Journal of a Solitary Sick Girl

“Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go. ”

“I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.” 

― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

It's day 7 of my attempts to survive my new found malady.  I have been curled up in bed all day except for the 2 hour adjournment to the doctor's office this morning, where I filled an "emergency slot" due to the 5 separate ailments plaguing me. When the receptionist booked my appointment earlier this morning I could hear a single tear form in the corner of her eye then slowly trickle down her cheek as she said, "You poor thing, you have all that going on? No kidding you've had better days." I reassured her that I've been bed-ridden for a week already, so this is actually a good day since I'm ever so slowly healing. But her sympathy was exactly the right stroke for me at 8:33am; it's good to start out the day knowing someone out there cares and doesn't want you feeling pain. In this way, today has been better than most.

Perhaps the worst day of an illness is the pre-day. That's the day you vaguely start to take notice that you're not quite top-notch. That day for me was last Tuesday. I woke up fine, got to work early, trotted along with my typical Tuesday tasks... and then at about noon I felt a curious scratch in my throat. My lunch break was a trip to CVS for cough drops and milk chocolate - one of them was sure to slay the subtle yuck - but after trying one of each, I knew with all my sickly wisdom that I was sailing straight into a storm. By 3pm I could no longer bare the swirling tides within me. My throat was tense with anticipation, my shoulders ached and heaved skyward to brace what was ahead. So I scurried home in search for higher ground.

Home. That little, 400 square foot studio apartment with creaky floors and a chainsaw radiator and windows so thin you can feel the wind speed change when someone sneezes outside on the street. That place where you can't operate the toaster and the microwave at the same time or you'll blow a fuse.  That place where you better love taking boiling hot showers or freezing cold showers, because there is no in-between. That is my home; that is the place I've tucked myself into, holding on for dear life for the last 7 days, a hermit in a crowded city.

The night of the pre-day was also the morning of the first day of the end of the world. And that could still be true for all you know. The night started me with chills and aches that I tried to muzzle with cotton and fleece covered with wool. Still, my teeth chattered. I buried myself under my sheets, blanket, down comforter, and wool blanket on top of that, and I let the fabrics mute my moaning as to not disturb the street traffic below. But in all that self-comforting and nuzzling, sleep would not be had. I think my temperature only rose to 100.8 as I shed every thread of fabric in a 3 foot radius of my body, but it felt like I was a frog slowly boiling to death, senseless and unable to jump out and rescue myself. The moderate fever, like the moderate life, seems the most demanding to tolerate. I found myself madly ruminating about how lovely it would be to have a real burning fever, as though I was tracing Kerouac's prose in On The Road, but instead of talking about people burning with passion, I substituted my own despair, inwardly chanting, "the only ailments for me are the mad ones, the ones that are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars;" If my temperature was at least 103 I could get some sleep! Instead my night invoked brave patience until it met the dawn and I could moderately sweat myself to my doctor's.

It was Wednesday when they ran the first strep test, which came back negative minutes later. It is because of situations like this that I've determined the practice of medicine is no more impressive than it is for some slummy guy on the corner convincing a tourist his Mike Bidlo is a Jackson Pollock. It is always a guessing game based on appearances, and no matter what the facts, doctors will try to convince you they know better. "Your strep test was negative," the nurse said, "but it still looks like strep, so take these antibiotics and we'll call you in a few days to somehow prove it is what we say it is."

Then the cough set in. It was mild since the pre-day, but with swollen, patchy tonsils, a good strong cough was too difficult to embrace. As the swelling subsided, the full force of my cough took siege.  I coughed and coughed until I vomited, and then I coughed some more. I coughed up saliva, I coughed up phlegm, and I coughed up blood. And that ain't no strep talking! But because I so badly wanted to believe in the practice of medicine, and believe my doctor was appropriately taking care of me, I refused to treat my symptoms like the flu because what I had was bacterial, and I had antibiotics for that. And for 3 more days I hacked and moaned and buried myself under the sheets.

On Saturday morning, after still not hearing from my doctor's office to find out the results of the culture on my throat, I dialed them and left an urgent message. Then 2 hours later, just as I was about to call them again, just as my mom was calling me to make sure I wasn't dead, and just as I was about to sob to her that I thought I was dying, my doctor called me back. "You have strep," she exclaimed. "Significant growth. Keep taking your antibiotics."

"But doctor!" I retorted, "I can't stop coughing. I'm coughing up blood!"

"Well," she replied, "I can prescribe you a cough syrup, too?"

According to all the online health sites, strep does not ever entail a cough.  My doctor-friend recited her knowledge, "FACE: Fever, Absence of cough, Cervical lympadenopathy and Exudates on tonsils. That's the pneumonic to diagnose strep. NO COUGH." And my brother-doctor also offered his two cents, saying that from 2500 miles away, he could tell I had a virus. So maybe I have both?

It's been 4 full days of hiding in my sickly solitude at this point in the story, and it is nauseating to continue typing on about it.  I've been sick, that much is obvious. How many more words can there be to describe the misery? Regretfully, there are a few more, and I must use my finger jabber to distract myself from the inflamed and oozing affliction sitting upon me; writing is my way to survive it after all.

So, still stuck in Saturday, fatigued from my uneducated quarrel on bacteria versus virus, I woke up from a short nap with a blood shot eye and yellow tears. I tried to call my doctor's office back but it closed at noon. Luckily there was an on-call nurse available, and I exasperatedly drew the picture for her, "You see, it LOOKS like pink eye, thus I have pink eye, too," and she called in some more antibiotic eye drops to the pharmacy. Of course, pink eye can be bacterial or viral, so the weight of my quarrel pressed on.

My friends and readers, you must understand, after all the health problems I have had the luck to survive in the last 2 years, I have developed a dark sense of humor about sickness. I always expect the worst, and perhaps I should be ashamed of that because positivity is a powerful healer itself, but when one thing goes wrong, I've learned to never say "it can only get better from here." God is watching, and he likes to test that theory. When 2 things go wrong? It can still get worse. When 3 things go wrong? It can still get worse...

So when I woke up in the middle of the night moving on to Sunday, I was not surprised when my left eye was glued shut and blood started pouring (not even trickling) out my nose. I was not surprised later in the day when I realized the sharp pain in my ass was not just a fissure, it's another hemorrhoid. I was not surprised at the same time when I discovered the antibiotics I have been on have given me a yeast infection. There is no surprise left in me, I am very matter of fact, according to appearances, learning to lose.

"You poor thing, you have all that going on? No kidding you've had better days," the receptionist said this morning. No, ma'am, I do not kid. And my doctor later confirmed it, I do have a bacterial infection AND a viral infection. And even a fungal for good measure.

I'm taking 6 prescriptions for my strep, flu, pink eye, hemorrhoid and yeast infection. I'm faithful to my probiotics, even though it would not surprise me at all if I get C. Diff again and need that dreaded fecal transplant. I'm still taking my stool softeners, my omega-3s, and my St. John's Wart to keep my depression in check through it all. I am still stuck in bed, and I don't know how long it'll last.

I do know this solidarity is not a choice, and I hope tomorrow this, too, shall pass.