7
After being shorted for my March pay without explanation, it gave me
the perfect excuse to leave my key behind at the software start-up
and leave the associated negative work environment behind me as well.
I went to classes that night feeling a sense of relief despite my
cough, but by Tuesday, the next day, the cough and chest soreness
outweighed the relief I felt. Still, I muddled through that night's
classes just the same. By Wednesday, a piercing pain had started to
develop in my left ear as my cough continued to get worse and I began
to have balance problems. All I could do was lie on the living room
area couch in mother's mobile home.
She was surprised to see me when she got in from work as I would
normally have been gone to classes by six forty-five at night. I
told her that I was having problems with a bad cold and ear pain and
hadn't felt well enough to go to classes. But once she had finished
her little dinner, I decided to ask her to take me to the emergency
room by seven thirty. As she worked in the kitchen at the hospital,
she knew where it was and how to get there, but she had also
decided I shouldn't see a doctor again since my 'situation' cropped
up at puberty. If it was her concern of a doctor finding out
about me, or that she just didn't want to be bothered, she refused
saying it was ''Too late at night.'' Yet the pain in my left ear got
worse and my breathing more raspy and just after eight o'clock I
pleaded with her to take me to the emergency room. She scolded me
for even asking such a thing and I continued to lay there while she
watched a couple hours worth of evening shows, then went to bed.
With the astounding level of pain in my left ear, I couldn't imagine
falling asleep and instead stayed on the couch to let the evening
news and subsequent two hours of late night talk shows distract me.
The thought of calling an ambulance flitted through my mind, but I
disregarded it as I thought they were for gun shot or heart attack
victims, not a bad cold and an ear ache. I tried to go to the
kitchen and get myself something to drink, but with my sense of
balance all screwed up I found I needed to use my hands just to keep
upright, so the thought of returning with a glass of water or tea was
quickly discarded. I just took a quick sip at the sink and lay back
on the couch. My eyes repeatedly glanced at the clock as if doing so
would make it tell me it was now time I could fall asleep. By the
end of the second hour of late night talk shows, I felt I could fall
asleep despite the pain and made my way to my bedroom where I
collapsed onto the bed still dressed.
The next morning I woke-up and the pain in my left ear was gone, but
the wheezing wasn't. Sitting up in bed I noticed a large blood stain
on my pillow where my head had been lying and I checked my left ear
to find it coated with dried blood. Getting up from bed I made my
way to the kitchen where my mother was making herself her morning
breakfast and asked her about the blood around my ear. Her eyes
widened in horror and her breakfast was abandoned as she decided to
rush me to the nearest 'SwiftCare' location. Intended for small
health care needs like cuts, or sore throats, when we arrived the
staff asked if mother was sure she didn't want to take me to the
emergency room. She was very sure as, being the place where she
worked, the last thing she likely wanted was to get me to the
emergency room and them asking her why she hadn't brought me in
sooner. Knowing her as well as I did, I had no doubt she had
spent the past few years at the hospital kitchen telling all of her
coworkers what a selfless and caring mother she was to feed her own
ego.
Oddly, despite people being in front of me and asking questions, I
felt like I should turn to the right to better hear to them. Then it
dawned on me that I couldn't hear with my left ear anymore and that's
why everything sounded like it was to the right of me. The doctor
had the nurse clean some of the caked blood from my ear as he got an
abbreviated health history from my mother, then he put a fresh
plastic cap on the scope and looked into my left ear. He told us
that my left eardrum had ruptured and I would have to keep it dry
from now on; I was to use a cotton swab coated with Vaseline tucked
into my ear to keep the water out as I took showers. He told mother
I needed to see an ear specialist right away, if not by the end of
the day then by tomorrow at the latest. She agreed, but on the drive
home told me we couldn't afford that and berated me for not having
her take me to the 'SwiftCare' the previous night given how serious
it was.
But I was not quite with it and didn't pay much attention to
what she was saying. As she scrabbled for a quick bite and then a
dash to work, I welcomed the chance to get back into the blood
stained bed and fall back asleep...
I woke up by one in the afternoon with a piecing pain in my right
ear. I used the cotton swab technique to seal my left ear and took a
quick shower just to, at least, feel clean even if I was otherwise
feeling like crap. The problem with the cotton swab technique is
that it leaves the opening of the ear canal all slathered with
Vaseline once you remove it and I tried to wipe it up as best I could
with a tissue. I got dressed and laid back down on the living room
couch and prayed for the pain in my right ear to get better as it
got
progressively
worse. I also found I was having to breath more just to feel
like I was breathing at all.
By two thirty I was becoming increasing sure that my right eardrum
was going to burst and wondered if that meant I'd be deaf for the
rest of my life. I once again debated if I could drive myself to the
emergency room or should call an ambulance, but again they seemed
like a bad idea. By three, I realized what I could do and decided to
manipulate my mother. I called her work number and told the
lady who answered who I was and that I needed my mother to pick me
up and take me to the emergency room. She said she would put me
on hold and get her, but I told her just to give my mother the
message and said goodbye. If I had been passed to mother on the
phone, she would have poo-pooed it and not come. But by having a
coworker know that I needed my mother to get me to the emergency
room, my mother would have no choice but to pick me up and take me
there, less she look like a bad person by ignoring my request in
front of her coworker.
By three twenty my mother was at the mobile home and helping me into
the car. She glared at me and told me, ''Never do that again.''
But it didn't matter as I got the result I needed. The emergency
room staff quickly got me to a bed as my mother stayed rather than
returning to work. When the doctor came to examine me, checking my
left ear, then my right ear, he decided to check my lungs and slipped
his stethoscope up under my tee-shirt. When he encountered the ACE
bandage, he paused for a moment, then slipped it under the bandage
without comment and asked me to breath in and out. Then again, from
the back. It turned out I had ''Walking Pneumonia'' and the
congestion had been clogging up my inner ear tubes as well as filling
my lungs. He ordered a decongestant on site to relieve the pressure
on my right ear and then wrote a prescription for the pneumonia
itself.
He told my mother she'd made the right choice deciding to bring me in
as we waited for the Actifed to arrive from the
hospital pharmacy. When it did, it took less than fifteen minutes
for the pain in my right ear to improve and by the end of the hour
the doctor confirmed that I was out of danger of losing my right
eardrum and released me to go home with a pit stop to get the
antibiotics and more Actifed at a local pharmacy. As
part of the discharge papers, they had gone ahead and made an
appointment with an ear specialist the coming Monday to check on my
ears and decide on a long term course of treatment for my left
eardrum.
Without complaint, mother picked up the prescriptions while I waited
in the car and then she got me home. She was silent the whole way.
Once home I decided to call Jeff and let him know that I learned
the hard way that it was possible to get pneumonia and still be
'walking.' But by then, the decongestant had started to break-up
the phlegm in my lungs and all Jeff heard was a largely incoherent
gurgle. I excused myself and told him I'd call him tomorrow after I
could talk clearly again.
Another result of this experience was my mother developed a need
to burst into my bedroom in an apparent attempt to see me naked. I
would close my doors to change clothes and she would sneak up to my
door, pause a moment or two as she waited for me to unbutton or unzip
something and then quietly turn the door knob and thrust the door
open and step in. Perhaps
noticing that the emergency room doctor hadn't reacted when examining
me, she wanted to see for herself if my puberty 'situation', which I
had shown her when I was thirteen, was still there or if she had
simply imaged it back then. Whatever the reason, she
ignored my protests and I eventually found a keyed, locking door knob
for my bedroom...
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