Was It Worth It?

Having completed my week at Mayo Clinic, the question has now changed from “What do you hope to gain?” to “Was it worth it?”

Ben and I talked about that for a while yesterday, and I’m not exactly sure how to answer.

From a non-medical perspective, our family had a great time.

The girls LOVED:

1) Swimming every day

2) The most amazing bookstore ever, right close to where we stayed (and they visited it a few times a day)

3) Apartment-living for a week

4) Exploring Rochester (Anika thinks it needs to become a regular vacation destination for our family!)

5) Seeing LOTS of Daddy

From my experience of the medical side of things, this is where I’m at:

I’m still waiting for a few more minor test results to come back, but other than that, nothing dramatic was really determined. I saw 5 different specialists, and went through countless tests, but nothing abnormal showed up. I was told that while they believe any pain or discomfort I feel is real, my body looks completely normal and healthy. For whatever reason, I cannot eat gluten or any of the other things that I have shown to be intolerant to. My body may have trouble digesting things, but the doctors feel that this is just the way my body does it.

At first, that made me feel incredibly frustrated, but Ben’s words of wisdom helped me to deal with it. He told me that it’s kind of like the fact that he has bad knees. It’s just the way that it is, there is nothing he can do to change it, but he can strengthen certain muscles to compensate for the fact that he has bad knees. I have a bad stomach. I can’t change it, but there are things I can do to compensate for the fact that it doesn’t work the way that it should.

The doctors at Mayo explained to me at the beginning of the week that they would do everything they could to help me from a conventional point of view, but as I have found many times in the past, it is the unconventional stuff that has helped me the most.

So now, I am happily going home to my unconventional naturopath doctor, who puts a lot of time and effort into caring for my needs, and I am so thankful to have found her. She has helped to bring me to a point where I feel good, but I’m just kind of high maintenance. A nice, conventional solution would have been convenient, but when that doesn’t work, there are other ways to get things done.

It’s not the way I would have chosen for this last week to go, if I could live in a dream world, but it will work.

Was it worth it?

1) I know that I am “conventionally” healthy, from top to bottom, and there is no serious problem lurking undiscovered anywhere in my body.

2) I know that I have now done everything conventionally possible to address my health issues.

3) I have faced every fear, label, and method of denial that I have used in the past, in regards to my health. It feels good!

4) If the doctors had found something wrong with me, I would have said absolutely, it was worth it. And there was no way of knowing the outcome beforehand.

So I think I’ll say that it was worth it. And now we go home. Here’s hoping the trip home goes as well as the trip out here!