Confessions of a Hypochondriac

Well, the pain in my side has finally started to ease up. For those of you who don't know, I'm sort of a closet hypochondriac. I hate going to the doctor because it's such a massive inconvenience, but I'm generally in fear that I have cancer or heart disease or some other thing that is going to cause me to die young. It doesn't hinder my lifestyle (I haven't become a germaphobic hermit or anything), it's just one of those things that always crosses my mind. So, when I went to the doctor about my side again, they did all these x-rays and blood work to check for infection, and everything looked clear, except that I was still in terrible pain that just wouldn't go away and my lovely Indian doctor wasn't exactly sure what it was and started making guesses about ligaments and tendons and cartilage. I knew, though, that all the tests had been run and everything was clear, so I wasn't too worried about it. My mother tends to be the opposite of me. She doesn't worry too much about life threatening illnesses, and always assumes the best until she's told otherwise. But, then, a couple of nights ago she asked me for the millionth time about my side and I replied with, "I don't want to talk about it," because I was so annoyed with the whole thing. Then she said she was worried because I shouldn't be in pain this long. Well, that's all it took for me to start mourning the death of my children's mother and get all stressed out about it. That was late at night, and the ER is not even a consideration for me unless I have bones sticking out or something because it's the most uncomfortable, repulsive place in the world covered with people suffering from the pitiful condition of ignorance and bad genetics, which leads to terrible health and no insurance and the use of the ER as a general physician, making it totally miserable for people with a legitimate emergency (No, I have no problem expressing my honest opinion). So, I went to bed and prayed and coughed myself to sleep. Today, it feels so much better. It's still there, but it's bearable. I can wash my hair without feeling it, and I can lay on my back without feeling like my lung is going to split open (I've been restricted to the fetal position every night), and I can even sit up with full use of my stomach muscles. I'm still coughing, which my doctor gave me an asthma inhaler for, and which I never remember to use, and it's still lingering in the back of my mind that there could be some underlying problem, but I've always been a perpetual worrier, so my mother used to frequently remind me of the words of Scarlett O'Hara to help me sleep at night: "Fiddle, dee, dee. I'll worry about that tomorrow." So, that's what I'm trying to do. A couple more years blogging and you'll all know the full extent of what a nut I really am. Oh, and here are Evan and Alli caught in a rare moment. They've gotten in the terrible habit of fighting all the time these days, which I'm finding is typical.