Harnessing the healing power of snark
So I’m two and a half weeks past the end of the kick-ass antibiotics, and I’m happy to say that I am starting to feel like myself again. So much so, in fact, that every day before he goes to work my husband sits me down, looks me in the eye and says,
“Remember. You are still recovering from a serious illness. You are not well. You need to take it easy today.” Otherwise he will come home to discover that I’ve re-shingled the entire roof and added an extra room to the back of our house while he was gone. And I’ll be upset, because I didn’t get around to repaving the driveway as well.
The people in charge of the study still call me once a week as a follow up, and last week I asked them if they had the results from my final stool sample. The nurse said she didn’t have them at that moment, but that she would call me back this week.
So I heard from her on Tuesday, only to learn that, “We’re having some trouble tracking down your sample.”
Apparently my poo is on the lam.
If I had to guess I’d say that it committed an act of violence against Science, and then escaped to some Latin American country which has no extradition treaty with the United States. It is bilingual, after all.
because I spent last night in a sleep lab doing a sleep study. Because when it comes to sleep, mostly I don’t.
This is not anything new-for as long as I can remember, I haven’t been able to sleep. But even though it seems sort of obvious now, it took me all of these 35 years to realize that I could get help for this, so that one day I might eventually reach the astonishing place of actually being able to sleep at night.
So I got scheduled for a sleep study, and the day finally arrived, and yesterday I was so anxious that at any moment I expected to vibrate right out of my skin, plus I had so much trouble taking in air that I was actually panting, BECAUSE OF ALL THE RANDOM STRANGERS WHO WERE GOING TO BE WATCHING ME SLEEP!!
It turned out to be only one random stranger, who was actually a very nice gentleman named Ken. Ken had me and my husband watch a little video on sleep apnea, then my husband left and Ken told me to take some time to relax. Apparently this “down time” was preparation for the fact that I was shortly to take on the appearance of a science experiment gone horribly wrong. I had wires going down under all my clothes to my legs, bands across my chest and stomach, something plastic sticking up my nose and in my mouth, a pulse monitor clipped to my index finger, and electrodes covering just about every square inch of my head.
As a matter of fact, between the sleep study and the clinical trial I was in for the C DIF drug, I’m pretty sure that the only information about my body that hasn’t been documented somewhere for all posterity is the rate at which I accumulate lint in my belly button.
So I thought I was all ready to go, but then it was time for Ken to tell me a bedtime story. It had to do with Reggie White and sleep apnea. I think the point of the story was that if I had a significant weight change in either direction, then I needed to come back in to get my treatment adjusted.
But it’s entirely possible that this was yet another test, because the story pretty much went, Reggie White, got treated for sleep apnea, retired from football, yada yada yada, AND THEN HE DIED OF A MASSIVE HEART ATTACK. As in, “Not only have I made it physically impossible for you to get comfortable, now I will mess with your mind. Let’s see you sleep now, bitch, Mwa ha ha ha ha!!”
Astonishingly, I did actually fall asleep long enough for them to collect the information they needed to determine my treatment. So they sent me home, and I stumbled into the house at 7 this morning only to find that the cats had chosen to express their anguish at my absence by attempting to set a world record through barfing 11 times in the 12 hours I was gone. Plus my head is covered in sticky white electrode adhesive, making me feel like perhaps I accidentally got drunk last night and decided it would be a great idea to style my hair with an entire package of cream cheese.
To quote one of my favorite bloggers, Mighty Maggie,
GAH!
January
I begin teaching Spanish to a class of businessmen and engineers that includes my husband.
See also:
The Difference Between Teenagers And Adults
And Lo, The Truth, It Doth Hurt
February
You May Be Right-I May Be Crazy
I lose my mind and sign up for a class in stand-up comedy.
“Yesterday I attended my very first class in stand-up comedy, taught by a real live stand-up comic who has actually made a living by being funny in person, as opposed to just documenting their random mental snarkiness on the Internet for free.
This is very different from the “live” situations in which I normally place myself, such as teaching a Spanish class. In those situations everyone is more than happy to support the illusion that I am actually funny, since they know that if they don’t I could very well say that I’ve just taught them the proper way to ask, ‘Would you be interested in doing business with our company?’ when in truth they will have just proclaimed to their potential business partner that ‘You are a large monkey filled with giant, hairy balls of cheese’.”
March
I perform a stand-up routine on stage at the Punchline, in front of an audience, and I don’t die.
“Last night I successfully performed my very first stand-up comedy routine at the Punchline here in Atlanta. Even though I did start to lose all feeling in my hands and feet two people before I was supposed to go on, and even though after 6 weeks I still could not work the microphone correctly, I did remember all my lines, and people genuinely laughed.”
You can listen to the podcast of my routine here.
April
Yep, I’m Still Afraid Of The Telephone
“For most of my life I’ve thought that this was a problem that only I had, and that I’d just have to bear the stigma of being different and misunderstood alone, but then a couple of years ago I met someone else who felt the same way. And sure, we like each other as people, and we have some common interests, yada, yada, yada, but I truly feel that the strength of our friendship lies in the fact that we made a solemn pact to never call each other on the phone.”
May
Golf Is Flog Spelled Backwards
“I have always had an a stormy relationship with golf, beginning with my first golf lesson at age 9 and continuing up through last Sunday, when I was unable to lend my full attention to the actual tournament play due to the unfortunate propensity of my pants to unzip at random times as I walked the course. Because nothing says class and sophistication like the occasional flash of your hoo-ha. (Unless you are a drunk, twenty-something college guy who thinks it is COMPLETELY appropriate to appear in public wearing brown, patchwork, vertically-plaided Bermuda shorts with a light green and white, horizontally striped, polo shirt. Holy. Hell. If there was ever an argument for allowing us everyday citizens to be armed with tiny, semi-poisonous blow dart guns, This. Was. It.)”
June
The Adventures Of Dave And Our Home Repairs
” “Behold,’ said Dave, ‘your concrete is all black and dirty, like unto the dark heart of the blackest night. But I wilt come and wash it with my special ‘hot chemical’, and lo, it will shine like the clearest diamond and sparkle like the brightest sun.’
‘Hm,’ I replied.
‘And verily,’ continued Dave, ‘we also do decks.’
So we hired Dave to come and work on our house. And Dave pressure washed the house, the deck, the driveway, and all our walkways. And it was very good.
But it was also dangerous, because that was the moment that we all began Getting Ideas.”
July
We Practice Religious Tolerance And Understanding
“My sister-in-law and her fiance were among the first guests to leave, and as they were making their way to the door my dad caught up with them, huddled them together over in a corner of the kitchen, and with an absolutely straight face told them that he was giving all of the party guests an opportunity to contribute to his special “love offering”.
My sister-in-law’s fiance immediately jumped back about 3 feet, with a look of absolute horror on his face.”
August
“Thus you are required to undergo the dark side of your passage and bring it into the light.”
“Yup, that pretty much sums it up quite nicely. But as you know, if you’ve ever gone racketing around in your own unconscious for an extended period of time, there’s a b-i-g difference between reading these words on a page and actually undergoing the process. A difference which I think can best be expressed by the phrase HOLY. F&%@!!”
September
“Last weekend my husband and I went to visit my brother and sister-in-law as part of the official start of our summer vacation. They both have their own laptops, but apparently my brother insists on keeping his in its virginal, pristine condition by refusing to allow anyone to download anything onto it from the Internet. So anytime this need appears, my sister-in-law’s computer is pressed into service.
It’s a good thing they’d told me about this on an earlier visit. Because otherwise, the conversation I overheard between them would’ve been even more disconcerting than it already was.”
October
Matching Wits With My Students
“We’ve been on the same chapter with the same vocabulary words for an entire month. We’ve had tests and quizzes and homework assignments on all the words related to clothing, and yesterday he still did not know the Spanish word for ‘clothes’ (did I mention that it’s been a month?!), a fact which did not at all make me feel like a failure as a Spanish tutor, or heavily tempt me to become A Person Who Drinks.
So of course, I told him to look it up in the dictionary, and of course he used his super-keen spidey senses to hone in on my super hero weakness by saying, ‘Why-don’t you know the answer?’ (accompanied by a disgusted head shake and heavy exhale) ‘Yeah, I bet you don’t even know the answer.’
Right.”
November
“As I believe I might’ve mentioned here once or twice, I have worked tirelessly through years of living with depression, only to emerge, hopeful and blinking into the sunlight, to discover that now I have to learn to manage an anxiety disorder. (As I am trying to make this a mostly-family-friendly blog, I’ll just go ahead and censor my reaction to this little discovery.)
You wouldn’t really know it unless you were my husband, and had to listen this every time you came to visit me in my office: ‘Oh my god, you did NOT just throw your dirty socks on my office floor, did you?! Oh, the pain! The burning! I’m m-e-l-t-i-n-g…’ ”
December
The Battle With The Hostile Alien Bacteria Reaches Its Climax
See also:
They Could Not Find Their Own Ass With Both Hands And A Map
And now, on to 2008!
That is really unfortunate, because “they” are the people involved in treating my C DIF. Not my doctor-him, I love. But because this illness is becoming more and more of a problem, and because the medicine required for its treatment is apparently handcrafted by tiny elves who live in remote workshops in a distant land and spend all their days grinding down rare nuggets of 24-caret gold into a fine powder, carefully placing the powder into fragile, jewel-encrusted capsules, and then glazing the capsules with the wings of the silver faeries who reside in the blossoms of a flower that only blooms at the stroke of midnight on the top of the tallest mountain when the light of the moon falls gracefully across its petals, causing each individual pill to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 850 frajillion dollars, my doctor suggested that I allow Science to step in and lend a hand.
So for the next ten days I’ll be filling out excessively detailed reports documenting every, minute bodily occurrence (as in, “Lost 5 eyelashes on upper left side at 10:39 am Saturday morning in freak gift wrapping accident”), and in exchange for all this scintillating personal data, Science is covering the cost of my treatment.
But as grateful as I am for the medicine, I must admit that I have really not been all that impressed by Science.
For example, on Wednesday I arrived at Science’s office, where I was told that I would have to complete a number of tests, undergo a short physical, and provide data on the history of my illness. Part of this data involved the taking of my vitals, which Science knew in advance that it was going to have to do. But apparently neither Science, nor anyone else in Science’s office, possessed a thermometer. So Science was forced to send its nurse (who incidentally, is also Science’s real-life daughter), to the drug store to purchase one.
Once Science was finally in possession of the necessary medical instrument, it tried valiantly to affix a protective plastic cover over the end of the thermometer before placing it in my mouth. But no matter what it tried to do, it wouldn’t fit. So Science was forced to call on the aid of her daughter, who took one look at the situation and said, “Mom, you have to take the cover of the thermometer off first, before you put the plastic part on.”
I very nearly gave up on Science at this point, but unfortunately I was too sick and tired to be able to make my escape.
Science also needed to collect some of my blood, so next we paid a visit on Robert, the guy who collects all the blood. It did not go well.
Science then informed me that I would have to return in three hours, once I’d taken my first dose of the medicine, in order for Robert to collect even more blood.
I then turned to Science, looked her dead in the eye, and said, “This medicine had Better. Fucking. Work.” And Science had no idea what to say to that, because Science is clearly used to spending all of its time with numbers, graphs, and various bodily fluids, rather than desperate, half-crazed women who have been sick for the past three months and might, at any minute, decide to rip your face right off your head and make you eat it just so they can find a little relief.
But I F-I-N-A-L-L-Y got my medicine. And the second trip to Robert was a little easier. And I have been faithfully filling out my worksheets (“At 5:04 am, right buttock began twitching uncontrollably in time to the song, “Ice, Ice, Baby”).
And even though Science did give me a little check to cover my traveling expenses, right now?
My feeling is pretty much that Science can just go ahead and suck it.
So as I mentioned yesterday, I finally escaped Excessively Loud Jolly Man and made it in to see my doctor. He, I, his medical assistant, we were all pretty sure that yep, I still/once again have C DIF, and that it’s time to move up to the seriously bad-ass medicine for this round of treatment.
Only he wouldn’t give me a prescription for said medicine until he got back the results of my stool sample. Which was fine, except that they wouldn’t take my sack of poo! They told me I had to drive it over to the hospital and find someone over there to take it.
So I did, even though it was extremely odd to basically be chauffeuring my poo all around the greater Atlanta area.
I parked, and for the sake of this story, let’s say that my parking lot was in northern Georgia. And then I had to walk all the way over to the front desk which, metaphorically speaking, was all the way over in southern South Carolina. There I once again had the privilege of informing a complete stranger that, Hi, I’m carrying around a sack full of my own poo, looking for someone who will pretty pretty please take it off of my hands.
At which point the receptionist looked at me, looked at my bag, and said, “Well okay, but first you’re gonna have to go and take it to get registered.”
Me: (blinking)
Me: (as in, I have to register it so that it can go off to an educational summer camp and then get into a really good school with all the other stool samples?)
So I trudged on over to, say, central South Carolina and explained my situation to yet another random stranger in hopes that maybe she would finally give my poo a loving home.
But no, they wouldn’t take it in there, so they called the courtesy (golf) car(t) to come and take me back over to northern Georgia, which is where I started out in the first place.
Finally, almost an hour later, I found the correct lab where I was met at the reception desk with…stunned outrage and indignant disbelief that, of all things, I brought a stool sample! To a lab! A stool sample on which I had the audacity to expect them to perform laboratory tests, if you can even believe the nerve of me.
I had well and truly had it by this time, and was one dirty look away from responding, “Look, lady-I wasn’t the one who decided to go into a job where you have to deal with other people’s poo on a daily basis. It’s not my fault.”
So she was a real bitch, which is really not what you need after suffering with hostile alien bacteria for over 2 months, but in the end she took my stuff, and they did the test, and it came back positive, which meant I could finally start treatment.
I’ll save that story for tomorrow, because it I don’t really have the energy right now to write about how I almost had to rip someone’s face right off and make them eat it. That’s a story for another day.
Over the weekend the Hostile Alien Bacteria returned to my intestinal tract for the third time. This time I decided to go and see my real doctor, as opposed to The Only Doctor Who’s Open At 5:00 On Sundays When You Become Deathly Ill.
Fortunately I was able to get an appointment right away, but on the way there I was making up so many horrible stories in my mind (I’m going to be an invalid forever, They’re going to have to rush me to the hospital, my body is eating itself from the inside out) that by the time I arrived I was mere moments from full-blown hysteria.
After I checked in I decided to do some writing, because that usually helps me calm down. Just as I sat down and pulled out my notebook, an elderly gentleman somewhere between 70 or 80 entered the office. I didn’t really pay him any attention, until he started to speak.
Because this man was loud. He spoke IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. And by God, we were all going to benefit from his wisdom and wit, whether we wanted to or not. It was not that he was senile. It was more that he had a compulsive need to keep everyone’s attention on him at all times, in addition to being completely unable to entertain himself for more than 30 seconds at a time.
Perhaps sensing my need for some blog fodder, this gentleman sat down next to me. However thanks to my highly honed hermit sensitivities, I knew how to be polite without inviting any further contact; namely, smile gently but without making any actual eye contact.
But Excessively Loud Jolly Man was undaunted by my defenses. After he’d exhausted all possible greetings to the room at large he thought for a moment and then said, (to no one in particular), “YOU KNOW I TRY, BUT EVERY TIME I TRIM MY FINGERNAILS, I END UP CUTTING THOSE SUCKERS TOO SHORT.”
Dead silence in the waiting room, because what the hell do you say to that?, and also, maybe if we just pretend we can’t hear him, he’ll finally stop talking.
But unfortunately, we were not that lucky.
Because although his hearing seemed to be a bit impaired, his eyesight was keen enough to notice that I was writing, or in his mind, doing something that didn’t involve him, and so he was immediately compelled to get involved.
“MIGHT I ASK WHAT YOU’RE WRITING?” he inquired in a tone that at first glance seemed polite, but was actually designed to 1)make me feel bad for ignoring him, and 2)impress everyone in the room with his charming and witty manner.
I wasn’t really writing anything in particular, plus I really didn’t want to be in a conversation with this man, so I gave him a polite, but definitely a brush-off, kind of answer.
“I’m just doing a little writing practice,” I said, immediately turning back to my notebook in hopes that he would get the message to please, please just leave me the f*&% alone.
“I UNDERSTAND THAT, BUT WHAT ARE YOU WRITING?” (so clearly, he didn’t understand AT ALL).
“Well, you know how athletes have to practice their sport every day? I’m just practicing my writing.”
“I UNDERSTAND THAT, BUT ARE YOU WRITING ABOUT SOMETHING IN PARTICULAR?”
F*&% politeness.
“Nope,” I said brightly, and went back to ignoring him.
Apparently that did the trick, because after that he left me alone. But unfortunately for everyone else, it meant that they were now the objects of his attention. And of course that meant that his next victim was…the woman in the wheelchair.
“MADAM,” he began, full of the confidence that he was only about to ask what we all wanted to know, but wouldn’t ask ourselves, as well as the confidence that we would all be so grateful to him for retrieving this information, “MIGHT I ASK WHAT YOU’RE DOING IN THAT WHEELCHAIR?”
Noticeable change in the room’s barometric pressure as we all gasp silently in horror.
But she was a polite, Southern woman, so she said, “Well, I’m just waiting to see the doctor.”
“WELL I UNDERSTAND THAT, BUT MIGHT I ASK HOW YOU ENDED UP THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?”
Fortunately at that very moment, in what I can only describe as some extremely well-timed Divine Intervention, the nurse called my name and I bolted out of the waiting room.
Because it was only a matter of time before Excessively Loud Jolly Man noticed that I’d brought with me a stool sample, and we were all forced to hear,
“MIGHT I ASK WHY YOU’RE CARRYING AROUND A SACK OF YOUR OWN POO?”
Thank heavens for small mercies.
My husband: “I was reading the Darwin Awards book this afternoon.”
Me: “How was it?”
My husband: “Well, apparently there are a lot of really bad things that can happen to testicles.”
Lately I’ve been in another one of my having-trouble-sleeping phases. My coach and I have been working on this together, and one of the things she suggested was that I pull out my relaxation/meditation CD’s and listen to them before I go to bed.
So yesterday when I checked in with her she asked if I’d been doing that.
Me: Um no, I haven’t.
My Coach: Hm.
Me: I even got it out and put it in my nightstand drawer, but that’s it.
My Coach: OK well tonight, I want you to ACTUALLY LISTEN TO IT.
That’s why I pay her the big bucks.
