Post diagnosis-day 3

Trying to sleep sucks. I felt like garbage all day, and I'm sore and exhausted. Worse yet, my lack of productivity makes me feel oddly guilty. I've lived a forced "normal" life for so long, that I feel like a total loser on days where I can't push through. The kids upstairs are playing rock band. I've tried rock band, but I could never make all my fingers move right, and it all moves too fast. Same thing with dance dance revolution. Each thump moving through the floorboards robs me of sleep and reminds me of all the things that have never worked right.

There's been a lot of that in the last three days. The sudden realization that this has all been real- that I'm not some lame hypochondriac-has been both terrifying and freeing. My stepmother reminded me today of my dad telling me to "cut the shit" when I was sick. I guess at some point I decided to not be sick anymore. Of course, I was sick, but damnit, I got up and pretended I wasn't. I ignored signs and symptoms until they were unbearable. I subjected myself to endless medical tests that found nothing. I got so tired of hearing about how it was all in my head that I stopped looking for the real answer.

Ironically, it's all in my head.

Literally.

The joint pain. The nausea. The cold, numb extremities. The growing weakness in my right hand. The clumsiness, the dizziness, the vertigo. Hell, I have vertigo in my dreams. The endless fatigue, the bouts of incoherence, the fainting. The headaches. The hearing problems, the earaches, the ringing in my ears.

It's all in my head.

But not for long. The neurosurgeon will be calling any day now, to set the date when she'll open up my skull and make it all go away, leaving only a zipper-shaped scar zig-zagging up the back of my head.