Anatomy of a hypochondria episode - or at least I hope so.

So umm I should probably address this. For about two weeks, my calves and legs have felt too sort of stiff, like I need to keep stretching them – especially the calves. They just feel too tight, you know that feeling? And at work, they feel achy and tired. Then yesterday at work, the edge of the throw rug was stuck up from the chair yanking on it, and I tripped on it.

So tonight I got myself convinced, without a single doubt, that I have ALS. Like, full-on panicking, two hours on the internet, checking off the symptoms (really the one important one: sudden muscle weakness) and looking for any "outs" that would indicate something else. Like, everyone else was worried because they had muscle twitching, and they were constantly being reassured "But that comes in the late stages, don't worry! It's really just a subtle, tired-muscle feeling in the beginning." Which, you know, is exactly what I have.

Now of course, I haven't been to Kung Fu in about three weeks. So aside from work, I haven't moved or stretched. Can't really walk either dog, so I've just been either working (massage therapy, obvs,) or sitting at the computer. I mean really, have just sat here.

Except for Monday, when I put on my sneakers and took Haku for a jog. That was the first time I've jogged since July. But would I still be feeling it now, almost a week later? (And my calves were tired at work, the week before that.)

The other thing that happened was yesterday at work, a client who may or may not have been related to me was telling me about her deceased son. He died suddenly at age 19, from a congenital heart defect – the same one that my Dad had. (Although I'm never really convinced that is actually what happened to my Dad.) She tried, in a gentle way, to tell me to go get checked out for the defect, because some of our families were from the same small part of the world (Naples, specifically,) and if my Dad had it I probably do, too. And it obviously can just drop you dead out of nowhere, at any age, right in the middle of a work-out.

I'm not sure how I got from there to ALS except that it's possible she legitimately triggered me. Then I was like, "Holy crap. Do I have an actualfax anxiety disorder?"

In the past I've gotten worked up into total panics thinking I had every kind of cancer there was. No really: every kind that it was possible for me to get. Lymphoma once in college, then again right before my second time around in college. After Pendragon died, I was sure I had ovarian cancer because I was having heart palpitations. [??WUT??] Then a few years after that, I was wearing a halter monitor because I was having heart palpitations again. (The doctor told me that time to just lay off the chocolate. I didn't.)

Oh, then when we were doing the circulatory system in school, I ended up at the emergency clinic because my nails on one hand had turned blue. It ended up that I had just been shoving my hand into my pocket and getting fabric dye on it. Weird thing about that was that when the nurse checked my O2 levels, it actually was way lower on the blue side. The doctor that time assured me that I had done that myself, just by thinking about it. He told me "Come back when you're doing the respiratory system; you'll have pneumonia! We'll X ray your lungs for you!" (He wasn't being a dick about it; he actually was really nice and we both had a good laugh after he had cleaned the dye off my fingernails.)

Two weeks ago I was about 90% sure I had colon cancer. (Note to self: that's your left ovary, okay? Every single time. Honest. The one that exploded violently over the summer with all the pain and anguish etc. And remember: the dildo-cam confirmed that the ovary was JUST FINE post-explosion.)

It's not just me, though: EVERYONE is dying. Whenever someone I know gets a cold, looks pale, feels tired, or has dry skin, they obviously have any of the many diseases I've "studied." (In other words: learned about in pathology and/or read about for hours at a time on the internet.)

Right after I saw 50/50, and for about two months after that, I had a tumor in my back for a while, too. (It went away after I got rid of the old computer chair.) I mean, honestly convinced that's what it was. Like, started to decide what I would do if I had to lose work to have an operation and stuff.

So now my calves hurt and I tripped over a rug, and even though I haven't been to Kung Fu in weeks, and I went for my first jog in 8 (9?) months, I still can't be convinced that I don't have ALS. Logic doesn't work – because even though I can focus on likelihood and logic and stuff like that, the fact remains that I still have the, like, one actual symptom of it. (And by the way, that started before my jog. And as far as likelihood goes, I am the exact right age for it, so.)

Oh, and here's another weird thing. It says that chickpea toxicity can mimic ALS too – especially in vegetarians. Okay, so I live on chickpeas and hummus. In the last month, I've eaten literally about three tubs of hummus. But again, to weigh this fairly: the "mimicry" they're probably talking about is muscle twitching ("One theory of chickpea toxicity is that the high level of the amino acid glutamate interferes with synaptic activity. If glutamate crosses the brain blood barrier, it allows calcium to enter synaptic spaces causing very dangerous interference with nervous transmission. ") which I don't have (and anyway, that's the one that everyone says "Oh, don't worry about that; that's not ALS.") And two, that's really only for people who don't have access to any other proteins, and I still get enough protein.

The other side of that is, I remember hearing about this briefly in school. Except I was sure, absolutely sure, that my professor had said MS and not ALS when talking about chickpea toxicity. Still – maybe, possibly, the professor did say ALS and I got incepted. "Oh, I've eaten tons of hummus every day for the last month – time to kick in with the one definite symptom!"

Also, I have been sitting in some mighty strange positions in this computer chair to get comfy. I am hyper-mobile so I can cross my legs around each other three times. Literally can wrap my right thigh around my left thigh, left calf around my right, and right ankle around the left and then invert that foot so that it wraps around the right. (And vise-versa and can do the same with all my fingers as well as bending them all the way backwards. Another family trait.) So I get into these weird contortions and they are comfy for a while.

The point of this is that while it's quite likely that I do have this anxiety disorder (my primary doc gave me some "relax" meds about six years ago when I couldn't breathe and thought I was dying of pulmonary obstruction,) and that this lady triggered it by telling me I was going to drop dead suddenly – the fact remains that I still have the one symptom of ALS and it came out of nowhere. So logic doesn't matter. Just because I dodged all the other bullets / was being an idiot about things, that doesn't mean that's always going to be the case.