Tingling

The whole family had a bad cold a few weeks ago - initially Maddie started with a fever and runny nose - we figured it would be the usual daycare bug making its rounds. But when she started having boogers leaking out of one eye, it made even me nervous. We took her to the pediatrician, who after pinning my thrashing child down to the exam table and attempting to look in her ear canal (unsuccessfully, might I add-- Maddie always wins when it comes to a down and out struggle!) - diagnosed her with sinusitis and we started her on antibiotics. I thought she was possibly just trying to placate us, or perhaps make up for her inability to see Maddie's eardrum, and was giving us a parting gift of some tasty tasty antibiotics. But then, a few days later, David had pain in his ear and when I looked at it, his ear canal was taut with pus, and so he also started on antibiotics. And then I came down with the worst sore throat - so bad I even lost my voice for a few days. That didn't particularly phase me, but then one of my lymph nodes in my neck blew up to the size of a tomato - and it HURT. So I started antibiotics too. The whole family was happily slurping cephalosporins with every meal --I'm sure infectious disease docs world wide are cringing. The lymph node began to come down and I figured that the Loh- Austin family was well on it's way to health and happiness again.

But then...I began to notice these strange sensations on the right side of my face -- burning, tingling, numbness by my nose, cheek and chin...like as if you bumped your funny bone, but this time it was on your face. I thought it would go away...but it didn't. I tried ignoring it, pretending it didn't exist, but it's there. Always. And now I'm scared. My inner hypochondriac keeps turning the differential diagnosis over and over in my head and all the causes of facial paresthesias are BAD. Like, tic douloureux - also named the "suicide disease" because people can't get relief from the stabbing facial pain and so they commit suicide. Or a stroke. Or damage to the trigeminal nerve from trauma. Maybe a tumor pressing on my nerve. Or an abscess? Or could it be Bell's Palsy, and I would have half of my face drooping, maybe it would even be permanent? The possibilities were endless, and each more frightening than the last.

And yet I was raised in a house with an Oncologist father, who basically believed that as long as you didn't have cancer and weren't actively dying, you were fine, and any complaints otherwise simply meant you were weak. Compiled with the fact that I am a physician, and our culture is such that you don't actually go seek medical care yourself unless you have something REALLY WRONG. And so I'm stuck vacillating between feeling like this is something REALLY WRONG and hoping? believing? that maybe it will go away on it's own and it's really NO BIG DEAL. Or I've got the suicide disease and my poor Maddie is going to grow up motherless. Or it's just some post viral inflammation or something or the other and it will go away on it's own. Or not. Or it will. Will it? AAck! You see the neurosis building by minute.

David, my darling husband, has been driven to scouring the internet for a diagnosis, and has concluded that it all stems from TMJ - since I grind my teeth at night. His other suggestion was that I actually make an appointment for myself with an ENT or a neurologist so they can see if something is really wrong. Rather than just sit and stew all day long about whether or not I've got an incurable disease or if death and disfigurement is near - or if something can actually be done.

Well, why would I do that? That's actually sane. And reasonable. As you probably have figured out by now---I am none of those things. And so I sit here typing, and my face tingles away and I still can't decide---should I book an appointment to see someone? What's worse, being seen by your colleagues as someone a weirdo and possibly "crazy" (oh, she's got "tingling"....eye roll eye roll) or should I worry myself crazy for a couple more days, pop a couple more anti-inflammatory meds and hope the whole mess goes away?