The third in a series about how we are built and the history of our corporeal selves.

In relativity to my other medical dramas*, I don’t think I get actually (communicatively) sick any more than a regular person. I had some minor crud about two weeks ago, but mostly what takes me out of the action is one of my other tricks: headaches, Crohn’s, inexplicable phenomena.

Then again, the combination of my ‘roids and my 6MP (Leukemia/Lymphoma drug) mean I’m a walking sick-factory currently, my immune system all repressed ‘n shiz. So, don’t cough on me. I don’t want your shit-itis.**

So, again, what’s the sickest you’ve ever been? I’ll try, but my stories are weak.

• I think the sickest I’ve ever been, and possibly the most (extended) pain I’ve ever been in: my right ovary kind of “exploded” in 2003.

  I woke up one Saturday morning after being out late (DJ Tiesto? Maybe?) and I felt like I had appendicitis. My lower right side wouldn’t quit pulsing and seething.

  Afoot, I limped over to Chez Clay (I lived in an apartment on NW Trinity Place at the time; Goose Hollow/Chez Clay–where my boyfriend at the time, Sasha, lived–was about 3/4 mile) in the pre-dawn. We begged Dave Hood (another Chez Clay resident and good friend) for his truck (I was car-less at the time–need more parentheses?) and we drove over to Good Samaritan Hospital on NW 23rd. (where I was born, for what it’s worth).

  I’m not going to sugar-coat this with heroics: I was scared. At the time, much more than now, considering, I was not a hospital person. The hospital had to call in a specialist to do an emergency ultrasound and ufortunately the technician had the “bedside manner of a rock” (thanks for the quote, S.M.). Fluid in my abdomen: indicated burst ovarian cyst.

  OK, ovarian cysts–common. I’m not claiming that to this point anything out of the realm of the unfortunate-but-ordinary had happened. I didn’t feel that bad. The ER docs gave me a scrip for Vicodin and sent me on my way. Girls get these. Ovaries asplode occasionally. Whoop dee doo.

  The next couple of days were spend in a Vicodin haze–more on that later–but by Tuesday I was fine for work. I remember (foggily) getting a ride home from Aileen, and having her drop me in the parking lot at the Stadium Fred Meyer, a block from where I lived. I was shopping for edible necessities when I started to notice that I felt amiss. It was like cramps or gas but unremitting.

  By the time I got home I was moaning and probably intolerable. Every breath burnt. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t sit up without pain. I called an on-call doctor who told me to take more Vicodin. I felt confused and nauseated.

  The next day I couldn’t get out of bed. I felt like every piece of my insides had been scraped against a hot, jagged brick. There was a lot of heat and pressure. Doctor visit.

  As it turns out, my ovarian cyst, the one that got all blowy-uppy, was not small. Probably on the order of multiple centimeters in diameter. The blood and viscera it had pressure-washed my insides with: of considerable quantity. When blood sits, even in a sterile area like your abdominal cavity, it goes acidic. It coats your internal organs. It sits there on the tiny hairs. Burning. Every breath.

  What’s this called? Peritonitis. There are two general outcomes: nothing, or fatal. The latter happens when you get it as a result of a burst appendix. It’s an inflammation of the walls of your abdominal cavity and its various angry organs. In my case, the contents of the explosion were sterile, so I wasn’t going to die or anything like that. It was merely incredibly horrible. The prescription: fistfuls of opiates.

  I inhaled Vicodin and got worse. My instructions were to lie still and go to the ER if I a) puked or b) ran a temperature. Days passed. I got more confused. Finally I officially thought I was going to die and called another on-call doctor.

  “Try,” he said, “reducing your Vicodin dose.”

  Total. Fucking. Miracle. (Sorry). Within a few hours I felt like I could put pieces of a sentence together and I realized that the decorative mosquito netting on my four-poster bed was not a death shroud suspended above me. The little white lights I had wrapped around the bed posts became distinct and individual again. I will never forget the deluded look of that bed, that bedroom, its cream walls and dim light and cream carpet and dim everything.

  And then I realized it was nearly two weeks later. And then I got better.

I think that is enough. Your turn.

* My stepmother says “You’re the sickest healthy person I know” and Kes says “you won the medical lottery. Again. And again.”
** For Mike: “I don’t have a knife.” Total inside joke inappropriate for blogging. re: Sean Penn