This is where I’m at today. See if you can spot the difference:
Feels as bad as it looks.
This has been something of a sucky morning, just another in a chain of suck, which explains why I’ve been doing the equivalent of the wounded-dog-under-the-porch routine.
A few weeks ago, there was the Thing With The Lawyer regarding something I had written. Fortunately, that blew over after a few days of anxiety, but I did learn that the project I had been working on for several month wasn’t publishable at all — the fault was entirely my own — so that had to be set aside.
It was fortunate that I hadn’t gone ahead and tried to publish it, because the fallout would have been much greater, but, still, I could think of far more useful uses for the time that was lost.
Then, late one night, I made the mistake of playing with my bipolar cat, who shifted from purrs to sinking his fangs deep into my hand. A day later, I was in the ER at Hershey Medical watching the nurse draw a line up my arm, charting the course of an infection that had already passed my elbow and was taking the express route to my left ventricle.
An intravenous solution of antibiotics followed, which pushed back the infection like the Dow in ’08. Like a good little patient, I took the week’s work of Amoxicillan. Side effects: rising blood pressure, insommnia, mental confusion, stress.
And it was while I was under that drug regime that we learned my job might be going away. We’ll find out in a couple of weeks.
Oh, and while I was in the ER, my blood pressure popped at 180 over something, and the doctor on duty said, “Man, you better get that checked out.” Since I had been spending several nights listening to it beating that fast, I took his advice. The good doctor checked me out with the help of two interns he was training, suggested I lose weight, and prescribed beta blockers, which actually helped.
Doctor: “Actors use them if they’re suffering from stage fright.”
And he’s right. When I had my wisdom teeth taken out, I was given a Valium, my first. I was drifting so high that my pulse barely registered when the dentist said he would have to break a molar to get the pieces out,
The beta blocker, I’m happy to say, wasn’t like that. Just a peaceful disconnection between what I registered and what I felt. Just enough to get some sleep.
So, now that I’m off from work for this week, I woke up a couple days ago to discover two floaters had taken up residence in my right eyeball. I have suffered from them all my life. As a kid, I used to lay on my back in the front yard and watch them drift across my eye, the wispiest of clouds against the blue sky.
They weren’t wisps this time. They were a Mutt-and-Jeff team: one big and hazy, the other small, sharp and jet-black.
So, off to the optometrist. Good news: No tears to the retina spotted. Bad news: “Let’s have a specialist look at that. I’ve never seen floaters that big.”
Which was only mildly alarming. After the events of the past week, nature’s going to have to try harder to get me to react. Right now, all I can think of is all the Simpsons scenes in which a character got poked in the eye.
Nothing feels better than a poke in the eye, so long as it’s someone else’s.
