impostery

taking a moment to never look back

♤

it's another post i'm not entirely sure will survive the culling so it won't go out to subscribers and it will probably be restacked once but I think i may have had a revelation? and I want to write it down before I chicken out.

I told my friends earlier this year that it's entirely possible i’ve been fighting low grade encephalopathy the whole time i've known them but I figured I was probably being at least a little hyperbolic, it's came from a post in the liver transplant group where someone mentioned fighting hepatic encephalopathy for over a decade.

I often assume im being hyperbolic about my health, even when i'm not.

it's actually been a very strange pathology to wrestle with.

I think i'm faking it even though I know i’m not.

faking sick isn't really my thing, I'm much more prone to coping.

grin and bear it straight into the grave.

but the pathology is weird, i know other folks have the same impostery type syndrome about illness, but every time?

every single time?

even now, when i have the evidence of my suffering on paper as scientific fact, I still feel like i’m faking it.

♤

I used to get sick a lot in elementary school.

stomach aches. all the time.

we went to doctors. we saw specialists.

I had that allergy test done where they poke the back of your hand half a hundred times.

No answers.

I was bullied at school (and at home but you don't say that to doctors) so all the adults assumed it was “stress”.

when i missed school I would go to work with one of my parents, mostly my dad. I would sleep under the desk in his cubicle and played DOOM on his second desktop in the office arena while he had lunch.

I dont want to keep writing this.

I didnt go to work with mom often, as a GYN triage nurse she spent most of the day on the phone, but when I did I would cut up magazines and draw zentangles on post-it notes.

when you're told at 10 that your chronic stomach aches are “stress”, it gets filed in the same category as “faking”.

you just need to try harder.

just calm down

relax.

I never got any other answers for the stomach aches so I assumed they were normal for me.

when the bleeding started after i had my daughter i assumed it was hemorrhoids from childbirth.

even after I had me first colonoscopy come back with inflammation, I just assumed it was fine.

♤

I feel like my judgment in relation to myself has always been compromised.

after I bolted from the oncologist office, giving him all of 5 minutes to handle my visit, more test results popped up in my notifications.

he told me i wasnt anemic, and i didnt have time to question it because I had to get my daughter to work.

the results were for Iron, Ferritin, and Iron Binding Capacity.

the science is too convoluted for me to get into but I am anemic, my iron is low, they cant figure out why because i have a million diagnoses including a genetic mutation related to iron absorption, but after reading between the lines on the questions him and my hepatologist have asked combined with the bloodwork results, there's a small chance the celiac ripped up my intestinal tract and I have a GI bleed.

yesterday I remembered my other doc saying something about celiac and cirrhosis so I looked them up together.

untreated celiac can cause cirrhosis.

on a hunch I looked up when the test for celiac was invented.

1997.

years after I was tested for allergens.

the auto immune panel I had done in my 20s only covered arthritic conditions and lupus.

it is entirely possible I have been poisoning myself since childhood, flailing for help with debilitating symptoms that critically altered the course of my life, and everyone just nodded and smiled and told me I was stressed.

I was programmed to assume my suffering is a lie because they couldn't find a better answer.

I really don't know how to wrap my head around this.

part of me hopes I'll forget.

ive already forgotten most my childhood, it shouldn't be hard.

except ive written this.

and i'm going to post it.

because truth is fluid but it's all i have left,

and integrity only matters when it's hard.

♤