Happy new year, everybody! All good thoughts and wishes your way.

It’s always difficult to get back into the place of confession, but here, as in a polar dip, I suppose the best way to go is shrieking, half naked, and in front of a bunch of people.

About a year ago, I started noticing tingling and pinpricks in my feet. I knew what it was almost right away, because my father had it. Neuropathy.

One of the worst side effects of having a parent diagnosed with dementia is the ever-creeping fear it will get me too. It begets time consuming hobbies, such as the constant compare-and-contrast of my father’s history with that of his parents. My grandparents lived into their nineties with no symptoms. What was different about Dad that caused him to get dementia? Do I carry the attribute as well? What about my sisters? How are they different from me but like my father? It quickly takes on an aspect of Russian Roulette, as somehow I am quite certain only one of us will get it. Does this make me a pessimist or an optimist?

Each difference opens up a wormhole of research, as if I am going to single-handedly uncover The Cause of ALL Dementia. Differences can be as major as diet (my grandparents were strict vegetarian, my father so-so) to something my father said to me only once, years before his diagnoses. (He’s seen shadow people/hat men. So have I.)

The briefest of googling reveals the most common cause of neuropathy is diabetes*. Which is the name of my boogeyman, as my father developed Type II diabetes mid-life. His mother did not develop it until she was 85, and his father not at all.

The other thing google will tell you when you look up neuropathy is to go to the doctor right away. So naturally I did what most rational adults do. I took up jogging, lost a little weight, and completely refused to see a doctor. Stop yelling at me. I could not handle getting that diagnosis any more than I could handle putting a gun to my head, even if there was only one bullet in the chamber.

After a month, the tingling went away. Further proof of being diabetic/pre-diabetic, I assumed. And just so you know I’m not a total asshole, let’s throw in the rest of life: also around this time, my husband took me to Paris, which was the first just-us vacation we’d taken that lasted over 72 hours since having kids. Around that time, I had a root canal and got a previous root canal re-done. Trump was president and there was nothing I could do, no amount of social media I could watch, that would either change that fact nor allow me to have finally seen enough to make peace with it.

And perhaps we will also talk in comments about the few, but somehow very easily internalizable, times doctors have said when I’ve ventured into their offices, “Well, you’re getting older.” (I was 30, it was back pain) or, “Maybe you’re just depressed.” (After he ordered a CBC, which came back normal.**)

Occasionally, my feet would twinge, and I would think, I should make an appointment to get this checked out. I would also think, Maybe it’s just in my head. Maybe I’m just psyching myself out that there is pain because I’m afraid there might be something wrong. Gaslighting myself! Let’s talk about that another time!

I began feeling pretty flat and fuzzy brained, with no good ideas. I had a panic attack. My feet started not just tingling, but really hurting, until it was difficult to sleep at night. These things happened with such slow creep, swirled in with the rest of my life, that the progression of my acceptance of them can only be accurately captured in gif format:

This is my life meow from r/thisismylifenow

via GIPHY

I called my mom and asked her about Dad’s neuropathy. She gave me all the details (good pulse, diagnosed as idiopathic, I should probably go get tested for diabetes.)

I went to the doctor. PS: A new doctor, because fuck-no would I ever be vulnerable toward those doctors mentioned in previous comments. PPS: my new doctor is AWESOME.

The New Guy took a tuning fork and put it against my ankle and asked me to tell him. I said, “Tell you what?” Turns out I was supposed to feel it vibrating, and report when the sensation stopped. When he put it against my other foot, it hummed hard against my skin.

“Any way I’ll get that feeling back?” I asked.

“Yes, if it turns out you have a vitamin deficiency, or if your blood sugar is through the roof and we can get it back down.”

I took the blood test that day. My mother couldn’t remember how old my dad had been when he was diagnosed, but I felt sure I was younger than he had been. I’d foolishly avoided the doctor, and probably ruined my brain, and was probably already showing symptoms of dementia. Probably dementia is why I couldn’t get my shit together to get to the doctor quicker. The phlebotomist said it would take three days to get my test results back.

I stared out the window at nothing all three days.

Just kidding, I watched Trump burn the world down via my computer. Looking out the window would’ve been smarter.

The results came in. Turns out, I have a vitamin B 12 deficiency. I’m not diabetic. I’m not even pre-diabetic. Which? I know diabetes isn’t the end of the world. But it was the end of my world, boogeyman-wise.

In my newly minted FAVORITE DOCTOR EVER’s office, I learned how to give myself B 12 injections. I get to do it every week, and I am a mutherfucking badass at giving myself shots.

The first thing I did was text my mom about the results. Somehow, in my excitement, all I could think was that if I had a deficiency, maybe Dad did too. I had spent so much time thinking about how we were the same, it seemed like a completely reasonable conclusion. And as it turns out, in extreme cases, vitamin B 12 deficiency looks like dementia. My brain was a whirlwind. What if I had stumbled across the unimaginable and actually figured out the cause of Dad’s dementia? And what if, maybe like my feet, it wasn’t too late to get my dad back?!

My mom didn’t answer my text. I called her.

Of course they’ve tested him for B 12 deficiency. Did I think she had been sitting idly by as Dad got progressively worse without researching the fuck ton out of all the possible causes? She told me in measured, flat tones that my father’s B 12 was one of the first things they’d checked, because of the possible dementia-causing symptoms. As it turns out, his B 12 levels have always been high.

I still don’t know what to do with this feeling. The falling distress that what fixes me doesn’t fix him. The surprise that what looked the same about us on the surface (neuropathy) is completely different underneath. The elation I don’t have what he has. We are different! I’ve spent all this time thinking we were the same, and here in bright Technicolor of blood test results, we are different.

And of course, this dumb wonder that some irrational, hidden piece of me still believes he could be fixed, that there is some Scooby Doo clue I might dig up that would make everything go back to how it was at the beginning of this crazy adventure. How strange to uncover, when everything I thought I knew about myself understands he’s irrevocably damaged.

*These days, it seems like the most common reason for everything I google health-wise is diabetes! I was googling yeast infections (Hi, TMI, did you miss me?), and diabetes is listed as a possible cause. For fuck’s sake!

**This one makes me so angry my eyeball twitches. If I was depressed, certainly he should have followed that up with medication or instructions for therapy? I feel like he in small part but large spiritual manner violated his oaths, and wonder now if I was vitamin deficient then and he missed it. Then I think, while technically an MD, he was/is my allergist, so maybe it wasn’t his job in the first place to deal with either depression nor any non-allergy related symptoms. Then I spiral down into that weird place of wondering whether I’m unruly angry at someone because I made a mistake, not them.