If I could have one wish I think it would be to have a year without any medical problems or injuries. Not a lifetime, just a year! I’d like one sweet, sweet, year when my body would function just as it was supposed to. Alas, this will probably always remain a fantasy. I always tended to injure myself when I was running or training for races, and even though I’m not training for anything right now my right foot is causing problems.

I don’t remember the day my right foot began to hurt (kinda like I don’t remember the moment I got my headache), but it was sometime around late December 2010. I felt a pain in my arch whenever I walked, but it felt fine when standing or sitting with no weight on it. I thought it would just heal with time, but it started to get worse, particularly after I did anything active that required bending my foot, like, oh, WALKING.

I decided I needed to see a doctor, but I waited until February to schedule an appointment because that’s when my COBRA ran out and my state-sponsored health insurance for sickos kicked in. Little did I know that it would take TWO MONTHS to get an appointment with a general practitioner. I might have been able to get in sooner if I’d bitched about it, but the foot wasn’t really an emergency, so I just waited.

When I did get in to see the doctor in early April, she took a look, didn’t find anything obviously wrong and decided to send me to a podiatrist. So I have to wait ANOTHER MONTH to get an appointment with that expert. I wish I’d known all this back in January and had just scheduled an appointment with the foot doctor for February. But I didn’t, so here I am, having walked around on a dodgy foot for four months before I can get an expert to tell me what’s wrong.

It’s particularly frustrating because it makes exercising more inconvenient. Yeah, I can bike or swim or yadda, yaddda, yadda, but the best exercise is the exercise you actually do, and for me that’s always been walking and running. I like that it’s basically idiot proof (though maybe I am disproving that assumption). I like that it’s meditative and gives me time to just think. I like that it allows me to wander about the city and feel more connected to my community. I miss it.

Part of me wonders if they’ll take an x-ray and I’ll learn I’ve been walking on a broken foot all year. It would kinda suck to go to FitBloggin’ on crutches. My doctor said a broken bone was unlikely, though, so I might just end up getting a special insert for my shoe. Or maybe I’ll have to weird really dorky orthopedic shoes. I hope this doesn’t turn into something like Shauna’s dodgy knee saga back in 2006 where I learn if I’d done something sooner I could have prevented more damage and drastically shortened my recovery time.

For anyone who’s about to diagnose me, I don’t think it’s plantar fasciitis. I had a case of that about 8 years ago and my current pain doesn’t feel like that. The plantar fasciitis pain was focused on the bottom of my foot near my heel, whereas my recent foot pain is located in the middle of my arch. Also, the pain from plantar fasciitis goes away as you walk around because you’re warming up the muscle, making it stretch and making it more flexible. This recent pain hurts no matter how long I’ve walked and actually gets a bit worse the more I do walk.

The strangest twist in all this is that my foot feels best when I’m wearing high-heeled boots. Go figure! High heels are supposed to be all kinds of evil for your feet, but for whatever reason they seem to take pressure off of my trouble spot. I’ve been a strong hater of everything high-heeled for most of my life. I’ve always considered high-heels to be uncomfortable and unnecessary since I’m already 5’9″ without them. But I was charmed into buying a pair of boots with a 2.5″ heel on sale, and now I’m sort of coming around on the issue.

Off-topic: Do people in foreign countries measure heel height in centimeters? I’ve never thought about this before and it now seems rather odd to me. Does this affect shoe production and design?

This is the last Diet Dr. Pepper I had. The photo is date-stamped for August 5th, which means I’ve been off of sodas for…hmmm…let’s see…FAR TOO LONG!

I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with soda dating all the way back to our first break-up in 2004. If diet soda were a person, all my friends would be telling me to ditch that guy for real this time because he’s no good for me or my teeth. Then I’d reply, “But he can be so sweet and bubbly! You don’t know him like I do!” I know in my head that he’s no good for me, but my heart (or my tongue) just can’t say no.

This time around the dissolution of our partnership was ordered by my new headache doctor. New state, new neurologist. He’s making me avoid artificial sweeteners and preservatives because they can inflame your nervous system and___________ (fill in the blank with the bazillion reasons I know fake foods aren’t good for you, but that I don’t want to hear).

Anyway, I have no reasonable counterargument to convince either my doctor or myself that TV dinners and Nutrasweet are headache reducers, so I’ve been enforcing the diet restrictions as he prescribed…mostly. He wants me to go off coffee too and I haven’t yet sit down with Mr. Coffee to serve him our divorce papers.

Do you know what I’ve been drinking? Water. Just water! For days and days and days! It’s been AWFUL. I have to get up and pee in the middle of the night because of all the water I’m drinking.

Even though I know these diet changes are probably good for me, I miss my fake foods! Plus, preservatives and artificial flavorings are in everything! When you read the labels, you discover they add them to yogurt, ketchup, bread, soup and practically everything at the grocery. Eating only “real” foods is hard, and much more labor intensive. And even though I know diet changes like this help some headache sufferers, I went through this song and dance two years ago and saw no results, so I get the feeling all this work and suffering is going to do nothing for my suffering.

I figure, I will try this for a month and when it doesn’t do anything for my headache I shall schedule a consultation with my favorite doctor: Dr. Pepper.

I attended a free seminar last Wednesday at the IUPUI student center called “Myths and Facts of Pain: Is it all in your head?” that is part of the IU Mini Medical School 2009. I heard about the series on a local radio show, Sound Medicine, after they did a segment about chronic pain. The lecture was free, and I work downtown anyway, so I decided to stop by. Plus, they had free snacks! The caterers were even considerate and included a veggie tray along with the brownies and cookies, a true rarity in modern society.

The first speaker was Dr. Palmer MacKie, Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine in the IU Department of Internal Medicine with clinical interests in treating those with persistent pain. I learned several new things about chronic pain from his talk and his multiple PowerPoint slides, and even more of it went flying over my head splatting into the wall behind me.

First, as I’m sure it’s made absolutely crystal clear by this diagram, chronic pain and acute pain function differently in the central nervous system.

The left half of the diagram shows how the body is supposed to react to pain, and the right side of the diagram shows how screwed up your body’s response becomes during chronic pain. Even more depressing is the fact that the brain changes after you’ve been in pain a long time, a phenomena called neuroplasticity. “Plasticity” refers to the ability to change and “Neuro” refers to your brain. Your body learns how to be in pain. The common English translation of this is, “Jennette, you are totally fucked.”

Other interesting things I learned:

• Portions of your brain start to shrink over time if you’re in chronic pain. (I doubt this will make the feeling of constant pressure in my head go away, but maybe I’ll get lucky!)
• Our brains contain mu receptors which bind to morphine to make you feel better and combat pain. Men have a lot more mu receptors than women, the bastards. Seriously, a lot more. I don’t have the slide to show you, but it was like the difference between a blizzard and a few flakes of snow.
• Not only do men have more mu receptors, but women’s mu receptor response varies during the menstrual cycle, making your body’s ability to gobble up feel-good morphine vary depending on the time of the month. Again, the bastards!
• Dr. MacKai spoke about the difference between pain and suffering, which is probably worthy of a whole entry in itself. Basically, even if you are constantly in pain, how much you suffer from the pain depends on your emotional state, your attitude, your environment, and how much the ACC (anterior cingulate cortex) portion of your brain is lighting up to tell you to PAY ATTENTION! to the pain. This was driven home by the fact that listening to all this talk about pain made my headache seem worse.

There was another speaker after Dr. MacKai, but he was an OBGYN who was talking about pelvic pain. Thankfully I do not have pelvic pain, at least not yet, so I decided to grab a cookie and drove home in a windstorm that knocked out several traffic lights instead. After all, I had a headache, and there was only so long I could concentrate before I had to lie under the table.

During the lecture, Dr. MacKai asked the question, “How many people have been in pain for over…” and I started to raise my hand, “…10 years.” Then I put down my hand, turned around and saw several people with their limbs raised. At that moment I wanted to get up and give them all a hug and tell them, “I am so, so, so incredibly sorry.” Because I am so sorry for those people. Now when I see a man walking slowly with a cane in front of me, I don’t think, “I wish he’d walk faster,” I think, “He must be in a lot of pain.” At least I know there are a lot of us.

* BTW, I am not a doctor. I related this information as I best understood and remembered it, but it’s possible I made some errors because I do not fully understand the processes I wrote about.

Though he has not cured me, I like my allergist very much. I was hesitant at first, sitting in his waiting room which looked like it had not been renovated since the early 80′s. I further psyched myself out as I waited in the examination room reading a chart with about 90 things I did not know you could be allergic to. Then the doctor walked in, an older man who has seen it all and is on the case and poked at the problem from all angles (including poking me in the back). He demonstrated quick knowledge on a breadth of topics, which impressed me. “I haven’t given up on you,” he said, which was nice to hear even if I’ve basically given up on myself. So I’m trying some new pills and getting some new tests.

The allergist also suggested I try an organic diet, which essentially means if you can’t pull it out of the earth, don’t eat it. No artificial preservatives. No artificial sweeteners. No pesticides or growth hormones. “The 21st century may not be good for you,” he said. I’m rather fond of the 21st century, what with the civil rights and the Internet and the ability for women to vote and own property. But I get his point. “You can eat Amish chicken!” he said, which made me wonder where I would find any Amish people around here. I’ve seen hitching posts at the Meijer in South Bend, but that’s three hours away. I suppose I am supposed to shop only at Trader Joe’s now, even though it’s a bit of a drive.

So, I’ve been trying to do this organic diet thing since the weekend, but it is really, really, really, really hard. All the food at the grocery store has fake sweeteners or preservatives in it like my flavored yogurts, my beloved easy TV dinners, and my diet sodas. I’ve been drinking water. Water! And I bought….sugar. Real, organic, authentic sugar. Not Splenda. Not Aspartame. Sugar. It felt so wrong. It felt so dirty. All those calories packed into tiny white crystals in a bag. I may as well have been buying crack.

Then I discovered that Splenda actually is sweeter than sugar. It’s not just their marketing tag line. To get my coffee to taste as sweet as it does with two packets of Equal, I have to use three packets of sugar. So not only am I using more product, it’s costing me 45 calories. Ironically, I only started drinking coffee because it has essentially no calories. Now I’m hooked and it’s costing me the equivalent of one fat-free cheese stick for every cup.

I can’t chew sugar-free gum.

The only positive part of this experience is that the organic apples are sweet and delicious, much better than the wax-coated non-organic ones. But I have to pay extra for the deliciousness. And I don’t even know if any of this will work. Most likely my headache will persist and I will simply be slightly poorer and have eaten more calories. There was a study awhile ago that said artificial sweeteners make you gain weight because they’re not as filling. My only hope is that it turns out to be true and eating real sugar keeps me satiated. I’ve only been doing this a couple days, but I’m willing to accept it might be true. I haven’t been hungry right when I come home as I normally am. This might be because I’m getting real sugar in my coffee, so I’m more full from more calories. I dunno. We’ll see if it continues. It’s weird not eating right when I come home. I want to do it just out of habit.

I still have a headache though, and even if it didn’t, figuring out this organic diet would have given me one.

* Please do not comment on suggest remedies for my headache. I’ve heard it all, y’all and being the 40th person to tell me to see a chiropractor is not going to win you a warm spot in my heart. In fact, it will put you on my shit list.

But I wonder, does anyone really ask their doctor for weight-loss advice?

Many overweight people avoid going to the doctor because they don’t want to talk about their weight problems. They don’t want to see the number on the scale when they’re weighed. They don’t want to deal with it. But if you are ready to do something about a serious weight problem, do you turn to your primary health provider or do you turn to Jenny Craig? Do you read diet reviews on the Internet? It seems more common for people to ask a friend for advice or join a gym and hire a trainer. Why is that?

It’s certainly important to consult your doctor if you have a medical problem that might make it dangerous to exercise, like a bum knee or asthma. But outside of that, I wonder how effective a general practitioner would be in dispensing weight loss advice. They are “general” practitioners after all. They know a little about everything, but I probably read more about the latest weight-loss breakthroughs than my doctor does. (Unless it’s bad news, since we all know I ignore that stuff.) I’ve heard stories of doctors who tell patients to join Weight Watchers, essentially outsourcing the problem.

So, did you consult a doctor before deciding to lose weight? Why or why not?