Friday Fiver: Plague

Yes, I know it's Tuesday and I'm posting a Friday Fiver. I haven't posted since September--do you really want to risk discouraging me by splitting hairs over the day of the week? I didn't think so. I was just taking a look around the new Blogger, which is now out of beta, and decided to check out the most recent Friday Fiver for the first time in months. When I saw the topic I had to post. For once it's actually relevant to what's happening in my life. I wish it wasn't.

1. How are you feeling?
That's a matter of perspective. Compared to the past week and a half, not too bad. Compared to how I normally feel, shredded. "When Cameron was in Egypt land...let my Cameron go!" A couple Saturdays ago I stopped by the local hospital. Not because I love hospitals so much, but because I was coughing so incessantly I was having a hard time breathing. It's the flu, and it's a real mother of a flu, too. I was lucky enough to get treated the day after I started having symptoms, but even with enough drugs to choke a third-world village I just can't seem to shake this thing. I missed all 4 days of work last week (had Friday off anyway for spring break, one of the benefits of working at a college). Actually, I was ordered home for 3 days by the doctor who saw me at the hospital, and when I went back on Thursday I lasted all of 2.5 hours. I tried to go back today, and after getting out of the shower I got coughing so hard I...well, let's just say I didn't make it to work. I saw my doctor, who didn't like the sound of my breathing all that much and sent me to the hospital for a chest x-ray, after ordering me home from work for another two days. The good news is I don't have pneumonia. So I got that goin' for me.

2. When is the last time you went to the doctor?
11 minutes shy of 12 hours ago. I want to state something for the record: I love having health insurance. My employer pays for a high-deductable plan, and all the medical bills I incur before I meet the deductible are paid out of a checking account they contribute to. If it weren't for insurance I never would've gone to the hospital to get looked at for the flu, and now I probably would have pneumonia.

3. Ever broken a bone?
Yes. Sadly, they were my own. I broke the index toe of my right foot about 10 years ago in a cat-related accident. You know how sometimes a cat's love can turn homicidal without their intending it to? Two cats tried to play the "I'm running between your feet" game at the same time, which only succeeded in tripping me up. I lurched onto my right foot, which came down on some object. The resulting *snap!* dropped me to the floor like a sack of potatoes that could swear. Last year I broke my right big toe by kicking the garbage can in anger. I don't know what the hell was in the trash that was so solid, but it taught me a valuable lesson that I somehow had missed previously: don't kick things out of anger, idiot! It also taught me that canes you buy on eBay for $16 are worth precisely that much.

4. Ever had surgery?
No, but that blissful condition is not going to last. Slated for "sometime" is some work on my poor twisted feet. I have highly caveous feet (high steep arches) and hammertoes. The combination pulls the padding on the bottoms of my feet out of position, so I walk on unpadded bone. It's about as much fun as it sounds. Surgery can correct the hammertoes, which should provide some relief, so that's in the future for when my feet are bothering me enough and I have enough time to take off from work. Looming much more ominously on the horizon is oral surgery. That one's happening soon. I have a consultation appointment with the surgeon next month. I share a couple traits with Austin Powers. Unfortunately, one of them is bad teeth. In my early 20s I saw a dentist (something I tend not to do often because of bad experiences in my childhood with dentists who never should've worked with kids) who took x-rays to determine what was going to happen with my wisdom teeth. He showed me the pics and assured me that my wisdom teeth were never going to come in and that I'd never have any problems with them. A few years later I was working a job that paid right at the poverty level and offered no health insurance whatsoever. My teeth began falling apart, accompanied by some of the most excruciating pain I've ever gone through. Having no money, no insurance, and a profound fear of dentists, I coped by self-medicating (including taking so much ibuprofin at once that I actually could've killed myself), and eventually my teeth stopped hurting. The dead feel no pain, after all. I've recently faced my fear of dentists and dentistry, and have found out that the dentist who so confidently told me to forget all about my wisdom teeth should lay off the laughing gas while he's reading x-rays. All 4 of my wisdom teeth have come in to varying degrees. One of them has worn a hole in my gum at the corner of my mouth, prompting my most recent visit to the dentist. All four of them have to go, along with the two top molars directly in front of them, which they have utterly destroyed. I'm looking forward to this about as much as I look forward to the possibility of kidney stones. I'm naturally phobic about medical procedures and I've never had surgery of any kind before. To be honest, I'm a little curious about the sedation. I've never been put under, and I've always wondered what it's like. Guess I'll find out. They'd better put me on some damn good drugs afterward too. I'm telling them that right up front--pain management is my top priority. Or as Vinnie Barbarino once said, "Gimme drugs, gimme drugs, gimme drugs!" "Chang was always most concerned with...dulling the pain." Seriously, I've already gone through horrid mouth pain, and I know how relentless it is, how it works my nerves and turns each minute into 60 seconds of concentrated suffering. I won't go through it again. If all I can do for three days is sit on my couch and drool on myself, so be it.

5. When is the last time you were in a hospital?
Ten and a half hours ago. It was a quick and relatively pleasant trip to the hospital. The hospital has valet parking because their parking lot is perpetually screwed up due to construction. On my way to the valet drop spot I spied a primo parking space about as close to the entrance as you could get, so I parked myself and walked to patient registration. There was no line, so the registration process took under 4 minutes. In the x-ray department I got to wait just long enough to read most of a magazine article about the Vermont music scene. The technologist was perky and friendly and got my x-rays taken quickly, which is the best way to do it. I didn't have to wait in a line, get poked with a needle, or swallow something I normally wouldn't. I call that a good trip to the hospital.

Doctor told me, "Son, you're living too fast."
"One more rocket's gonna be your last."
But I wanna ball, what can I do?
I got the tu-ber-cu-lucas and the sinus flu.
--David Lindley