I dont know if this is exactly bizarre, but anyway…
I had a lump taken off my left breast last may ('99). And I am only 22. So I had to go through all the mammogram crap(yes, it hurts, at least it hurt me, but then again, I have bigger boobs than most), and the ultrasounds, and random people poking at my lump on my boob, trying to figure out what it was. They said it was a fibroadenoma, and then I had surgery and they took it out. The little books they gave me said this is is not an uncommon problem, these lumps, esp in younger women like my age. Funny, I’ve never met anyone who’s had one. Now I have about a 2 inch vertical scar there, the only scar on my body.
I just remembered a somewhat bizarre medical thing I had when I was about 11. At that time I had felt a lump on my neck (like right where your jugular is) and you could even see it when I looked up. I told my mom, she took me to the doctor, they did blood tests, chest xrays, never figured out what it was. It slowly disappeared, and now I can’t feel it anymore. Weird.
My chest is shaped oddly. It’s called an inherited congenital deformity of the sternum. Basically, my chest looks like pigeon. My sternum sticks way out. When I was younger, I was a local celebrity at school. People would ask me to lift my shirt all the time. After a while, I began to feel like a circus freak and stopped doing it. It’s not dangerous, but cosmetic surgery to correct it could be. Also, it’s kind of like wearing a kevlar vest. It’s cool to be a freak.
I have a very boring body. the weirdest I can come up with is the fact that I’m 18 years old and one of my permanent teeth is STILL coming in. The baby tooth never fell out and it had to be extracted, and that was nearly three years ago. Also I have very small teeth, so they look like they’re gappy even though they’re not in the sense that most people would have. (I.E. if I had worn braces, my teeth would have just crowded forward in my mouth.)
Oh, when I was a baby one of my eyes turned in. They had to operate and cut the muscle, and now I can’t see in three dimensions.
I have two sleep-related anomalies. I occasionally, especially when I’m stressed, have bouts of “sleep paralysis.” As it’s been explained to me, this happens when the muscles lock up as though for sleep but the mind is still awake. It tends to happen just as I’m dropping off or just as I’m waking up. I’ll be awake but unable to move, even to open my eyes. (I’ve read that the eyes are unaffected by sleep paralysis, so apparently I’m atypical.) It lasts up to 30 seconds or so, then I can usually force a motion and “break” it. But if it happens once, it will recur every time I close my eyes for the next hour or so. It is an extremely scary feeling; aside from being paralyzed I have a sense that I’m suffocating.
I also from time to time have episodes where a dream won’t stop even after I’m awake. It just keeps “playing,” and if I close my eyes I can watch it like a movie, even though I’m fully awake and know it’s a dream. There’s a name for this, but I don’t know what it is; it’s supposed to be related to seizure disorders and very rare. That one’s not scary, though, just peculiar.
When I was in high school (Junior/Senior), I had the weirdest problem with fainting. Whenever the teacher of whatever class I was in at the time would start talking about something painful, revolting, or shocking, I would start to feel myself losing it. Usually I could bend down and pretend to be tying my shoes in order to mask the fact that if I didn’t bend down, I would faint. But there were a couple close calls. Once when my teacher was talking about Chinese foot-binding, I actually did faint. Another time I had to leave the room when a video of the Holocaust was being shown. And there was a movie, I forget its name, that made me nearly pass out due to its gory, graphic nature. I was terrible at staying conscious when viewing or hearing about anything painful or bloody or graphically violent. Once I nearly fainted merely by being inside a hospital. Thankfully, I no longer have that condition.
My strange medical condition is about my left eye. One morning I woke up, and noticed I couldnt see anything out of my left eye. Hummm, I thought, this couldnt be good. I proceeded to touch my eye and noticed that my eyelid was still closed. I tried with all my might but I couldnt open it. So I opened it with my hand, and I could see just fine out of my eye. I tried to hold my eye open but it just flopped back shut. I went through the whole day w/o my left eye open. The next day I woke up, and I could just barely crack my eye open if I tried with all my might to open it up. So I went through the whole day with my eye barely open. Finally on the 3rd day I could open my eye w/o any problem at all…very strange.
Well, aside from a couple broken bones, all I can think of is something called Crohn’s Disease. It’s fairly rare, I think, and the only downside to it was a few years ago I spent about six weeks in a hospital and went from weighing 140 to 89 pounds in about 2 months. Thankfully I haven’t had any trouble with it since the initial occurence, I’ve heard it can require surgery, special diets, etc.
I also have only 1 wisdom tooth… is that a “condition?”
Ruffian–
You mentioned your head tingling when you took Claritin(or however it’s spelled). I am epileptic and when I was in college I took some antihistamines for a severe cold. I got the same symptoms you described. Well, having seizures is no picnic, so I called my neurologist and he said that I was receiving too much of a certain something common to both the cold medication and my anti-seizure meds. It was what he called a minor overdose. I don’t know if this is exactly what you have–but don’t be satisfied with only one answer. I’m NOT a professional, but this doesn’t sound like nothing to me. I’m not going to lecture, but take care of you! That tingling is your body’s way of telling you something isn’t exactly right.
I have two slightly bizarre medical conditions. One is vertigo, caused by a bad inner-ear virus I had in high school. As I result, I am “unbalanced” and frequently become a Fallen Woman. I have a terrible time climbing up and down stairs, as my brain won’t tell my feet where to go—it really is a lot like the visual effects in the film “Vertigo.” It’s not FEAR of heights, as some people think; it’s just lack of balance.
Not really a complaint but it scared the heck out of me. Falling in the door of my humble bachelor abode very drunk one night I felt, as you do, a terrible urge to eat. Almost nothing in the fridge but I ate what was there.
Comes the morning and feeling groggy, I visited the toilet. As I was eagerly going about my business, I glanced down and was horrified – scared out of my mind - to see nothing but blood just pouring from where I’d hoped to see more conventional fluids.
My Liver ? Kidneys ? Misuse of the sword ? It’s curtain’s, call an ambulance. Damn, I knew I should have eased up on the booze.
Took maybe 10 seconds to remember that the fridge had contained only ¾ of a jar of beetroot. Absolutely immensely relieved.
There’s a joke about root beer there somewhere but I can’t find it.
Poysyn L-Lysine will take care of the sores in your mouth. They also zap fever blisters. Whenever I feel a fever blister coming on, I pop 2 before bed and have 2 the next morning. By noon, no more fever blister. That stuff is magic!
I have a geographical tongue. Basically my tongue has a bunch of cracks and pits in it, and some red dots and white lines. Yes, it’s ugly. I have stopped eating gluten and casein and it looks better. Apparently I am allergic to gluten and casein. (Read: no more milk and cookies.) Strangely, Dr.s have been telling me that it not dangerous, there is nothing I can do about it, and the cause is unknown for years - even though it is a known allergic reaction. Kudos to the www - I happened to find a link to a MS BB and a few people had success with the GFCF diet for geographical tongue, which is where I got the diet idea.
I had a weird migraine when I was 16 where I lost my sight for 20 minutes and then my hearing for about 5 minutes. I was making oatmeal and all of a sudden it got darker and darker and then I could see nothing at all, just a black void. I was so shocked that I couldn’t communicate what had happened to my very worried mother for a few minutes. I went to see my neurologist (have had migraines since I was 6) and he thought it was a Basler Line Migraine. (Not sure if I spelled this correctly or not.)
I also had a weird growth on my tongue when I was nine. I accidentally lanced it with a lollipop and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. My mom took me to the ER where they used cocaine to stop the bleeding. I wanted Mom to get some of that stuff to take home with us in case it started bleeding again!
I also had a weird reaction to Cipro. My left leg went numb.
When I was a baby, I had a pigmented nevus on my left wrist over a nerve. It kept growing so the docs thought it might be cancerous. It was removed when I was two, and it was not cancerous. The scar still hurts when I bump it.
The weirdest thing I have now is that my vision jumps. I am looking at something and all of a sudden my vision shifts up and down. This happens a lot while I am driving. It’s pretty scary. Also, I itch all over my body, though I don’t have any hives or bumps. It’s almost like I itch on the inside of my body. Scratching doesn’t help. My eyes sometimes twitch. Others don’t seem to notice, but I do. It’s really annoying.
When I was a baby I had Pyloric Stenosis. It basically meant that the bottom sphincter in my stomach wouldn’t open and I couldn’t digest food. They removed it and did something goofy to my stomach (it is still there) and ever since then I have been able to throw up at will. Sometimes against my will. Ever since I was 4 or five I have had a reflux disease. The doctors didn’t know what it was at the time but later classified it as that. They said it was nothing to worry about and just eat slow and in moderate amounts which I do.
When I had the chicken pox in second or third grade they started to go away and one swelled into my knee. I woke up from a nap and my leg was stuck straight. It didn’t really hurt until my sister said it was a cramp and forced it to bend. Then it was stuck in that position. I went to the doctor and he had to straighten it. He never heard of that happening and eventually found that it had happened before to something like 30 people. I had to wear a brace for about 2 months and didn’t go to school for most of that time. I was so happy when I could wobble my knee just a little bit. IT is better now.
When I was a junior in college, I broke out in this strange sort of rash. It was a bit like chicken pox, but not quite. They itched quite a bit, and I had these little sores popping up on my arms and torso, but no other part of my body. Being quite concerned, I went to the campus “Health Center” to get it checked out.
The doctors took one look at me and started asking questions about my sexual activity. Imagine my mounting concern. I had one of the symptoms of syphillis. Even though I knew that this was extremely unlikely, my imagination started playing with me. “Can’t wait til the folks get the bill for the VD tests,” I thought.
So we go upstairs to the blood lab, and I remember a giant poster hanging on the wall, proclaiming in bold letters CHYLAMIDIA GOES TO COLLEGE, TOO! It was a wonderful atmosphere.
Later on, they called me in my dorm room and told me that the results were negative. It was a little uncomfortable, because a girl I had just met and was interested in was in my room at the time, and she heard me on the phone. “Yes. I see. Okay, thank you.”
“Who was that?” she asked. I replied, “Oh, that was the health center, and I don’t have syphillis.”
Her look was a mixture of disbelief and horror. Eventually I explained things to her, and we ended up going out for several years. Turns out I had some sort of viral infection that has no diagnosis, except via the elimination of the other things that it could be, and no real treatment – it ran its course and disappeared in about two weeks. I still laugh about that phone call.
Man, these are creeping me out!
So, to add my two cents…
I’m hypoglycemic and have low iron (like many women), so if I don’t eat on a strict schedule (about every four hours) I become dizzy, disoriented, tingly and my vision clouds. I have to eat immediately or I’ll crash to the floor. Apparently related to this is the fact that I can’t give blood or I pass out in about 15 minutes. Even when I go to the doctor and they have to take a teeny vial of blood, I’m out in 15 minutes, no matter if I drink juice or eat something. It’s as if the blood they took left a “blank spot” in my bloodstream and when the “blank spot” travels around to my head, bam! I’m out.
Also, on the inside of my left wrist I have a squishy lump about the size of a dime. I asked my doctor what it was and she said, “Does it hurt?” When I told her no, she said “Don’t worry about it.” I never got a second opinion.
Lastly, when I was a kid, my eyes produced a freakish amount of “eye boogers” so that my eyes were sealed shut when I woke up every morning. I had to soften the crusty stuff with a hot wash cloth until I could pry my eyelids open. Ewww. Finally the doctor gave me some salve that I had to put on every afternoon and eventually my eyes became normal.
Does anybody know what the function of earwax is? My right ear is alllways full of the stuff-I really have a problem when swimming, the stuff blocks my hearing. I once had to use the ear drops for two straight days, just so I could hear normally!
Me too on the pilonidal cyst. Had it bad from junior high school to college (recurring infections) but it doesn’t bother me much anymore.
I have TMJ (temporomandibular joint disorder, also know as TMD) from clenching my teeth. I haven’t been able to chew gum for 15 years. When I was in college, I couldn’t even bite into a sandwich.
I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, an autoimmune disease where my body attacks my thyroid, giving me hypothyroid symptoms (sluggishness, fatigue, dry skin, etc.) Some day my thyroid will be totally dead. Suo Na: have you ever been tested for thyroid disorders? Lots of thyroid sufferers feel like they’re choking because of a goiter. Also, dry skin’s a symptom.
I have chronic sinusitis, had a deviated septum fixed and live on Sudafed, Claritin and steroid nasal spray.
But my favorite disorder is Non-Classical (or Late-Onset) Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia. An enzyme which turns adrenaline into cortisol is missing from my adrenal gland. Cortisol is necessary to help the body handle stress (including high body temperature and injury). If your body doesn’t produce enough, you could die. So instead of getting cortisol, my body produces extra testosterone–cool, I’m a woman with extra testosterone, complete with excessive body hair, stunted growth, intolerance to heat, and an inability to lose weight. So next time you see a short, fat woman with hair on her arms and face, try to be nice. That extra testosterone might piss her off enough to kick your ass if you make fun of her.
Thanks for the morning laugh LondonC!