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July 21, 2005
The Kidney Song
I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT KINDA: I broke down. I need to try TypePad once and for all. If you'd like to read this in my new Typepad thing, you can go to www.lovelyandmalicious.typepad.com and read it there. I don't know what I'm doing, so bear with me while I learn. Okay, here's the same entry...
Today I’m having a nervous breakdown.
I have health problems. A slew of them, but none of them require the good drugs that make you sleepy so they’re just the boring kind that make you worry at night.
In April, before I moved to New York, I had to go to the emergency room for some intense pain in my kidney. Prior to the emergency room visit, I thought I had a urinary tract infection but I wasn’t sure because sometimes I’d pee and it was urgent and other times, it wasn’t. Sometimes I’d have a fever. Sometimes I’d be freezing. Sometimes I’d feel perfectly fine. So I self-diagnosed my dumb ass with a maybe UTI and I went to Trader Joe’s and bought the disgusting no sugar at all, tart as fuck cranberry juice. I drank it every day and waited for the symptoms to disappear. Poof, they were gone.
Cut to me sweating like a slave in a chicken coop in my aisle seat on my way home from a speaking engagement a week later. The flight attendant kept asking me if I was okay. I hate calling attention to myself (funny, used to never be that way) so I just kept saying I was fine even though I was sweating profusely and strangely my hands and feet were freezing. Finally, when we landed, I pried myself from under the blanket (no, stupid head not the airplane blanket, duh, I always bring my own) and tried to stand up. I couldn’t stand up. The pain in my kidney area was just fucking excruciating. Excruciating like I wanted to throw a bottle of Ajax onto the back of my ingrate adopted daughter a la Mommie Dearest. I thought for sure my appendix was about to erupt.
After everyone got off the plane, the flight attendants helped me to the front and then I sat in a wheelchair while everyone stared at me. I was crying my ass off. The pain and the anxiety combined were just too much.
The paramedics asked me all kinds of questions and they said they wanted to take me to the ER in an ambulance. Oh no you don’t, Mr. I know all about the ambulance. They charge one million dollars for the ambulance and I’m moving to New York soon and there’s no way I’m paying for that shit. You see, at the time my health insurance was on the fritz because shit bitch, sometimes money’s tight and a girl opts for the good cable and the grocery delivery and electricity and that insurance bill just goes unnoticed just long enough to get canceled. This is when you stock the house with bouillon cubes and Echinacea and throat lozenges that you’ve stolen off the set of your hit show – you know, just in case you get sick.
I convinced them I was okay and Coral came and got me.
That night, I dedicated all phone calls to Blue Cross Blue Shield. But, how can I get it reinstated without waiting? What if I pay all the money now? Don’t you people see there’s a problem with the healthcare in America? LOOK LADY, I’m fixing to die straight up.
I got my insurance situated the following morning and I hobbled my ass straight to the ER.
The urine test didn’t show that I had any hardcore evidence of a UTI. I said, “But that has to be what it is lady. The Google said I had all these symptoms…”
She rolled me into another room and told me that it might be an advanced kidney infection or a ruptured appendix.
Oh but see, that’s not the bad news.
In order to see if the appendix is ruptured she wants to give me an MRI. To properly look at it, I have to have an enema. I scrunch my face up because this isn’t making any kind of sense. An enema during the MRI? Yes, she insists.
And now I’ll get to the part where I somehow end up in a hospital bathroom perched on a countertop scrubbing my own shit off my legs…
You see, imagine a bag that a loaf of bread comes in. They fill that up with water and attach it to an IV pole. From the bottom of the bag there is a tube and that tube goes right in your booty behind so that your insides get filled with water and somehow this makes your appendix show more clearly. And wouldn’t you know it, the person that put the tube in my butt said I looked familiar. I wanted to say, “Did you recognize me by my asshole, asshole!” but I didn’t. I just died inside a million times over.
Now, you breathe in and out a bunch of times and this machine goes back and forth over your body and all the while you feel like you’re totally shitting on yourself but you’re not.
When it’s over, they do something with the something and the bag fills back up with water but the water ain’t so fresh anymore.
When the dude pulled the tube out of my booty behind, I felt really uncomfortable for a second and the next thing you know, I felt a wetness and I was straight up mortified. Without thinking, I blurted out, “Yo, did you just get my legs all shitty?” and he said, “No, you’re fine…”
He puts me back in the wheelchair and then plants me right outside the door and told me that someone would come and get me. Okay? So I’m supposed to sit in this hallway with my suspiciously shitty legs while Mr. Reyes over there is moaning in pain on that cot? Somebody help him, shit!
I rolled myself to the nearest bathroom like the renegade I was and I removed one of the gowns. I had two on for good measure. One backward and one forward because I didn’t have on my good panties that day. Sure enough, I had shitty legs.
What the fuck, man!
I put a bunch of paper towels on the sink top and I sat up there with my legs in the sink, scrubbing away. I was going crazy. Cursing my shitty legs to all kinds of hell. We’ll clean this mess together. I would look in the mirror and make my Faye Dunaway Mommie Dearest face.
I threw away the one gown and locked myself up as tight as possible in the other gown and I rolled myself back into my waiting position. Years later, someone came and got me and I requested that they let Coral into my room please so we could watch Jeopardy! together. I always smoke her.
When Coral finally arrived, I was like, “Yo, my legs were all shitty…”
She started laughing and I looked at her like this was a serious matter so she fixed her face up and put on a look of concern and asked me to explain.
I told her everything and then I said NOW we can laugh. We did and we sat there waiting for the doctor to come in and say they did that enema and MRI for nothing because it’s a total kidney infection. Sure enough, doctor lady came back and said it was a kidney infection and they put me on an antibiotic drip and made me sit there until the bag was empty.
And that’s why I hate going to the doctor. When I got home from the ER that day, I washed my legs with Pine Sol. For a week, I was ashy.
But that’s not the point. A week ago, I felt the pain in my kidney again. I tried to lie to J, talking about I was just kidding and I ignored it until…
I was at the Verizon store trying to get my new 917 which was so not available so I’m a total 516. Mid conversation, my left ear started buzzing and suddenly I couldn’t see. I blacked out and luckily I was near a ledge so I sat down and hoped it would go away but it didn’t. I started sweating and my hands and feet were cold. I asked the Verizon man to walk me to my car and I barely made it.
I got into my car and turned the air on full blast and waited for J to come get me.
He said, “You’re going to the doctor! Did you eat anything today!” and he started in with his yelling and I couldn’t even concentrate. He was upset because I scared him, but shit, I’m scared too. And can’t we just Google this and figure out a home remedy? I had smudged the house when my kidney hurt earlier and I put out good intentions that I wasn’t sick and the symptoms did go away. Sage works, man. He was like, “You’re crazy, we’re going to the doctor…”
That night, J served up the hot teas and tiny sliced fruits and propped me up on pillows and let me watch all the reality TV I wanted. He hates reality TV, says it gives him a headache. But what about me and the whole reality thing? I know, it’s a whole other conversation we’ll have to get into another time. The point is, I was spoiled rotten that night and I plan on getting sick all summer.
Again, no signs of a UTI for sure. The doctor took my blood and my urine for testing and next week, after this round of antibiotics, he’s going to make me do a sonogram to see if my kidney has a cyst on it. I don’t think sonograms require enemas so fuck yeah, I’ll take it. He also thinks I might have diabetes or hypoglycemia and that might explain the fainting spell at the Verizon.
Yesterday I couldn’t get my phone to download a song so I had to go back in the Verizon. When I called to say I wanted to come in to exchange the phone, they knew exactly who I was.
“Oh shit, Melissa from the Real World? Yeah, you passed out. Are you okay?” the guy asked.
I’m so embarrassed. And you know he noticed my face was melting off too.
So yeah, I got problems and none requiring the drugs that make you see things. Damn it.
Posted by melissah at July 21, 2005 02:39 PM