Professional Paranoia

I would have exhibited the mole to my professor, but that would have required me to take off my pants and pull my Victoria’s Secrets to the side, which she may not have anticipated or appreciated during office hours. Instead, I took a picture of the offender—trying to crop out as much of my crotch as possible—and emailed it to my physician mother. The subject line was something like “Does this look like it could be cancerous?” Which I can only imagine she archived alongside the other emails I had sent to her since beginning nursing school, including “How loose is a too loose loose stool?”; “A concerning voiding pattern”; and “Am I too young for a colonoscopy?”
Her reply to my mole email was roughly, “I did not even open the photo. It’s not cancer—I remember seeing it when changing your diaper. Let me know which weeks you will be learning about STIs so I can make a point of not checking my email. Love, Mom.”
The worst adverse effect of the nursing profession is to know the various complications one can have with the body and diagnose myself with all of them. Now I know that ignorance is bliss, but unfortunately it is not an option in this profession. Those with active imaginations should beware, but I believe that even pragmatic left-brainers still suck in a nervous breath at the site of a rash, instantly thinking of Steven Johnson Syndrome instead of contact dermatitis. Your son’s cut might not be healing properly because he keeps picking at the scab but for an instant you think he has MRSA. Probably, that cough from your daughter is due to the smoke from the fire but your first thought was whooping cough, was it not? My treatment for these delusions is the company of a level-headed non-medical professional.
“Beanzie,” I said to my sister as I was driving her to school, “If I had renal failure and refused dialysis would you respect my decision and let me die pain-free on morphine? I promise you would only have to watch me suffer for about a month before I would kick the bucket.”
Without even looking up from her magazine she responded, “Or I could just kill you myself. How would you like to go?”
That is what family is for.
Against my mother’s advice, I started measuring my urine output. I did not use the measuring cup from my kitchen; I bought a new one from Target. After four days of measuring I found my voiding to be roughly 8 cups a day, equivalent to 64 oz and 2,000 mL, which is roughly what I drank due to my polydipsia. I was ecstatic. My email to my mom was titled “My kidneys work!”
Each moment on the toilet is now a moment of excitement. I can pee. Congratulations to me. Good job filtering, kidneys. Excellent control, pelvic floor muscles. Way to retain, bladder. Every aspect of my body is under performance scrutiny, but as each one passes my various tests I find myself loving the parts of my whole even more. To my lungs, thank you for inflating, deflating and assisting with gas exchange. To my heart, you are doing an excellent job pumping. To my mole, I appreciate that you are not cancerous. Here is to your health.