New Year's Resolution, Of Course.

So it turns out that I may have something in addition to Fibromyalgia.

It has a name: UCTD, which stands for Uncalled-for Confusion To Doctors. No, no- it really means Unprecedented Clusterfuck Totally Dire. Ok, ok, I don't mean to alarm anyone- it's not Dire. UCTD means Unrepentant Collegiate Tad Diddled.

It really means Undifferentiated Connective Tissue Disorder. It's my doctor's way of saying that my body is attacking its' own connective tissues, and no I don't know why so please don't ask. The doctor is actually a good one- the kind you wait on for an hour in the practically magazine-less waiting room, and then wait for again in the exam room (absolutely no magazines there) for another ten minutes; then the doctor comes in and is really helpful and listens to your shit. That's the barometer of a quality doctor: it's not just the inordinate amount of time you wait for them, or the virtual dearth of magazines, it's the ratio of both of those things. I've only seen my doctor twice, so I haven't come up with the exact ratio yet, but I'll get back to you (HINT: those who know me understand that that's really unlikely, owing to my utter lack of interest in math.)

So some of the symptoms, besides being in pain and tired all the time, are:

          *hands that turn fascinating and unwanted colors, such as bright red or eggplant purple or white. It's a circulation issue, and it makes you get frostbite in supermarkets from the cart pushing/freezer opening.

           * a tight squeeziness in the chest from the lung's linings being irritated.

           * a similar squeeziness in the throat, which makes it hard to swallow, even ice cream. Which is bullshit, no? If you have a throat yuck then you get to eat frozen dairy products and for just a moment your throat feels all better. Not so with UCTD. It's just so...dehumanizing. I can't really write any more than that <sob.>

           * also feet (see "hands.")

           * crouching around underground pools eating raw fish and muttering to oneself.

           *  weirdness with your heart, so that it flutters or murmurs or thunders or demands representation or some such. I thought that was "just stress". In fact, I'd been told that it was "just stress" by another doctor who, not coincidentally, I saw after five minutes of reading from a copious amount of waiting room magazines.

There was a red herring that I put in that list: you're right- ice cream makes everything better, period. But I have to say that having heard this not-quite-diagnosis, I feel comforted (yes! Comforted!) This was strange, because what the hell could be comforting about having a vague disorder that involves your own immune system getting bored and turning to vandalism? It's this: UCTD is two more letters than FM. And there's nothing that passes the day more than making up names for illnesses (or anything, really) based on their initials. FM- what more could I do with that? Ferocious Monkey-eye? Frequent Molester? In both of those the reader has no idea that the Monkey-eye represents the syndrome itself and the Molester means the neurobioligical pathology that creates Fibro's symptoms. Yawn.

UCTD has more letters. I'm going to have fun with that (Unthinkable Cantankerous Toad Disease, anyone?) I guess in 2013 I'll be getting twice as much use of my thesaurus.