The chicken or the disease?

Tonight is the date for one of the annual fundraiser events for my girls' school. It is a fun event, with a great dinner, jump houses for the kids, and time to see friends outside of the daily drop-off and pick-up rush. Or so I recall.

We didn't make it last year, I was still recovering from surgery and wasn't up to a night of socializing. And we didn't go this year, either.

I spent today at the zoo chaperoning my first grader's class after spending a week in and out of the doctor's office trying to figure out how I ended up with two separate infections in the course of a few days. I'm not up to socializing tonight, and knew I wouldn't be.

But, a friend asked me today if we were going. I told her we were not planning on it and why. Later, she said it was funny that being diagnosed with something suddenly makes the symptoms seem real.

Maybe she's right. Last year, I was healthy right up to the moment the doctor told me I had cancer. And this year, I was on my way back, ready to get on with my life and to put the cancer behind me, right up to the point I was told I had to have surgery again, and then again when I was told I have an incurable auto-immune disease.

Last year, the breast cancer diagnosis made me start questioning all of my choices in life to see what I'd done to cause the cancer. Later, I realized this is a futile and destructive path to go down, so I stopped. But then, the breast cancer did make me sick, or rather, the cure, in the form of surgery and Tamoxifen, made me feel like a sick person.

This year, I am questioning every illness and syndrome and diagnosis I've ever had to try to figure out if it was or is the Sarcoidosis causing it. This week, my doctor said that the second infection was probably a result of my immune system fighting the first infection, so some of the bacteria moved along. So now I wonder, was the first infection a result of my immune system being too busy attacking my lungs and lymph nodes to notice bacteria?

And, am I too tired to socialize because the Sarcoidosis caused the infections, or because having Sarcoidosis takes up all of my energy to analyze and reconsider and rethink everything that has happened this past year? At least the latter is something I can deal with and stop after I learn more and, hopefully, learn it is futile and stop. The former is what I don't want more than anything. I don't want to feel like a sick person again.