I Wish I Had Gone to the Hospital the Second This All Started
It’s been almost a week and this attack is still going strong.
“Do I try to take off work this week and starve it out at home?” I asked every member of my team, as I woke up feeling worse 5 days in than a couple before. (You can imagine their replies involved such acronyms as E and/or R.)
I wish I had gone to the hospital the second this all started. I counted and think this is my 21st attack in 6 years. I’ve also learned that laying low (which, for me, means not doing my job or driving my children around while low-blood-sugaring because ethically: that stupid)… feels the same in or out. One has more support and pain control; The other: cats.
I had eaten a salad. One of those little Walmart pre-packaged circular ones. Then I added dried cranberries, candied pecans, gluten free croutons and more buttermilk ranch than any self respecting human should ever add… and it tasted as good as it sounds. (Or maybe you have tastebuds and that sounds disgusting.)
“I feel so strongly for you,” an online friend said a day prior, “There is no way to heal unless you are on IVs. Even then it’s terrible. NPO is the only way to calm the crazy.”
I need you to imagine how good that salad tasted because… though I thought I was ready for food, I woke up on Day 5 crunched over in pain, realizing my work days were ticking on without me, and I only have a couple to be ready for the next weekend of shows.
“I am so sorry that this is happening at the worst time for you,” a favorite nurse said in email. She talks like she’s known a patient for ages and makes me wonder if they give Daisy awards with cash money prizes because she deserves it. “I know how long you have been preparing for these productions.”
My heart is hit like a fraught freight train. (Or a Ranch covered salad hurtling towards an inflamed bile duct.)
“This always happens around shows,” my husband said the day it started. It happened before a big show in New York once. It happened the day I flew home from a week of performances in Seattle. It happened the night we wrapped one of our first evening length Company shows; I ate a piece of pizza on the curb at 3 AM with one of my best friends, laughing. It happened about a week before @ was honored at the Kennedy Center.
“It also just happened before Thanksgiving when I was finally relaxing,” I want to argue to he. Myself. No one. Everyone.
How ironic that the times when I’m the most hydrated, most “physically fit”, and most likely to eat a salad: I find the most pain. Go eat some curbside pizza and laugh with your damn friends. And then have a salad too. (I won’t right now. Don’t worry.)
There is no right or wrong pattern, in all my years of study. You can do exactly what they say to do… and still not outrun your shadow.
Eat the f*cking pizza.
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