Poor little victim me

Megan Hadgraft

Megan Hadgraft is a freelance writer and English teacher, who lives and works in Berlin. 

Poor little victim me

Not for the first time in my life, I have a chronic illness. The shape of illness and diagnosis is much the same this time as every other time.
First, there’s trying to get a medical professional to understand how much pain you are in. Doctors are good at dealing with acute situations. If you have a huge gash on your forehead, they (usually) know what to do. If your illness isn’t immediately obvious, doctors run out of answers very quickly.
My diagnosis was impeded by two things – I’m female, and I’m 48. An obvious answer didn’t present itself, so guess what the go-to option was? That’s right –  menopause. When I pointed out I still menstruate regularly – perimenopause! I mean, what else?
If something is wrong with a woman, her girl bits must be the root cause. We get sent to the Lady Doctor, which is weird, because if you’re not pregnant and don’t have cancer, these doctors can’t do much for you. Women suffer over decades of their lives… ah, but we know this already.
You probably get a prescription for some cocktail of artificial hormones, administered unscientifically (‘Try it, see what happens, if it doesn’t work and we’ll try something else). Or, if you are over forty, you can have your female organs removed. Once you are past child-bearing, why look for a solutions when you can whip it all out instead?
Any side-effects from these efforts have nothing to do with the treatment, of course. If you are desperate, you can try a same-same-slightly different path with psychiatry (‘Try it, see what happens, etc’). As we know, women are crazy! Not driven mad from pain and frustration. Or life.
If all else fails, medical professionals can fall back on ‘alternative’ medicine. If you choose to go down the complementary path before going to a ‘real’ doctor, you will be scorned. If they have run out of answers, suddenly acupuncture and so on are considered viable options.
If you are lucky, your doctor will have a Eureka moment, and you’ll get a result. It would be unfair to suggest that luck plays a bigger role in medicine than science, but… oh, let’s not go there! Doctors have such a difficult job and are doing their very best!
My current illness is one of the most painful I’ve experienced, and I am not a stranger to chronic pain. In my life I’ve been diagnosed with asthma (diagnosed aged 6 after being hospitalized because I had an acute attack and was given the wrong medication), Meniere’s disease (diagnosed aged 20 after an acute attack, though the deafness, nausea dizzy spells had not been believed), endometriosis (diagnosed aged 38 after emergency surgery for a ruptured ovarian cyst), and scoliosis (diagnosed aged 40 randomly, after years spent at physiotherapy clinics). Any one of these can make your life a misery. Yet you can live with all of them and function relatively normally, which I guess is why it is difficult to get a diagnosis.
This time round, it is chronic sinusitis. Yes, snot. I had no idea how painful it could be. For a time, days would begin with a nosebleed, and end with a headache so bad I wanted to rip my face off. Now, it’s just headaches, anxiety, fatigue and ickiness, which is quite the upgrade.
How can sinusitis be mistaken for menopause? When you can’t look past someone’s age, it’s easy enough. Also, the symptoms include anxiety and depression. Think about it – the cavities in your forehead are filled with pathogens, allergens and inflammation. Between that and your grey matter is a permeable surface. Of course this affects your mood. But as a Woman of a Certain Age, hormones are an easier go to than … well, anything else.
The cause of my current indisposition? A mouldy flat. Strangely enough, getting my landlord to understand that I had a problem with fungus in my flat was remarkably similar to getting a doctor to understand that something was very wrong with my body. At least I could move out of my flat.