My computer, in case you were wondering, has not actually been repaired. It just recently decided I was allowed to use this site again, so I suppose I should take advantage of the fact. Admittedly, in my weeks without updating I've fallen out of the habit of doing so, and it's been a challenge to pick it back up again. It's much easier to just let the blog die, knowing how very few people care, but instead I'm going to press on. Because I'm sure the posts on my Facebook wall about my lack of updates will never stop.
Another reason I haven't been updating is that ever since my break started, I just haven't had anything to write about. I felt that moment creeping up on me long before my computer went on strike, of course. The number of consecutive "Episode From my Childhood" updates was a clue about that. I have to relate back to the past and tell stories from my childhood when I run out of current events to talk about and quite frankly, the events of the current variety have been absolutely boring as dirt for months. No one single event (or chain of related events) has been interesting enough or had substance enough for me to write an entry on. I suppose I could have just talked about it anyway, but this is a humor blog, not an "update everyone on the boring mundane happenings in my life" blog. If I wanted to do that, I'd use my twitter account more often. It's far more suited to notifying the world of everything in my life that nobody cares about.
There lies my problem. My life is boring. I have literally spent the last several weeks watching Let's Plays on YouTube, listening to music and playing Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning on my Xbox between sessions of ragequitting out of League of Legends.
So you know what? I'm going to do this update. And I'm going to update about the most interesting thing that's happened to me since my computer decided to boycott my blog. And I'm going to make it the funniest damn retelling of stupid pointless mundane life events there ever was, or so help me I will... probably... fail miserably to do that.
Starting from the most significant thing I can remember, let's go back a few weeks to the last two weeks of my summer semester. It was a Wednesday. I was sitting in my ASL 2 class, doing my best to pay attention in my sleep-deprived state. I was finding it a little more difficult than usual, and I suddenly noticed that I was extremely cold. Now, this isn't necessarily an extraordinary event. The SHSU classrooms are always cold. I'm fairly sure that some of the classrooms in the older buildings serve as meat lockers between semesters. My theory is that some of these buildings are so old that they're actually in a state of cryogenic freezing, and if the temperature were raised at all they would crumble to dust. This normally doesn't bother me, however, because I generate enough heat that I'm like a human space heater, so it was unusual that it would be getting to me. The follow-up to that warning sign was the loss of the feeling in my fingertips. All of them. At the same time. Now, I'm not a medical doctor. The extent of my medical knowledge comes from First Aid Merit Badge and a marathon viewing of all 9 seasons of Scrubs, but I'm still fairly sure that losing the feeling in all my fingertips is a red flag. Then when you added in the dizziness, lack of ability to focus, sluggish mental alacrity, nausea and pale complexion, I was pretty sure something was really wrong.
I made it through class and back to my apartment where I proceeded to lie on the couch because standing up made me light headed. I considered putting the symptoms into Web M.D., but given that site's accuracy, it would probably just tell me I was dying from Ebola or some rare genetic disease from the Congo. Until further notice, I was just sticking to the theory that I was either dehydrated or I was about to be the start of the zombie apocalypse, though I suppose the two aren't mutually exclusive. My friends and family were unimpressed with my decision to ride it out on the couch, however, and I was sent to the doctor. And by doctor, I mean the free clinic on campus.
Normally when you go to the campus clinic without an appointment, they have you make an appointment and come back later unless it's an emergency. Now, I was still fairly convinced this was the furthest thing from an emergency and I just needed a few cups of Powerade to cure a moderate case of dehydration. But they had me see a nurse anyway. She asked a lot of nursey questions, checked her chart a lot, and went back and forth between me and the doctor several times.
Then the doctor came in and asked me a bunch of questions with a very concerned face, took my temperature, etc.
I was still convinced that I was just dehydrated, but I did have to admit that it was very peculiar for dehydration to cause a 102.6 fever. I had also never known it to cause my blood pressure to drop significantly anytime I stood up. Ultimately, I remained unconcerned until they started talking about sending me to the ER.
Now, here's a little fun fact about me: I hate hospitals. And when I say "hate," I mean "completely and utterly despise with the burning intensity of a thousand suns." They make me nervous and anxious and I feel trapped when I'm there. Probably because when I was eighteen, I had a cyst removed from my throat and an appendectomy within a few months of each other and neither time was a pleasant experience. Over those visits, I've learned that I'm allergic to just about every kind of anesthetic they have, including morphine which gives me hives, and I also react to painkillers by vomiting every ten minutes or so. Also, when I had appendicitis, I was catheterized. Which I didn't know until I was recovering and suddenly found that trying to use the restroom was excruciatingly painful in ways that pain should never be experienced.
So in my mind, when someone says "Emergency Room," my brain associates those words with getting stuck with needles full of liquid fire, waking up with scars in strange places, and finding that things aren't working quite the way they're supposed to and it hurts to pee. It's an experience similar to being abducted by aliens, or a typical night on the town in Los Angeles. (Zing!)
They must have taken my blood pressure at least ten times in those couple of hours. I suppose it wasn't a mystery when they discovered that my heart rate was extremely fast, and I suspect it had less to do with the illness and more to do with the sheer panic I was trying to suppress at the mention of a hospital visit. Fortunately, when I decided to share my strong disinterest in an ER visit with the doctor, she agreed to do what she could to keep that from happening.
In the end, I was sent home with my cousin with a bottle of pedialyte and a ban from eating certain foods (see: anything tasty) because I wasn't allowed to be alone in case my condition worsened. I got a four-day antibiotic aimed at covering a wide range of possible causes, and that was the end of it. The fever lasted for three days, and the cause was never really determined.
And that's the story of how I ended up getting two blood tests, a bottle of pedialyte, a five-day ban from eating anything good, and a $70 bill for what I'm still convinced was a case of moderate dehydration.
-The Sarcastic Soul-
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