My shoulder. I did something to it at work, and now I get pain from my neck, through my collarbone, down to my elbow. And when I roll my shoulder, it pops. A lot. It wakes me up at night, and I can't sleep in the positions I'm used to. It only gets really painful every other day, but at times I'd just like to cut it off. I just keep putting off going to the doctor.

Oh gosh LF, six weeks, that is a lot. Though, I bet you're relieved to have a cure.

My dermatologist is hilarious. He commands, "take off your shirt", then says "OMG, sunspots, sun damage!" Then he hands me lots of literature on sunblock and protective clothing.

The last time I was in to see the dermatologist I had a hideous photosensitivity rash all over my face, chest, and arms caused by Levaquin. I took the Levaquin to treat a UTI and was riding my bike a lot in the sun. He took one look at me and knew instantly what the problem was.

I still have acne. I use acne soap and acne cream like an adolescent would. I had a pre-cancerous tumor of the uterus. My left ankle sucks. I had my saphenous vein ripped out of my left leg. That's all. I can't complain, the health is pretty good.

Aren't you glad I shared my health history? It's riveting, no? :-)

Good God Lori! How on earth did you rip out a saphenous vein?

The crappy thing my body does to me is that it gets hungry. HUNGRY. But I am trying to keep the weight down. My body is not going to win. It's either me or it! Heh.

LF, I'm sorry. "Ripped out" is the lingo I use for surgery.

Darn, it would have been much more interesting if the vein was ripped out in some sort of traumatic way.

The sucky thing muy body is doing is getting old. I caught a different train this morning and couldn't get a seat, so sat on the floor - getting up after an hour sitting cross-legged on a hard floor wasn't fun.

My body/face isn't getting carded much anymore. I'm closer to 40 than 35, so I need to make peace with it, but it's hard. Today I had SUNGLASSES on and didn't get carded and I thought, wtf.

I have a derm. appointment set for May - mostly to look at my skin for sun damage, and remove skin tags, (Gross, Body: why make those? Why are you so pale and stuff?!) and also, I have a flakey eyebrow. One, the left. Can't fix it. Need doctor help.

Bonus - creaky knees. No pain, so I'm embracing the horror movie sound I make when walking up stairs.

I'm diabetic, that's the big one. I'm clumsy so I frequently fall and hurt myself. Silver hair and acne should not be on the same head. I have arthritis in my left hand (not carpel tunnel syndrome as previously thought) and it makes my left thumb ache like a SoB. I was born without hip sockets and have been told that hip replacement surgery is probably in the future. I overeat and that makes me overweight. Which, of course, doesn't help the diabetes or the hips or the creaky knees or the clumsiness or the cholesterol or the high blood pressure.

The only thing that makes all that tolerable is that, although I'm 16 years younger than the mister, I'll probably die first.

redvixen - sounds like your rotator cuff. I've been going through the same thing. The doc put my on an anti-inflammatory (Arthrotec) and it's done wonders.

I know you have a bunch of health issue deborah, and I don't mean to pile on and/or minimize, but I have high bp and cholestrol too. It's largely genetic. Of course, if I could not drink and smoke as much and loose weight, that would help.

Gah.

Do you know it's not PC to call or label someone as diabetic? Of course deborah can call herself a diabetic if she pleases, because she has diabetes. For all of the peeps out there that give a flip, it's a person with diabetes.

The more you know.

I've had thyroid cancer, have either Marfan syndrome or a closely related connective tissue disorder (affecting my heart, back, eyes, and joints), and have not one but two subtypes of hemophilia (which was discovered 2 years ago when I almost bled to death after having both jaws broken and reset to fix my screwed-up bite). Most recently, I f*%&@'d up my foot last week and I suspect I have a little hairline fracture. I'm going to the doc on Friday, where I am such a regular that they call out my first name when I walk in the door, a la "Cheers."

My medical travails are so goofy and I have such an unusual combination of rare conditions that I've had more than one doctor tell me in all seriousness that I'm a walking JAMA article. On the plus side, I've turned the whole tale into a spoken word comedy piece that I've performed a half dozen times or so over the past few years.

LF, you probably already know this, but if you're on a 6 week course of antibiotics, for the love of your naughty bits, eat yoghurt. Lots and lots of yoghurt, with active cultures. If you hate yoghurt, take acidophilus capsules. Good luck with the treatment!

For me? My body doesn't recover as quickly as it used to, from anything (surprise). My elbow still aches from an xmas-period nail-pulling spree--3 days spent pulling out a very securely nailed sub-floor so a client could fit her dishwasher under the counter after her kitchen was tiled. My knee still makes a lovely cracking noise on occasion, a pimento of when I was hit by an SUV (as a pedestrian) a few years ago. It's not as bad as it was, though--for the year or two after the accident it popped with every step, which worked wonderfully with the acoustics of the open-plan glass-ceilinged building I worked in. Every time I walked down the hall to my office I thought of Flay from Titus Groan. I blew a disc at 26, but thankfully it's manageable with stretching and exercise, and I've learned to pay attention when it tells me it's gonna blow (I start losing feeling in my foot). However, considering the life I've led I've gotten off pretty lightly so far. God knows I've put this carcass through its paces, and would make an appalling organ donor, but it keeps going.

I went through a round of my body producing lovely sebaceous cysts. There was a oval one on my neck that looked a bit like I had an olive implanted under my skin, a little lentil sized one on my cheek, and little clusters behind each ear. The ones behind the ear would occasionally swell up and rupture like enormous zits. Surgery a few years ago took care of everything and left me with a small scar on my neck that I will tell people is from the time I was held at knife point, if anyone ever asks.