So, falling apart here

It's the last week of classes and I have to go and teach and talk about normal things and pretend that I am not waiting to find out if I have uterine cancer and kidney failure.

Perimenopause is really not as bad as I thought it would be.

My usual strategy for dealing with ominous medical news is to figure out what the least scary thing is that I could have to explain my symptoms and decide I have that. So I spent like an hour last night on the computer searching kidney function tests trying to figure out something innocuous that I could have. At first it was really depressing because all I found were sites that said things like, "Screening tests for kidney disease are really great because it will let us put people on diets in which they are not allowed to eat salt, protein, or minerals normally found in vegetables or fruit, and then their disease won't get bad as fast."

And so then I am imagining my diet of rice with vegetable oil and thinking, "there has to be something better than this."

So I tried to figure out what the false positive rate is, because it is a screening test and screening tests always have high false positive rates, right? All I could find was a study showing that some new test produced far fewer false positives than this other test. The authors of the study thought that was a good thing because, I kid you not, a false positive can negatively affect your quality of life.

To which my response was, "no sh*t?" Followed by, "I wonder if I got the test with the high false positive rate that negatively affects your life or the one with the low false positive rate that tells you that your life sucks?"

Undaunted I searched on.

I noticed that if you have kidney disease there are a lot of medicines you can't take, so I looked up my prescriptions and you aren't supposed to take either one if you have kidney disease! Yay! And then I found a recommendation for one of them that you should have a kidney function test if you have been on it a long time because it can interfere with kidney function.

So then I was happier, because probably the doctor was just going to tell me that I have to stop taking the pill that keeps my hair from falling out or the one that keeps me from murdering my kids and bitching at my husband, or maybe both, because I can't remember which one had the note about getting the test but they both said to tell your doctor if you had kidney problems (although I pretty much think that all drugs say that you maybe shouldn't take them if you have kidney problems).

Anyway, I decided that being bald and bitchy wouldn't be so bad if it meant that I could still have mustard on my roast beef sandwich, and I remembered that all my kids are bigger than I am and can totally defend themselves. Oddly I felt better about the whole thing.

Also, if I have to go bald I am going to convert to Orthodox Judaism so I can wear lots of hats and scarves and stuff even though I look silly in them. I considered Islam, but based upon the Muslim and Jewish women I know, and there have a been a few of each, it appears that bitchiness is more acceptable in Judaism. Or maybe I will just wear the scarves and TELL people that I've converted. I'm sure the faithful of either religion will be totally cool with me using their faith as a cover-story for my scarf collection.