125/365: 2006-2007

Sunday, 28 September 2008.

 

40 Years in 40 Days [ view the entire set ]

An examination and remembrance of a life at 40.

 

For the 40 days leading up to my 40th birthday, I intend to use my 365 Days project to document and remember my life and lay bare what defines me. 40 years, 40 qualities, 40 days.

 

Year 39: 2006-2007

 

At the beginning of October, 2006, Kurt and I were beside ourselves with excitement. Kurt's team, the Cardinals, and my team, the Tigers, would meet in the World Series. We joked about how romantic and perfect it was, and we trash-talked each other's teams, gently ribbing and teasing when someone made an error or struck out.

 

I would miss part of that series, however, because I was in the hospital. I'd had an episode of heart palpitations while driving to work. I'd always had occasional palpitations, even as a teenager, but they were always over just as soon as they'd begun. This time, they didn't stop. I felt my field of vision closing in front of me, so I pulled over to the side of the road, sure I was going to pass out. I thought, you've got to be kidding me. This is how I'm going to go? Sitting by the side of the highway during the morning commute to my soulless corporate cubicle? And then it stopped. I sat there for a minute, just breathing and making sure that it really was over, then got back on the road and drove to my office. When I got there, I told my boss what had happened, and that I needed to go to the hospital to get checked out.

 

When I walked into the emergency room and told them that I thought I was having heart trouble, they didn't even bother writing my name down before whisking me back into the treatment area. They hooked me up to every conceivable machine, did a CT scan, and took vials of blood to test. Nothing turned up. They suspected it was a combination of stress, lack of sleep, and having just finished a course of prescription decongestants, but they kept me overnight for observations anyway. They set me up in a room in the cardiac wing with wires hanging from my chest and abdomen. Nurses down the hall monitored my heart rate and blood pressure. The next morning, they did an echocardiogram (heart ultrasound). Still nothing. It was time to face facts, the doctor said. I was too stressed. I needed to chill out. I rolled my eyes. There was no way that was going to happen. In addition to the stressful job, I had also begun taking design and metalworking classes to indulge my interest in jewelry design. My schedule wasn't going to be getting any easier for months. Then, as if to mock his own admonition to relax, he informed me that the CT scan had turned up a mysterious mass on my liver. And thus began my weird health odyssey.

 

The doctors suspected that the mass on my liver was a giant hemangioma (basically a big, blood-filled, internal birthmark), but they needed to do an MRI to be sure. The MRI confirmed the diagnosis. I had a very large blood-filled sac on my liver, and if it broke open, I could die. Unfortunately, the surgery to remove it would be just as likely to kill me, so my best option was to simply make sure I never got hit really hard in the liver. Well, OK.

 

The MRI, in turn, had turned up something looking suspiciously like gall stones. I was immediately scheduled for a consultation with a gastrointestinal surgeon. The surgeon was iffy on whether or not to remove the gall bladder. If I didn't want kids, he said, it was a no brainer: leave it in. If I had any plans to get pregnant in the future, then it was a bit more complicated. If I had a gallstone attack while pregnant, it could be both excruciating and dangerous, but, he noted, also highly unlikely. I was having some symptoms that were somewhat consistent with gall stones, but he felt they were likely something more pedestrian, like IBS. He shoved me along to a gastroenterologist.

 

The gastroenterologist (who for all the world looked exactly like a guy I once had a huge crush on) decided he'd better do a colonoscopy and endoscopy. I reported for "duty" and just as the doctor (who, did I mention, looked exactly like a guy I once had a huge crush on?) sat down to go to work, I gratefully slipped under the anesthesia. When I awoke, I had a vague memory of choking on something, and nothing else. Kurt stayed at my bedside while I slowly came out of the fog, breaking wind like a frat boy at a Mexican rodeo. Now that's love, I thought. The -oscopies didn't turn up anything, either, and so I walked away from my medical odyssey with nothing but a smaller bank account and a paranoid desire that nobody ever punch me in the liver.

 

That was not to be the end of my trials and tribulations, though. In late July, shortly before my brother was to come to Chicago for a visit, my apartment was invaded by bird mites. The closet in my bedroom featured a mysterious portal to the outside. It had been boarded up loosely and, other than some idle speculation as to what its original purpose was, I didn't think much about it. That spring, some pigeons had begun nesting there, and when the babies hatched it set up such a ruckus that I couldn't sleep whenever they were awake. I anxiously awaited the day the babies would leave the nest. Unfortunately, when they did, the mites that had been feeding on them, poured into the house through the portal in search of other food. They found me.

 

The next month was hell. Pest control could do nothing to stop them. Despite them having told me that they wouldn't be interested in biting me because I was not a bird, my body was covered, head to toe, with painful welts. I began to research the problem on the internet, and what I uncovered filled me with horror and hopelessness. Bird mites are notoriously hard to get rid of, seem almost random in their choice of target (often leaving others in the same house untouched), and impervious to most pest control chemicals. Their life cycle can be rapid, reproducing and multiplying after just days, or they can adjust to sub-optimal environments by slowing their life cycle. I felt trapped and doomed, and I needed to get out, so I just walked away. I took myself and the cats and some clothing (dryer heat is one of the few things that kills the mites outright) and left the apartment and almost everything I owned. I got the cats cleaned up at the vet, and then moved in with Don W., an old roommate and friend of mine from college. I got in the shower with my clothes on, stripped down in the hot water, put my clothes in a garbage bag, and enjoyed the feeling of being safe once again. I lived with Don W. for the next three months, until I was able to get a short-term lease on a furnished apartment near work. I was planning to move to Kentucky to be with Kurt in January.

 

Kurt, meanwhile, had plans of his own. My birthday happened to fall on Homecoming weekend that year, and he had something special in mind for a birthday gift. On Friday night (the night before my birthday), as we were getting into our sleeping bags in the tent, Kurt asked me to wait a moment before going to sleep. He had something he wanted to show me. He turned around and fumbled around in his bag in the corner of the tent. When he turned back to me, he was holding out a small white box, opened to reveal a ring. He put it in my hands and said, "I don't want to live another day having to introduce you as just my girlfriend." We cried and laughed and hugged until our eyes grew too droopy to see clearly, then snuggled back down into our sleeping bags and fell asleep.

 

Who am I?

 

I am moderately healthy, actually.

 

By all rights, I should be a complete wreck. The genetic odds are stacked against me: diabetes, heart disease, cancer, mental illness. The lifestyle odds are stacked against me. I'm fat and have spent many years abusing the hell out of body. And yet, I seem to have remained mostly untouched by the worst of what should have come to me by now. I'm probably living on borrowed time, but for now, it seems to be working.

 

I credit the generous application of bacon.

 

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