Let me say one thing right up front. I love my doctor. I truly do. I think she is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And she likes me too. She has told friends of mine I am her favorite patient.

When I see her, she spends A LOT of time with me, answering all of my questions thoroughly, checking me over with a fine-tooth comb, talking about her kids and asking about my grandkids. She even tells me when she is confused by symptoms that I may have. (When this occurs, she always says, “Let me check up on that.” And then, she always does, and she gets back to me with a prompt answer.)

She comes and sees me in plays. I give her short stories of mine to read. She gives me books that she's read and thinks that I'll enjoy.We always end up laughing whenever we see each other. We talk about vacations, politics, what an idiot we think Rush Limbaugh is, her husband, my wife, etc.

In short, she is an excellent doctor who genuinely cares about my well being and treats me like a person.

Now, because she is such an honest and caring doctor, I have come to a certain conclusion about the state of the modern medical profession; it’s all a guessing game. Seriously. When dealing with health issues that are puzzling to her, my doctor goes though a process of elimination. Step by step, she methodically rules out diseases and syndromes that I don’t have, plays the percentages, and then presents me with her best highly-educated guess.

Case in point: about three months ago, I went to Dr. Kristin with severe bouts of dizziness. I would wake up in the morning, and the room would be spinning. I mean, I would literally see the world spinning past my eyes, going from right to left, as if I were on a high-speed carousel. It would be so bad sometimes that I would lose my balance and get nauseous.

The first thing that Dr. Kristin did was check my ears, nose, eyes and throat.

Being the hypochondriac that I am, (And I am a certified hypochondriac. Dr. Kristen laughed and called me that herself once! The legend, “SEE! I told you I was sick!” is going to be engraved on my tombstone.), I immediately knew what the problem was – I had a brain tumor.

Dr. Kristin told me that the symptoms I was experiencing could come from a number of things including: allergies, a sinus infection, inner ear problems, or something called benign positional vertigo. After careful consideration, she thought that it could be a combination of allergies and the positional vertigo.

Benign positional vertigo, according to her, is a syndrome that usually occurs in middle-aged and elderly folks. As we age, calcium crystals build up in our inner ear. Periodically, some of these little suckers break loose, and begin floating around in there. When they bump into nerve receptors, these receptors send messages to the brain saying that the outside world is spinning around. These episodes can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, and they can continue to re-occur for up to five or six months. They come to an end when the floating crystals finally dissolve.

She told me to take a decongestant such as Claritin D to fight allergies. She also gave me some physical exercises to do to counteract benign postional vertigo.

She also said that it may take a few weeks to clear up the symptoms, but that they should start to gradually diminish.

I asked her about the possibility of a brain tumor, and she said that, although that was a possibility, the chances of it being a brain tumor were slim to none. (She said that she was not going to tell the symptoms because she knew that I would instantly develop them.)

That bothered me.

She didn’t say positively that it WASN’T a brain tumor. So, in my mind, guess what? I HAD A BRAIN TUMOR!

I left her office depressed and frightened.

Since Dr. Kristin wouldn’t give me the symptoms, I googled them on the internet.

I had all the classic symptoms of a brain tumor! And, if I didn’t have a symptom at first, I quickly came down with it shortly after reading about it!

I wasn’t going to live to see my grandchildren grow up!

I wasn’t going live to retire.

Suddenly, everything else in the universe seemed unimportant and trivial.

I even looked at my eight-year-old German Shepherd, Dixie, and thought, You’re going to outlive me!

I drove my poor, understanding and wonderful wife nuts for weeks!!!!



Then, something unexplainable and baffling happened. After a little over three months of dizziness, I started feeling better. The dizziness began to diminish as did the nausea. Just like the good doctor guessed that they would!

Today is my third day in a row without Claritin D, and I’m feeling pretty damned good. For the last two weeks, I’ve woken up in the morning relieved to feel little or no dizziness or nausea. I look at the world, and feel elation because perhaps I will stay above ground long enough to outlive my teeth.

Perhaps Dr. Kristin was right with her diagnosis.

I look back now, and the numbing fear I experienced seems like a bad dream that never really happened.

Today, however, a new medical crisis has arisen. I have toothache, and I’m pretty sure there is a cavity in one of my molars that is big enough to be an expressway which bacteria are using to rush into the innards of my skull and develop a life-threatening infection that cause my brain to swell and explode.