I am so sick, y’all.
Seriously. As I type this, Shania Twain is yodeling from the television, because I figured a little VH-1 as I wrote would help me reconnect to the world at large. Twain wasn’t there when I turned it on. No, it was Matchbox 20 then, but now there’s this Twangy Twain shyte and I am so listless that I’m not even doing anything about it because getting up and walking the ten feet into the living room to change the channel would absolutely destroy me and leave me panting for several hours. So I’m dealing with the Twain. This should give you a gauge, right there.
So the Deathly Ill thing.
Back when I still had a will to live, I told you that I was sick and had been sick since Saturday. But what I didn’t know then was that the illness was only getting started. The announcers were only just telling the crowd about the v-10 mach four stage carborateor steel belted hotness under the hood. It was revving its engines and looking smug at the white trash girls on the sidelines. Back then, I thought I still had a chance.
Monday night/Tuesday morning, I woke up at 2 am. My throat had transformed from merely being on fire to now a tightly closed lava tube. I could only whisper at that point. I had a strained discussion with Esteban about who would be taking Mo to the airport the next day and then I decided that my throat hurt a lot more than I ever thought humanly possible and that I would not be able to fall asleep again. So I decided to go to our 24-hour clinic at the hospital (aka: the non-emergency room) and have them take a look at The Orifice Formerly Known As My Throat.
Once at the hospital, the triage nurse took my temperature (96.9, if you’re keeping track of the WeetaVitals) and then ushered me into a room and made me strip. I hate that. It’s my throat, not my tits. For the record, I never needed to take off my shirt. Not even once. Almost immediately, a gruff elderly physician’s assistant came in and started asking me questions. He looked familiar. And then I saw his name tag. Howard. Howard of the Ass Splinter. ‘Hey, you took a splinter out of my butt.’ I whispered, but he acted somewhat offended, as if I were insinuating that he had put the splinter in my butt, or perhaps that he did such things for pleasure. No, Howard did not appreciate our Six Degrees of Ass Splinter talk.
Now it’s that Nelly/Kelly song. I never see videos. Ever. But this one I have seen approximately four hundred times. And tell me, what the hell are ‘boo’? Is that the new millennium word for ‘peeps’? Could someone make a web page to track this stuff because for those of us who live in primarily unhip regions of the United States, it’s very difficult to stay on top of these things. Cripes.
So Howard then quizzes me and learns that I have not been throwing up, nor have I any of the other symptoms for strep throat. Then he sticks two cotton swabs on my tonsils (which, by the way, were spottier than Michael Jackson’s penis) and did a test for strep throat, which came back negative.
‘You don’t have strep throat.’ He said, signing my sheet excusing me from the Non-Emergency Room.
‘Hooo kay’ I mouthed, because at that point I was ready to burst into tears from the pain in my throat.
‘Just drink fluids and take Advil.’ He said with his hand on the door.
‘No, wait a minute. You don’t understand. I’ve BEEN taking Advil, Ny-quil, Day-quil and drinking as many fluids as I can guzzle.’
‘Juice?’
‘No, not juice anymore because it hurts my throat. I can’t have anything but water because it hurts my throat. I can’t swallow anything. That’s why I came down here. The pain in my throat has gotten worse! It’s not getting better.’
‘But you don’t have strep.’
‘I didn’t say I had strep. I’m saying there must be something else you can do.’ Because seriously, THAT’S why I hauled my sick ass out of the house at 2 am in ten below zero weather’ I was curious about whether or not I had strep. Now that I know that I don’t, by gosh, I must be feeling better!
‘I can give you a prescription to stop your cough.’
‘I’m not coughing.’
‘I can give you a cough syrup with pain killer in it.’
‘Fine’ fine’ fine’ just’ whatever.’
So he gave me a prescription, I went and had it filled, guzzled some and then sat at my computer and played the Sims until they started looking surreal and I started wondering about their ulterior motives, which was about 10 a.m. Then I sacked out for several hours until someone called looking for Esteban, who was surprisingly at work, considering it was noon on Tuesday. I then just sat and stared at various things in my house or laid in bed watching Two Fat Ladies from the Marathon that Ricky caught for me on the weekend. The thing that kept running through my head was that this wasn’t Adult Sick. This was the kind of sick you would get as a kid, where everything is surreal and you float in and out of consciousness. This was Pink Floyd sick. I continued to walk about in a daze until it came time for Esteban to come home. At that point, I hadn’t eaten in 36 hours and with the help of the vicodin cough syrup, figured that I could manage something soft, like a baked potato. There was a whole tenderloin in the refrigerator that needed to get cooked, so I threw it in a roasting pan, scrubbed several large bakers, and then popped open a can of Grands Biscuits (we call them Fat Biscuits, because of all the fat in them. We’re not terribly creative.) which are one of Esteban’s favorite things in the world. It was a rather impressive dinner considering that it took me all of four minutes to put together. I then threw everything in the oven. Esteban still wasn’t home when it was finished so I sliced a medallion off the fillet, which was uber tender, cracked open a biscuit and a potato and proceeded to eat rather slowly. It occurred to me while I was eating that I didn’t really WANT to be eating, I was just eating because my brain was telling me that it would be a good idea to eat something. When Esteban walked in fifteen minutes later, my plate was sitting there, minus a biscuit and four bites of potato, and I was sitting in the recliner, sweating and clutching the sides of the chair.
‘How are you feeling today, sweetie?’
‘Like I’m going to heave.’ And then I hurtled myself into the bathroom.
I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice to say, it was not pretty. I went to bed at 7 pm and watched American Idol, taking small pleasure in the fact that even with the voice of Zoul, I still sounded better than some of the people up there singing. When the alarm went off on Wednesday morning, I got up, completely intending to go to work. I decided that I would put mind over body and triumph over the evil that was undoubtedly trying to take over my luscious curves. Get thee behind me, Hoarky Badness! I got into the shower, shampooed my hair, threw up, almost fainted, rinsed, repeated the fainting part, then crawled back into bed. The bathroom is apparently my Waterloo in more than name alone.
I made an appointment at the doctor’s office almost as soon as they opened. Then, while seated in the doctor’s office being quizzed on my symptoms, I proceeded to heave into his trash can. It’s amazing at the level of service you get from an HMO when you throw up in front of the doctor. They were bringing me water. Instead of making me walk down to the lab to have them draw blood, they brought the lab to me. They kept checking in on me while they waited for the various test results. They brought me more water. I went from being HMO patient cattle to receiving spa level service. I highly recommend a few well-placed dramatic dry heaves in front of a medical professional.
The verdict: I still don’t have strep. And I don’t have mono. The blood test showed that I had a raging infection of some sort and it was bacterial in nature. He felt that I either might have a strain of strep that isn’t caught on the test they do OR I have the Mutha of all sinus infections. Regardless, the cure for both is Gigantic Horse Pills.
Think about the logic there. Girl’s got a sore throat? Let’s give her a pill the size of a Buick twice a day.
But from my mere appearance here on this webpage, you can pretty much guess that the prognosis is good. I’m starting to feel better. I had chicken and stars soup last night and all was well. But I’m still pissed at Howard for his Not Strep=Healthy view on life. Mofo Howard. I know that I will be taking all of my future ass splinter business elsewhere, thank you very much.
But then, this crap on VH-1. That can’t be good for you. Gah. I think I need another nap.
