The Breathtaking Impermanence Of Things
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Anaphylaxis
I woke up early this morning. Truth be
told, I didn't sleep much. I rarely do. I opened my eyes, looked
around my sparsely-decorated bedroom, and said, to nobody in
particular, “Here I am.”
Here I am. Thirty-four in two weeks,
looking down the barrel of a divorce, renting a single bedroom
apartment where the closest landmarks are strip clubs, beginning to
feel the waters of rent and bills and payments and child support
slapping at my chest and shoulders, lifting my feet off solid ground.
I'm far from shore here, and no longer
feeling much like swimming.
I've spent much of this week at home,
in the wake of a deeply strange physical experience that seems to
take on greater weight the more I think about it, and I've been
thinking about it a lot. On Monday, persistent pain in my throat and
ear led me to seek medical attention on my lunch break. I'd been
suffering several days at that point, and the nature and location of
the pain left me sure it must be related to an issue I'd suffered in
late April, when a Wisdom Tooth arriving some fifteen years after its
companions caused a painful infection in my mouth.
The benefits I receive from my new
employer, including health insurance, haven't kicked in yet, so I had
visited a private clinic called Zoomcare, where paying out-of-pocket
sets you back only $100 plus whatever medication or extra treatment
you may need, relatively cheap by the insane standards of US
healthcare. On my last visit, I'd been given two different types of
painkiller and a ten day course of antibiotics to clear up the
infection, which had worked, at least temporarily. The nurse I saw
this time (after agreeing with my assessment that the same infection
was still scampering merrily around my tonsils) decided that the best
course of action would be to up the ante with what the bottle (which
sits beside me as I type this) names AMOXICILLIN AND CLAVULANATE
POTASSIUM TABLETS, 825mg of the former, 125mg of the latter. I was in
favor of this course of action.
I paid my bill, headed back to the
store, took one of the intimidatingly large pills with a mouthful of
water, and got back to work.
Within minutes, I knew something was
wrong. At first, I put it down to the weather; I'm extremely
sensitive to changes in temperature and the brisk walk to the
Zoomcare center and back I'd just taken on what was a cool and
drizzly day in the northwest was exactly the kind of thing that could
set my skin to itching and even bring me out in hives. So I ignored
the prickling and tingling in my lower legs and the uncomfortable
warmth beneath my clothes. Even when I felt myself starting to sweat,
I swiped an arm across my forehead and carried on. It would pass.
But it didn't pass. My mouth was
suddenly very dry. My heart was racing. I was having to think more
about my breathing than was normal. In then out, in then out. I got
on the radio and told my co-workers I needed to step off the floor
for a few minutes. I'd been doing that quite a lot to drink water for
my throat, so it likely didn't seem unusual.
By the time I got back to the office, I
was starting to panic. Sweat was pouring down my face. When I fell
into a chair, lowering my head between my knees because I was
starting to feel faint, it dripped on the floor. I was dizzy and
nauseous, colors floating across my vision, suddenly sure that –
not only was I about to lose consciousness – something terrible was
happening to me, something I wasn't going to be laughing about later.
The one thing I kept thinking about
later on, laying in my bed feeling very sick and very sorry for
myself, was that at the peak of this attack, I quite clearly remember
getting on the radio and calling for help, calling for somebody to
come back to the office. Nobody came, and it was only some fifteen
minutes later, stumbling out into the backroom to find my boss moving
freight, blissfully unaware of anything that had happened until the
pale, sweat-soaked apparition that had apparently replaced his
assistant appeared before his very eyes, politely asking if he could
go home, that I realized I hadn't had the strength to push the button
to transmit my message. Nobody had heard me.
At the time, I thought (and possibly
rationalized) that I'd had some kind of panic attack. Later, after
consulting the nurse to get my medication changed and doing my own
research, I realized that I'd gone into anaphylactic shock as a
reaction to the antiobiotics and that – given that nobody was
concerned about my whereabouts or heard my pleas for help – I could
quite easily have died.
If I'd gone straight back to work, I
probably wouldn't have dwelled on that quite as much as I have, but
the aftermath has been an uncomfortable few days in bed, punctuated
by a single attempt to return to my job that lasted all of three
hours. I've had a lot of time to think.
It doesn't mean anything,
of course. Even if I'd climbed unscathed from the flaming wreckage of
my Accord after barrel-rolling over the median some dark night, it
wouldn't mean
anything. I'm not a believer in things happening for a reason or as a
message or any of that nonsense, but curled up in bed, itchy and
nauseous and with a dull thudding in my head that took three days to
subside, I couldn't help but think about it...
What
if they'd found me later, thirty-three years old, twenty pounds
overweight, almost divorced, almost broke, wearing a fucking sweater
vest, slumped over in a chair in the back of an office supplies
store, killed by an allergic reaction to a pill I'd had to take
because of a randomly-arriving wisdom tooth?
Fuck.
posted at 11:00 AM
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