...I should have posted this earlier but I was SO SICK of writing about my STUPID HEALTH and I sort of assumed you were SICK OF READING ABOUT IT...
I think I have mentioned that one of Mr. IQ's summer jobs is an overnight-dealy where basically he gets paid fairly substantial coin to sleep. I think he actually loves going to these shifts. Unlike here, at work there is junk food in the cupboards, plus cable: He can, if he chooses, not sleep, but sit and stuff his face with Cheetos and watch TV all night. He comes home to our TV channel-less house filled with nothing but chick peas and green leafy veg a refreshed new man. I think he likes this job a lot. I, on the other hand...
You know, there are not too many things I'm very good at. I can't draw; I can't sing; I couldn't organize my way out of a paper bag and the things I cook are often burnt and never delicious. But I must say, when Mr. IQ is off doing one of these overnight shifts and I'm alone in the house, I am a freaking GENIUS at imagining the different ways psychopathic home invaders could get in here and kill me. Lying in bed alone, listening to every creak and moan this house makes, I can work myself up into a right tizzy, mentally going through all the possible "Kill Whippersnapper!" scenarios I can think of. I've spent many a scary night holed up in this pit picturing myself being shot at, stabbed, poisoned, hacked in the skull with an icepick and shish-kebobbed Bavarian style with a side order of fries. I've even imagined myself being sat on in the face and smooshed to death by a big fleshy pair of robber buttocks. (Clothed buttocks. Oh my god, if that actually were to happen to me, fat ass mister robber man better bloody well have a pair of pants on.) In this manner, I terrify myself into a psychotically freaked out paralysis and then a coma-like trance takes over. It's like sleep, but when I snap out of it the next morning I find that I'm really not as well-rested as I would like to be. Also, I've usually peed the bed.
If you've been reading this blog for a while you probably know that all this is leading up to something and it is: Being sick for an extended length of time (like, oh I don't know, maybe HALF OF MY FREAKING SUMMER) just happens to be another one of those things that gets old Whippersnapper's imagination running off the deep end. I start envisioning some pretty bad scenarios, all of which end up with me in a casket and everyone bawling at my funeral. (Balling whom? Hahahaa) Anyway, because of all this I have a message I'd like to pass on to Winnipeg's health care professionals, in the wild and totally irrational hope that they read my blog: IT IS MEDICALLY IRRESPONSIBLE TO LEAVE AN AGING HYPOCHONDRIAC LIKE ME UNDIAGNOSED FOR FIVE BLOODY WEEKS. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? ARE YOU CRAZY???
Let's recap the last month and a half of doctor's visits, shall we?
Visit #1: (To the walk-in clinic, one week after illness first appears) "Well, the blah blah blah blahs on your throat indicate that the infection is viral in nature. Go home and take it easy."
Visit #2: (Two weeks later, to my family doctor) "Why are you coming to see me for a virus?? Here, take these antibiotics."
Visit #3: (Another two weeks or so later; again to my family doctor) "Hmmm... you're dying you say?? You think you have West Nile? Maybe Hantavirus? Ebola? Well, maybe we'll take some blood and, oh, why not, let's swab your throat for a sample as well since it's bugging you so much. Wow, would you just look at it down there, it's redder than old Karl Marx dressed up as Santy Claus!"
Gaaar. Anyway, the trips to the doctor are done and the tests are in: We have an official diagnosis. What have I been suffering from for all this time?? (Drum roll please... )
Strep throat.
(Strep throat?????)
Yip. Strep throat. Strep freaking throat. Half my summer wasted because of strep motherpluckingcanucking throat.
You know, I have been known to stretch the truth a bit on this blog. For instance, in the last post, it is not even slightly true that I regretted not having meatballs on the floor to cushion Mr. IQ's fall. In fact, if I had had meatballs down there and he HAD landed on them, truthfully, I think my first thoughts would have been ones of irritation. (Hey! That bastard just ruined my meatballs!) But it's important to me that you know that, on my honour, EVERYTHING I wrote about my symptoms last month was absolutely true. When I said I had a fever, I really had a fever. When I said my throat was killing me, it really was killing me. And every time I said I was suffering a relapse, darn it all, I was totally relapsing. My July was a ruin.
However! One good thing has come out of all this! My roll of fat around my middle, compliments of Baby Fangs and her nine month sojourn in my belly has -- well, not entirely disappeared, but definitely shrunk a lot. I'm happy about this and recognize this is a fabulous thing, however I'd also like you to know that I had become rather fond of my Fangs Roll. I liked to lie in bed and fondle it the way some people like to fondle their well I'm not going to finish that sentence, suffice it to say it was my comfort tire and unless I was looking sideways at myself in a mirror (something I rarely do) I didn't really begrudge its presence. Now that it's gone I must admit a small part of me is a little wistful and melancholy. Besides, what am I going to do at night now in bed? Besides freak myself out with my freaky little death visions, I mean?
I really can't believe I just asked that. If that's not a cue to end a post, I really don't know what is.
Uh, good-bye.
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9 comments:
"Oh of course you have to have a site meter! That's the whole point."
Hate continues, unabated.
P.S. MMMM, meatballs.
You're hilarious, even sick. I know what you mean about having become reliant upon the belly roll as a security blanket. When mine has shrunk (a rarity, mind you), I start to wonder what I'll balance trays and plates on.
And the imagined evils of the night? I was up from 3-5 a.m. this morning, fretting about the killers from a halfway house who were going to break in and torture my family before killing the children. And my whole family is home, so I'm not even getting myself wound up in their absence.
Just remember that these terrors only happen, in reality, VERY, VERY rarely. We just read about them too much.
Yeah, they like to pack the newscasts with stories like that, don't they? From the media's point of view, crime stories are "safe"; no controversy (nobody except criminals is in favour of crime, and even criminals aren't keen on it when it's done to them) and no analysis needed.
It's good to know that they've at least got an explanation for your sickness now. I never got one for that affliction that laid me out for two weeks or so back in 1987 or 88.
Wow. I certainly don't have any attachment to my postbaby bulge (emotional, that is, physically I do). You must be so much more evolved than I am. Or maybe it's that I don't need anything to play with at bed. ;-)
strep can be very dangerous.
I'm glad that it was finally diagnosed.
I had strep throat for a whole winter once, and it was one of the WORST things I've had to deal with. Every time I thought it was over, it would come back. So I know your pain.
I always thought they tried to tell you quickly if you had strep because it was so contagious. The last thing you need is your kids getting sick with it too. Brutal. Are you actually gonna get better now or what?
Oh, and I would love books and, should I be brewing a girl in here, clothes! You can give them to Heather - she knows where to find me!
I hope your doctor offered up some apologies for the last month and a half, or at least acknowleged his/her mistake. I hate it when they act like that.
Strep throat. Ugh. Had it. I remember lying on the couch wondering if this is what it feels like to die a slow and painful death. Really.
You know, there are less painful ways to lose weight.
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