Last week I received a diagnosis from a doctor that made me very happy. Once again, I was down with a virus that had either by-passed most members of my family or from which they suffered marginally--or at least a whole lot less than I. (What happened to building a better immune system as you age?) (Because, age, I have, I can assure you.) (And to whomever welcomed me into the decade of the 40’s in the comments on my last post, bless your sweet, cotton-pickin’ little heart!) (Because I’ve been here for quite some time.) (And it feels like 60.)
I was told that I have an over-reactive airway system which means that what makes ordinary reactors sick but better after a few days and a modest amount of OTC’s, will cause MY airways (nose, sinuses, lungs) to over-react and induce misery, severe sleep deprivation, the abuse of OTC’s and finally, an anguished call to the doctor to prescribe antibiotics over the phone b/c I sicken so well and suddenly that I can’t drag myself to the doctor’s office (the anguish part is essential since my medical group requires a body to be sick for ten days before they will prescribe antibiotics. This requires no acting since I get ten days worth of sick in two or three. It might call for a bit of lying (I plead the fifth) but mostly, anguished weeping.)
Sometimes truth is a speck in the ocean. Sometimes it's light filtering through the trees.
And here I thought I was some kind of weakling or hypochondriac. (What a relief!) Most of all, I now understand why I was given an asthma inhaler (but not an asthma diagnosis) after ending up in the hospital struggling for breath in the wake of a fair-to-middling virus a couple of years ago. (I also know why the common cold, for me, results in the usage of an uncommon, downright shocking, budget-busting amount of Kleenex).
After mentally chewing on this for a few days, it occurred to my befuddled brain (cuz, naturally, I’m still sick) that there is much about me that is over-reactive. For example, I am clinically crackers for one to seven days a month—clearly a matter of over-reactive hormones. In fact, I suffer from every single PMS symptom known to man, er, woman. Fortunately, not always at the same time. Some months I get all the physical ones, the next month I’ll get all the emotional ones while the month after that might be a mixed bag. (You never know what you’ll get in a box of cracker jacks!)
But wait, there’s more! My body over-reacts to gluten. To watermelon, broccoli, lettuce, rosemary (which I adore), sugar (ditto but times ten) and citrus. When I was young, the approach of a rain storm made me only a little hyper, then anxious, then I would start experiencing pain, sometimes bad enough to keep me from sleep (one MUST sleep when one entertains dragons at her house), then I would get super depressed, (because I knew what was coming). This last winter, we (as in the royal we—because I’m the Queen of Over-Reactive Syndrome, a name I just invented, proof in the pudding off my royal status, IMHO) added a new symptom: a few hours or so before the rain bursts upon the scene, my body simply shuts down and I fall instantly asleep as if drugged. 
Sometimes truth is a bit out of reach.
In the past, I have been unable to lift my arm for a week after carving a pumpkin, windexing the windows, sweeping the floor a little too energetically or from throwing something up onto a loaded truck. A baseball in the jaw (I hate school P.E.--I simply can't stress that enough) resulted in several decades of joint pain and many, many puncture wounds in the lips b/c my jaw refused to open on command (this can be particularly embarrassing whilst eating spaghetti. At a swanky restaurant. With your boyfriend and his local politician father.) Fibromyalgia, another bugaboo from which I suffer, is, by definition, a condition that causes the body to over-react to everyday muscle damage that most bodies simply absorb (and to think I used to take ballet lessons three times a week and dance, a la pointe, until my toes bled! Ditto to playing guitar, only switch out toes for fingers, which I did well but had to quit due to said shoulder pain.)
Then I remembered . . . as a kid I often got ribbed by my older sisters (I could leave that as a stand-alone sentence and it would be a true statement but moving on) (I have read that it takes 10 positive statements to obliterate the damage of one negative statement especially when unleashed on a young child by a parent or authority figure, or anyone who wields some kind of power over the powerless one, whether real or perceived . . . .kind of overwhelming, isn’t it?) for throwing up “at the drop of a hat” (French for “hint of a fever”). I also got teased for limping when I twisted my ankle, accused of faking it when I experienced still unexplained sharp pains in my ribcage and generally disdained when I got sun-sick.
Sometimes, like the forest hidden by the trees, we can't see the truth that's always been there.
And here I thought I was some kind of weakling.
That it was all my fault.
That I was somehow just not good enough.
That I didn’t measure up.
Sniff . . .
One thing I do know that makes things far more difficult: stress. And dragons. And dragons who induce stress. We (as in The Spouse and I) do what we can to eliminate as much of that as possible. (Sorry if it happens to be something or someone you care about.)
One thing I know that helps a lot: knowing what to expect. Dragon fighting (or more accurately, dragon-holding-off, or, as often as not, dragon-induced-damage clean-up) is a full time job and it is sooooooooo much easier if I know/when I know, (just as long as I know!) what to expect. Obviously, knowing how my body reacts to certain foods makes it easy to avoid them (resisting them is an entirely different story—and I’m still learning all the sneaky places gluten hides), but invisible germs, rain storms and other things that rob me of sleep, as well as other people’s right to put their own issues gloriously on display, happen with alarming regularity and often little fanfare.
There are times, however, when someone could have chosen to exercise an ounce of understanding, kindness, forethought or compassion and did not, making my day, job, life disproportionately (as in several pounds-worth) more difficult.
And I over-react.
And you know what?
For the first time in a very long time, indeed, I’m giving myself a pass.
The Middle Child didn't just see her grandparents through her camera lens, she saw devotion.
Look through the glass in my bedroom door and you will see the Middle Child as depicted by my talented brother. 
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