buckle up

sick

        I don’t want to tell you the funniest part first, but here it is: I was really sick, like projectiling from both ends all night, and I asked Connor to go to the drug store and get some very specific things for me. I’ve been this type of sick before, so I ask for gatorade, pepto bismal, and anti-diarrheal suppositories. He brings me back gatorade, pepto bismal, and preparation-H hemorrhoidal suppositories. This is not at all what I wanted and will not help me in any way. (So now, in my apartment, on my dresser next to all my jewelry, I have a big blue box of pills you stick up your butt when you get hemorrhoids.)

The rest of the story is maybe not as funny. It’s the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and I’m trying to go to bed early so that I can get up early for the 45 minute commute I make twice a week to my practicum. I am anxious that the break is ending, can’t seem to get back into my teacher sleep schedule. So I take a klonopin. I know this will be an impossible night without one.

Then my stomach starts to roil. I’m stoned on my anxiety meds, but awake because I’m so uncomfortable. I get up, tell Connor I think I’m going to puke (I want it on the record before it happens, to prove I’m right). He, of course, doesn’t believe me, because I, of course, tell him I’m on the verge of puking like once a week and never follow through. An hour passes and I worry this will be another one of those times. Thankfully, I end up with my head in the toilet. (I don’t really want to tell you about the diarrhea part, but it comes back later, so just know that that’s happening now, too. At one point I even have to Sophie’s choice it between which end gets the toilet.)

All night long, I’m up every 20 or 30 minutes, just emptying out, waiting for this to be over so I can get one with my day. I have my last week of practicum, my last class with Cheryl, who I love so unspeakably much. It’s not until 5 am that I begin to draft the email telling everyone I’ll be missing school. 

Then this is the part where I ask Connor for help and he brings me hemorrhoid suppositories. (“But you specifically asked for suppositories, and this is the only one they had!”)

This just makes me miss my mom more. I hate getting sick without her. She would never have bought me hemorrhoid suppositories. I call her because I need her. I tell her I’ve had this before, I’ll be fine. Don’t make the 7 hour drive, it’ll be over by then. But then I call an hour later, crying, telling her it’s just too much and my legs are starting to cramp. She tells me to hold on, she’s going to check and make sure our insurance is still covering me. I’d turned 26 three weeks earlier, and BCBS told me I had a month grace period of coverage after my birthday. When it checks out, she tells me to go to the ER.

I call Connor, beg him to come home from class to take me to the hospital. I think I should point out here--and this sounds made up-- but it’s his birthday, exactly 3 weeks after mine. He spends it waiting in the ER with me. I get checked out by a nurse who gives me something that miracuously takes the nausea away. I also get a wheelchair and a bright yellow armband that says FALL RISK. Connor mocks me mercilessly, even then, and I pout, trying to convey how serious this whole thing is. I am FINALLY right about being sick, and you can’t take that away from me. 

I’m tachycardic from dehydration and panic. This means my heart is beating too fast. When I finally see him, the ER doctor tells me this is the only reason I’m getting an IV. There’s a shortage because of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Something like 90% of IVs are made there, and they have to be careful who gets one. So I’m getting out of my ER bed to keep shitting what I assume is literally my brains out, and this beautiful doctor lays this guilt on me, and not to brag, but I can really run with guilt. We’re very old, very close friends. 

I tell Connor he should leave. It’s his birthday and he hasn’t eaten anything today. It’s 7 pm. I really really really don’t want him to leave. He stays and then he’s gone.

I end up staying 2 nights. I keep getting woken up by the kindest nurses, truly the best people, to take my blood every 3 hours. I have an IV in my hand, which I always thought would feel differently than it does. It feels like a big ass needle is in your hand, and I don’t know why this is surprising. My veins collapse and I lose feeling in my hand, but they keep taking blood and pumping me full of fluids. 

My other doctor is kind of an asshole too. I don’t know how to answer the question: rank your pain on a scale from 1-10. I try to compensate for my innate inclination to exaggerate, and I just really lowball it, then tell the doctor I’m going to the bathroom still every 20 minutes. We are both confused by what’s happening to me and how I am describing it.

I am mortified when I have to give a stool sample, mortified that I have to buzz the nurse to come pick up my poo, mortified that housekeeping comes in when I’m in the bathroom, takes my sheets and leaves me a special bed pad, the kind you use to potty train a dog. I finally ask the nurse if there’s some kind of diaper I can use. And while I’m wearing this diaper, an insurance agent comes in to tell me my insurance has, in fact, lapsed. (Don’t worry, it hasn’t really because my mom would NEVER have told me to go to the ER without it.) I get so fucking angry at this lady. This is not a conversation for a person in a diaper, full of IV fluid and needle holes, who’s recently spent an incredible amount of time presenting and discussing their poop. 

When it’s time to go, I have to put on the disgusting pajamas that I came to the ER in. I didn’t think to ask Connor to bring me a different outfit, and he definitely definitely didn’t either. I tell him we have to walk so slowly to the car. He goes too fast, we get lost, and somehow we loop through the ER waiting room again. 

The drive home is torture, I just want to use my new power to sleep. Bless Connor’s dumb little heart, but he hasn’t done anything to make our apartment different, cleaner, than when I left. The sheets on the bed are the same ones, there are Kroger bags of vomit in our kitchen trash can from the times the toilet was too far away. It’s all still there. I am furious at this man who has never had to take care of anyone like this before. I make all kinds of demands and then we both take a nap. He wakes up, cleans a bit because of how mad I am, and then I hear a noise.

In my puny, still-proving-how-sick-I-am voice, I ask: Connor, are you ok? No response, but this is sometimes a game we play, where he pretends to get hurt in another room, I worry too much, and then he thinks it’s funny 

Again, just rage. Goddammit, Connor, this is not the time. I  am still sick. 

He’s sitting on the kitchen floor, looking pale and dazed. I am suddenly very, very worried. The motherfucker passed out! He’s trying to steal my moment! I pathetically reach for a bottle of water, force him to drink it. He shows me where he hit his head on our counter, and there’s an egg-shaped and sized bump. 

I feel helpless, horrified that we can’t just take care of each other. UGA has this nurse hotline. I call it twice, and since it’s a head thing, I think they legally have to tell you to go to the ER. I call twice because Connor doesn’t believe me the first time. The second time I hand him the phone, and he hangs up and is like: yeah, we should go to the doctor. (Neither of us can drive for reasons I have already alluded to.)

My friends are all in class, Dr. G’s reading clinic. I think about calling Cheryl, but I haven’t showered in four days, I’m still wearing the diaper, and I’m not quite ready to take our relationship there. 

So we uber. I can’t believe the guy picks us up, knowing that we’re heading for Urgent Care. I would NEVER do this if it were my car. This guy is insane. So much judgment from a girl wearing a diaper. 

We wait like a half hour at urgent care for the woman at the front desk to tell us they don’t do “head stuff.” A lady next to us in the waiting room asks us what happened. Connor tells her he passed out in the kitchen and hit his head. She is with her young daughter and says she doesn’t even want to know how this happened. I think she’s insinuating that we were trying to have sex in our cramped kitchen. I am fucking indignant, just about to unload the whole thing on her, diaper and all, but I hate when strangers tell me too much about their lives. So I shut up and we uber to the ER.

But we don’t make it through the doors. Connor finally remembers he has an aunt who is a nurse. She tells him what to look for, tells him to go home but call an ambulance if he starts to feel the pain inside his head. 

We uber back home. We have just gone in a circle, and there’s nothing to eat or drink at home. Connor even drank the goddamn gatorade he bought me back on day 1. His mom orders us Publix delivery, but it won’t be there until the morning. 

She orders graham crackers, tomato soup, a million bottles of neon orange gatorade to make up fo the ones her stupid son drank. She texts me that day too. It’s the first text I’ve ever gotten from her after 8 years with Connor. She tells me she’s glad I was there to take care of him. I tell her I’m glad we could take care of each other. Even when we can’t.