Infection, Brain Worms, Hospital

 Testing.  Testing.  

I have a long explanation for my absence, but I don't think I have the energy or wherewithal to write it today.  Jesus.  The desire to tell thrives, but the energy to sustain an explanation or to be witty or interesting about it is desperately lacking.  I'll bungle this for certain, but I'll just dive in and see how far I sink . 

I still feel like one of the Living Dead. . . but damn. . . it is wonderful to have a good cup of coffee.  

I'll get to the lede here eventually.  I've just had a lot of hallucinatory time to think this past week, and I have a lot of brief, disconnected thoughts.  Here's one.  A revelation?  I don't know.  It seems so to me.  Almost a religious awakening.  My life, by and large, has felt, or so I've lived it, like a trip to the carnival.  I've taken as many of the rides as I could afford.  I've gone to every sideshow.  Seen the Man with Three Eyes, the Human Blockhead, Electro-Lady. . . .  I've snuck in under the tent to watch the Hoot Shows.  

"I've seen things you people could never imagine."

It is good to be home.  O.K.  The lede.  

I've been in the hospital.  I've had a cyst on my leg for thirty or more years.  I think I got it from running.  I  wore those wide-heeled Nike running shoes for a long time, and I would catch the inside of my right calf with the inside of my left heel sometimes.  This is what I think.  The cyst, I believe, came from that.  Maybe ingrown hairs.  

Nobody knows.  Yet.  When it is removed, maybe.  

I've been to docs over the years to see about having it removed.  They said if it wasn't bothering me, to leave it alone.  So that has bee the case, but in the last few years it became inflamed.  I went to a surgeon who again said to leave it alone.  It is in a weird place and the incision would be deep and it would be difficult to heal.  

So that is what I did.  But last week, it got really infected.  I went back to the surgeon, but he was no longer there.  It was a new group.  I asked to make an appointment.  When the staff looked at the cyst, they said there were no surgeons in the office that day, but that I needed to go to the ER.  

"You need antibiotics.  You don't want that infection to get into your blood."

So that is what I did.  I was seen quickly--by a P.A.  Never saw a doc.  You hardly ever do any longer.  P.A.s cost the hospital less than half what it pays a doc.  Do the math.  

So he gave me a syringe full of antibiotics and two oral antibiotics to take with me.  Never mentioned a surgeon.  I was wary, but what could I do?

I took the pills that night and in a few hours was vomiting violently.  Oh. . . this is gross.  I had the Big D at the same time.  

That night was terrible.  I couldn't sleep.  My body quivered.  My mind was everywhere.  

So. . . being a smart guy, I took them again in the morning.  Repeat.  I took them again that night.  By morning, I desperately needed help.  I decided to stop taking the drugs.  

Duh.  

I asked my tenant if she would take me to the ER at a different hospital.  I thought I had a better chance of seeing a doctor there.  

The ER doc was the cute little Dr. Miracle who almost killed my mother.  Christ, I was terrified.  So was she, by all outward appearances.  She had, at least, the good sense to call for backup.  My tenant had bailed on me by then as the hours passed.  Around nightfall, a woman in a sari came in.  She looked as if she had been to a party.  

"Hello.  I'm Doctor _________.  I was called in to come look at your leg."

She was an infectious disease specialist.  I watched her face for any clues.

"What is this rash?"

"I didn't know I had one."

It was on both legs, bright red spots like measles.

"They don't itch" I said. 

She said she was going to admit me.  I'd be staying for awhile.  

I was taken to a room upstairs where they gave me an injection of an antibiotic, and hooked me up to an IV.  I was getting fluids, of course, and alternating drips of two other antibiotics.  They hooked me up to a heart monitor and began taking blood.  I was so out of it at this point, though, I was happy to have a real doctor looking after me.  It seemed an achievement.  

But I was tethered.  

Many people came in to see me, to ask me questions.  

"Hi.  I'm Wanda, your lead nurse for this evening.  How are you feeling?" 

She was checking the computer at the head of my bed, typing, reading.  Then. . . 

"What is your favorite thing to do?"

WTF?  This was out of left field.  She was smiling under her mask.  Did she like me?  Was she flirting?  Of course this is what I wondered.  

"Uh . . . I don't know what you mean."

"In your spare time.  If you could do anything you wanted to, what would it be?"

She wrote it on the white board.

"What is this about?" I asked.  

"Just to start the conversation," she cooed.  

Many other people came in to ask me questions not at vague.  

"Tell me your name and date of birth."

This happened every time I was to get anything from a meal to more drugs."

"What is your age?  Do you live in an apartment, a house, or a facility?  How many floors?  Do you live alone?  Do you have for a support group?"

Did I tell you that I am a colorful character?  Ho!  It didn't sound like it.  I sounded like an old man living alone without any support.  I mean. . . I've eschewed so much to be independent.  I began to fear they would put me in a home.

That night, I had the most hideous visions.  I couldn't stop them.  My mind seemed no longer to belong to me.  I could not have done simple additions or subtractions.  I was dying a pitiful death with no one offering "prayers and wishes," no one to grieve.  It wasn't funny.  

I had enough tether to let me reach the bathroom.  And that was the extent of my movement.  I lay in bed all the next day.  I had cable t.v.  A thousand channels.  Breakfast came.  I couldn't eat it.  It was unimaginably bad.  Then lunch.  I couldn't eat it, either.  Horrible.  I drank water constantly, so I was up and peeing every half hour.  

"I need to see a proctologist," I thought.  

I asked for milk.  I had drunk the morning's milk.  I could survive on milk.  But wait. . . I was told you can't have dairy with antibiotics.  

"That's an old wive's tale, I think," said the nurse.  

Think?!?!?

The needle in my arm began to hurt.  I called the nurse to look at it.  My arm was swelling up.  Apparently the needle was no longer going int the vein.  She said she would be back to change it.  She was a Jamaican from Miami.  I know because I'm like that.  I am curious about people.  I ask, they tell.  She liked Miami better, she told me.  But I could imagine.  The cost of living there was much higher.  Miami is one of the most beautiful cities to look at.  It is gorgeous.  But where did she live?  It would not be in one of the beautiful places, I thought.  People who live twenty miles inland from Miami say they live in Miami.  

When she came back, she was accompanied by another person.  He was a young beautiful Black fellow and a flamer.  We kibitzed, of course.  Even in death, I hope I'll still be entertaining.  

"Oh my god. . . this is the FUUUN room," he decreed.  Yup.  I spent my career making people happy.  

That evening, the tenant brought my mother to see me.  

"Bring me some food," I said.  "I can't eat the shit in here."

She brought me potato chips and soda.  WTF?

I was worried about my mother.  I hadn't been to her house for days.  She was doing alright, she said.  

I tried watching television.  I found CNN, MSNBC, Fox.  I searched for a long time and finally found TCM.  Ah. . . no commercials.  But they were showing unwatchable things.  "The Knut Rockne Story."  Truly horrible stuff.  So I went back to the news.  Ten minutes of opinions, five minutes of commercial.  Try to skip between stations to avoid them.  Impossible.  And here it was.  Here was what had infected the brains of Americans.  It is all too obvious, all too clear.  The characters in commercials are inane.  They talk in cartoon voices.  The ARE cartoons.  Everything and everyone is crafted to be idiotic.  They are brain worms meant to infect you.  This is how people think. . . idiotically.  Even the news interviews idiots on the street.  It is important to seem "relatable."  Here is the overweight protester in an ill-fitting t-shirt with multi-colored hair and multiple face piercings telling us why she is here.  Over there is a steroidal MAGA man with the perma-pissed face looking ready to fight anyone who challenges his view.  He speaks simply like a pit bull barking through a screen door.  

I found a music channel.  Jazz.  Good jazz.  I needed to calm myself.  My head seemed to be clearing a bit.  

"I like the music," said the new nurse.  "I like your sweater, too."  

Flirting?  I know, I know.  I can't help it.  I'm special.  

Another night.  I lose track. 

The next day, a surgeon comes in.  A fireplug in hospital greens and a cap.  He's a real jet pilot.  He doesn't have time for chit-chat.  He isn't messing around.  He looks at my leg.  He says little.  All I get is that he can take it out when the inflammation is gone. 

I'm in a nice room alone.  They bring me food, water.  Otherwise it is me and the walls of the room and the inside of my skull.  I couldn't read if I had a book.  My thoughts are not good.  Isolated in a hospital room.  Isolated in life.  A real outsider.  

Last time I was in a hospital, Ili stayed with me day and night.  I think I would have died if she hadn't.  There are many days when I wish I had.  It would have been easy.  This pulling me back hasn't been worth it.  Had I not suffered enough?  Is there some "fate" we must pass through?  

Such were my thoughts.  

No one but my tenant and mother knew I'm in the hospital.  Lives go on per usual.  

It seemed to me that all the antibiotics were not working.  Redness and swelling continue.  Then, maybe, it lessened.  

I watch Trump.  His rally.  His interview.  His cabinet meeting.  Everything is scripted.  It is a Nazi propagandist's dream.  He is winning.  No, wait, CNN, MSNBC show polls.  He is losing.  No, wait again. . . we the people are losing.  That is what the crazy looking analysts show.  On Fox, the smarmy men and women with standard uniforms and looks and hair are doing a victory dance.  They call people "liberal lunatics" and "renegade judges."  There is no pushback.  The "left" is lost.  They are correct in that.  I still predict a bloody summer.  

Brain worms.  Maybe we've become too wormy to treat, too infected.  

I fear the same for my leg.  

I have seen a number of doctors now.  I am confused.  Most of them are from the infectious disease group.  I get a visit from one in the afternoon.  She comes in with bright eyes and a bright, mid-thigh dress.  She looks at me and fairly coos, "How's the leg?" and does a little dance ending with her kicking her heels together.  Her legs are very shapely.  Dark hair.  Is this Dr. _______?  No.  It can't be.  She was much older.  

This doc stays to chat, explains things, tells me the plan.  I will be discharged tomorrow.  I will follow up with their office.  

"We are just across the street," she says.  She makes me feel things will be O.K.  She wears a mask, but I can see her eyes are shining.  

When she leaves, the nurse comes in.  

"Before she came in, she said, 'I remember him.'  She saw you when you were admitted.  

"Is that Dr. _______?"

"No." 

"Does she want me for her boyfriend?" I don't say.  I know.  I know.  It is a sickness.  I'm becoming needy.  

The next day, it takes forever to get me released.  I Uber home.  It is three-thirty.  I wait outside.  It is a nice day.  Fresh air, sunshine.  I am weak.  

When I walk into the house, it is how I left it.  I had to cancel the maids.  It is a lovely house.  It is not like many houses.  Rooms full of books, thousands of books, and trinkets from the world's carnivals.  My mind is still not steady, but I open my mail.  I clean the kitchen.  There is a story to tell there, but not now.  I get into my car to pick up my prescriptions and to see my mother.  My mother tells me about how she is feeling.  I worry.  The routine of my life will return whether I am ready or not.  But I am weak and need to get home.  I microwave an Amy's enchilada.  My first meal in days.  I sit outside and drink coconut water.  I think.  Sunset.  I get on the couch.  I turn on the television.  I watch a guy who has been building his life in old herder cabins in the Italian Alps for as long as I can remember.  He is good at the video of him working.  He lives alone with four chickens.  Recently, after years of just him and some occasional help from workers, he has a girlfriend.  She works in valley down the mountain in town.  She has something to do with fashion.  She stays with him from time to time.  One wonders.  I wonder.  He is a practical Dutchman.  How did he do it?  She is pretty.  

I am getting tired but it is early.  I turn my YouTube channel to music.  I am free of the brain worms.  I don't know how people live the lives they do.  It is terrifying, but one has to deal with them.  The hospital stay made me understand them better.  America is infected, but I must assume the world is.  People are prone to stupidity and foolishness.  

"Not me.  I'm not like the others," I tell myself.  "I have this."