From outer space!

I am back from Richmond Hospital, where I spent the last five days recoverting from pneumonia. Yup, the same pnemonia my roomie Julian had.

Small world. Small, contagious world.

I am far from out of the woods yet. I am still pretty sick. I am home not because they cured me but because I am well enough to go home. PEruiod.

And I am kicking myself for letting myself believe that leaving the hospital meant I would better by then. I was severely disappointed t find out that wasn’;t true when we left the hospital and I instantly becamke winded.

In face, to be honest, I feel more or less the same as when I checked myself into the hospital. SO an irrational and rather cranky part of me wonders why I just spent five fucking days in the hospital.

It’s crazy, I know. If I really think about it, I feel a gazillion times better than when I entered the hospital. Sure, I am still frustratingly lacking in lung capacity, but when I went in Friday night I felt terrible on many, many levels.

Now, it’s down to just a few.

I am okay if I I sit still. Almost no shortness of breath (SOB) then. It’s when I get up and move around that I get in trouble.

So yes. Irony of ironies, my treatment for my serious illness is to continue my extremely sedentary lifestyle – only more so.

Oh, and here was my first clear thought when I left the hospital “Oh crap. Now I have to be a person again. ”

Because that’s the best thing about being overtly sick in the hospital for someone with my profound weakness of character : nobody expects a damn thing of you. You have official permission to do nothing with your life and not be a grownup and not reall deal with anything at all.

That’s how people like me fall into being Munchausen’s Syndrome patients. To a person with severe emotional difficulties (ahem), being a hospital patient is ideal. They get care and nurturing and people’s sympathies while also being free ot any responsibility to deal with the scary loud grownup world out there, of which they are terrified.

So part of me – a very unhealthy part – is going to miss being in the hospital. It was like a vacation from reality in a way. I lived in a world where all I truly had to do all day was keep myself entertained, and people took care of my meals and my meds and such.

It was a lot like being a kid.

And the whole time, I maintained a sort of “don’t think about it” mental state. I dedicated myself to staying absorbed in my distractions because I knerw that would make the time pass easily and that was my top priority.

Patient readers will note that this is how I live my life outside the hospital too. The hospital only magnified it a lot. And it took away a lot of my autonomy, and that sucked pretty hard. I like to do things myself.

If I do it myself, I don’t have to sit there waiting for someone else to do it, not knowing when it will happen, uncertainty grating my nerves.

Much better to just do the damn thing myself.

Picture me saying that in a Hank Hill voice. He and I are alike in a lot of very Taurus ways, including occasionally feeling like the only person who has any SENSE around here some times.

Still, in other ways, being a hospital patient is an oral retentive wet dream. You get to just lie there while the world revolves around you.

When I was first admitted to the ER, an amazing scene took place. In the space of fifteen minutes, a dozen health professionals took various readings and measurements from me while I say there feeling like I was in the middle of one of those “fabulous makeover” scenes where the person is getting their hair done, while getting a manicure and a pedicure at the same time.

I have to admit, it was all kind of thrilling, and made me feel comptently cared for, and that’s not a feeling I get much out of life.

Now let’s talk about me versus the system.

I woke up Saturday morning with terrible back pain. It was excrutiating. Like someone had stuck a dagger between my shoulder blades. Huge knot of tension around it.

So I did the logical thing and I pressed the nurse call button. A nurse showed up. I told her all about the agony I was in. She nodded, then left without saying a single word about what would be done about my fucking pain.

And this would happen two more times. Press button, Get nurse. Patiently explain that I am in a lot of pain. They leave. Nothing happens.

Eventually, I at least get a nurse with sufficient rudimentary sentience to say “Do you want more Tylenol-3’s? Well you can’t have them until 12:30. ”

This did not appease me.

It was nearly 10:30 as she said that, and somehow waiting two hours for pills I knew would barely take the edge off did not appeal to me.

By this time I am super mad and probably super scary. The pain has cost me all sense of diplomacy and the fact that I am quite clearly telling a hospital full of health professionals that I am in a lot of pain and it barely seems to be registering yet alone producing a result is making it that much worse.

Eventually the doctor assigned my case. Doctor Wong, shows up. I think the nurses went and got him because they couldn’t handle me.

And at first, he is giving me the bullshit about Tylenol too. So I really let him have it, telling him that the Tylenol did not work and I needed something like a muscle relaxant. I made it clear that I was not going to be happy until someone actually addressed the fucking problem instead of regurgitating a formulaic response.

It was like some kind of Kafka-esque nightmare where everyone was a moron incapable of actually taking in any new information unless it fit within their microscopic umwelt. I was telling them exactly what the problem was and it might as well have been random clicks and pops and high pitched whining noises.

So I ended up essentially dominating Doctor Wong. Suddenly he had suggestions as to ways to actually treat my pain. Almost like it was a real thing that was actually happening and he was some kind of healer.

And all I had to do was scream into the hurricane for hours first.

Eventually I more or less sorted things out myself. I realized that it was the same kind of pain I got when I was severely constipated So I schemed my way toi the bathroom and tried to solve the problem that way,.

It more or less worked. The knot of tension remained but the horrible pain was gone. I ended up[ stretching out the knot of tension over the days.

But seriously. Why did I have to go through all that shit? It made me feel seriously misanthropic. You would think a patient reporting pain and getting treatment in the hospital would be the simplest thing ever..

And yet, I had to get super pissed and basically intellectually browbeat an actual fully trained medical doctor just to get him to wake up and look at the problem.

If there had not been so much pain, I probably would not have gotten that upset.

Probably wouldn’t have gotten results, either.

This is the sort of thing that turns guys like me into raging arseholes. I got a taste of the power of my mind, personality, and size from this incident, and it has given me a hell of a lot to think about.

Maybe the problem is me. Maybe there is something about how I normally comport myself that makes people dismiss what I say from their minds as fast as they can and refuse to treat it as real.

Perhaps my strong power of personality is to blame. Without meaning to (necessarily), project what I say so strongly that it feels like it is invading people’s minds and trying to take over their will, and they have to protect their mental sovereignty by just blotting it out at the most basic level.

Plus, my usually mild and pleasant mantter makes it seem like that would be a safe thing to do. I am highly nonthreatening most of the time.

It has its pluses and minuses.

Whatever the reason, I tell things to people and it completely fails to stir them into any action whatsoever. Something  about me stupefies people.

Maybe it’s my charisma. I don’t know.

But I do know I am damned sick of it and from now on I am going to step on however many toes it takes to make people wake the fuck up and LISTEN.

Damn being sick is making me cranky AF.

I will talk to you nice people tomorrow.

Also, probably later tonight as well.

Because I still have to tell you about Max.