Well, I went to the doctor on Wednesday. I didn’t really get any answers. He listened to my heart and lungs and said there’s no fluid in the lungs themselves. A few months ago I had an EKG, and he believes that was recent enough that there could be nothing wrong with my heart … I am, of course, not sure whether he knows what he’s doing. At the end of the day, when my legs and feet are swollen and everything hurts, I want to go to the ER and have them run actual tests, do some imaging, find someone who really knows what they’re talking about.

But he says I should just expect my body to be ‘haywire’ for a while. He has no idea what’s causing the edema. He did draw blood to do a comprehensive metabolic, to see if it could be an imbalance of electrolytes or something of that nature — but then again, he said they could all come back perfectly normal on paper, but still not be “my normal,” meaning they could be the cause and even after the test, we won’t know.

So I’m going to give it about a month, and if the swelling hasn’t stopped, I guess I’ll go back.

I wonder about the use of going to the doctor at all. I never seem to find one who can tell me anything that makes sense.

There is so much on my mind recently that I’m having trouble figuring out what’s worth writing about here. For two days, I did a pretty good job staying positive and being happy. Then there was a meeting at work in which more work was piled on me, work that will potentially cause conflict between me and a coworker. Conflict I’ve been avoiding by doing both our jobs and allowing her to spend the whole shift sitting and reading a novel, because she’s one of those people… if I ask her to do something, she’ll do it wrong so I won’t ask her to do it again.

I tell myself the work stuff doesn’t matter. That’s how I’m trying to cope with that. Work as hard as I can, do my best, and then whatever happens, I can tell myself it’s okay, it’s fine, what do they expect of me anyway? But the thing is, that works until I’m sitting around thinking about the physical and emotional wear on me, the ways this is contributing to poor health I can’t remedy fast enough to counteract it, and then that doesn’t help as much.

So anyway, today I’m not doing very well at staying positive. I don’t know whether it’s the PMDD I suffer from making areas of my brain not function correctly, making it impossible to feel happy, or just the objective issues in my life, work among others, such as my younger sister’s $1300 dentist bill I’m not sure how to pay and my family’s unhappiness at the situation we’re in and my inability to make enough money to get us out of it (small trailer, inadequate food, inadequate everything).

Today, my thoughts are between:

I’m ashamed of how hard it is for me to handle work in a happy way/This job is so hard and unreasonable that no one there can, everyone’s miserable and looking for something else.

I need to have a more Can Do attitude and try my best/I can’t possibly complete everything they expect of me in the time I have with no help, and they don’t take I’m Doing The Best I Can as an acceptable answer.

So many dual thoughts like this, I think today’s goal should just be to forget the physical pain, which I can’t help and will worry about until it makes me even sicker, and try to focus on getting my mind quiet and organized, try my best, even if it is PMDD, to be as positive, or at least as calm and borderline pleasant, as possible (the anger, just boiling, is really terrible).

I don’t know. I suppose it’s obvious I’m still very, very confused and conflicted.

Thank you for your kind replies, C and Madonnika.

C, I hope what you’re going through eases up on you.