for my driver’s license. I bit her head off. “Why do you want my license?” I felt my voice rise. “Do you think my check is going to bounce or something?” Maybe she thinks I stole the checkbook. What’s her problem? My temper flared without warning, and I embarrassed myself by becoming belligerent and acting the fool again. I immediately followed my verbal assault with an apology. “I’m so sorry. I just don’t know what has gotten into me these days. I guess it’s my job or my kids. I don’t know anymore.”
And I was right. I didn’t!
I was really distraught at this point because I knew I was not myself. I didn’t understand what was causing my erratic behavior or what would trigger me next.
Poor Sean, Alex, and Brian. They were so young and so sweet but despite my overwhelming love for them, I now found myself screaming and yelling at them for the most trivial things. Sean spilled his milk one night during dinner and I went ballistic. I couldn’t seem to cope with the boys’ normal needs and simple childishness. In the few hours he spent at home, Chuck seemed to be avoiding me. The reality of how bad things had gotten between us penetrated at times but I told myself, Maybe I’m imagining all this. Maybe he’s not around enough to even notice. Maybe he doesn’t care. I’m most afraid he really doesn’t.
All these changes happened to me over one year. Just one year! First, the headaches. Then the weight gain. Next, my hair loss. Then my erratic mood swings and ongoing depression. And after that, my periods became irregular. One by one, my symptoms accumulated. Why had my life changed so drastically in just twelve months?
Why?
There seemed to be no answer.
I went to doctor after doctor. None could determine a physical cause for any of my problems; so I dismissed the seriousness and continued to blame my lifestyle for my failing physical and emotional condition. Life’s stresses, my job, finances, my marriage, the kids. The same stale excuses.
One morning I woke to feel my heart skipping every sixth to seventh beat. “What the hell’s happening?” I cried out. Chuck slept on. “This has gone too far. I have to get some answers.”
I went to see a family doctor whom some other professors spoke highly of down the street from the university. After a thorough examination, Dr. Baker asked to perform an extensive thyroid scan. “Something’s not right,” he said almost too casually. “There’s an increase in thyroid activity which may be the reason for your health problems.”
“This never happened on any tests that were run by the various physicians I’ve been to over the past year,” I replied. “But I am relieved someone has given me some sort of answer for my recent health problems.”
The doctor prescribed expensive thyroid medication and told me to take it easy. I went home feeling relieved. I’d made some headway.
But nothing changed in the next few weeks. I still experienced sudden migraines, PMS, continuous spotting, depression, and unpredictable mood swings. My hair kept falling out in huge clumps. My fingernails were down to nubs. My weight was now up thirty pounds. My skin looked irritated and was broken out, and my eyes protruded to the point that I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror. Nonetheless, what scared me most was my heart. My heart now continuously skipped beats, sending unrestricted surges of blood through my veins.
Then, late one night, my heart abruptly began to beat ferociously until I lay motionless in a pool of sweat. I knew I had to do something else at this point. I thought I was about to die.
“Damn it!” I knocked the alarm clock off the bedside table as I feebly reached to see the time. It was 4:00 A.M. Chuck and I had returned home from a weekend “getaway” only a few hours before—an
