Lolita (the laptop) and I are sitting in Starbucks. I asked my boss for the day off to relax and chill by myself for a while. But I am Wendy - physically and emotionally incapable of enjoying any relaxing
me time. So I booked a doctor's appointment for this morning. Just got out. After more than 20 years of symptoms, after more than 20 years of not knowing what the next moment would be like, I have finally taken the leap to pharmacology. I am hoping the path to freedom lies in something called Effexor.
Today is a bad sinus day for me. I woke up all sneezy and congested. It might be that I sucked a bit of cat into the ol' filter while I was asleep. It happens sometimes. Unfortunately, if the allergen gets stuck on my right side (which it is today), it will affect me all day. The whole right side of my face will swell up, and my eye will nearly close. It hardly affects the left at all. Is this just because I'm RightGirl? No. It is because there is scar tissue in my right nasal passage that keeps it from working properly. It's minor, but on a stuffed-up day it is pure hell. The scar tissue is from a tube being inserted and later ripped from my right nostril. I don't remember much about it, except that I woke up with blood on my face. Well, maybe "woke up" isn't the right term. Perhaps "came back from the dead" would be a more descriptive turn of phrase.
When I was 17, River Phoenix and I had the honor of dying on the same day. How cozy. About twelve hours after he stopped writhing on the street in front of the Viper Room, I stopped breathing. I ceased to be. I was expired. Very much an ex-Wendy. (Before you roll your eyes, no, the two events were not related. I liked River Phoenix, but not
that much.) Earlier in the evening of that chilly Halloween, I sat alone in my room, methodically swallowing 80 over-the-counter sleep aids. Over and over I refilled my water glass from the pitcher I had thought to bring into the room. Clever Wendy. Soon the pitcher was empty. The four little plastic bottles were empty. I was sloshing. I had to pee! So I staggared from my room to the bathroom across the hall. My dad figured I was drunk (Ours was a household in which that was pretty normal. The 53 year old and the 17 year old often drank together. It made the life we led without my mother that much easier to bear. He figured that if he didn't bug me about my drinking, I wouldn't bug him about his.). I peed. And then I tried to stand back up. Dad came running when he heard the crash.
There was some yelling - "What did you drink!" He didn't believe me when I said water. "Stand up!" I can't. I couldn't. I was dead below the waist. You coulda stuck a fork in me. My arms turned red. Cooked lobster red. Thirteen years later I still don't know what that quirky side effect was all about. I wasn't exactly in a position to ask. "Stand up!" He hauled me up under my arms, I wobbled and shook, and went right back down again. My legs don't work, Dad. They're asleep. I'm going to sleep. *Ping!* The light went on in his head. After all, wasn't his grandmother the one who took a pitcher of martinis out to the garage 50 years before, and started up the car? He called an ambulance.
Hospital #1 was near our apartment. I died on their ER table. Just for a little while. They used those sadistic waffle irons that their oh-so-fond of to break one of my ribs. Oh, and to bring me back from the dead. They stuck a tube up my nose and down my throat, injected it with charcoal, and let me puke till I was empty. "How many did she take? We need to count them!!" WTF? Like, someone from the public health system is actually going to take the time to go through my murky black vomit with tweezers to make sure they got 'em all? Bizarre. In a cruel twist of fate, a seven year old boy died on the table next to mine. His mother had been drinking before she got behind the wheel. He died. I lived. She got arrested. I have a scar in my nose. What a fucking waste.
The hospital, while willing to inspect my vomit, didn't want to take responsibility for my care because I was under 18. They stuck me in another ambulance and shipped me downtown to the children's hospital. I was stoned out of my mind, but I remember being able to see out the back window of the ambulance. "Is it snowing? On Halloween?" The attendant confirmed it, and I went back to sleep. After a week, I was sent home as if nothing had happened. No referrals, no meds, let's not speak of it again.
While that was the only time I have been dead, it wasn't even the worst day my mind and I have ever had. There have been panic attacks, sharks surrounding my bed daring me to get up, all-encompassing depression, another brief hospital stay (they put me on Zoloft, but took me off of it when I told them I was enjoying it. fuckers), a cognative behavioral therapist, a hypnotherapist, psychologists and psychiatrists since I was 8 years old, insomnia, too much sleep, eating too much, not eating enough, a road trip across America because I was having a bad day, a couple of social workers, endless tears and screaming and mood swings, many lost jobs, an expulsion from highschool... and now Effexor.
I'll keep you posted.
