A Puff of Smoke...

Legend has it that when I was born, I popped out accompanied with a puff of smoke, top hat, magician’s cape and cane – well, the hat, cape and cane are an exaggeration, but the smoke is NOT. To this day, my mom will gladly share this story with whoever will listen, and I personally can never hear it enough – according to her, immediately after a little Stephanie tapped danced into the world, the resident physician in the delivery room suddenly had a wide, gaping stare. Not knowing whether to be offended or scared, my mom demanded to know what was going on “down there” and the physician, who continued to stare in awe, kept asking the nurses around him, “did you see that?! Did you see that?! There was a puff of smoke!” Everyone just laughed it off and assumed that perhaps this delusional doctor has accidentally received some of the delivery pain medication, but he looked my mom straight in the eye and said directly, “I swear, I saw it.”

Since then, my life, however short it has been, has been chock full of medical mysteries with the puff smoking representing my eventual need to be my own magician to make pain and physical illness disappear. It has become an ongoing joke among my friends, family and colleagues how I seem to get hit with the most random, sometimes unknown, illnesses and medical issues. Most recently this week, I was diagnosed with a very cute (note the sarcasm) case of eczema that planted itself on the back of my neck and crept its way up into my scalp. Never before have I had any type of skin condition, let alone one that will require a lifetime of attention as eczema does, but lo and behold, I will forever have to worry about “flare-ups” of this malady on the nape of neck which looks like a deranged hickey. All I can say is thank God I’ve bagged myself a man, because the continued onset of my strange ailments is definitely not an attractive mating call.

Not too long before this eczema incident, I was perched on the exact same examining table because I had the most random, gruesome looking rash on my right hand. It was this isolated patch of skin that looked far more painful that it actually was and the strangest part is that my doctor couldn’t conclude what it was or what could have caused it – and now I’m left with a permanent scar of what could potentially have been a flesh eating disease transported from an African monkey who got loose in the plant where my hand lotion is manufactured. Alas, I have been unable to confirm this theory.

And who can forget my vertigo incident during college? I woke up one morning unable to stand straight and felt like I was trapped in a snow globe that was being violently shaken with no relief in sight. I soon found myself in the ER and it was determined that I caught the “vertigo virus”, which caused crystallized masses to form on my inner ear causing my balance to be thrown off. To remedy it, I was given a horse sized shot directly into my butt check, which to this day, I can still feel the burn from, and then the ER doc proceeded to shake my head to apparently dislodge these so called “crystals”. I then half excepted him to break out incense and a voodoo dance, but unfortunately, after another minute of jostling my noggin, he then only prescribed me ultra strength motion sickness medicine and told me I would feel like I was at sea for the next week or so. Ahoy.

And then there is my sleeping disorder and this is a fun one. Ever since I was a wee one, my mom would come to wake me up for the morning to find a G-rated crime scene... pillow cases would be off pillows, sheets would be wrapped around a bed post, beloved stuffed animals were catapulted across the room and there I would lay, distorted into a pretzel position, one sock on and the other being grasped in my little hand. At first, my parents assumed I was an “active sleeper” and would jokingly ask me who I “fought” in my sleep that night; however, this was the only the beginning of what become a diagnosed condition called “parasomnia”.

After years and years of being painfully exhausted and being granted my own king size bed on vacations because my entire family was too scared to share a bed with me knowing they would endure a night of violent kicking, my parents sent me to sleep clinic where it was found that my brain doesn’t emit the proper brain waves for deep, REM sleep. Basically, my mind is always awake even when my body is not, thus I physically act out dreams which result in extreme sleep walking and talking. And here’s a fun fact: In 1981 a Scottsdale, Arizona man was accused of murdering his wife with a kitchen knife and admitted to stabbing her 26 times, but claimed he did it in his sleep. After extensive sleep tests, it was proven that the man suffered from parasomnia and was found not guilty and walked away a free man. To my boyfriend: be afraid, be very afraid.

This is just a snapshot of my random ailments and I’m sure I have something brewing as we speak, which will soon rear its ugly head during another inconvenient time in my life. However, I take each ache and pain in stride always keeping in mind that afterall, I WAS born with a “puff of smoke”, so its only obvious that I was destined to handle such mystery in my life. And the magical support of my family and friends, along with a little humor, helps me face each mystery head on with my magician’s cape, hat and cane in tow.