and I hate feeling this way. It is not something I am proud to admit, even though I know rationally that we all have our good days and bad days. I have been feeling pretty awful and I know why. It is the stress of worrying over whether the doctor is going to find skin cancer next week.
It is so easy to say, and for others to say, “just don’t worry about it. It is what it is”. But we all know that faced in these situations ourselves we never quite can follow our own advice. The worry is affecting my health, as we all know that stress is a big no-no for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients. It just makes our symptoms worse and that makes me depressed when my symptoms are worse.
I still have one week to wait until my appointment and I just have this awful gut feeling about a couple of these moles, or “marks” – whatever they are. The one on my arm is/was definitely a mole but became larger and kind of odd-shaped. The one on my lower leg, down near my ankle – that one has never looked like a mole really.
Believe me, I am always the first to try and brush aside any negative thoughts (even though I’m not always successful) and laugh things off and try to make light of them. I just have this weird feeling, this gut instinct, that I’m going to get bad news. No matter how much I try to shake it off, it’s not working. I think for those of us who are chronically ill, we are so in tune to our bodies we have a sixth sense about these things.
So over the weekend I was not much good to my husband or son because I felt so bad. My husband, God bless him, did his best to try and get me out a little, which that did help. But after being active for only a short time I felt really useless and so fatigued again.
I just really don’t have anyone to talk to that I feel comfortable bearing all, you know? I am seen as this “strong”, “funny” person by so many that I feel that I can’t share my true feelings or that I can’t let them see the vulnerable side of me.
I do talk to my husband, but we all know how men are. They want to fix everything when I just need someone to listen. I can’t talk to my husband’s family either. They are all so self-absorbed that they turn every situation around to be about them. I just become more frustrated if I try talking to them.
My family is great and very supportive. But my first thought is that they will worry, so I just made light of the situation to them – well, my mother mainly. I told my sister that the doctor thought the mark on my lower leg looked like Melanoma, but I made her promise not to tell my mother. My mother and father just know that the doctor is going to look at some “suspicious moles” and I made it sound like it was no big deal – just a routine thing they do for people with a lot of moles. I don’t want to burden any of them.
I do have my readers here to share with – that is a bonus to having a blog! I can let my guard down here, online, and know that no one will judge me. For anyone reading this, thanks for “listening”. You readers are so very special to me!
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