Out of absolutely nowhere and for no good reason, three days ago my left ankle blew up like a balloon.
I am the world’s worst patient. For one thing, I almost never get sick or injure myself, so episodes like this are extremely aggravating and confusing. I can turn mean and hostile under questioning of the most normal and innocuous sort, preferring lock-jawed misery to normal human communication:
“What did the doctor say?”
“How often are you supposed to take those pills?”
“Is there anything I can get you?”
GRRR…
(And so it goes. If I got sick more often, I would still be a bachelor.)
* * *
Naturally, at first I did nothing. “I must have sprained something, it’ll go away.”
“You need to TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!!!”
Grrr…
By the second day, it hurt so badly I relented and spent the day lying down with a heat wrap on the ankle, loaded up on Ibuprofen. I felt better and decided I was almost cured. On the third day (yesterday), I resumed mostly normal activity, albeit with considerable limping. A commenter mentioned DVT (deep vein thrombosis), so I went to the Mayo Clinic website and read every resource they had: oh shit, that might be IT, a frigging blood clot from sitting too long at this stupid computer! When I got up this morning, I immediately called my doctor without prompting—the equivalent of a pig launching himself into space—and made an appointment. It being Friday, that meant I’d be seeing a nice lady P.A. instead of the doc. Fine, no problem, just tell me whether I not I just became a smelly, shuffling, hopeless old fart at the end of his rope.
[Long, slow, painful limping slog across the parking lot to the medical building...]
“No, I don’t think you have a blood clot. Hmm.” (Obvious bafflement.)
The upshot was that she prescribed some honker anti-inflammatory pills and sent me next door to the hospital for blood work to look for signs of gout. GOUT?!? I don’t have any goddamn gout. There was something else they were going to test me for, but I forget what that was. (It doesn’t matter, I don’t have it. I never “have it.”)
Another long, slow, painful old fart’s shuffle across another parking lot. After 25 minutes of three different people pecking at computers—America the damned—a bored young lady waiting for the weekend took a blood sample, and I was out of there. Slowly, of course. A long, limping struggle back to my truck. By this time, depressing the clutch was like sticking my leg into a wood chipper, but I had to go get those pills. I mean, I really had to get them.
The closest pharmacy was at Walmart. Uh-oh. There is nothing worse for one’s self-esteem than limping through Walmart, a brisk sure-I-shop-here-when-I-have-to-but-I-don’t-want-to-BE-here pace being much more therapeutic. Of course, on Friday afternoon the parking lot was nearly full. I had to park at the perimeter and limped to the entrance, where I remembered I’d left the prescription in the truck.
[Limp, limp, limp. Limp, limp, limp, limp.]
The greeter didn’t welcome me to Walmart. (Nobody likes a limper.) Limp, limp, limp to the pharmacy at the other end of the building. It was not a small building.
“When do you want to pick this up?”
Dumfounded at first, then straining for calm, I answered: “AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, please!”
“That’ll be 15 minutes. Come back at 2:45.”
I decided to sit down on a nearby bench and wait. My order wasn’t ready by 2:45. Nor at 3:00 p.m. I waited for a full 45 minutes and didn’t see a single prescription brought over to the “ready” shelf behind the cash register. Finally the pills arrived, and I was out of there, sort of.
[Limp, limp, limp. Shuffle-shuffle limp. Limp, limp, stagger, limp.]
Depressing the clutch in my 23-year-old truck was almost a transcendental exercise. The pain suffused my entire body, leaving no room for me, and that was how I got home. I took the first pill, built a fire, and collapsed on the dead landlord’s sofa with a blanket pulled up to my neck.
* * *
Five hours later. The pain has abated, the ankle is still swollen. I may be a smelly old fart, but I no longer shuffle and nothing is hopeless. God won’t let me die, in any case, because I haven’t “done it” yet. (The back side of I never “have it.”)
Time for a bath now. Hot water is good.
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Giggle … that’s like the old stuff. Serious, but funny.
I can’t die either. I’ve calculated I have to live to 98, in pretty good condition, to make up for wasted time. I should never have spent all those years in my youth reading Agatha Christie novels.
Hell, I can do funny. And I’ve always taken your observations in this area to heart, despite too much time spent wallowing in vileness of every kind.
But yes, I think you’re in a similar karmic crunch! I think we’re going to be kept around until we get it right, and as soon as we realize we “had it right” all along, we’ll be ready to go, dammit.
Set me to thinking… I have a bum knee from a childhood injury. Periodically I do something inadvertent which causes it to puff up and spear me with excruciating pain. This used to last for a few days, now it can last for weeks. Maybe I’ll have to have it sawed off some day…. When these bouts hit I always have early memories of the polio epidemic of the late 40′s and early 50′s. Remember the fear of lost limbs and worse? Parents were panicky about these things, but sometimes there are causes for panic. A kid on my block got the dreaded disease. Our family moved soon afterwards, and I never knew what happened to him. Did he hobble through life with a brace? Or spend his days in an “iron lung”? Or simply die before life could even begin for him? –Imagine what it would have been like to have been dealt a shrivelled limb at such an age and have had to carry it forever. From time to time, I’m inclined to rail against the modern world, but that disease was defeated by modernity. You and I are old coots, John, so we remember this disease, but it’s a blessed thing that anyone much younger than us will hardly know what we’re talking about, much less have any sense of the despair and panic of those times, blessedly ended forever by first a jab in the arm and then a sugary swallow. Time heals (more or less) the aches that you and I have. I got that bum knee on the playground, but I dodged the real bullet.
Every now and then one of my knees does the same thing, but there isn’t any pain, it just swells up and gets stiff. Sorry about yours. This just isn’t fair.
Yes, I remember the great polio fear of my childhood, and it was one based in reality! That’s why the development of the vaccine was such an incredible thing, and what a boost for faith in science.
Maybe your bum knee is insurance against further physical catastrophe, like when you get that first dent in the new car and it never happens again.
Think you’re on to something there. That little injury at such an early age seemed to confer immunity against the bigger stuff. The Angel of Death just nicked me lightly at the same time as It (whether God, Fate or blind chance) marked for destruction the neighbor kid. Indicating a charmed life? Hardly. But at least a survivable one. When the pain has flared in that knee over the years, I think of it as my lucky charm. I probably didn’t deserve to survive all those years ago, but I did, so best get on with things.
There was an ancient king who administered doses of poison to himself as preparation for the big dose someone else would some day administer. That’s a little too calculating for me, but I see the point: As the cliche has it, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I think there’s a fallacy there, but at this hour of the morning I can’t quite figure it out.