I am addressing medical professionals as well as patients here.  In my teens I began to experience severe heart palpitations.  My doctor was the man who delivered me, and he set about doing everything that he could to find out what was causing the palpitations.  I spent a few days in the hospital getting the glucose toleration tests and a variety of other tests.  He sent me to one of the leading diagnosticians in the nation at the time.  The conclusion was that I suffered from hypoglycemia or low blood sugar.  At the time little was known about how diet plays a role in controlling this condition.  Instead I carried sugar cubes in my pocket everywhere I went just in case I started to feel like I had an episode coming on.  The tests also showed that I had a B complex deficiency for which I was prescribed a prescription B complex vitamin.  I remember feeling so guilty because the vitamins cost 10 cents per pill.  My father was a hard-working famer raising a daughter by himself as my mother died when I was 13.

I got married, went to college, finished my degree, and began teaching.  About 2 years into that life, I began having the palpitations once again.  I went to a local doctor and explained what happened in my youth and told him that I was having the palpitations once again.  I could feel the eye roll and just clamed up about the palpitations.  I visited more than one doctor with the same outcome and just vowed to myself that I would not mention it anymore.  I also had developed a rapid heartbeat.  Each doctor would say your heart is beating very fast.  Is that normal for you?

Maybe I just had a bad luck streak with doctors, or maybe I seemed to young and healthy to have these symptoms.  I do not know what the situation was, I just know that I dreaded the possibility of having one of these attacks in public.  My husband was sure that I was not telling the doctor how bad the palpitations were and accompanied me to an appointment.  He told the doctor that the palpitations were so severe that they bounced me up and down on the bed.  He left the office in a huff as he experienced the same lack of concern that I had experienced.

Fast forward to a move to the area which I now live in.  We became acquainted with a physician’s assistant one Saturday afternoon as the result of my husband cutting his thumb almost off with a very sharp knife.  The said physician’s assistant was on duty and did an expert job of sewing my husband’s thumb back on.  He did not experience loss of feeling or use of his thumb.  We had found our medical home in this little one doctor clinic in our town.  I felt comfortable enough to bring up the palpitations to this wonderful professional who got right to work trying to determine the root of my problem.  My thyroid hormone levels were through the roof, and I was sent to see the new doctor in town who was starting an endocrinology department at the local hospital.

Even though the local PAC was doing all that he could to find the root of my problem, he did not give me the peace that the endocrinologist did.  He walked in and said I notice that you have a problem sitting still and I also notice that your hands are shaking.  Do your ankles feel cold when they are not, and do you have heart palpitations?  I wanted to jump up and kiss him.  I felt so relieved that someone in the medical profession knew my symptoms and hopefully had a plan to address them.

The point of this rant is that most people do not pretend to be sick in fact people with chronic illnesses pretend to be well for the most part.  I think that medicine has come a long way since my experience with the doctors who told me that I had too much time on my hands and prescribed “nerve pills” which I dumped in the toilet.  Sure I needed more to do, I was working full time and going to school 2 nights a week.  I also had an ailing father and husband who needed some of my time.  Something else to do was the. last thing I needed.