Adventures in Chronic Illness - glib, glum gastro

Glib, glum, Gastro

She strides into the exam room, flipping back her mane of chestnut hair. I have googled her and know that she was initially trained in a Soviet bloc country, which brings to mind big rubber hosing and distended bellies full of homemade potato vodka and thin, gruely soup made with old vegetables. She asks a few brief questions..."how long hav you had this probleem?" (And with this problem, it can seem like forever, baby,) and then advises me to "stripe" so that she can give the offending orifice a closer inspection.

(When you have a few chronic illnesses, ill-defined (ha!) by the American medical establishment, this bit currently incurable but responsive to toxic drugs that cause early menopause, dowager humps, and "Big Ben's pendulum" mood swings, that bit poorly understood by anyone in the 50 contiguous states and seemingly triggered by wind, rain, full moon, wheat toast, tuneless whistling, high heeled shoes, extreme liberalism and french fries, you are poked, prodded, manipulated, lightly mawled, slightly violated, probed, lifted, shifted, rolled, oiled, gelled, smashed, injected, ejected, subjected, projected, mushed, exacted, pricked, stuck, plucked, siphoned, inflated, kneaded to the point where nothing seems inviolate anymore. "Sure, stick that banana in my ear, if you think it'll help.")

You get the picture. Moon over Quincy Center. A few Jackie Gleason like expressions on my face and it's over.

"Test. We must do." She proceeds to her desk in the corner and writes for ten minutes. I'm not kidding. I sat there in the tiny paper robe and read an entire "People" magazine.

Viva le deluge.

Fasting tests. Resting tests. Rubber hose tests (I'm only guessing--I was asleep). Tests on every human effluent imaginable. And, after six months, the call that all of us sickies long for: THE DIAGNOSIS. "Doctor wants you to come in," says Nurse. I, dutiful Patient, take an Immodium and board the Red Line train, face aglow with hope.

And...
it isn't
this
or that
and there's no evidence of this
or these
or scurvy, Ebola, diphtheria, mange, ringworm, accidentally ingested hula hoops, drug muling, voodoo, no missing parts, and no
it isn't "all eeen your mind, Ms. Claig."

So, I murmur, what in the sam hell is it?

and there is no answer
to this day.
I've got a few words, a phrase that the gastros use for this kind of thing. But nobody really knows.
Food diaries
allergy testing
home mold testing
Reiki
Psychy
Howlin' at the moon
(Howlin' at my moon)

So it's just one more question on the long list of questions I have when I go before God. This week, let's call him Irving.

"So Irving, why are there poor people, and why is there David Hasselhoff...what's with Disney, Dafur, does anyone love bats? Who is Oprah, really, where are our gurus, our leaders? Is Aerosmith being the guest band for the Boston Pops 2006 4th of July celebration a sign of the Apocalypse? And Irv, exactly WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY ASS?!"