Read Online Lost in Dreams by Roger Bruner - Free Book Online Page B

worried I was.
    “Dr. Holly doesn’t think so, Kim. You took shots for everything before going to Santa María, and she’s tested you for every disease Mexican tourists come home with. Most of the tests are back—all negative. She doesn’t expect the rest to be any different.”
    I sighed. I could have told him that, but I didn’t want to believe it.
    “You ate packaged foods and drank bottled water. No chance for contagion there. Were any of the villagers sick while you were there?”
    I sighed again. He knew the answer without my having to tell him again. We’d had this discussion before. Several times. But I loved him for exerting so much effort to find a solution.
    “No.” I didn’t have the strength or the heart to argue. I knew what was coming next, and the thought of it brought bile into my throat. When it went down again this time, I barely noticed the bitter aftertaste.
    “Dr. Holly wants you to have more tests. She’ll probably refer you to some specialists, too.”
    I groaned. Not because the tests might hurt or be unpleasant, but because I grew hopelessly tired and weak whenever I had to walk farther than the distance from my room to the bathroom. The last time I’d gone anywhere with Dad and Aleesha, they had to lug me home between them just to get me inside. They probably looked like they were carting home a prodigal drunk.
    Dad listed some of the tests Dr. Holly had ordered. Most of the names were meaningless to me. But one tickled a few hairs of curiosity.
    “Sleep apnea?”
    “Yes. Or some other sleep problem. Dr. Holly wonders if sleeping the way you did in Mexico has somehow affected your ability to get the rest you need from your sleep now.”
    “Huh? How do they test for that?”
    “You go to sleep.”
    Hmm. I might be able to handle that one.

chapter fourteen
    J o was sitting on the front porch when Aleesha, Dad, and I got home from Dr. Holly’s office. After several months of nonstop lifelessness, I’d just received the final diagnosis—four separate diagnoses along with Dr. Holly’s, that was—and I wasn’t the least satisfied. Neither were Dad and Aleesha. We learned that the only thing our family doctor and four renowned specialists could agree on was that none of them knew what was causing my fatigue.
    One of them had removed my cast, though. My right arm—weak as it was from disuse—might have been the only normal part of me. Or at least the healthiest part.
    At least they’d ruled out leukemia and every other life-threatening disease under the sun. They saw eye to eye on the symptoms, but not the cause.
    At first, a specialist in teen medicine thought it was mono, but Dr. Holly had already ruled that out. Then the specialist considered fibromyalgia, but I wasn’t suffering muscle aches. So he concluded my problem was anxiety and depression and prescribed adult-strength medication.
    Another specialist suggested chronic fatigue syndrome, but he couldn’t be sure until my condition remained unchanged for six months. If that was the problem, it might last the rest of my life. Not what any normally active girl of almost nineteen wants to hear.
    The sleep study had been soundly conclusive. That was, I slept soundly through the night with electrodes stuck to various parts of my body while a technician monitored
    everything from heart rate to body twitches to eyelid movement on a computer in another room.
    In the morning when they woke me up—with great difficulty—I talked with both the technician and the doctor. Not a sign of sleep apnea. In fact, neither one of them had ever seen anyone sleep more soundly. According to the computer, I should have felt wonderful. But I didn’t.
    Good thing I didn’t have a recurrence of my nightmare that night.
    The fourth and final specialist said what I’d half-expected all of them to say. “It’s in your head. Go see a psychologist or maybe even a psychiatrist.” He probably thought me crazier still for requesting a referral to a