18 July, 1998

Deer and Bugs

"Look!" Sabs suddenly cried out as we rounded the curve of the on-ramp onto 495 on our way home from a friend's house. "What?" I asked and he yanked his head around as he stopped the car. I turned around and that's when I saw her, elegant and dainty, dipping her head to catch up tendrils of grass. She stepped away from the curve then and I caught my breath at the beauty of her. A tawny coated doe, placidly eating in the still, warm summer air.

Headlights came up behind us then and Sabs pressed down on the accelerator to start the car moving again. But I had a sudden feeling of specialness and magic from the encounter, which even thoughts of how bad it can be to hit a deer, did not mar. Her eyes had been so clear, brown and limpid you see. She looked right at us, straight at me as we watched her move back into the brush and It made me contemplate again the relationship between all creatures of Earth, including humans, and Nature.

Earlier this week I was incapacitated by a sudden bout of some kind of intestinal bug. Or maybe it was just a very bad muscle and bone bruise from getting stuck in a Metro turnstile again. I'm not quite sure and I was so fed up with my doctor's office that I probably never will know. Early Tuesday morning, a dull ache in the left side of my abdomen, not unlike cramps or ahem bad gas troubled my last few hours of sleep. Shaking it off as perhaps just some small digestive complaint, feeling tired and queasy from lack of sleep by the time Sabs was up and going, I went back to sleep and went to work very late. As the afternoon wore on, I found the pain to be slowly increasing and was vaguely annoyed with my digestive system. However towards evening it started to feel better. After a nap when I got home, I felt well enough to go out to dinner at a fancy French restaurant as we had planned, to celebrate Bastille Day.

After an excellent meal and several glasses of wine, I felt fine and we went for a walk down by the water. On the way back to the car I felt the ache starting up again and by the time we got home it was bothering me actively again. Now, I have a recurring problem with Chinese food which has been cropping up of late. On Monday we'd gotten take-out, but I'd avoided spicy sauces which are generally what cause the problem. However at this point I was ready to start blaming the Chinese food again, because the pain was similar. As the night wore on and I kept getting up to visit the bathroom I became increasingly worried. The pain was located very low on the left side of my abdomen, right over the tip of the pelvic bone. It wasn't very sensitive to the touch, but it wasn't going away no matter how I oriented my body. It wasn't sharp either but it was just painful enough to keep me from sleeping.

By morning it still had not gone away despite all the visits to the bathroom and I was in a panic about it. A desperate call to the doctor's office was met with "We don't open until 9am, call back later". Groaning now and feeling singularly unable to get up and go to work, I called in sick and skipped my upload for 7am. Around 7:30, very scared now because I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, I called my mother who is an R.N. She talked me through the symptoms and deduced that since I did not have a fever, I neither had appendicitis, nor kidney infection but probably had a localized bacterial or viral inflammation and that I shouldn't eat solid food for 24 hours. This was just like when I had food poisoning several months ago, but I took 2 Advil as she advised, drank a large quantity of water and promptly feel asleep.

In the meantime, Sabs called the doctor again and tried to make an appointment. He called later on saying that they were booked all week but they might be able to slip me in if I went down there around noon and "was patient and brought a book". I frankly did not feel up to going to sit in the office and waiting for hours with that much pain and I was so woozy with lack of sleep that I didn't think I'd be abel to manage the bus or cab so I told Sabs to forget about it. My mother had told me that if I didn't feel better in a few hours, to go to the E.R. if the doctor couldn't see me. I fell back asleep and didn't wake up again until just after noon.

I spoke to my mother again around then, feeling much better, the pain had settled down to a barely noticeable dull ache and I was able to get up and walk around. I started drinking lots and lots of juice and plopped down in front of the computer since I didn't feel up to much else. Around 2pm, the doctor's office called asking where I was and why I'd missed my "appointment". "What appointment?" says I, "My boyfriend said, you might have been able to see me around noon, but that it wasn't a sure thing and I wasn't feeling up to sitting around in your waiting room for possibly more than an hour without being able to lie down." "Oh no no," answers the receptionist/nurse, "I made an appointment for you and we were expecting you." "Oh ... well, I'm very sorry but there was some miscommunication then." I answer, very confused and just a bit annoyed about the whole thing. "At any rate, I was in a lot of pain and couldn't wait, so I called my mother who is a nurse and she diagnosed as follows." "Oh well, if you're feeling better then she's probably right, continue with the fluids and avoid solid food and if you start feel worse, give us a call, but we're booked solid all week and I won't be able to slide you in again until next week." This got a very dirty look from me at the phone and mumbled comments under my breath about the state of the practice of medicine in this country ... I mean ... what EVER happened to HOUSE CALLS huh? Between 7:30 and 9:30 that morning I wasn't really in any shape to leave the house to go sit in their gosh forsaken office and moan and groan in their chairs. Yeesh!

So I hung up, apologizing again and padded into the kitchen to make myself some herbal tea. My new books from Amazon arrived later in the day and I curled up on the couch with a good book on early film history and drank about a million cups of chamomile tea. And I felt a lot better. In fact by the time I went to bed again the pain was gone altogether and I slept mostly through the night, with just a lingering tenderness in my side. The next day it flared up again, though not as badly as before so I popped two more Advil, drank more fluids and again felt better. Enough to go to work and eat real food.

On Friday I wound up sleeping late and missed work again. Mostly because this whole thing was just plain exhausting. I really hate it when my body conks out on me. I'm still a bit sore in that area, but I'm keeping very close watch on it, because if the pain flares up again you can bet your behind that I'm heading straight for the hospital. Because pain like that is no joke and if my doctor can't see me on short notice, then what the heck else am I supposed to do? Grin and bear it?

The interesting part was when I was getting dressed today, Sabs suddenly pointed out that I had a large yellow bruise on my left hip. This bruise was at about the right level for door handles and the Metro turnstile which I bump into all the time. So the whole thing may not even have been a bug, but simply a bad bruise on the muscle, which combined with a bad juju meal for my system caused increased pressure and swelling in the general vicinity. This would explain why it was so far over on the left (not really on my stomach at all). All in all it's just rather strange, so I'm keeping an eye on what my body is saying.

Hrmm. Well I think I've rambled on about that ailment enough. Basically it just scared the bejeezus out of me or I wouldn't have gone on and on at such length. Reminders of mortality are never easy to take in stride