All I Want For Christmas Is A Sucking Chest Wound
Well, it's official. I have pneumonia. Again. Those of you who wondered why I've been so fucking out of it lately, please understand I've been struggling mightily to keep putting one foot in front of the other with no real energy left over to actually form thoughts and communicate and stuff.
Wound up going to one of those exigent care half-emergency places when I realized this afternoon that I couldn't get my fucking breath. My doctor's office said they'd be happy to work me in just as soon as I straightened out this little $300 insurance snafu from back in May that they're only just now mentioning. Two hours on the phone with the insurance company - wheezing like my transmission is about to drop out - and I find out that a) Dr. Dumbass' office never got paid because they never sent it in, and b) it was now much too late for them to work me in.
Teh Hubbinator is a mild-mannered (hah!) geek by day, but when danger threatens those he loves he leaps into the nearest phone booth, puts on a cape and long underwear (his are red, with the little butt-door in the back*)and emerges as THE ATOMIC HYPOCHONDRIAC!** Faster than a speeding Viagra! Able to leap to conclusions based on the merest hint of symptoms! Banned from the CDC website forever by marital decree!
So anyway the nice nurse at Dr. Stupid's was very apologetic and told me to please go get checked anyway, even if I had to go to the emergency room, because something was very wrong with my breathing. THE ATOMIC HYPOCHONDRIAC, emerging from behind the sofa straightening his cape, starts spouting obscure statistics about the whooping cough mini-epidemic in the tri-state area.*** So off we went, and it was crowded, and it took a really long time, and they were very nice and made concerny faces and ran lots of tests, including the one where they stick that little red light thingie on your finger and tell you you're not getting nearly enough oxygen, which caused them to run for the mechanical hookah thingie where you sit and breathe medicine for a while to forcibly open your lungs up, and so on and so forth. Two hours, many tests and several chest x-rays later I apparently have pneumonia. Not severe pneumonia - I'm sort of just over the line where severe bronchitis turns ugly and dangerous. But pneumonia just the same.
Been here, did this. Twice. Took me three months to recover. No time for this bullshit. Shots? Yes, please. Even the antibiotic one that feels like someone's shooting hot metal into your ass cheek? Will it speed this up? Yes? Lemme have it. Give me two, they're small.
And so on. So we caught it early and I even feel a little better for having had my lungs hookah'd out and I think the hot-metal-in-the-ass shot may be working. (The other cheek got cortisone steroids to help with the lung congestion, so I'm picturing one very muscular butt-cheek about twice the size of the other one.)
And I have all these prescriptions, inhalers and antibiotics and cough suppressants and coedine (yay!) and mucus looseners and decongestants and so on.****
Needless to say we won't be hitting the big family-reunion xmas thingie at Teh Hubbinator's grandparents this weekend. So boo, but at the same time yay, no 5-hour drive while cold-sweating and struggling to breathe*****. Now if I can just get this under control in record time, the holidays may turn out to be quite nice and relaxed after all.
*Really.
**Sorry about that. It's just been too damn long since I've made something blink.
***Really.
****I've never figured out why they give you mucus looseners and cough supressants at the same time. To misappropriate a Steven Wright quote, isn't that kind of like locking a humidifier and a dehydrator in a closet and making them fight it out?
*****although boo, I'm not contagious so I can't spit in my MIL's eggnog and give her whooping cough, assuming the bride of satan is vulnerable to human germs in the first place.
Wound up going to one of those exigent care half-emergency places when I realized this afternoon that I couldn't get my fucking breath. My doctor's office said they'd be happy to work me in just as soon as I straightened out this little $300 insurance snafu from back in May that they're only just now mentioning. Two hours on the phone with the insurance company - wheezing like my transmission is about to drop out - and I find out that a) Dr. Dumbass' office never got paid because they never sent it in, and b) it was now much too late for them to work me in.
Teh Hubbinator is a mild-mannered (hah!) geek by day, but when danger threatens those he loves he leaps into the nearest phone booth, puts on a cape and long underwear (his are red, with the little butt-door in the back*)and emerges as THE ATOMIC HYPOCHONDRIAC!** Faster than a speeding Viagra! Able to leap to conclusions based on the merest hint of symptoms! Banned from the CDC website forever by marital decree!
So anyway the nice nurse at Dr. Stupid's was very apologetic and told me to please go get checked anyway, even if I had to go to the emergency room, because something was very wrong with my breathing. THE ATOMIC HYPOCHONDRIAC, emerging from behind the sofa straightening his cape, starts spouting obscure statistics about the whooping cough mini-epidemic in the tri-state area.*** So off we went, and it was crowded, and it took a really long time, and they were very nice and made concerny faces and ran lots of tests, including the one where they stick that little red light thingie on your finger and tell you you're not getting nearly enough oxygen, which caused them to run for the mechanical hookah thingie where you sit and breathe medicine for a while to forcibly open your lungs up, and so on and so forth. Two hours, many tests and several chest x-rays later I apparently have pneumonia. Not severe pneumonia - I'm sort of just over the line where severe bronchitis turns ugly and dangerous. But pneumonia just the same.
Been here, did this. Twice. Took me three months to recover. No time for this bullshit. Shots? Yes, please. Even the antibiotic one that feels like someone's shooting hot metal into your ass cheek? Will it speed this up? Yes? Lemme have it. Give me two, they're small.
And so on. So we caught it early and I even feel a little better for having had my lungs hookah'd out and I think the hot-metal-in-the-ass shot may be working. (The other cheek got cortisone steroids to help with the lung congestion, so I'm picturing one very muscular butt-cheek about twice the size of the other one.)
And I have all these prescriptions, inhalers and antibiotics and cough suppressants and coedine (yay!) and mucus looseners and decongestants and so on.****
Needless to say we won't be hitting the big family-reunion xmas thingie at Teh Hubbinator's grandparents this weekend. So boo, but at the same time yay, no 5-hour drive while cold-sweating and struggling to breathe*****. Now if I can just get this under control in record time, the holidays may turn out to be quite nice and relaxed after all.
*Really.
**Sorry about that. It's just been too damn long since I've made something blink.
***Really.
****I've never figured out why they give you mucus looseners and cough supressants at the same time. To misappropriate a Steven Wright quote, isn't that kind of like locking a humidifier and a dehydrator in a closet and making them fight it out?
*****although boo, I'm not contagious so I can't spit in my MIL's eggnog and give her whooping cough, assuming the bride of satan is vulnerable to human germs in the first place.