Back at square one, I started to lose hope — again. Discouraged, depressed, and sleep deprived, I continued to Google my symptoms online. Time passed. Every little thing sounded like me. I stopped Googling. I started seeing a grown up doctor, my parents’ physician, Dr. DeLucia. The nurse practitioner I saw for my first visit and physical ordered more blood work. Everything came back fine.

My aunt and grandmother suggested their neurologist, Dr. Greco. I had Dr. DeLucia give me a referral for Dr. Greco. Dr. Greco ordered more bloodwork, did another EMG. He did a pressure point test for fybromyalgia. Everything was fine, everything was normal. Dr. G referred me to a rheumatologist, even though bloodwork had ruled out rheumatoid arthritis time and time again. It was worth a shot. Dr. G also prescribed me Ultracet. I kept running out of money, and didn’t think I could afford a prescription. Luckily, my great-grandmother had stockpiles of Tramadol (same drug, minus the extra Tylenol in Ultracet). I tried it, and it worked. It didn’t make me feel crazy, but I still couldn’t function on it. It affected me the way really good marijuana used to affect me, back in my high school stoner days.

I had an appointment with Dr. Memet, my first female specialist and the rheumatologist. It should have been comforting, but it wasn’t. She ordered more bloodwork, a urinalysis, and did another pressure point test. I mentioned that the pain and lack of answers was depressing, and she prescribed me amitriptyline, suggesting that maybe all I needed was an antidepressant and a “good night of sleep.” She suggested I see a therapist or psychatrist. I added the printout to my pile of prescriptions.

Slowly, the suicidal thoughts started creeping in. I would pause in the bathroom while getting dressed, peeing, or brushing my teeth, and I would stare at the little bottle of Tramadol and Nyquil, wondering if I had the balls to do it, wondering if it would work.

After a party, happy about a good night of beer pong and many wins, I decided that I would just sit outside in the below 30° weather and let the cold and alcohol do the job for me. I didn’t want to deal with the pain anymore. Mike begged and pleaded with me, trying to lift me off of the stairs outside my house. After about twenty minutes of that, he decided I was bluffing and went home. He thought I’d get up and go inside, that it was just a drunken hysteria. I didn’t, and it wasn’t.

He called me twenty minutes later, and I was still outside. I shivered a little, but mostly felt numb. I had to pee, but didn’t care. We talked on the phone for another half hour or so, and then I changed my mind, just like that. I remember wrapping myself in several blankets and three layers of clothing and still not feeling warm enough.

The pain continued to get worse, to spread, to intensify, along with it my thoughts of ending it all. At times I felt serious, but then minutes later told myself I was being overdramatic.

The pain started manifesting in my feet and toes and, sometimes, my legs. I started to wonder how much longer I’d be able to walk.

I had two episodes of very, very instense, sharp pains in my left arm and shoulder. The episodes were a couple of months apart. I started noticing more and more often that, occasionally, my left thumb would be sore and sometimes swollen for a couple of days. Once, when I got out of the shower, my feet were very red, swollen, and achy. Minutes later, they were so normal that I wondered if I’d imagined it. I started to wonder if I was imagining it all.

I missed a follow-up appointment with Dr. Greco because of bad hemmorhoids and constipation. During it all, as I laid in bed in agony, I wondered if the symptoms were related at all. Most of the time I just felt crazy. I started seeing a therapist, who pretended to work on meditation techniques with me but kept insisting that she needed prep time and that we would do the techniques “next week.” I stopped seeing her.

Then my hand swelled up again.

Earlier in the week, my left thumb had become stiff and sore. One morning, while I ran my hands under warm water at work to soothe the pains, I noticed that the base of my thumb was swollen again. “Can you look at my hands?” I asked a coworker. She noticed right away that it was swollen. I was relieved that I wasn’t imagining it. I showed my mom and scheduled my follow-up with Dr. Greco. I wanted someone to see my hand and get it on medical file.

Dr. Greco looked at my hand the next morning. I had to leave work early to make the appointment. “That’s because of the carpal tunnel syndrome,” he said when I showed him the differences between my two hands.

“I… don’t have carpal tunnel syndrome,” I said, baffled.

He continued the examination. “Did you see the rheumatologist?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Did you tell her that you have long limbs and joints?”

“No,” I said. The last time that I had seen Dr. G, he had also kept saying that it was because I am double jointed and have long limbs, fingers, and toes. “She wasn’t very helpful, anyway.”

“Oh?” He stopped and looked at me.

“She told me to go see a therapist, and my therapist told me it’s all in my mind, too.” I flexed my hands and told him that I had really wanted someone to see my hand while it was still swollen.

“You must have hurt yourself,” he said.

“But I didn’t. This has been an ongoing problem. It’s all a part of my whole mystery problem.”

He kept insisting I’d hurt myself and ordered an xray of my hand and wrist, as well as another EMG for the next day. I decided to go get the xrays done right then, and called my boss to tell him that I wouldn’t be back that day. I tried not to think about the money I just lost and the hours I would have to make up as I crossed the bridge between the medical building and the Catholic hospital. I tried not to think about how much time was going by as I went through admissions and filled out paperwork. I tried not to think about how frustrating this whole day was becoming (I’d almost gotten into a car accident earlier, because some old man had come within inches of backing into my aunt’s car) as I waited in the radiology department. Finally, they called my name for the xrays.

The technician held a clipboard as she ran through the routine questions. “When was your last period?” She asked.

“Last month,” I said, fidgeting a little. It would all be over soon, I reminded myself.

“And this month?” She made notes on the clipboard.

“It’s a couple days late, but I recently switched to a new birth control pill, so it should be coming any day now.”

“Well,” she said. “We can’t legally do the xray unless we know for sure you’re not pregnant. Can you have your doctor order a pregnancy test?”

“No,” I said. “And I’m not pregnant.”

“We can’t do it unless we know for positive.”

“So you’re telling me that I just wasted all of this time for nothing?” I tried to keep my voice down, but my anger clearly showed. “That I just wasted a work day for nothing?”

“I can get my supervisor to come and talk to you to approve it,” she said. “But I can’t legally do it.”

“You do that, then,” I said, trying not to snap.

The technician left the xray room, and I looked down at my stupid hand. I had never heard of anything like that, and I had no idea how xraying my hand and wrist could possibly hurt my nonexistent child.

A woman poked her head in and then came in slowly, closing the door behind her. She was probably afraid of the crazy “pregnant” woman. She asked me if I was pregnant, and again I told her no, that I had recently switched birth control and had anticipated it being late or different. She insisted that I could be pregnant and that she couldn’t do the xrays, and my patience jumped off a cliff.

“Fine,” I said through clamped teeth, trying to hold back the tears. I’m one of those lucky people who cry when really mad, so I don’t look threatening or anything; I just look INSANE. “Glad that I wasted a whole goddamn work day here for nothing,” I said as I followed her back to the reception cubicle.

“Could you give Ms. Barone her xray order back?” She asked the nurse behind the window. I snatched it from her when she handed it back to me. “Come back when you know for sure,” she said.

“When I come back, it WON’T be fucking swollen anymore!” I snarled as I stalked away, tears running down my cheeks.

I probably scared every nurse, every patient as I made my way back to the parking lot. I didn’t care. I got lost and almost yelled at a nurse to help me find my way back. I broke down in front of her in the elevator, and she was good enough to smile and nod at me until we got to my floor. She pointed me in the direction to the parking garage, and had the elevator doors closed before I could turn around and thank her. I cried all the way to my car. I climbed in and told myself I had to calm down, that I’d buy myself cigarettes and coffee if I could only just calm the hell down.

On the ride back to my aunt’s house (I was house sitting at the time), I snapped. Fuck it all, I thought. I would just go home and wash down whatever Tramadol I had left with a nice cold glass of water. The solution didn’t calm me like I thought it would. I cried all the way back to the house, the tears blurring my vision. I kept thinking I needed to stop crying before I got into an accident, which is ironic considering what I planned to do.

I got home and got ready. I cried the entire time I changed out of my work clothes. I cried as I filled a glass of iced water. I cried as I went back upstairs for the little bottle of pills and my journal, thinking that I would write my note in there. As I wrote, I realized my words weren’t final but frustrated, angry. I realized that the dishes needed to be done, that my aunt’s cleaning lady would be there soon, that I didn’t have enough pills for anything to happen except maybe a really super high that would probably make me sick.

The urge went away. I felt stupid and overdramatic. I called Mike and chainsmoked as I told him what had almost happened. I took it lightly. I talked to my mom, his mom, my aunt, and my journal some more. I felt better, but I didn’t feel optimistic. After talking to my mom some more, I decided to schedule an appointment with the hand specialist — Dr. Manzo — again.

I’d come full circle.

( To Be Continued… )

Read Kill the Pain (Part I), Kill the Pain (Part II: Doctor Soup), and Kill the Pain (Part III: More Doctor Soup).