Sometimes, hypochondria, isn't

I don't get sick often, but when I do, I usually assume that it's cancer. This seems like an excellent strategy-- a night or two of freaking out, followed by a resigned evening searching the Internet for acceptable wigs to cover up my inevitable chemo-induced hair loss (sometimes I consider snoods, but I usually reject them as being too Thirtysomething), and then, when I finally find out that I only have a sinus infection, things don't seem so bad.

So this time, when I developed a set of bizarre symptoms-- startling easily, inability to concentrate, vague neck pain, blotchy rash-- I decided to call a doctor. It was probably just stress, or a bad reaction to my new birth control pills (or ringworm! Because of course I spent a frenzied night studying pictures of ringworm on Google) (which I don't recommend, because ringworm is totally gross).

After a brief once-over by the male nurse (which, by the way, I will never stop thinking male nurses are funny), the doctor came in, and I began describing my symptoms to her. Rather than doing the old flashlight-up-the-nose routine, she began subjecting me to some very strange tests involving my reflexes (at which point my brain said CANCER! YOU HAVE REFLEXES CANCER!), and then announced something totally odd: for once, my bizarre symptoms actually meant something.

It turns out that, pending the results of a blood test, I have something called post-partum thyroiditis, which evidently afflicts around 5% of post-partum women (because I'm doomed to excel in every area of life). Even weirder is that this disease has even more symptoms that I have and didn't even know were symptoms, such as rapid weight loss (which I totally just thought was from breast-feeding, so now when people ask why I'm so skinny, I have to tell them it's because I'm a diseased freak, rather than a super-dedicated nursing mom) and unexplained hair loss.

Apparently, while sort of scary-sounding, this problem can be fixed relatively easily with some pills. But it does have one more giant downfall: following this period of hyperthyroidism, which is the source of the weight loss, there is a much longer period of hypothyroidism, which causes rapid weight gain. Farewell, brand-new size eight pants!

But you know what? At least it's not reflexes cancer.