Cutting Teeth(18)
And thank God she doesn’t work, doesn’t have a real job. Thank heavens she’s so fortunate that she can turn off the lights and nap when she feels one coming on. Another doctor had said those words to her. Those very words. And Mary Beth had blessed his heart.
“It could be anxiety,” says the doctor, liver spots speckling his cheeks. “That’s usually the trigger for these things. Are you under a lot of—” His cough is phlegmy. “Stress?”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“But the migraines have been relatively manageable until now?”
“No.” She wrote that on her intake form, which he obviously didn’t bother to read. “That’s why I’m here. They’re terrible. A ten out of ten on the pain scale. Right now. I feel like I’m going to be sick. And then I start to panic because I have no idea when it will stop. They can last days and days and days.”
Hope. That’s what she feels every time she enters a new doctor’s office. Here she is giving this new medical person the chance of a lifetime, the chance to be a hero. That’s what she wants to tell him. Be my guest! Save my day, Dr. Whatever-Your-Name-Is!
But she recognizes the signs. The aloof expression. The interminable time in the waiting room. He came highly recommended by the friend of a friend of a woman in her Bible study. (This is the guy!)
She’s willing to try anything. Already she’s sampled acupuncture and Botox at the top of her neck. She took magnesium supplements and went cold turkey off of coffee, then tried to drink even more of it after hearing conflicting advice. She takes topiramate at night and whatever triptan is currently on trend at the outset of her symptoms. And still they come for her.
“I hear you,” he says. “That panic may actually be contributing to the severity of the pain. It’s incredibly frustrating, I know, but I see this in my office every day with women.”
“And?” Her entire face feels like a rotting bruise on an apple. Driving herself here felt borderline dangerous.
“Nine times out of ten it’s a nasty cocktail of anxiety, depression, and hormones. I know that probably isn’t what you want to hear.”
“It’s just that I don’t feel anxious or depressed.” She carefully measures out her words, trying to sound like a person who should be taken seriously, not like someone who barely graduated from college. “Or hormonal.”
She thinks vaguely of Miss Ollie and what she’d said about the reasons the children may be manifesting a physical urge to crave blood based on psychology. Or something like that. Mary Beth doesn’t really understand the details, but she could swear she did see a smear of red across little Asher’s cheek this morning that could have been jam, but looked distinctly, she feared, like blood.
Is that this doctor’s point? Psychology and anatomy and whatever else all conspire to make the human body go haywire?
“Maybe you don’t. But your body is telling you otherwise. It’s flashing the ‘check engine’ light. You’re a busy mom of…”
“Two,” she supplies obediently.
“See? That’s the hardest job in the world.” Is he being condescending? Does he mean it, or, worse, only wants to mean it? She can never tell. “And a lot of times, this is the mind’s way of saying enough. The good news is I can prescribe something that should help take the edge off. Have you tried a triptan before?”
She feels murder pumping from her heart. By the grace of God there are no sharp objects within reach because otherwise she couldn’t guarantee his safety. The pain borders on violence and she wants it out, out, out.
Off her look, he gives a casual wave of his hand—yes, yes, he gets it, no worries. “I can use an alternative. Not a problem. But.” His fingers hover over the keyboard. “Remember that’s just going to treat the pain, and the pain is the symptom. Not the cause.”
“You’re sure it’s not something—” She’s choking down the desire to leap at his throat and shake him. Her molars smash together. She will stay polite. She will hold it together. She will show this man mercy, for he knows not what he does. “I’m worried when I look online that—”
“Dr. Google. Well.”
It must be frustrating having laypeople like Mary Beth believing that WebMD is as valuable as a very expensive and hard-to-achieve medical degree. But it is also frustrating, she would like to point out, to feel as though your brain is going to ooze through your eye sockets. “I just mean that you’re sure it’s not something more serious?”
The doctor puts his glasses on his nose. “It depends what you mean. There have been new studies showing a statistically significant link between certain mental health disorders and migraine headaches. If you’re serious about this, then personally, as a next step, I’d suggest being evaluated by a psychologist as soon as possible. But for today, go home, get some rest, take a nap.”
Again with the naps! In the middle of the day! That’s the prescription, that’s the treatment plan? Sure, doc, seems reasonable. Not like she has things to do. Has he ever stopped to wonder why being a mom actually is the hardest job in the world and not just something thoughtless people say?
It’s because there’s never a day off—not just a day, but an hour, not so much as a minute. Is she sick? Is she feeling under the weather? Too bad! There’s no one to cover her interminable shift; she’ll get off when she dies. She is non-fungible. Doctors may be replaced eventually through artificial intelligence, and last time she checked there are robots that can do surgery, but mothers’ jobs are never, will never be, in danger.