Aight, fine. It's only 10:30, and I have truly staggering amount of beer left, so I'll tell you a story.
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I would play racquetball, badly, with my friend, and I'd come out all exhausted and sweaty, and he'd condescend and such like.
But then when I went to the van, and levered myself up in to the seat, my forearms would be thick deep owwie.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my ex- (and bff) had been away on walkabout after we did hospice for her mother.
And she was back, and she stayed in my spare bedroom.
And we had a big argument.
I have no idea what it was about, no clue.
But I do know that I was in the wrong.
Sooooooo, fuck me, I went to her room, and crawled up the ladder to her loft bed, and apologized.
And I told her about this physical ailment, and my trips to the (seriously major hawt) doctor, and how we'd got *nuffin* so far.
And bestie said, "Did you tell her you were miserable all the time?"
Of course I didn't tell my doctor I was miserable all the time. Don't be ridiculous.
But.
But, you know, I had just had a big fight in which I was in the wrong, so I couldn't really quite rationalize telling bestie to fuck off.
So there I am, at the doctor's office (my goodness, she was a lovely woman), and you have to picture me, I'm maybe 25, 26, 27, it's unclear, but you have to picture me like a third grader.
I'm avoiding eye contact.
I'm digging my toe into the carpet.
I mumble, "Helen says I have to tell you I'm miserable all the time."
And she said, "Oh! That's interesting."
She asked me to wait a minute, cuz she had a little survey she wanted me to fill out.
And she brought me this little questionnaire, twelve questions, and asked me to quickly fill it out.
It was a mental health survey, 12 questions, and I gave the wrong answer to 11 of them. (I was still horny.)
And the doctor said, "Oh, honey, you have depression."
And so I began the journey through formal depression and formal prescriptions. It was '85, or so, and Prozac (flueoxetine) was very new, and I got my first prescription for depression.
(You are not supposed to have a gigantic crush on your doctor. That is bad. That is not a thing to do.
But.
You know.
My gosh.
Soon after, I moved down to where I live now, 20 miles outside of Charlottesville.
I, maybe two years ago, discovered that my doctor, who I thought was beautiful and kind and smart, actually moved down this way, too.
She has passed, now.
But she was so lovely, and kind, and smart, and I will remember her always.)
So now we cut.
Fifteen years later.
The meds worked, ish, and for a while. My arms stopped hurting.
But it didn't *last*. It'd be a year, or 18 months, and then I'd be back in.
Deep in. At least two years of that time, I spent maybe 20 hours a day in bed. I wasn't sleeping. You can't sleep that much. I was just laying there faking sleep.
And then I had a new symptom.
I began to itch.
I had hives, on my hands and feet, and then, as it got worse, on my forehead and under my scalp.
Horrible itching.
And these hives.
And, I was still rich, I had anti-depressants in large quantities, and then steroids to calm it all down.
And one night, I began to die.
The hives were not even hives. My whole body was just a single solid red hive.
I told my wife I thought I was dying. So she drove me in to the emergency room.
I was fine, really, fine, hanging right in there.
But while she was talking to the nurse and filling out paperwork, I slid down the wall and collapsed on the floor.
Look, if you've never had someone administer epinephrine to your neck, you don't wanna know what that's like. I mean, an epi-pen is bad enough, but this was in my fucking neck.
Upside: Hives, *insta-gone*. I mean. *Nothing*. Instantly.
Downside: the worst fucking stomach ache I have ever had.
(ER doctor said, later, it was good that I'd come in. He said it wasn't that close, really.
"You had like half an hour or so."
That's how ER specialists think.)
So. Anaphylaxis, right? Must be an allergy, right?
After grand rounds, the allergist big boss came around. He asked me if it would be okay to take pictures of me in my underpants. He said that his students knew about stuff like this, but they hadn''t *seen* it.
I consented.
And then I became the patient of one of the most noted allergy doctors in the world.
AND I TOLD HIM.
"Doc, I'm not allergic, I'm a head-case."
And he poo-poo'd the very idea.
"Nonsense! There's an allergen and we will find it!"
I must have had 200 needle tests. I did maybe 6 or 7 isolation diets.
I have a very mild allergy to grass. So mild, the technician said, "welllllll, it's borderline. Not something we'd treat for."
Three fucking years, and then this world-famous allergist calls me in, and he calls my *wife* in, too, to deliver his conclusion.
"You're a head-case. You're not allergic to anything."
I FUCKING TOLD YOU.
Meanwhile, of course, I'm still on anti-depression meds.
And they worked.
Somewhat.
For a while.
And then they stopped working.
I got handed off from one doctor to another, from one psychopharmacologist to another.
(In the event, low serotonin is implicated in depression, yes, and it's also implicated in histamine reactions, yes, and it's also implicated in, I will work to put this into acceptable language, "lower GI issues".
I know this now. I did not know it then.)
Then I met the most wonderful doctor, the only psychiatrist I've ever met who was an expert in pharmaceuticals, and . . . wait for it . . . a decent and kind and thoughtful human being.
He prescribed *obscene* levels of meds for me.
My wife was having some anxiety issues, and they prescribed noratryptaline for her, and she ran out, and knew that I was taking it, too.
Could she borrow one of mine?
She was doing 5mg a day. (And it helped, and she still does it at times.)
I was doing 225mg a day.
And they'd help for a little while, these obscene levels of drugs, and then they would *stop* helping.
And this guy, this doctor, the only great psychiatrist I have ever known, took in my records, and took in what he had done, and he told me, "You're drug-resistant and drug-adaptive."
He said that, going forward, we were gonna have to drug the shit outta me, and it would only work for a year or 18 months, and then we'd have to drug the shit outta me with something else.
I, well, I am a manly man of the 20th century, and I am not a person who cries.
And I began to cry.
And Joe, that was his name, Joe, he just held my hand for a minute.
And then he said, "No, this is *good* news, on two different counts."
1) It gives us a plan. It's good to have a plan. It's good to know what to watch for, and it's good to have an answer for it, and we will have that.
2) It confirms beyond any question that this is your *body*. You are ill. You are not weak. It's not your mind, it's your body.
Somewhere around the age of 26 or so, I began to experience sharp and deep pain in the bones of my forearms.
I was rich then, so I went to the doctor.
She was DO, all of my best doctors have been DOs, and to be entirely transparent, she was *gorgeous*, and I had a huge crush on her.
And we did numerous tests, and we got nothing.