Cancer Ward

Friends, there's a reason I don't go to doctors --- By the way, how tired am I of the question "Who's your primary physician?" I'm plenty tired, let me tell you. What is this obsession with having a primary doctor? -- I don't like getting weighed and measured. I don't like reading Sunset magazine in the waiting room or trying to start work on a paper and get called and have to scrape my reference crap together because some nurse is impatient to get me into the room where she will weigh and measure me. I think my fear of needles has been well-documented.

Mostly I don't like illness. I know -- I know -- people get sick. It happens. But it worries me to see it and have no helpful thing to say. ("Gee, that oxygen tank sure looks heavy...") It makes me uncomfortable. The people at this cancer place all had cancer (yes way) and had faces in various shades of gray and pale with bits of pink. They all seem so dependent on the doctors and the medications and that kind of stuff just makes me edgy and fearful.

So I don't go to the doctors. I didn't want to go to this one, but when the guy in the emergency room says it's important what can you do?

Upshot is, there's no idea why I have this ITP thing. I don't have any cancer symptoms, everything was poked and listened to, so it's been put down as an auto-immune issue. I guess that's supposed to be better, but it means I have to take steroids. Prednisone.

"You'll bulk up," the doctor tells me. "You may have heartburn," he says. "But you'll have euphoria." Oh well, that's something to look forward to. "And then you may come down from that pretty hard." Oh. Great.

Not quite Barry Bonds, but more like a momentarily happy whale, I guess. As long as I don't grow a mustache or have hair coming out of my ears, I guess it's okay.

Oh! And I have a toilet again. Things are looking up!