Elevated Temperature

My normal body temperature is 96.5. I'm always cold. I have an impressive sweater collection, and I don't understand why people get excited when fall rears her ugly head. So when my body temperature rose to 98.3, and sometimes 99.1, and stayed there from Friday to Monday I got worried. I also suddenly understood why people liked air conditioning. And I suddenly had the strong urge to take an ice bath, which had always seemed like the most effective use of torture one could use on me. Was this what it felt like to have a normal body temperature?

My appointment happened on Tuesday, and of course, by the time I got there my temperature had already lowered to a 97.9. Still high for me, though. I explained to the nurse that my normal body temperature was much lower. She nodded and led me to my exam room.

When the doctor came in, we went over my symptoms again. We got to the temperature part, and I explained once again that my normal temperature is much lower. She looked at me and said, "yes, but you don't have a fever."

"Yes, but my temperature is elevated."

"But it's not a fever. Anything below 99 is not a fever, regardless of normal body temperature."

"Well, my body temperature is elevated, and it must be elevated for some reason, right? I mean, my body is reacting to something."

"Probably not." Now all I can think is there has to be something wrong with this. My body is exuding heat at an astronomical rate, and I still want to take an ice bath, but it's for no reason at all? But then she said the one thing that is certain to piss me off. "Is your period about to start? Because the woman's body elevates its temperature up to two weeks before the period begins."

Yes, doctor, in fact it is! You're a genius! In the past 12 years I've been a menstruating woman, I've never noticed the 5 day long heat wave before! How unobservant of me! I must be crazy. I'll stop wasting your time and go home now. And take a nice ice bath.

It is like the time I went to the women's center to talk to the nurse practitioner about the possibility of me having PMDD. Her response? "Here's a pamphlet on PMS." The end. No discussion, no probes into why I would feel that way. Just a pamphlet on the symptoms I should be experiencing once a month, and in theory have been feeling every month for the past 11 years at the time. Because at the age of 24I wouldn't have a clue as to what PMS is, or that I'm sure the symptoms are getting worse.

But I'm not that mean ever in person to say the cynical things I'm thinking, so I just nodded. The doctor diagnosed me with some mysterious virus, told me if I developed a skin rash to stay home from school, and asked me if I wanted a flu shot.

Overall, she was very nice, and awfully compassionate, and she even looked at the warts taking over my heel for me for free. But why do doctors think that women don't know how their bodies react to their cycles? Nothing in a woman's life is more personal and nothing is a woman more aware of than how her body and her uterus work together. Just, FYI.