It was my fourth time sitting in the waiting room of that cardiologist. First to meet him, twice for tests, and now for a follow-up. As before, I was calm and collected and I was friendly with everyone I encountered. When taken to the exam room nothing in my demeanor changed. The nurse took my blood pressure which was normal, and that’s normal for me. Then she placed the pulse-ox on my finger and once it began counting my heart rate she assumed it was broken. I looked at it and said, “Oh, no, 122bpm is accurate right now. My heart is pounding fast and hard. This happens multiple times a day for no apparent reason. It’s part of why I’m here.” She accepted that and left the room. Moments later she popped her head back in and said, “I know you’ve had an ekg before here, but do you mind if we do one again right now?” “No, go ahead. More information is better than less.”
She wheeled the machine into the room and hooked me up to it as I was lying on the exam table. She ran the machine. She looked at the results. She said, “I’m going to run it again if you don’t mind.” She again ran the machine. She again looked at the results. This time she said, “Would it be okay if I leave you hooked up? I think the doctor is going to want to run it himself.” “Of course that’s fine. But if you’re concerned you’ve done something wrong because the results are strange, I assure you that’s not the case. Whatever odd things are being printed from that machine correlate to the odd things going on in my body right now and for the past 45 minutes.”
When the doctor came in he was trying to hide his excitement, but I could feel that energy. He said it’s rare for a patient to come in exhibiting the symptoms they described but this print out gives him a diagnosis without question. At one point my heart rate peaked 140bpm while on the machine, all arrhythmic.
My first visit with him he didn’t seem to believe me. 35 year old female with significant cardiovascular symptoms? He actually said to be that I’m most likely just deconditioned, aka out of shape due to laziness. I told him, “I understand you see a young and healthy woman in front of you, not a candidate for natural heart problems. But I assure you, I am a young woman but I am by no means healthy.”
People, both in the medical field and not, seem to think that illnesses must be visible. Do they think that every chronic illness should be a walking case of the common cold or seasonal flu that simply doesn’t end? Or people with chronic illnesses should be non-stop announcing our symptoms like a sports broadcaster does a game? That’s not only unrealistic but also unfair. I’ve been accused not only of verbally lying but when I’ve handed over proof with medical documents I’ve also been accused of photoshopping them! Yes, I was cool and calm and friendly while my body was freaking out at the doctor’s office. Okay? Just because I can handle something well doesn’t mean it’s not happening to me. And that’s the crux of it all, really. Most of us living with one or multiple chronic illnesses (and one broken part often causes other parts to over work until they break down, too) learn how to adapt to them in order to best survive.
And, truly, what does it hurt people just to give others the benefit of the doubt?
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