So I guess I have spent some portion of my adult life not feeling great but doing okay. As I hit the mid twenties I knew I was hurting for no good reason, depressed, tired and just feeling like crap. I come from a family of women who "wear out" early. We all start having vague unexplained pain and tiredness at right about thirty and when we talk it over with the docs it is said we are just getting old. My mother, my grandmother, my great grandmother, my sister have all been labeled as hyperchondriacs or mentally ill. That's why they feel bad. Fibromalagia, CFS, bipolar, Irritable bowel syndrome, PTSD, you name your favorite vague symdrome and my family has gotton stuck with it.
So when this happened to me I just ignored it. Just imagine going down to the Drs office and saying " I feel tired and am achey" Nothing like being branded a hyperchondriac at 25. Instead of dealing with know it all drs I just ate better, excercised more, did yoga, meditation and mentally prepared to deal with pain on some level and fatigue on some level for the rest of my life. I was just getting old. When I first moved to Michigan I spent the first six months totally exhausted and in constant pain. I figured it was the stairs-I hadn't lived in a place with stairs before. Over the next few years I went through a slow decline in my ability to focusand remember. I ended up with a diagnosis of ADHD and took ritalin for awhile. It did help it really odd ways.
I could focus better and I felt calm and relaxed. I guess I had morphed into a constant state of hypervilegence for some reason. I was always on edge-not in a panic attack sort of way but somehow on a more innate level. When I started the ritalin I was taking aikido-My teacher noticed a huge change in the fliudity of my movements. Before I had been very spastic, even spasmodic, now they were very smooth and integrated. The ritalin also helped me sleep so much better. I would sleep much more deeply and not dream at all. Before this I always dreamed, always remebered my dreams and would wake up every three hours or so with clocklike precision. I would find myself on some nights waking up from nightmarish dreams were my brain would get stuck in repetitive thoughts-an OCD like mesh of doing the same task again and again. My legs would also ache in a really odd way and I would wake up my husband by kicking him as I rolled around. It was exhausting. The ritalin made that stop and I could sleep so soundly. I also learned to "watch" my mental state as on and off the meds I could see huge differences in the way my mind worked. It gave me essential skills in self observation.
On the down side I had to stop taking it after awhile. Normally when ritalin wears off you go through a half hour of hyperactive irritability due to the innate dopamine levels dropping a bit. Your body steps up and restores those levels to normal but it takes about thirty minutes for that to happen. Kids on ritalin will be super spastic when this happens just for a bit. For me this was horrible. I would feel really bad with headaches, eyeaches, stomachaches and exhaustion for about two hours after I stopped the meds. I also noticed the longer I took the meds, the more of the calm effects had disappeared. I would just be more awake. I finally stopped them altogether and just embraced the fact that I was who I was and there wasn't much I could do about it. I found god-not jesus by any means! and focused on mopping up the mess that my graduate career had turned into.
I considered vet school as I realized I didn't want the lifelong PhD research route. My GPA and GRE scores were easliy within range so I took a pharmacology class in my grad program to see if I was smart enough to do okay in vet school. I totally understood the mecahnisms and the underlying science but I couldn't remember any of the drug names. My memory had been in serious decline for awhile so I figured I was just to old and dumb to really pursue that route. Our moms tell us we can be anything we want to be when we grow up. It is a lie but one told for the kindest reasons. I had tried to be a biophysicist but it seems my differential equation limited mind was not quite up to par. Now it also seemed like vet school was not realy a reasonable choice. On that note I worked for another year helping my Pofessor finish up some extra work and left with a Master's degree. A four years master's degree is a bit sad but a PHd would have locked me into a much worse path.
