Sicky Wicky in the Heady Weady

These last few days/weeks/months have been a flutterby as far as keeping one foot in front of another. I took an online test last night that confirmed that I have adult-onset ADHD. That, along with the online symptoms of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and dementia, make me truly falling apart.

Alright, I’m not really sick. Well, maybe a little ADHD, but who isn’t?

I think that as the path in front of us gets shorter and the one behind us gets longer, we all tend to be alert for whatever disease/neurological condition sits waiting for us in the shadows. Along with real symptoms, many of us tend to blur the line between a symptom and a life style. I know I do.

Your lifestyle doesn’t include a lot of extra-curricular walking, so every time you feel a pain in your chest you think heart attack. You’ve forgotten where you left your phone or keys that you just put down two minutes ago and you are well on your way to dementia. You can’t smell the roses on someone’s desk and already you have Hyposmia, Anosmia, or Parkinson’s.

What is with us?

It can be exhausting to get hung up on medical twitches. I don’t have a lifetime to turn around built up health problems like being overweight or wrinkly skin. Most of my ailments are from the fact of getting older, period.

But I know more and more people who turn to the Internet to diagnose their symptoms until they are convinced they are going into a diabetic coma, even if they’re not diabetic. They let uncommon sense run over their common sense.

I do believe that as you get older you are more susceptible to things falling apart and weaknesses in your immune system giving way to diseases with 15 letters. It’s part of life. But I also believe that the older you get the more you fear leaving this world. And that any virus or broken hip can be the start of the end.

None of us want that.

So the point of all this nonsense is to pay attention to your body. Really pay attention. Don’t invent, don’t fantasize, don’t whack out. But pay attention.

I did seven years ago and caught breast cancer before it spread. Another time the moment I saw red on my skin I knew it was cellulitis and went to the doctor. Those are the things you work with. The things you pay attention to.

Don’t be checking the Internet for a symptom found in 19,000 diseases and disorders. It just ages you. Keeps you away from the great things in life. The things that make you who you are.

And that person is a wonderful person.

Although with insomnia, restless leg syndrome…