Sick again... or still

I rolled over to face away from the beast beside me, spewing some foul concoction of stomach acids, last night’s alcohol and weight loss into the air like a toxic mist. The caretaker-husband who finds me sexiest when I’m sick; who dutifully sacrifices his sleep to drive me to the hospital for my daily infusion even though I beg him not to. Now that I am no longer stoned on oxycodone I might not be able to wash my hair efficiently, but I’m certain I could drive the car! He insisted. I capitulated. He complained. I was careful not to wake the beast as I rolled; careful not to disturb the IV in my left arm; careful not to wake up the pain that had taken up residence in my right arm like a guest that stayed too long at a Holiday Inn. The unwanted guest was the reason for the left arm’s inaccessibility. Why didn’t they drip the antibiotics directly into the infected arm?  Perhaps they couldn’t find a vein in that swollen mass. Perhaps a needle couldn’t penetrate the skin, taut and tough from the heat and stretching. Perhaps they simply didn’t want to touch it fearing my reaction should an errant poke release a bolt of pain that would course through my body and delay the procedure as they tried to peel me off the ceiling, or the floor, more likely, I thought, remembering the prodding fingers of the physician’s assistant at the orthopedist who incorrectly diagnosed tendonitis and sent me home with instructions to call if it got hot or red. That took a few hours. By then, all the people who could help had left for the weekend, leaving instead a list of Doctors-On-Call whose only advice was to call someone else or spend another day in the emergency room taking every test imaginable and then being sent home with a broad spectrum antibiotic and list of follow-up doctors. And pain meds. Blessed pain meds. Isn’t that how I got here in the first place? Never listen to a P.A.! There was the P.A. in Westport years ago who told me that my six-year-old son had masses in his legs and we should watch them for a few weeks to see if they grew, until the Doctor came in a suggested these worried parents might like to know TODAY if their son had cancer. This P.A. knowingly pressed the most painful spots around my elbow until I came to one that made my body feel as if it had been opened at the soles allowing my innards to rush out on a wave of white light and greenish-yellow nausea.  There was the P.A. at the emergency room a few weeks ago who tested me for everything, found nothing but a mysteriously high white blood cell count, gave a diagnosis of a mysteriously high white blood cell count, and sent me home with the list of doctors, two prescriptions and a “Feel better. Don’t know what’s wrong with you but we hope it will go away soon.” Really? Is this what the medical profession has become? Is this how it has always been? A guessing game? Guess right and win a car, or the monetary equivalent. These days, doctors don’t even have to guess right to win. They just keep guessing. And we keep coming back! I remember as a child, the doctor would sit on the edge of my bed as he examined me in my room, my mother looking concerned in the corner. He’d make jokes to relax me and slap my bottom to lessen the sting of the injection in my backside and then he and my mother would have coffee at the kitchen table as he assured me I’d be up and about in a day or two. And I would be! Now, four months, three rounds of steroids, every cillin, cephalosporin and now mycin has entered my body and still no one knows what’s wrong. It’s still a mystery. Do I feel better? I want Dr. House. I want my Daddy.