Listen to Natahna read Big Feels 7.3 here👇🏻
I have five stickies stuck to my chest and a walkman-esque device hooked to my leggings. I’m getting a 24-hour Holter exam. They’re trying to figure out if my seizure-like movements when I faint are true dyed-in-the-wool seizures or just a little extra pizazz while passed out.
The technician is a fast talker, no nonsense. My age. She tells me to take off “everything from the top” and lay down on the table. There is an awkward moment where I thought she said, “face down” and I start to lay face down and then she has to correct me, “on your back.”
I feel silly.
She does an ECG to start. Different stickers. Different procedure. She puts them on, then takes them off. She asks me to come stand right in front of her.
“Closer.”
“Even closer. Look up.”
She is eye-level with my tits. I wonder if she thinks they’re nice or if she doesn’t think anything about them at all.
She tells me, at least twice, very pointedly, not to shower while wearing my Holter monitor. I’m trying to recover from my previous silliness and let her know that I’m actually a cool girl, so I laugh and say, “Surely people aren’t trying to shower with this on.” I feel like an electrocution waiting to happen with all the cords attached to me. She looks me dead in the eyes, “You have no idea. No idea.” She tapes each sticker on with three bands of tape.
I remember once I’m in the car that I’m allergic to medical tape. The last time I was taped up, I had hives and welts for days. I’d gotten overwhelmed with my tits in her face and the stickers and her handing me a piece of paper telling me to “write down the symptoms” and wondering what kinds of symptoms I was looking for besides absolutely passing out and tremoring for the gods.
It’s fine. I’m going to be fine. It’s an old quirk of my body and I don’t expect new information.
But also I have at least some reason to feel as nervous as I do. Not in a way that shit is likely to hit the fan, but in the way that, like, my first memory is of my brother dying of heart stuff. And I have a close family member with a seizure disorder that makes their life look very different from mine. And when my parents were setting up education funds for each of us kids, they created an account for everyone but me. My mom said that they were worried that another one of us would die. I told myself that I was chosen because I was always the healthiest, so I was set to break the curse or something; but really it just made me feel a bit like the sacrificial lamb. I’ve been worried that it might be foreshadowing.
I’m also consumed by the idea that getting these screenings at all is at least a little dramatic. I have premature embarrassment thinking about coming up empty handed after all my big, fancy tests (I’m getting an MRI in a couple days too! How obnoxious!!). I’m desperate to make a formal announcement: “DON’T WORRY EVERYONE, I KNOW THAT I’M FINE (lol, *sticks tongue out sideways*). FURTHERMORE, IF I HAVE A PROBLEM, I WILL ABSOLUTELY TAKE CARE OF IT MYSELF MOVING FORWARD. AVERT YOUR EYES. CARRY ON.”
Oh god. Old habits die hard.
My mantra this week is, “It was a medical professional who referred me. It was a medical professional who saw me seizure, and then decided that it wasn’t LOL even if it has been happening for 32 years with no referrals. She sent me to a neurologist who then sent me to get these fancy tests. I’m allowed to get fancy tests even if I’m not literally dying and even if absolutely nothing is ‘wrong.’ It’s not a waste of everyone’s time. I am worth the energy it takes to check to see if I’m okay or if I could be better.”
A catchy mantra, I know.
As for the medical tape, I’m just hoping it doesn’t itch that bad.* I want that lady to be so proud of me and my tits when I come in tomorrow AM to have this thing removed.
Talk soon,
Natahna
*Reader: The medical tape did itch that bad, but we persisted.
The Recommends: Cozy evenings with old friends, getting high and watching holiday romance films.