Derek left for his island hopping TDY a few days ago, and it didn't even take a full 24 hours of his absence for my trouble magnet to activate.
As I was walking back into the house from grabbing my laundry out of the garage, always a dicey situation for me because the garage is where the cockroaches (cockaroach) live, and they're the size of dinosaurs and I hate them and I am so afraid they're going to do a mean version of Joe's Apartment on me, so I do my best to not be in the garage. I've been relying on throwing my laundry in with my husband's so he goes and does all of the garage entering, but he's not here to do his laundry which means I have to do my own laundry and brave the cockroaches. Cockaroaches. Anyway, I'm walking back inside with my laundry, and the basket must have bumped the pile of lumber Derek put up against the wall (cat tree lumber. He's very crafty), because it all came crashing down, tumbly bumbly, pell mell, onto my poor little foot. My right foot. My big toe, specifically. The big toe I've broken two times prior to this.
I don't know if I'm meant to even have this as a functioning toe. It would appear not.
It. Fucking. HURT. I definitely cried for a solid ten minutes. Ugly crying, too. Like...I was sitting on the floor of my kitchen, howling like a beaten dog that got the wind knocked out of her for cheating at foot grapes.
I messaged Allen to tell him what I did, because he was there when I broke my toe the first time. I tell people I broke it on a run, but the truth is, I broke it just....walking across the apartment. Allen was sitting in the living room, I was walking out of my room, and I have no idea what even the fuck happened, but suddenly the air was filled with a CRACK sound, Allen asked me what the fuck the noise was, and I crumpled over and told him I was pretty fucking sure I had just broken my fucking toe. The second time was months later, and I actually WAS on a run, and I don't even know how I did it, but I was running and suddenly my toe snapped again and I had to limp home.
Derek was in air to Guam when I broke my toe, I think, and once he saw my messages, he insisted I go to the hospital. I said I didn't need to, I had iced my foot, the swelling had gone down, I had broken it dozens of times before (citation needed), and the doctors wouldn't do anything but x-ray me and tell me to not be such a clumsy binch (citation needed). I told him that I'd go if the swelling didn't go down, knowing full well that it already had and my foot was fine, just tender, as per usual.
When I woke up the next day, the ugly bruising had started, but the numbness from my toe had traveled up my calf, and it freaked me out a little. When I got ready for class, I noticed my entire foot was numb but still oddly tender at the same time, and I had pain all across my foot instead of localized in my big toe. During class, I started to get a really weird sensation in my foot and up my calf, so I decided to go to the hospital, and this is why I wanted to write this blog post.
My visit to the hospital was fucking WILD.
Super Crazy Fucked Up Hospital: A Story in Three Parts
Story one: Steve McQueen's The Great Escape (but not really at all)
The Hawaiian islands are small. Oahu isn't so tiny that you can like, see the other side from the north shore or anything, but it certainly isn't large. Since Oahu is the most populated island in the archipelago, space here is limited. You have no idea how much you take things like large parking lots for granted until you don't fucking have them. When I got to Tripler, there wasn't a single parking space open. I drove around for a solid fifteen minutes, hoping to score one, but I kept getting cutting off by my own kindness: I would let people into the parking lot from the road, and they'd gratefully drive on in, but instead of doing the polite thing and leaving the next open space for the person behind them who let them in (me), they would jack the space and I would scream in my car. The audacity of this bitch, I would scream in my head. After fifteen minutes, I gave up (I also stopped letting people in after this happened twice. Fuck them, the cutthroat world of finding a parking space has no time for good intentions) and drove over to the valet station. It's a flat rate of 7 bucks, no skin off my nose, and I was never going to find a parking space on my own. There were three cars in front of me, but we're going to talk about the blue car directly ahead of mine.
When it was her turn, the lady explains to the valet attendant that she couldn't find a parking spot, was there another area of the hospital she could go to for parking? The attendant said no, she could either valet her car for seven dollars, or she could keep driving around the lot and wait for one to open up. She let him know she had already been driving around for twenty minutes and she really had to get to her appointment. He asked her if she wanted to valet her car, and she said she'd rather not be forced to pay for something because of a lack of space that isn't her fault. Which, I'll be honest, resonates with me. I was slightly irritated that I had to pay for valet, but time is money, and I reconciled with that pretty quickly. He said he understood, and he waved her forward. She wasn't going forward, though.
She was angry.
She went from 0 to 10 REAL fuckin' fast, and started yelling about how this is inconveniencing her and it isn't fair that she's forced to feed money into something when there should be a better option available (umwut. We're on an island, lady, they can't just, like, make space), and the valet attendant is just standing there, taking it (he must get this a lot) and apologizing, and then she opens her car door, and my head seriously took this as a sign she was going to physically fight this man. She did not....she made a run for it.
Here's the thing, though:
She was fucking LARGELY pregnant. No shit kinda pregnant. No mistaking her for bloated, or overweight, she was like, full on watermelon-in-her-tummy-space knocked the fuck up.
I don't know if anybody has ever tried to run when they're that visibly fucking laden down with oven buns, but it's next to impossible. And yet, here she was, trying to run away from a 7 dollar charge. Her run was more like a dying duck waddle, though. Have you ever seen a dying duck? I haven't but I imagine it is the saddest waddle you've ever seen, and that's exactly what she was doing. Like a cartoon cowboy with the exaggerated bowed legs, she just kind of Godzilla-shifted each foot in front of the other at a pace that I bet felt fast to her, but to me, it was very much not. And I laughed out loud. I couldn't got damn help it. It was the most ridiculous thing I had seen in ages, and because my window was down, the valet attendant, who had thus far just been incredulously watching her go, not moving a muscle, heard me, looked over, and just shrugged. That was the only acceptable reaction, honestly. He called over the security guard posted up by the entrance of the hospital, and I have to assume the woman got cited for something, I just don't know what that citation would be. Another attendant came over and moved the car out of the way, and I couldn't find out what happened afterward, because it was my turn to pay the attendant and go inside. I wanted to laugh with him about the entire thing, but he didn't seem very chatty, so I just paid the fee and limped over to emergency.
Story two: The Zombie Uprising Starts in three, two.....
Emergency sent me down to radiology, offered me a wheelchair (which I didn't take, because I'm a fucking saint that understands people with REAL breaks in their bones....and pregnant women who are exhausted from "running" away from their financial obligations...need them more than I do) but not someone to push me in it, and I was on my way. When I got checked in to radiology, they sat me next to a lady who was with someone that I assume was her mother. The mother appeared to be quite old....her skin was very thin looking, she had sparse white hair, and a cornucopia of liver spots. She also looked beaten the fuck up. My guess was she had been in a car accident. Her arm was heavily bandaged, and she was clutching it to her chest; her face was swollen and bruised and cradled in her good hand; her eyes were locked in the wincing position; she had a hugely swollen bump on her neck; and she had some wounds smattered across her body. Car accident seemed like a good guess. I didn't want to gawk, even though I was very curious about her condition, so I just read my book on Micronesia and minded my own business.
It's important to mention part of the ambiance here: I don't ACTUALLY know what the sound is, but the noise is very specific to the radiology department. At random intervals, this very loud grumble reverberates through the entire ward. It sounds to me like a subway rushing overhead. The first time I heard it, I very literally thought the hospital was collapsing. it's very loud, very scary, and I have yet to get used to it.
So, I'm sitting in my chair, doing my best to look like I'm minding my own business when in reality I'm trying to figure out what happened to the old lady by listening in on the younger lady's conversation with her, when three things happened all at the same fucking time and my brain was like RUN BITCH IT'S THE FUCKING END OF THE GODDAMN WORLD AND YOU ARE IN THE WRONG FUCKING PLACE HERE COME THE GOD DAMN ZOMBIES!!!!
Thing the first: the loud subway noise crashed its way into my ears;
Thing the second: the old woman started slowly, but with increasing volume every second, moaning;
Thing the third: the lights started flashing while the slowest ever instrumental version of Rock A Bye Baby started playing over the loudspeaker.
It was thing the third that really fucking kicked my brain into gear, because what even the fucking fuck is that shit? It was such a slow version, and the loudspeakers weren't great quality, so the music was broken up and crackling, to boot. It really was like a god damn horror movie, and I wasn't alone in thinking this. As my hands were gripping the chair arms, getting ready to hoist me up with the quickness so I could make a mad dash for the exit, the younger lady's hands were ALSO gripping the chair arms. We looked at each other, and she looked as terrified as I felt. Which was immensely comforting. She vocalized what I myself had been thinking, just without as many expletives peppering the sentence, with a hushed whisper of "what the hell is going on??" I decided that I'd just shrug my shoulders so I didn't look like I was some sort of horror movie alarmist, and I cracked a joke about being trapped in a nightmare or something. It eased the tension enough for her, because she laughed, but my sympathetic nervous system was like YOU LAUGH NOW BITCH BUT NOBODY WILL BE LAUGHING WHEN WE'RE ALL FUCKING DEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD! RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
I overheard a lady down the hallway trying to ease the fear of her child, who was allowed to cry over the whole affair because she's a child, but that's unfair, and I wanted to be able to terror weep in the radiology department hallway, and she explained it by saying, "they do that to tell everyone in the hospital that a mommy just had her baby! It's the hospital's way of telling everyone something wonderful just happened."
I fucking call bullshit, you gigantic fucking liar, that is the sound of the impending uprising of the recently clinically dead but now somehow completely alive again, we all need to run. I didn't SAY that, I was only like that, but since the little girl wasn't worldly enough to be scared anymore, I figured that explanation could work for me and the lady next to me. So I shared the information I just heard, made another joke about it being like the world's least fun horror movie because we were in it, and got back to my reading. My heart was fucking pounding still, but I played it cool.
Story three: Is that your given name, or a really bad life choice?
After getting my x-rays and surviving the zombie horde scenario I elaborately conjured in my brain, I was sent back down to emergency to wait for my results. I walked over to the window to sit down and read, but I still felt a little antsy from my World War(d) Z moment (see what I did there? Suck it Brooks family, you're not the only geniuses in the world), so I opted to stagger around the waiting room on my dumb foot. A nurse came out and called a name. I heard what he said, but I figured I had misheard the name, and I stopped, looking around for the person he was calling, waiting for them to correct what had to be a mispronunciation. Nobody was paying attention at all, and I shot a look over at the nurse. The nurse looked very obviously aggravated, and I watched him take in a deep breath and sigh as he yelled out, much louder now, "XMEN?"
Pardon. The fuck. Out of. Me.
This time, a young gentleman in the corner of the waiting room perked up, raised his hand, and hobbled over to the nurse. No name correction hollered across the room. I seriously thought this was a fucking joke. It had to be a joke. The nurse had the same inclination, I could tell. He looked at the young man and said his name again for confirmation, "Xmen?" The young man nodded agreement. This was no trick. His fucking name was Xmen, and I was fucking DELIGHTED. I messaged Allen really quickly to tell him the magic that just happened, and his response was the only appropriate one: "The fuck".
Exactly.
I told him this was the best hospital ever, and I meant it.
I got called in a few minutes later, me and my stupid boring dumb dumb of a name that isn't Xmen at all, and walked do my room, being again asked if I needed a wheelchair. I again refused, and hobbled my way to my hospital bed. To my absolute joy, I was placed in the room next to Xmen the man. I was going to wait until I left the hospital to tell Allen that I had been put in the room next to Xmen the man, the real life man, but I overheard the discussion he and the nurse were having, and my sympathetic nervous system, the nosy, overreacting little fuckbox of a thing it is, kicked itself on again. Here is the conversation I had at Allen:
Me: Update. Xmen is in the room next to me.
Me: His symptoms sound like LITERAL Xman symptoms, like he's about to go full Cyclops in this piece.
Me: He says his eyes have been burning and the drops they gave him aren't working, his eyes are getting worse.
Me: HE SAID HE CAN SEE THINGS IN HIS EYES.
Me: And the nurse is like...oh my god, I can see. Your eyes are so red I can barely see your irises.
Allen: Reminds me of that girl who didn't change her contacts for months.
Me: A nurse just rushed over to Xmen's room and was like, ok, well, because this has been more than a week, and we don't know what's going on with you, we're going to move you over there.
Me: And he protested a little bit and she interrupted and was like, we can talk about it over there. We need to get you over there NOW.
Me: WHAT THE FUCK EVEN IS THIS HOSPITAL????
Allen: Goddamn seriously
Me: I'm wearing my Sell Your Soul shirt today, too. I'm fucking ripe for an ironic plague scenario.
While I'm sure it wound up being something benign (I mean, not for Xmen, but for the rest of the world), my brain was cooking up fucked up ideas, like telling itself that Xmen was going to wind up like that woman whose body was super toxic and smelled and everybody that came into contact with her got sick with some mysterious illness and she died and it was fucking fucked up and crazy (Gloria Ramirez, also dubbed as "The Toxic Lady", got a pretty unfair shake, honestly. There are two fairly sound explanations for what happened at that hospital, and neither of them involve movie-esque plot devices. Did knowing that stop my brain from being fucking bonkers? I think we all know the answer to that). I was kind of panicking, and telling myself THIS is why I don't go to the hospital.
.....Really, brain? THAT'S why you don't go to the hospital? To avoid people named Xmen who have some sort of eye infection gone rogue that you interpret as actually being a plague of biblical proportions even though you don't believe in the fucking bible? That's why you don't go to the hospital?
In reality, I don't go to the hospital because I'm terrified of catching a stomach bug. Thankfully, I only lightly fractured my foot in seven places, I didn't even need pain meds. The doctor told me that the weird sensations and numbness and pain in places I should have pain was probably because the lumber fell across my nerve and shocked it, so not to be surprised by strange feelings for the next few weeks.
That's a relief, but unless something wild happens, I think it's best to keep me and my imagination out of the fucking emergency room for as long as I can manage.
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