My summer of medical maladies

It's very difficult to find chemical concoctions that will fix medical problems without any drawbacks. We call them side-effects, and usually the benefits outweigh the small unpleasant things. My issue now is trying to distinguish between side-effects and symptoms of other conditions. Am I just a lazy bum for sleeping all the time, or is my medication causing somnolence? Are the lightheadedness and trembling because I don't eat enough, or because of the drugs?

However, I'm feeling better. Not completely well, but I've started to dredge myself up from the layered depths of despair and apathy. Playing piano has become my personal therapy. When I put fingers to keys and play, everything else goes away (cookies if you caught that reference). The days my friends invite me to do something, I'm happy. Some days I feel like running and dancing; I smile without specific reasons.

I still need to find outlets, ways to connect with people and release energy. I've been working on it, wanting to get into shape and be active. Unfortunately, physical activity may not be in the cards for a while. If you read this post, I can tell you that it's gotten worse. I had a bit of a scare the other day while swing dancing with a friend. I almost completely passed out, thought I was going to throw up, and all my skin turned bright red. My chest hurt for a long time after that, and then subsided into an unpleasant pressure over my sternum.

My mom decided it was finally time to see a doctor about this. I knew it had to be related to my pectus excavatum (google it if you aren't familiar with the term), and our family doctor confirmed it. The chest x-ray revealed that not only has my sternum displaced my heart slightly, a common state in pectus cases, but the bone is actually pushing on my heart. Before deciding on a course of action, we have to go do another test called a stress echocardiogram to see how exactly my heart performs under stress.

I'm a little scared. I don't want this to impact my China trip. It's also hard to tell people about it, and explain why I can't go running with them or do sports at the level I would like to.

Oh well. This is a bit of a boring/scattered post, but I'll publish it anyway because I haven't written anything good in a while.