Just the waiting...

Well that was a bust.

I called the doctor's office this morning, and headed out to get my results. The entire time I tried to ignore the gnawing in the back of my head, to block the sneaky fears out and just carry on with it.

For the most part, I guess, it worked. I sat patiently and pensively in the waiting room, finally called into an empty exam room by a really young, really cute (I'm assuming) male nurse. He stayed with me for a minute, then said the doctor would be along.

When the door opened again, I got that little clench in my chest. This was it...

"So, what are you here for?" the doctor asked cheerfully.

I nearly fell off the bench.

After explaining my situation, he looked over my chart. "Ah, here we go," he said, glancing at the typed information. "Hrm..." he said. "I see some results here...but not everything. How many tests were run?"

As it turned out, the only results he had were for the most basic blood tests for electrolyte levels and such. None of the big, important ones were back yet, nor will they be back until possibly two weeks from now.

Great. I wasted an entire morning, plus $23 on a doctor's note, to find out pretty much nothing.

Of the results that I did get, everything 'seemed fine' other than a slightly higher-than-normal white blood cell count, which 'could mean a lot of different things' and 'isn't specific enough' to help in any diagnosis simply by itself. Doc said the higher white count can indicate the body is fighting an infection of some type.

So I have to wait now until they have the results - all of them - before I go back and hopefully get diagnosed.

Afterwards I felt really edgy. Naturally I was upset that they didn't really have my results, but I understand that nobody really is to blame for that, they simply take that long. I also felt this sense of wonder...what exactly is wrong with me? Naturally I started let my imagination wandering about, and by the time I'd joined up the class I had missed most of, I was a bit bummed.

Thankfully the people around me today were great and helped cheer me up. I guess I'm being way too concerned for no reason at this point, and they all agreed that I shouldn't worry too much until there is actually something to worry about.

What bothers me the most is that I'm having a lot of trouble switching the worry off. I can't put it behind me, adapting my usual professional understanding of conditions and diagnosis and options. All the stuff I'm used to doing with my mother, being the one who looks at things scientifically and rationally from the start, is seeming to be really difficult to do in my own shoes. I dare say I'm getting a sense of how it feels to be the actual person waiting for the results, not just a person in their life who waits alongside them.

Maybe that's part of the reason I'm getting worked up over things, the fact that my family has a bad history of things not going well medically. I guess I'm just expecting something terrible to pop out from the results and scare me to death.

Whatever the case I feel better about it now. There's nothing I can do for the next week or more, and I probably won't hear back from them until after Easter. Until then I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed and focus on life. After all, I really shouldn't be that worried. Whatever is actually wrong with me, by all accounts, should be fairly straight forward to treat.

That is, I hope it will be.