Inconclusive

The prob­lem with their find­ing noth­ing wrong is that they don’t find a cause, either– which means the cause is still out there.  Which means it comes back.  Creeps back, so at first you don’t really notice, a lit­tle bit of exhaus­tion, a small bit of nau­sea, some tired­ness, until your friend wafts some cook­ies you’d try under your nose and it’s all you can do not to hurl.  You’re pretty sure your gag– almost heave– is plain on your face.

You’re woozy– tired– sweaty and feel­ing light­headed in the large crowd when you go sight­see­ing with friends and think to your­self well, it’s been a long cou­ple of days as great as it’s been, that and you never were fond of crowds and the air’s kind of stuffy in here. Some­thing to drink, a lit­tle trail mix, a few min­utes to your­self on a bench at a quiet spot out­side in the back, you’re almost right as rain.  You try not to think about los­ing your foot­ing on the stairs with one of their bags just that morn­ing– you’ve always been a bit of a klutz and there needn’t be more to it than that.

But Sat­ur­day comes and you’re tired after a long day of work– feel­ing crushed– and a grilled meats and veg­etable din­ner, just the thing to restore the ane­mia that was the only defi­ciency the doc­tors said that they found doesn’t make a dent, not at all.  Sunday’s even worse, and halfway through your shift you’re sweaty and nau­seous again, just like a month ago, won­der­ing if you’ll make it through your shift with­out your knees buckling.

They checked every­thing– blood tests, blood sugar, blood pres­sure, phys­i­cal, all of that stuff, reduced some of your meds, changed your diet around, and they said that every­thing checked out on an immune and endocrine level except for your iron once all was all done.  Their best guess is that some com­bi­na­tion of your lit­tle yel­low pill and your weight loss, maybe some stress all com­bined to take advan­tage and make you feel so very ill.  But that’s just a guess.

The prob­lem with incon­clu­sive is that– it’s no con­clu­sion, it leaves things open-ended.  Ane­mia isn’t an answer to why you have sweats and nau­sea– it doesn’t explain why Sun­day night when you go down to the break room to heat up your din­ner, the heave you have when you take off the microwave lid has you clap­ping your hand over your mouth and run­ning out of the room, then grab­bing onto the wall, your knees shak­ing because fuck, the din­ner you ate last night with­out prob­lem now smells utterly nasty and your poor boss, the one twelve years younger than you, has to come out to the base­ment to check you haven’t passed out on him because it’s his din­ner break too, the poor suf­fer­ing bastard.

Diet Coke.  It’s a hell of a din­ner, but liq­uids are bet­ter than nothing.

Mon­day morning’s hardly much bet­ter.  Your morn­ing pills stay down with the kefir your nutri­tion­ist rec­om­mended you try (a for­mer Fat Kid on the out­side, always going to be one in your heart and your mind, the fact that you need one to fig­ure out how to keep weight on is such a damned mind­fuck), but then when you try to have some­thing real later on, up it comes a half an hour later and you’re headachy and shaky and sick the rest of the day, your blood pres­sure up and down and all over the place.  You call in sick and it’s the same boss from last night, so he knows– under­stands– and you promise to keep him posted about the next day, but there’s an unspo­ken ques­tion there you can’t answer–

What’s wrong?

Damned if you know.