Maybe I’m Dying?

Maybe I am dying. It’s hard to guage reality vs. what is fantastical when you’r e a bit of a hypochondriac. I waited over a week for my urine culture to come back. Finally, I called and they said it looked like I had a UTI. This is when I inform the nurse I took the full course of antibiotics and still had kidney pain. I asked what sort of bacteria grew and maybe they could match an antibiotic to it. “I’ ll have to ask the PA,” she said, never to be heard from again.

A few days later, I get a call from a radiologist. The bastards at my doctor’s office referred me without saying a blessed thing. I don’t know what specifically they suspect, or if it’s in an abundance of caution. Do they think I’m riddled with cancer or my kidneys are failing? Luckily, my friend is coming with me and I’m going to take enough Ativan to numb me into a stupor. She can ask questions I’m too afraid to ask.

If I had to guess a reason for my problem though,  I think I caught  Monster E-Coli on New Year’s Eve…

New Year’s Eve, an apt time for bad things to occur. Unlike last year, battling the caprices of my best friend’s mood, this New Year’s was to be my own. I perused the after Christmas sales at Walgreens and Dollar General, and hit my friendly neighborhood ABC Store.

To those of you unaccustomed to living in one of the more God-fearing states of the union, the ABC Store is a state owned monopoly selling spirits. Alcoholic fascism is the southern American way.

I relish my twice a year trips to the ABC Store. I am in forbidden territory. We hope my mother if she watches me from above, averts her eye as I walk about the store fascinated by brands, flavors, price points. I almost relish defying my dead mother, in the occasional homage to my equally dead drunk father.

There were 3 things my mother drilled into my head:

Sex causes unwanted pregnancy, venereal disease, and a broken heart.  Better to remain a virgin for life.

Don’t walk alone at night. Don’t go anywhere alone at night. You will be raped and/or murdered.

Don’t drink. You’ll wind up like your father once the liquid first passes your lips.

You think I exaggerate. Not much. Of these 3 things, the only one I’ve managed to not do yet is the first one. Walking alone at night sometimes is necessary and alcohol is a panacea for holidays.

I left the ABC with a bottle of orange vodka, alcoholic eggnog, and a 4 of those 50 oz. bottles. I went to McDonald’s to indulge in my other vice, overeating. They have the absolute worst service of any McDonald’s in town. After waiting literally 20 minutes for my food, it was going to be too late to take the bus home. Oh well.

As I was finishing up eating, I heard fire trucks . “There’s a fire somewhere down the street, ” said a customer. I hurried outside to make sure it wasn’t near my apartment complex. I could see clearly in my head the fire that tore through a building behind mine back in July, and I had thought then it would spread to my apartment. It hadn’ t, but I was still traumatized.

This fire mercifully wasn’t near my complex. It was across the street from the ABC store and behind a used car lot in some woods. I couldn’t see much, but there was a horrible plastic burning  odor. A few days later, I found out a drunk homeless man had somehow managed to accidentally light himself on fire using his kerosene heater. I hope he didn’t suffer long.

I start walking home. It’s not horribly cold and I’m coming down from a full fledged panic attack. My heart raced and I had feared I would vomit while looking for the fire. Only now was I beginning to calm down as I walk home down another street…and then suddenly it hit, the overwhelming urge to shit. This area is virtually deserted at this time of the night, around 9:30, as it is just doctors’ offices.

I can make it, I keep telling myself, even praying. Oh shit, I can’t.

I leave my little shopping cart in the parking lot of a psychologist’s office, hurry toward the back fumbling in the dark. I pull my pants down, lean slightly against the building, and contort myself into an unnatural but necessary position. All the while, I keep fearing someone will attack me. Once more, I fumble in the dark, breaking off small leaves from nearby bushes to tend to myself. I feel overwhelming relief when I stumble back to the parking lot without someone jumping out at me.

And that’s how I think I got a monster UTI. Maybe it’s not cancer or kidney failure, but ever the optimist, I’m sure I’m dying.

Fear of a New Decade

Last decade was the worst decade of my life. Highlights in case you don’t feel like flipping through almost 10 years of mediocre writing:

My mom died.

I realized friends, relatives, humanity in general will disappear or downright disown you in your hour of need.

I went into a nursing home for 2 and a half months just because there was nowhere else to go.

I almost got evicted.

I got bed bugs.

Instead of thinking that things will look up for the new decade, I’m certain this will be worse.

I’m scared that I’m dying. I recently had a kidney infection, the second in three months. The hematuria cleared up with antibiotics, but I’m still having stomach and back pain. I keep thinking I am in kidney failure. I am having weird bumps and itching. I used to worry it was bed bugs who had hid out without showing themselves in over two years. Now I think it’s just organ failure. I’m too scared to go to the doctor. If I start pissing blood again, I’ll go. I’ll probably die of sepsis one day just like my mother before me. Yay.

I keep thinking I’m going to lose my apartment, I will have to rely on my best friend, and will never have my own own home again. My friend will grow to hate me, throw me out, and I’ll wind up in a nursing home or on the streets. My dreams are filled with me losing my home. Sometimes, the dreams are that my mom just died again and I wake up in amazement that it’s 9 years later and I’m OK.

Well, thanks for letting me unburden myself. I could go on  about how I’m never going to be loved and my life will be remembered as meaningless if I do  fall dead, but I’ve had enough fun for one day.

Rumors of My Death: Episode I

 

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It seems there are a few maladies unable to be conquered by waiting for them to go away, that there are some things that will make the most reluctant patient go to the doctor. My abject horror of disease-finding doctors kept me away from them in cases most people would go to a physician. Like that time I thought I had Swimmer’s Ear, or the time I had that giant pus-filled boil  and could barely lift my arm (sorry to be graphic). The only time in around five years or so that I had to get a medicine, not referring to my antidepressants, was the time I got oral thrush and ended up at my dentist’s. Genius here thought it would be fabulous for my gums if I kept Listerine in my mouth slightly over the minute directed on the bottle….. like 19 minutes  over the time on the bottle. Cleanliness may very well be next to godliness, but this doesn’t pertain to the bacteria of the mouth. Of course I thought I had oral cancer, then, after my mother explained what thrush was, that I was sure I had a compromised immune system and had ‘caught’ AIDS in a nontraditional way. …Ever the optimist if not the deep thinker. But anyway…

One morning I woke up and went to the bathroom to receive an unpleasant surprise of almost red urine, to which I immediately told my mother. She at first wanted to say it was still my Aunt Flo, but I told her that good lady of red blessings packed up and left at least two days ago. This had happened to me a couple of times months ago, but it went away and my bladder kept its peace until now. This time would not be the same. From almost red urine, I began to void red clumps and spots (again, sorry to be graphic). I just chalked it all up to bladder cancer or kidney failure.

For the first day or two my mother remained optimistic that I just had a long period, but my stomach and back now began to hurt and I seemed to pee less. To strain gave me a bit of a burning sensation. Then, joy of joys,  I had my once every 3 months pill pusher’s psychiatrist’s appointment to go  to while I barely could stand up for the pain and dizziness. It was today I planned to  ask her to switch me to a medicine I only tried for a while because I am desperate to end the need to be perfect and the overwhelming anger at not being able to live to my standards. If you feel like you have to restart all the time you might be pretty pissed off and on edge too. Though I was half dead, I still asked. Recall, gentle reader, I’ve mentioned this sort of thing before, my medicine not working well (I sort of cringe when I read one sentence in it, embarrassing! But you can have a look if you didn’t have the fortune of following my fascinating, deep chronicles of my life in April:

https://ocdbloggergirl.wordpress.com/2010/04/20/went-to-the-shrink-and-found-out-my-life-stinks-but-decide-to-live-it-anyhow/#comments Can’t get link to work, but if you  just really gotta read it its APR 20, 2010 in the hallowed archives —–>

).

My psychiatrist heard me out and this time she decided it would be better that she increase my dose rather than change my medicine. I take 300 mg of Luvox, which is the maximum dose recommended, so she upped it to 350 and would have me back in a month to see whether I was still alive.

“We’ll have to watch out for Serotonin Syndrome,” she pronounced as she scratched my new prescription on the pad.

“But I’d have symptoms before I fall dead of it, right?”

“Usually.” Ain’t life grand?

Before giving the prescription, she asked me if I was having any health problems.

“No!” You can go to hell for lying, you know, Nelly?

I decided I wouldn’t start the brave new dosage until I was over whatever settled on my kidneys. Let one thing kill me before another thing decided to give it a go.

I got progressively worse. I didn’t make it to the toilet twice, thinking I only had to slightly go when my bladder played a dirty trick on me. Freaking out, I told my mother, “That can’t be a kidney infection can it? That isn’t a symptom is it?” I was convinced I had kidney failure/diabetes/cancer/AIDS.

“Yes it can. You have a kidney infection and you need to go to the doctor.”

“No!” Look, I knew I had kidney failure/diabetes/cancer/AIDS and I had no desire to hear a doctor tell me I was as good as dead.

“If you don’t get better really soon, you’re going to the doctor .”

“OK.”

But I wasn’t about to go without a fight with my immune system if not my mother.

I began a war of feverish, almost sleepless nights where I felt like I was freezing. My temperature at its highest was 103 and if I coughed my brain felt like it was exploding. So I told my mother if I wasn’t better by the time I finished an entire jug of cranberry juice I would go to the doctor. So I drank my juice, took Tylenol for my fever, and Azo for urinary pain. I had no appetite.

Curiously enough, as I was dying, I began to worry about a blogger thinking she might have caused my malady and I knew it wasn’t, but I was much afraid she thought so. So I says to my Mom, “If I die, please let her know it wasn’t her, that I knew the frozen tampon thing was a joke to begin with anyway.” Well sometime or another I felt better enough to let her know myself. Strange what the mind thinks about when sporting a fever. I said something along the lines that my vagina was just fine and all, but if it had been my vagina ending me, perhaps my death would  have warranted a Darwin Award and I could say I had not died in vain.

I guess it’s OK to explain, because if any of you read the comments on a blog, you might have seen what I did just because I was curious a little. I knew the post was a great joke, but I hadn’t dared myself to do something ignorant since my teens when I ate an ornamental pepper and ate a whole packet of mustard down with nothing else. The good old days, you know? (Such an attention whore to be so shy). So I decided to try freezing my tampon just because I could. I left this comment on her blog:

19. Lisa |  September 16, 2010 at 10:22 pm

So I left it in the freezer about 4 hours, hidden behind a half-used box of spaghetti. It was one of those new “U” tampons, a blue one, which is really apropos for freezing. Somehow they think if tampons come in bright colors that you’ll buy them…well it worked for me (though I believe I prefer others….neither here nor there)

Anywho 4 hours later I remove the package from the freezer, and I’d be a liar if I wasnt thinking about those tasty ice cream on a stick things as I hurriedly stuck it iin my pocket.
The package was cold but yay! no freezer burn! I open the package and yes the applicator was cold, So I ….
The applicator was cold, not like Ice Man taking advantage cold. More like jumping in a pool in May cold, but God bless America, the actual tampon was only slightly cool.
It was a chilling experience and makes me wonder if there actually are people who do this junk.
But I climbed Mt. Everest and I conquered.

When I started vomiting, I knew Game Over on Save Myself with Cranberry Juice. If indeed I had a kidney infection instead of or along with kidney failure/diabetes/cancer/AIDS, I was getting in the stage before it gets in your blood and damages your kidneys, which = FUCKED. Little did I know how difficult it actually would be to see a doctor.

My mother called the local Medac urgent care, which takes Medicaid if you’re first approved. Sort of takes the point away from ‘urgent’ doesn’t it?

My mother called Social Services and I could be approved for a certain doctor’s office, so we called there, and they could  pencil me in on November 15. Great. I might literally be dead by then! They suggested I go to the emergency room if I couldn’t wait that long. Perhaps it’s unfair of me to be cross since they had never seen me before, but cross I was and am. Here I am trying to die here and all, dang.

I hope y’all won’t be cross, but gonna stop here and continue later. I can’t believe I’ve written this much and only now get to my guest appearance on ER.  Anyway, in Part 2 expect our heroine to go to the damn emergency room, return to her version of ‘normal,’ and get freaked out at the therapist.  Important junk like that!

The Dying Swan; or, “That Ain’t Ebola is It?”

(This short post  was started March 31, then set aside , only to be finished today. Besides, I could not bear to not finish it when I liked the title so much).

Once upon a time (like yesterday),  I took a look in the bathroom mirror and my eyes were red, particularly my right eye. Not like  bloodshot-been-opening-my-eyes-too-long-underwater-someone-been-on-a-drunk-red,  much weirder.  A horizontal line seemed to divide my eye in half in the middle,  reddish at the bottom half and normal white on top.

I looked into the eyes of death.

Or something…

My mind began to conjure up what symptom of my imminent death was this.

I had mostly given up my of several years’ obsession with the idea of contracting  AIDS by bizarre means not pertaining to intercourse or needles, so scratch that one for now.

Cancer?  Maybe that’s it, I thought. I always swam in outdoor pools without goggles  due to my high tolerance for chlorine, and I loved looking at the sun’s rays dancing on the pool’s bottom.

So I ask my mother, a retired nurse, what dread disease is this one?

What malady is about to dispatch me, to nail the lid of my coffin, strike me down in the prime of my life?

“Pollen,” said Mother.

No Swans. Close Enough.