I suppose it’s time to discuss my internal organs and how they relate to being a supportive girlfriend. Let it be known that I’m thankful for having the internal organs, and that I’m not an amoeba and that I have more than a single cell to define me. I’m quite happy that my body functions almost perfectly and all I must worry about on a constant basis is my stomach: no cheese, no MSG, no excessively oily foods or I’m spending the evening face down in a toilet, sobbing for my mommy.
Only when I met The Boyfriend™ did I start having to worry about another internal organ. Well, OK like 3 internal organs, but it first started with one. No, wait. I’m going to have to get very technical here because it actually involves a fourth, and I’m sure if I were some sort of biology or anatomy major it would include more. Hell, I’m probably even using terms wrong, but whatever.
The first week of May The Boyfriend™ and I were out of town, helping me kill two girlfriend duties with one trip: spend time with his family and support him as he plays in a water polo tournament (side note: have you seen that sport? Eyes and nut sacks were gouged.). Things were going well, everything was pleasant, joy overflowed––until 3am Sunday morning when I woke up and bolted to the bathroom to pee, triggering the pain of a bladder infection to end all bladder infections. I literally crawl on my hands and knees back to the bedroom, forcing myself upright so The Boyfriend™ didn’t see what a wuss I was. I stumbled into bed and shoved my face in the pillow (this time to hide cries of pain rather than that other type of cries from a few hours prior).
The Boyfriend™ insisted on rushing me to the ER, where they wanted to hook me up to an IV full of antibiotics because my bladder is so fucked up that they’re afraid it’s in my kidneys. NO. FUCKING. WAY. Never will you bastard vampire nurses get an IV in me, do you hear? Do you? Apparently not, because you keep trying to convince me of it. Instead, they give me some industrial strength antibiotics that I’m sure if I fell into a vat of them, I’d gain mutant powers. But those three organs of suffering, the triad of grief, would be fine with pills, not IVs. The Boyfriend™ cackled maniacally, holding up his iPhone to take a picture of me. Luckily I got my middle finger up so my true feelings about the situation were documented forever.
Then he Facebook’d it.
Hate.
The last day of June, a day or two before we left for the Fourth of July to Monterey and Santa Cruz, The Boyfriend™ hosted a board game night. Just as we’re wrapping up, I got up to pee and returned from the bathroom trying to covertly clutch my abdomen. When everyone left, one long, pathetic cringe to The Boyfriend™ as I doubled over in pain had him grabbing his keys and shoving me into the car. More antibiotics were prescribed. For the next twelve days, food tasted like there were metal shavings cooked into it.
More importantly, this UTI went into my kidneys, which were swollen like rising bread with overly aggressive yeast in it. Eew. Yeast. Anyway, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t walk upright––and we were leaving in two days.
After limping around the central NorCal coast for four days––not to mention having to sleep next to The Boyfriend™ and not getting any action––I returned to a week of peace (despite the metal taste in all my food). Nothing went wrong.
So the third week of July, when we were going to Lake Tahoe, the fourth organ went afoul: my brain stopped working normally and I was nothing but anxious. Twice now I’d gotten sick and made a mess of our vacations together, and we’d only been dating four months. And this was an important trip. The Boyfriend™ was swimming a relay across Lake Tahoe with all his high school buddies. I was nervous to meet them, he was nervous for me to meet them. He wanted me to like them and them to like me, and I really just wanted to not ruin the trip. I drank tons of water, I took cranberry tablets, I watched what I ate, I went to Bar religiously, I swore off any form of booze (so sad). Healthy. I was going to be excessively healthy.
Friday night in Tahoe The Boyfriend™ and I cooked dinner. He made this crazy gourmet macaroni and cheese, so of course I had to try some. An hour later I was throwing up and sobbing on the bathroom floor because it felt like my stomach was trying to digest a boulder. Humiliation.
I passed out only to wake up the next morning with that familiar sting in my abdomen. Off we went to the Tahoe ER in Truckee. The triage nurse asked me where it hurt and how much (“The bladder and about a six on the scale.”), and if I were allergic to anything (“Tylenol.”) and if I was on any medication (“Birth control and Flonase.”). I pissed in a cup and they took me back to a room a few minutes later. The Boyfriend™ was really happy to have a rocking chair to sit in. He kept rocking back and forth while I scowled at the white walls.
“This is much nicer than the other ERs we’ve been in,” he said, continuing to rock in the chair. Really, it was like a tour at this point. We should have developed a rating system. “How many hospitals put something this comforting in their ER rooms?”
Eyes narrowed. If I could have gotten my hands on a scalpel, my first action would be to cut my bladder out of me. My second, before I died of blood loss, would be to just randomly stab somewhere on the rocking chair for no reason whatsoever. And then randomly stab the IV machine because, holy fuck, did I hate that thing. I felt myself tremble at the mere sight of the long steel pole that held bags full of creepy liquid, like something out of Frankenstein’s lab. And that hose, that line that ran from the bag all the way down into a needle that every time they tried to poke into me, I’d throw up and faint. Yeah, I fucking hated those things, more than any rocking chair, PT Cruiser or Miley Cyrus song. If I took one out before I died, or even with me as my heart beat it’s last, my mission in life would be fulfilled. Christie, IV Assassin.
The nurse came in and said he would get me something for the pain. Hurray for Advil, because I really needed it. I couldn’t even sit down. For the twenty-minute drive to Truckee, I’d slouched in my seat to prevent bending at my waist, probably in a position that would have broken my neck had there been a car accident. And, honestly, I’d wanted to die during that drive because here we went again, having to tell yet another house full of people who were just meeting me, that I was trying to make a good impression on, that I was going to the ER for the third time in the mayfly span of our relationship.
I swallowed the two pills gladly when the nurse returned, thinking, “Please, antibiotics, please work fast.”
The Boyfriend™ asked, “What painkiller did you give her?”
“Percocet,” the nurse replied and left us alone.
I kept pacing while the boyfriend suddenly stopped rocking and looked uncomfortable. “This rocking chair is meant only for this room.”
“Yes, we’re in the ob/gyn room, darling.”
Possibly to feel extra manly because he was with me, obliviously sitting a rocking chair meant for people with babies, The Boyfriend™ pulled out his iPhone. “Percocet. Seriously, I think I should look that up for some reason, see what’s in it.”
I continued pacing back and forth, holding my abdomen as his phone made clicking noises. Mental note: randomly stab the iPhone after the rocking chair and the IV contraption.
“Stupid reception, I only got part of the site download––uh, sweetie?”
I groaned in response while leaning against the hospital bed. I felt weird, like all woozy, as if my limbs weren’t working, or even responding to what I wanted them to do.
“I think there’s Tylenol in Percocet.”
Then The Boyfriend™ bolted from the room, leaving me alone to panic. I forced myself to breathe. Surely they wouldn’t give me something with Tylenol in it. I saw the nurse write it down under “Allergies.”
The door swung open and The Boyfriend™ grabbed me, hugging me tight. “OK there’s Tylenol in it.”
I started crying (OK, and nearly hyperventilating).
“It’s OK, it’s OK. It’s going to be fine.” He hugged me tighter. “They have to give you an IV of Benadryl.”
Then I started shrieking because not only was I going to die from ingesting Tylenol, I would throw up and faint first. Images of nurses calling my death time but not removing the needle from my arm, leaving that bag attached to my cold corpse. I would raise from the dead and fucking yank it out of me, you motherfucking incompetent bastards who killed me!
The ER doctor came in with the nurse. “Really? You go into anaphylactic shock from Tylenol?”
“It’s not like I just get sleepy when I take it, what the fuck?! My throat closes up!” I muttering as the room started to spin.
The only thing good was that the Percocet made me too woozy to really resist. They put me down on the hospital bed while The Boyfriend™ made me keep looking at him while they shoved a needle into the top of my hand. Like a total pussy, I just kept sobbing. Not “I’m going to die, I’m going to die” but “I don’t want an IV, I don’t want an IV.” Yeah. Total pussy.
By the time they had the IV in me, I’m pretty sure I was floating off the bed. I mean, that’s a side effect of the Percocet, right? Where was this when we needed it, twenty years ago at slumber parties, because Light As a Feather, Stiff As a Board never worked? That thought disappeared quickly when my throat started getting tight and I had to gasp for air. That’s when I started thinking, “I love IVs, I love IVs, oh my fucking god, please give me another one!”
When all was cool, and my head kept wobbling one way, and then the other like I was some bobble head toy, The Boyfriend™ disappeared for what might have been a blink, or it might have been hours. I’m really not sure, but it was for however long it took him to eat a Snickers bar and return from the gift shop with a stuffed toy dog to cheer me up.
Then he exploited my woozy state: “OK, smile. We have to add this to our ER scrap book.” And somewhere, out there, is a picture of me looking higher than a member of a 70s rock band, lying on a hospital bed hugging a stuffed dog with this creepy smile on my face. As if the humiliation could get any worse.
Oh, but it did. Because I tried to go to the bathroom. The Boyfriend™ found me passed out on the floor, next to the toilet. I’m pretty sure I peed into the toilet because there was no puddle beneath me, but he had to drag me back to the bed.
We ended up spending most of the day at the ER, and The Boyfriend™ missed practicing with the team the day before the race. He swam Lake Tahoe with no warm up, while I waited on the beach with the rest of the girlfriends and wives. At the end of the day, we returned to the cabin where I found my skin resembled bricks: so dry it was almost crunchy and that lovely shade of red. I waddled around for about two weeks after that, unable to wear a bra.
No, I hadn’t forgotten to put on sunscreen throughout the day. I just hadn’t looked at the insanely powerful antibiotics’ side effects before venturing out in support of my wonderful man. They made me extra-sensitive to the sun, and in such a high altitude, I burned to a crisp. Crispy Christie. Yummy.
But nothing bad happened at Comic Con. And we’re going to Ashland, Oregon, for the Shakespeare festival this weekend. So far I’m peeing normally and with no pain (because you totally wanted to know that). There’s no Tylenol anywhere near me. But if I do end up sick or wounded somehow, I’m just going to fucking die because I am so tired of sitting around in ERs while on vacation.
I'm also tired of not being able to have sex while on vacation.
