Aug
30

Time Flies When You’re Nearly Dead.

Well, I’m glad THAT’s over. As you may recall, I got sick early last week—fever, weakness, general ill feeling. I missed work that Tuesday, but by Friday I felt well enough that I managed to vigorously humiliate myself in front of one of my mother’s Naked Neighbors.* Clearly, my illness had passed.
[Here is where I laugh darkly.]
About an hour after I woke up Saturday morning, I found that I could not breathe. Because it had come on so suddenly, I decided I had developed an Allergy. After all, I felt fine! Except for my suddenly blocked nasal passages, there wasn’t a thing the matter with me, and I sent the Actually off to work with a breezy assurance that I would be well by the time he returned.
Only I wasn’t, because some sort of Avian West Nile Flu Virus swept in during the afternoon, and by five o’ clock I was feverish, sore-throated, and cowering on the sofa in the dark, covered in my own snot. I was in the dark because the sun had set, and I was too weak to get up and turn on the light. When the Actually returned I whimpered “I dome think I hab an allergy!” and he put me to bed.

But the Avian West Nile Flu Virus was not finished with me. Sunday I felt worse yet, and Monday morning I woke up at 6:00 and knew that the only way I would make it to work would be via body bag.
The worst part of the AWNFV is how it saps your will to live. By midday I was no longer wishing to get well, I wanted only to die swiftly, as I told the Actually during one of my many crying jags.
“I just feel so awful!” I blubbered wonderingly.
“Yes,” the Actually said for the dozenth time that hour, “Because you’re sick.”

The Actually deserves a medal, or at least a commemorative plaque, for the way he took care of me during my bout of AWNFV. A lesser man would have left me to die in my own filth, but he made me soup, ran out to buy me cough drops and then back out again to buy me Alka Seltzer Plus Nightime Cold because I had decided that AWNFV was too strong for Ricola. He urged me to stay home from work and forced me to take vitamins. He overlooked my sweaty hair and cracked lips and the high-pitched whines I emit when I don’t feel well. I am unspeakably lucky to have him, and can hardly wait until May, when I will have a legally binding contract lashing him to my side. “In sickness and in health,” after all.

Today I feel much better—a little sniffly, but largely recovered. This is how it works for me: I get intensely, ferociously sick, but it moves very quickly through my system. Possibly because I am Swiss and efficient.
I apologize for not writing during my illness—I did start a post, but only got as far as the title (“Notes From a Deathbed”). My sickness coincided with a production deadline at work, so I have been playing a doomed game of catch up since my return on Tuesday, and I still have a paper to write, a paper that was due during the darkest hours of the Avian West Nile Flu Virus. I asked my professor for an extension, figuring I would be dead by then anyway, but here I am, recovered, so I suppose I’ll have to write something after all.

Friday is my HSG. Friday, as in the day after tomorrow, Dr. Doctor will come at me with a tenaculum and catheter to flush my womb with radioactive liquid while a nurse and radiologist watch and document the event on film.
What will they think of next!
I am a little nervous. I can’t help but be convinced they will find yet another thing wrong with me. After all, when I started this reproductive adventure a year ago, it was to investigate possible endometriosis**. The PCOS and, er, infertility, were discovered incidentally. So yes, I’m worried. I can see it now–Dr. Doctor squints at the films of my HSG:
“Hmm, what’s that marking on the uterine wall? It looks like some sort of…stamp, or brand…” She peers closer, then steps back in alarm.
“Nurse, does that say Edsel?”

*Remind me to tell you about that, by the way.
**Can they look for endometriosis on an HSG at all? Just curious.

By Alexa | Posted in Ceci N'est Pas Une Ecrivaine |