More Health Problems

January 30th's article was called Health Problems and it wasn't one I was hoping I could sequelize. Nevertheless, this article is basically a sequel to that one. While that one was about how people with chronic health conditions deal, this one is more about my personal experience with chronic health conditions piling up long past the point of, "Alright already!" See, back when I was first diagnosed with diabetes, I thought that was the one chronic condition with which I'd have to deal because, for the vast majority of my life, I had been the kid who never got sick. With the exception a case of pneumonia that took me out of school for a week once, I never took a sick day from school as a kid. Today, I am an adult living with nine diagnosed chronic conditions. Some were always there and have just been unearthed. Others are brand new. If you're wondering what this has to do with being autistic, basically it's a lot of change and we really, really, REALLY hate change.

Symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome have been present in me since about 2007. Since I was always busy trying to have ambitions of some sort or another come to fruition, not to mention simply in a great deal of denial, I've been ignoring it for eight years. Well, since I've been getting everything checked out lately anyway, I figured I might as well see about the carpal tunnel syndrome too. Upon examining me, they determined that it was either arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome, and an X-Ray was taken to rule out the former. Depending on how that comes out, I get to either have regular injections into my wrist or undergo the official carpal tunnel syndrome test. If that confirms I have it, surgery is coming. That's a pain in the ass, but I also have pain in the head. A few weeks ago, migraine headaches began happening about once a week. The pain's dull and endurable, but I'm rendered useless to myself or anyone else when they occur because I can't think.

Whereas the previous article on health problems was about how chronic conditions grind one down, I suppose this one is really about how traumatic the change of having new ones in one's life can become. Part of it is knowing that, with age, more and more health problems will come up. Beyond the stuff that everybody has to worry about when they get older, one also knows what one has to worry about in one's family history. While I've pretty much already got everything I can think of that my family tends to get while young, there is Alzheimer's, prostate cancer, gout, and osteoporosis to think about as I get older. Of these, Alzheimer's, which my great-grandfather had, scares me the most. Autism already robs me of my awareness plenty and to be robbed of cognitive ability until it actually kills me would be a cruel fate. Even with all this, I know some would say I'm relatively healthy and shouldn't whine. Well, if I whine it is because I am afraid.

-Frank