Schrodinger’s Brain- So Many Possibilities
Schrodinger
Metaphor for Uncertainty
Until the tests (the opening of the box), all of these diagnoses- and the symptoms that go with them, are both real and not real at the same time.
This should sound like an anomaly, but I’m pretty sure that most people who have experienced the process of being diagnosed with something that isn’t straightforward can entirely relate.
There’s this constant battle in my mind right now. I do know that whatever is going on is real… but is it?
Toxic Positivity Warps Reality
Here’s the problem- no matter what symptoms I’m experiencing there’s this version of me who is mean, cynical, and doubting.
Make no mistake, this version of me was created by my mother, so we’re just going to name this version of me “Joyce” in her honor, because it’s the need for survival that she seeded within me that anticipates the worst for me, the believes the worst in me, and is incredibly vocal (inside my head) about everything.
The reasonable, logical, educated, adult that I’ve become knows better. Sometimes.
That’s not true actually. I know better all of the time, and it’s still been an incredible struggle.
What if none of this is real?
What if I’ve made the whole thing up?
What if it really is “just arthritis” and the blood test was a false negative and everything else is fabricated? Because this is how this stretch of my journey started… I just want relief from the pain.
The pain.
But every once in a while, I’ll have a good moment. I’ll be sitting at my work computer typing away, and I’m not noticing my arm going dead on me, or the grinding in my lower back (which a recent x-ray says is “normal”). In this moment, I hear Joyce.
“You’re fine. So your body feels weird once in a while, and you think you just need everyone’s attention for it? Jesus Christ! Give me a break.”
I’ll struggle on the stairs- losing my eyesight, and having the pattern in the carpet weave and dance in front of me- then the next time, it doesn’t happen, and Joyce chimes in.
“It never happened. You made it all up, and this little ‘struggle on the stairs’ now is all an act.” I told you she was mean.
I’ll take the next step, feel the zing down my leg, and the grind in my lower back, and tell myself, “You could suck this up if you wanted to. Why are you being such a child?”
And the worst part is, I probably could.
In any single task- I could probably “push through” and have actually spent decades doing so. So, this is what I expect of me, and I probably could push myself to run up the stairs one time.
It’s the cumulative effect, and that seems less real.
I am not afraid of finding out I have MS today. I’m afraid of finding out that I don’t and being told that “nothing is happening.”
In reality, I’m losing control of my arm about once per half-hour.
My eyes are super sensitive, and occasionally they do tricks.
I’ve started having flash headaches.
Walking at the end of the day is so painful.
I struggle sitting at my desk at work.
There are so many things going on that I cannot recall them all, even though I’m living in the body experiencing the symptoms.
I’m having symptoms in most of the systems of my body.
I spend all of my time seeking relief, and whenever any form of relief occurs, I start to think I’ve been making it up.
Never mind that I’m on an extensive, every day pain regimen to make some relief possible.
Never mind that my symptoms and the diagnoses we’re investigating, are defined by their intermittency.
I can’t just blame my mother either. Medicine has told me “Oh, it’s nothing,” so many times that I find it difficult to seek help for things that are obvious (like an open gash, or projectile vomiting). I find it difficult to believe that I will be validated regardless of the level of “proof,” and it’s much harder when there’s a chance of finding nothing.
This is real and not real at the same time, all of the time, and that is really hard to navigate.
Here’s to the possibility of answers, to arm my rational mind, and give me rest.
Survivor Literacy 
What do you think?