The Miracle and Wonder of Medical Goo

Well, by now, many of you know I’m sick. I’ve been sick for a week–nothing out of the ordinary there. The common cold is the common plight of the common human. And I’m just a common gal.

Until I catch a cold and slowly morph into an alien so slimy and gross, it would rival Ridley Scott’s magnificent salivating monster. And how does my cabinet of cold medicine curiosities only serve to fuel my strange state of being? Well, let’s run run down that list:

I’ve got my small tub of Vicks Vapor Rub to open my sinuses and clear my breathing, then a tube of Vaseline to sooth the sore nose, and the Puffs with lotion, in case the globs of Vicks and Vaseline didn’t lube my schnozzle enough. That’s just the outside. There’s the saline nasal wash that I’m supposed to shoot up my nose and sniff way up into my brain. This just increases my sniveling, of course.

Then there’s the cough syrups: DM has the suppressant that will give you a nice buzz. CF loosens all the mucous from the nose and lungs, making your cough so damn productive you’re practically drooling phlegm–alien city. I’d rather just have the dry high, but instead choose the healthier route and chug the decongestant, then turn on the humidifier.

I’m now the swamp thing in jammies.

I’ve got an assortment of lozenges to suck on, various teas and soups to slurp. Today I whipped out my  Burt’s Bees Miracle Salve to slather my hands and lips, which managed to become cracked and dry despite the humidifier and liquid diet. It might be a few more days until I turn back into my human self, but I have hope. Until then, I’ll just lumber around my house and pretend I’m some sci-fi creature, perhaps even taking a moment or two to be productive and, oh, I don’t know….write….

Justin Timberlake is the only cold medicine you need

So, I’m still pretty sick and can’t do much except sit and stare into space. Last night I decided to stare at Saturday Night Live. Check out the video (couldn’t get Daily Motion to work on here yet).

Sometimes laughter really is the best medicine…

There’s a forest in my throat

You heard me. An entire forest, with thickets and brambles that are scratching my poor little tonsils raw. Since I teach at a university, I can only blame my students for passing on to me one of the countless plagues they suffer from. Or, is it due to my lack of sleep and a diet of ham, butter, and toast? (today I threw in string cheese and a banana just for variety)

I actually had to bum some lozenges from one of my students who was also sick and only came in to school to take my midterm.  Then I came home to do some revising while my throat grew more swollen by the hour.

Fun times.

The words are coming slowly and awkwardly, even though I was good and had some chicken and rice soup. Perhaps taking Theraflu will help. Perhaps I should stop writing and just go to bed. Perhaps I should take the Theraflu and work on my revisions until I fall asleep on my laptop. That’s the most romantic version of a writer, isn’t it? Toiling away in the dark of night like Kafka or Dickens, a glass of whiskey on the desk, the soft glow of the candle our only light….  

Instead there’s a girl in glasses with her knees drawn up just under her chin, bathing in the glare (I mean glow) of the computer screen, making “ahem” noises as she tries to clear her throat and write her daily post.

Enough writing. To bed!

Things that go bump….

…in the night

…and the doctor’s office

First, I taught a horror seminar at an Elderly Hostel up in Estes Park this weekend. Ghoulishly fun! What a treat, to talk to folks who listened to horror shows such as Inner Sanctum and The Shadow, where words still retained some of their power before they fell to the onslaught of television and film. Not that I’m complaining. No film has really ever beaten out the pure suspense of Psycho, that bloodcurdling scream, the laughing skeleton.

And as for it being called an elderly hostel, ha! I was with a witty bunch (be careful, we’re hostile elders, one woman quipped with a grin). On afternoon breaks, they went for a long walk in the woods; I went to my room for a nap. Later, we all settled in to watch Kubrick’s The Shining.

Redrum, anyone?

Speaking of being super scared I had lots of pain in my right leg a few weeks ago. Was it a blood clot? Some vein all twisted up inside my leg? My doc found the rather large, painful lump. “That’s weird,” she says to me frowning and then holds up three fingers, just so I could get a dandy visual of how big the lump is. “It’s not a clot. But it’s strange. Let’s get you in surgery and have that thing biopsied. Maybe it’s just a lipoma, although those are usually round, and what you have there is more of an oval.” 

Great. I can’t even get the shape right. I don’t despair, instead banking on it being a lipoma anyway, since it sounded more benign. And what, exactly, is a lipoma?

“Fat tissue.”

So in other words, my fat might be hurting?

“Sometimes it happens,” she says, and our session is over.

I hoist my hurting, oddly shaped self all around Denver for a week or two, then one day, notice I’m no in pain. Get thee a second opinion! I go to a different doc today. He looks at my leg, can find nothing there. “That’s weird,” he says.

So, it’s not just painful fat–I mean a lipoma?

He frowns. “Lipomas don’t  disappear. No, it’s just a really weird thing.”

Could stress have been the cause?

He frowns some more. “Stress can cause many physical symptoms, but not something like that. I have no idea what happened.”

Beautiful. I have been medically diagnosed as “weird.”  I apparently have a weird body capable of producing weird pain in weird places. It’s like my own little x-file. Where are Mulder and Scully when you need them?