59
By the turn of the year into Nineteen Eighty-Nine I again saw no
future for myself as a person. I was having buoyant success with the
science fiction club and The Doctor Who Report, and if not for those
I would have had nothing in my life to keep me going. But as for my
'person': My health was trapped fluctuating between thirty-five and
forty pounds underweight, I couldn't conceive of ever finding a
doctor to help with my health problems, nor could I imagine remaining
as a squatter in my mother's mobile home for the rest of my life,
however long that might be. Painful drawn out stints in the bathroom
had become a twice to three times weekly event and all I could do was
beg to God to please let me die so I would never have to face
another experience like it again. Then a few days later I was right
back there, begging.
Mother had lost some of her will to pound on my bedroom door to
harass me and was now down to doing it only once or twice a day. So
I guess some things were getting better. Since her summertime
stunt of claiming that she had spoken to my siblings about me, we
once again had little if any interaction. Once in a great while I
might see her when I'd come out of my bedroom to get a drink in the
kitchen or to use the bathroom. If she was up and moving at the time
I would make sure to lock my bedroom door behind me. If not, I might
be daring and leave it unlocked if I knew I was going to be quick.
If for some reason I forgot my key, I did have a second one hidden
elsewhere in the mobile home, but had rarely needed to use it.
At the turn of the year, my COBRA health insurance coverage period
had come to an end. The good news was that I no longer had to worry
about making that monthly payment, of course the bad news was I no
longer had any health insurance. But as I couldn't image ever again
seeing a doctor, it didn't seem like much of a loss.
I would continue my late night walks once mother was to bed just to
give me some exercise and a change of environment. From locked in my
eight foot by eight foot bedroom with everything I had crammed
inside, it was a great relief to roam the neighborhood streets or
undeveloped fields. Sometimes I'd take my portable and headphones
with me and listen to music, but most of the time I just liked the
ambient sounds of a world at rest.
While I would still dabble with computer programming, on the whole I
didn't have any purpose for it except to once in a great while write
a piece of code for Jeff's online site. He had finally changed the
host computer for it from his old TRS-80 to an IBM PC clone
machine. Having multiple hard drives allowed the site to host not
only multiple forums but networked ones as well. One of these I was
avid for was the International Doctor Who Forum and Jeff finally
found a reliable network link to it and soon not only did I have more
people to discuss Doctor Who with, but I could use that
discussion to create a 'Rumors' page in TDWR as well as gain
additional subscribers and some new minor contributors, to boot.
TDWR had finally gone national, though it was still pretty
obscure, and within a few months, when the existing forum
moderator decided to leave and they were searching for someone to
take over, I volunteered and received the most votes, adding
'Moderator Of The International Doctor Who Forum' to my quiver of
'job' titles. And just like my work for TDWR and the local science
fiction club, all of it was unpaid.
Early in January I found myself with the most bizarre
problem. It snuck up on me at first as I could just swallow more
often, but by the end of one day I realized that my mouth was
producing a constant and unyielding supply of saliva. It reached the
point that I found I could no longer drink anything simply because my
stomach was already overflowing with the liquid. As it became clear
it wasn't going to get better any time soon, and I didn't want to
find out what would happen if I tried to go to sleep for the night
with it, I finally decided to go to the emergency room.
Arriving by the turn of midnight, I checked in and had to admit I
didn't have any health insurance. This resulted in rolling eyes by
the admitting nurse, but my having to constantly swallow while trying
to talk lead her to believe there was something that needed to be
looked at. When asked who my primary care physician was, I said I
didn't have one. Checked in and taken to an examination bed, I
explained what was going on and after jotting down all of the
details, the nurse returned with a large cup that I could... drool
into. Hadn't there been a Saturday Night Live sketch like
this? I wondered as I sat there waiting for the E.R. doctor to
arrive and make his own examination.
A cup and a half later he did and quickly looked in my mouth and had
me say 'awh' with a tongue depressor performing its task. He
diagnosed me with an infected saliva gland and ordered a
prescription of antibiotics that I could get filled at the
twenty-four hour pharmacy on the way home. I did and when I heard
the price, I left for my credit union's Automatic Teller Machine to
pull the needed money out of my savings while the bottle was filled.
Since leaving the hospital, I was back to the constant swallowing as
I accepted the prescription bottle and thanked the pharmacist and
then went home. Mother was still in bed and for all I knew hadn't
even noticed I had gone. I took my first pill and returned to my
bedroom to work on the computer, now with a glass from the kitchen in
hand as my at home drool cup. Still, the flow hadn't subsided
enough by the time I wanted to go to bed and I had to resort to
getting a bath towel and folding it up into multiple layers to tuck
under my chin as I lay on my side to fall asleep. The hope was
that it would absorb the never ending stream while I slept.
It was surprising successful and by the end of the next day the flow
was down to a rate I could comfortably swallow again... By the third
day things were back to normal.
Aren't you glad
I share these things
with you?
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