Thoughts of an (almost) middle-aged veterinarian, or is it mother?

As I sat in the doctor's office last time, I began to wonder when I had lost my credibility.  It happens a lot lately- started with the TGX ignoring me, and has now spread across quite a bit of my life. 

I have an irregular heartbeat.  Well, that isn't true, entirely.  Sometimes my heart beats funky.  Last September, it beat funky enough that I couldn't walk across the room.  I was in the hospital for three days, unable to rise from the bed.   The nurses commented that they could tell when I went to the bathroom, because my heart would throw a constant stream of pre-ventricular contractions. 

These stopped on the third day.  After I got a full night's sleep, because the doctor's stopped asking for my vitals to be taken.  This happened after I saw two internal medical specialists.  Both of which felt that I was under stress.  My question, of course, was what made my body react so differently this time.  No answer, of course, except to be told that I was obviously under stress.

I was fairly blunt- I've been under stress for years.  That's what life is about when you are a fairly high acheiver.  I've had a job since I was seven- delivering newspapers.  If anything, my life has had the least stress ever in the last eighteen months.  Is it tiring owning one's own practice, and being a single mom half the time?  Of course it is.

But it isn't more stressful than it has been for the last twelve years.  In fact, it is less stressful.  I have a place where I can go, put my feet up and ignore the world.

And yet, my period comes every three weeks instead of four (yes, this was worked up also, and no, it isn't peri-menopause).  That's stress too, or so they say, and when I ask why my body has suddenly decided to react differently, the doctor again leaves the room.

My family doctor tells me that I am too aware of my heartbeat, my menstrual cycles, and my level of energy.  And that is causing me stress.  I was too amazed to respond. 

What kind of a world do we live in where it is accepted that people should not be aware of their bodies.  And aren't I the absolute expert on me?  Not according to the doctor.  According to the doctor, I am the last person to be good at diagnosing myself.  Huh?

I also do not have any idea of when my child is ready for kindergarden. My daughter misses the cut-off by one day.  My son missed it by a hundred, and we had him tested and admitted.  He's gifted (you have to say it in a Kentucky farmland 'yee-huck' sort of voice for that to really impact). 

My daughter is working (at her own discretion) through her second sight word book, and the summer book for kids entering the first grade.  She reads as well as her brother, with expression and meaning.  She's a little slower in mat- only at a kindergarden level. 

But yes, she has to be tested to be sure that she is "ready". 

I'm getting a reputation for pushing my kids- that is obviously part of the stress in my life.

Except, of course, that I don't. 

But nobody believes that. 

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• #2 Comment from ceilisundancer 
  6/9/08 12:28 PM | Permalink

  Sometimes, to go ahead and embrace knowledge, hits walls around us, as you can tell.  Crazy.  And, yes, do what's right for yourself and your kids (of course, you will, anyway).  Can you switch doctors, I mean, sheesz, around me, it's considered quite lax if any female old enough to menstruate hasn't kept track of the cycles.  Is this type of self-knowledge, and desire for proper placement of "gifted" kids, really out of the norm for your area?  
• #1 Comment from mmcn515 
  6/9/08 1:25 AM | Permalink

  Just take it easy because sometimes when we feel we aren't stressed we actually have an underlying stress that we choose to ignore.  The way your ex acts it isn't surprising that you are stressed. And I don't want to see anything happen to you. As for your kids, don't let the schools tell you what to do as they are often wrong.  They told me to let my youngest sink so he wouldn't sink in college.  Of course that would mean he would have a hard time getting into college.  What morons.