Why are we so quick to cut?

Shortly before my last post, I developed a hard, painful lump on my left wrist which steadfastly refused to disappear of it's own accord. After a few days of pain, growth and general discomfort, I became concerned that I had done something terribly wrong to my wrist, and went to see a doctor. He decided it was most likely a ganglion cyst, which is a mostly harmless, fluid-filled sac usually attached to joint tissue. Just to make sure, he arranged for me to have an ultrasound and told me to come back the following week. I won't bore you with the inadequacies of the health system I experienced in following these simple instructions, as anyone who has had to use it lately is already well aware of the problems I faced. Let's just say that I eventually got my ultrasound and returned for verification of the diagnosis. He mentioned there was a couple of options for treatment, but I would have to go to a specialist hand clinic in the hospital for which he sent up a referral.

Now, as I mentioned in one of my earlier posts (it may even have been my first one), I'm the kind of person who is insanely curious about most things I come across, and for this reason I have quite a love affair with google. So, of course, I googled my diagnosis. I must state here that while I do not recommend using google to diagnose yourself with medical conditions, choose home treatments, etc etc, I do think it is a wonderfully useful tool for better understanding something professionally diagnosed, especially as the health profession these days doesn't really lend itself to answering a multitude of patient questions. Of course I was quite interested in the types of treatment available, and found lots of studies and articles about each of them. To summarise, the options are surgical removal (80% effective in the first instance), aspiration with a needle (various rates of success), and the old-fashioned 'bash it with a heavy book and burst it' treatment (the merits of which are heavily debated). Having thoroughly researched all of these options, I determined that the middle option was best for me, and after my ultrasound went back to the doctors.

This new doctor confirmed that it was indeed a ganglion cyst, and then told me that I would need to be put on the surgical waiting list. When I informed her that I did not wish to have surgery, she acted as though the idea of other treatment was ludicrous. Now, the waiting list for this type of surgery is upwards of one year on the public health system (I'm not in a position to go private at the moment, as my insurance for some reason seems to cover everything but what I actually need). When I protest that it is causing me pain and numbness in my hand, she dismisses it as unlikely that I am actually experiencing this (?!!) and when I say that I don't care that if aspirated it is 50% likely to reoccur (by which time I assume I might be closer to the top of the surgical waiting list anyway) as long as I don't have it for the next year, she tells me that they can't just stick a needle in it that close to nerves and blood vessels and it's safer to have surgery (wtf???). My research has confirmed that reoccurrence when aspirated is highly likely, but studies in the last decade have shown that if cortisone is injected after aspiration, reoccurrence is significantly reduced, so I'm very confused by this attitude.

When I sat down and really thought about it, I started to wonder why people are so inclined to cut stuff away. The second something goes 'bad', we cut it. Cancerous moles or tumours are one thing, but a benign cyst that can be drained? Do we really need to go as far as surgery, and just cut it out? It doesn't stop at medicine. If we've got a sick looking plant in the garden, we pull it out, or chop off half of it's leaves. Sometimes, this is the right thing to do, but other times, like with my new tomato plant, all it needs is a good water. At work, we're cruising along and then suddenly a person or project comes along that we don't like, and we suddenly start thinking that we should find another job when all we really need is a holiday, or a new way to deal with the situation. You only have to look at the skyrocketing divorce rate to see that when the going gets tough, most couples get going - to court. Maybe where they should really be going is counselling. In our grandparents' generation, if something bad happened, you dealt with it and moved on, but these days, we cut it out, leave it by the wayside and run. Is this really the best way of managing our problems?

Just this week, I received my first contact from the hand clinic - a letter advising me that their was going to be a long wait for an appoinment, as my condition was classed as non-critical. I wasn't fazed in the least, mostly because my cyst currently is not there. I decided that I would deal with my problem the old-fashioned way, that is I put a cushion on the desk under my wrist and hit the cyst with the spine of the final Harry Potter book. I can only be thankful that no-one was around to witness the comic triumph of initial bravery over last-second attempts to stop the downwards motion of the book, which only managed to reduce impact. The cyst immediately went down, and although the spot where it was ached for a couple of days, all was back to normal very quickly and the book was thankfully unharmed. No cutting required, just carefully-considered use of alternative methods. I am feeling much better without the help of our overzealous health system - all thanks to JK Rowling.

Quarter-Life Crisis?

In the year most of my group of friends turned 20, one of my male (very metrosexual) friends, rather than being excited was quite despondent about leaving his teen years. He loudly bemoaned to all his friends that he was, shock horror, half way to forty. I laughed at the time and in fact ever since on his birthday have reminded him that he's half way to some horrible age. This friend's birthday is in January, whereas mine is in December, so every year it goes from being a joke about him to a cruel reality for me. For the first couple of years of this, each year on my birthday I brushed it aside, but the older I got, the more it started to actually hit home that I was indeed halfway to, well, the half way point of my life (if I'm lucky enough to make it to 100 that is). It wasn't until my 24th birthday that it hit home - I was officially mid-20's, and the following year would hit 25, the magical quarter-life year. It was this that sowed the seed of my quarter-life crisis, which took root and grew like crazy in the fertile soil of my insecure thoughts leading up to my 25th birthday last year. It was somewhere in the middle of the time between my 24th and 25th birthday that I first heard the term 'quarter-life crisis'. At the time of hearing the phrase, I thought what most people probably think - "nonsense!". But in the weeks leading up to my birthday, I found myself in the middle of a very real life crisis.

Type the words quarter life crisis into google, and the first page is a wikipedia entry, so straight away you know this is a popular phenomenon. The page tells us that a quarter-life crisis (QLC) describes the period of life following the major changes of adolescence, typically the years between 20 and 30, and is widely recognised among professional psychologists as a rising issue for young people. The page lists 16 emotional symptoms typifying the crisis, and reading through them was like reading a summary of the diary I never got around to keeping. Wikipedia also explains to me that this is partly caused by the changing financial and professional roles typically experienced in this period of a person's life. As for how to deal with this, Wikipedia is strangely quiet - a couple of books are recommended reading, but that's about it. The second entry is a website, www.quarterlifecrisis.com. Ok, if Wikipedia and my dread about my upcoming birthday hadn't convinced me, the fact that it's a domain name... well, now it definitely exists. This website tells me that the term was coined by a woman called Abby Wilner in 1997 after she graduated and felt unsure about what to do with her life. Apparently for her the answer was to write a couple of books to help others deal with her phenomenon, not, as one would expect, to find a job in the field she had spent several years studying (although the site doesn't mention what she studied, so perhaps she did indeed study new psychological phenomenon). Unfortunately, the site seems to be more about marketing the books, with the odd forum for QLC'ers to talk about their problems. No help there. The rest of the search results don't help much either.

So, there I was, about to turn 25 and feeling less than enthusiastic about it. There's a commonly held assumption that those experiencing a mid-life crisis generally will do something drastic such as change career, take a sea- or tree-change, buy a sportscar, or leave their partner for someone half their age. It doesn't really translate into a QLC. I'm just starting out in my career and love it, although I do wish I could advance faster (apparently a symptom of the QLC). Having lived both in a smaller town and on the coast, before the city I'm in now, I'm happy to stay here for a while - I would love to move back to the coast, but career-wise there's nothing there for me until I advance, and really it's only an hour's drive away anyway. I can't afford a sportscar or the insurance, and to be honest am very fond of my little barina with pink seatcovers anyway and would be way to nervous driving something expensive. As for dating someone half my age, that's just wrong at any age really let alone 25, and I'm already dating a younger man (albeit only a year) who I am very happy with. So, no help there. What's a girl to do to get over this?

Well, for me it's little things that help. On my 25th birthday, since my partner had to work and I was at home, I decided to go out and treat myself to waffles for brunch. I had looked in the mirror that morning and thought I'd never looked so old, wishing wistfully for the days of 21 when I was 5 kilos lighter and didn't have the beginnings of lines around my eyes and thought I needed a pick-me-up. While I was out, I dropped in to the bottle shop to buy some mini alcohol bottles for the christmas hampers I was putting together and the shop assistant asked me for ID. It was the best present I got all day. I've been having trouble finding a new job and have visited a stack of recruitment agencies, and while waiting at one I ended up in a discussion with two other job-seekers. As I have alot of recruitment experience myself, I found myself giving advice to these two ladies, and one of them said to me "I'm so confused as to why you're looking for work, it sounds like you've got so much great experience and really know what you're doing!" When I missed out on a job I wanted, my boyfriend told me "They're not good enough for you anyway". I feel out of touch with friends since I moved away, so I spend time on facebook checking their statuses and photos, and sending them virtual gifts. Every time I feel envious of someone else, like the friend who owns a house with her long-term partner and is a stay-at-home mum with a wonderful, wonderful son, or the friend who is organising her wedding and has just bought a house with her fiance, I am surprised by their envy of something simple I have that they don't, like a career that I love, a quiet weekend at home, or the ability to buy myself something without worrying that I should save the money for the wedding dinner or schoolbooks.

We were brought up in a world where we were told we could have it all, at once, and we could have it now. We are also brought up with the notion that we should live each day to it's fullest potential and get as much out of life as possible, as we never know if this day could be our last. But when we talk about wanting it all, or about this feeling we have as we leave adolescence behind, we're told a conflicting message - 'you have plenty of time. You're only young'. Perhaps this conflict is part of the cause of this rising phenomenon.

The world didn't end when I turned 25, and there was no earth (or mirror) shattering but I've been 25 for a month and a half now, and I feel slightly better. I've decided to take it one day at a time, enjoy the little things in life, and a bunch of other cliches. I'm feng shui-ing my house as well, which is really helping me clarify where I've come from, where I want to go, and what it is that I really want out of this life (more on the whole feng shui thing another time) as well as focus on the positive things I have. Most importantly, I've given myself permission to feel old, and all those other feelings that come along with a QLC even though some (older) people might tell me I'm still young and think that it's complete nonsense. As far as I'm concerned, it's perfectly normal to feel that you're getting old at any age, for one simple reason. When I gave my ID to the lady at the bottleshop on my 25th birthday, I told her that she had made my birthday as I was feeling a bit depressed about ageing, and she was one of those aforementioned older people who told me I was still young while giving me one of those looks I'm sure we've all experienced while hearing the same thing. So I looked at her and said "Well, I'm sure 25 won't seem so old when I'm in my forties, but for now it's the oldest I've ever been and it's going to take some getting used to!"

Lucky Dip Buses

Anyone who's ever taken a Brisbane bus can verify that it's like playing lucky dip. If you want to get from one location to another, you can find several buses that travel between the two locations that all leave within 15 minutes of each other, but how do you work out which bus is quicker and will take you the closest to your destination? Let me tell you a story that illustrates this.

I work near Mount Gravatt, and last Monday I had a dentists appointment in the Queen St Mall. Rather than trying to drive in during the storms and find a park somewhere close by, I figured it would be quicker and easier to take a bus, as they would travel up the busway thereby avoiding the traffic, and deposit me right at the mall. I was so, so wrong!

Before I left work, I looked up the transinfo website to determine the best bus and bus stop to use, and although confusing I struggled through and found what I thought was a workable plan. Now, according to the website there are two bus stops at Garden City shopping centre - an upper and lower one. However, the Garden City centre map shows only the upper level bus stop. The buses that stop at the lower level were the quickest, and I knew that there was a bus stop out the front of garden city on logan rd, so thought that might be the lower level one - wrong again. I parked near the bus stop and ran over to see if it was indeed the stop number listed on the map. It wasn't but while I was waiting, a City bus pulled up. I asked the driver if it was the best bus to take to the city and with his reassurance, jumped on, purchased a ticket and settled back for a relaxing ride.

All was fine until I realised that I had been on the bus for almost half an hour and we were still driving around Greenslopes and hadn't ventured anywhere near the busway. With only 15 minutes until my dentist appointment, I started to get agitated. By the time we got to Southbank, my appointment time had passed, I was feeling ill and after spending an hour on the bus, I desparately needed to go to the bathroom. I ran off the bus and over to the train station to use the amenities, and then hopped on the next train to the city. I arrived at my dentist appointment half an hour late, but luckily they were running later (maybe they had also caught a bus to the city).

After my appointment (and a quick lunch) I went to a bus stop to find a bus back to work. But it's not as simple as going to any inner city bus stop - I had to walk down a long stretch of adelaide st looking for a bus stop where a south-bound bus might stop at mount gravatt. For some reason, instead of one bus stop which all buses can stop at, there is several different stops for several different routes. This is particularly confusing for those who don't travel on buses every day. I've been known to get off the bus several stops early with the fear that this is the only stop in the city the particular bus I'm on might stop at, because there's no way to know for sure. Anyway, I eventually found a bus that got me back after another harrowing 1-hour journey. My supposed hour and a half absence from work turned into half a day thanks to the wonderful Brisbane public transport system.

I lost lucky dip that day, but it left me thinking, surely I'm not the only one who comes across this confusion while trying to use the public transport system. I'm not exactly unintelligent, and managed to negotiate the Gold Coast's bus system quite easily while living there so forgive me for thinking the problem lies with the bus company. Perhaps they need to look at their information systems with the objective eye of someone who has never caught a Brisbane bus, instead of assuming everyone has their intricate knowledge of bus stops.

I, for one, have decided to avoid playing lucky dips in future, and will forgo the extra couple of parking dollars for the sake of efficiency and calmness. These days, it's a safer investment than the share market (or a savings account).

Oh, by the way, sorry for the gap between posts again... This one's been trying to find it's way to the internet via public transport.