I've written before about what I call my "meta hypochondria" – that nagging suspicion that I have some grave new illness, but which I then dismiss by turning my worry to the possibility that I'm suffering from some unreasonable, hypochondriac delusion instead. Since my cancer, this has become even more multi-layered and frustrating.
With any new persistent ache or twinge or discomfort, I immediately begin to think: "Is that it? Is that the metastasis I've worried about? Is that some new cancer growing in my mouth or chest or wherever it is I'm feeling discomfort?" Then I think, well, that's unreasonable, to worry about that – I've got my check-ups, every three months, with CT-scans and all that, and they would tell me, if something was going on. Then I waver, and think, "well, but they might miss something. It's not common for a mouth cancer to metastasize into a gut cancer, but I've had that stomachache for the last several hours – maybe this is it?"
Then I think, I'm just a hypochondriac. That's meta-hypochondria, when you think that. Especially if it turns out you're wrong, and you're not a hypochondriac, but in fact have something wrong. That's what happened to me – I put off dealing with the pain in my mouth for so long, thinking I was just being overly sensitive to some minor issue, and telling myself to stop being a hypochondriac.
The fact is, I don't have much time in my life, these days, when my mind is not swirling around some possible new health problem. I experience a lot of discomfort: not quite pain, but "almost pain" in my mouth (where my nerves were cut), in my body (who knows from what – just aches and pains of a body not well-maintained), wherever. It's a bit like having a cold sore in your mouth – you "worry it" all the time, with your tongue.
The metaphor is exceptionally apt, if somewhat inverted, because the sensations aren't exactly the same: I wonder to what extent the fact that it was my tongue that was stricken, broken, and reconstructed as a numb, dead thing… how that impacts my proprioception… I think about how babies, before any other thing, begin to experience their world through their mouths. They put things in their mouths. It's like the mouth is a place of origin, a "center" of the self-perceived body-as-body. And so, I am vulnerable to distortions in proprioception because my tongue is "missing" – from a sensations standpoint.
Tangentially (but not as unrelatedly as normal, perhaps), I ran across this video, just now.
[UPDATE 20180328: Video embed lost due to link-rot; no replacement found. Condé Nast videos website fail! Sad!]
Grim.
[daily log: walking, 4.5 km]