January 18, 2011
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Le Hospital. (A Serial.)
You ever get new shoes, and then get a blister on your foot somewhere because of them? Yeah, we all do.
Monday: I had one that was really sore on my heel where the top of my new work shoes meets my skin. I had a callus there from wearing shoes in the past and the blister was under that.
Tuesday: I ignore it and it grows and becomes a little worse. The redness around it makes it more sore and I start grossing out my students with its redness and bits of pus. I wear a slipper all day. I decide to lance it. It feels better.
Wednesday: it snows 20 some-odd inches. I tie a plastic bag around my sock and slipper and go out to brave the New England conditions. I shovel for a couple of hours and barely feel any pain. That night some idiot (message me on Facebook: SHAUN CONNOLLY if you want what I really call this guy, but can’t, at least right now.) throws up in my bathtub. And all that is done is the shower water run over it.
Thursday: I take a shower. Go about my day. At around 8:30 Thursday night I go out to Beatnik’s with a great friend Jeremy Shulkin. As we are sitting there the pain in my foot increases so much that I cannot: sit still, make a simple gesture, keep my face from straining, breathing normally, but still am able to finish my Narragansett before asking if Jeremy could take me to the Emergency Room.
“Yeah it was uncomfortable,” Jeremy said of the Beatniks visit, “I couldn’t even talk to you.”
At the Emergency Room, which was the quietest I have ever seen it, the pain subsided once I got to play in a wheelchair for awhile. After about an hour and a half of my fingers being crossed that my doctor would be Meredith Grey I finally got called back to get a man, and it wasn’t McDreamy. I was told I had cellulitis. I was also told that I was a young, and healthy man, that I was going to be given two IV antibiotics and then prescription for oral. Antibiotics. And that I would fight this and I would be fine.
Friday: I get to school, on my crutches that I was given. Now I usually get to school right after the students are dismissed from breakfast in the cafeteria. For some reason EVERYONE was still there sitting there eating. And I come hobbling through the room. I now know what its like to be that helpless freshman coed still wearing that cute Forever 21 dress she picked up for her first big party in college the next morning, at the douchebaggiest Frat on campus. That’s what it felt like a walk of shame. I was getting all the hoots and all the hollers, the fake trips, point and laughs, some awes (but I felt like there were sarcastic awes), and through it never an uplifting or concerned comment. Much like Jenny Coed in the morning after her big night with Johnny Douchebag.
“Hey Mistah, yo leg get retarded?”
“Damn Mistah what happen someone break yo ankles? Oh yeah, that was me!”
“What happened you so stupid that you fell on da ice?”
“We are finally equals.” Says the kid who I pick on that is perpetually on crutches because he snapped everything in his knee.
I get to the office and am yelled at by my principal/boss like my mother would and I get sent home.
Flash to three o’clock where I head back to the Emergency Room for a check up. Yes, this sounds strange, “why did you go back to the ER Shaun?”
“Great question curious reader, I’ll explain:
You see I didn’t have a Primary Care Doctor, so the only way to get real treatment/help was to go back and co-pay $100 at the ER. For all of those who are my age and haven’t gone and called and got a PC Dr., do it. Especially if you have health insurance, well I guess that’s the only time you really can. Also if you live in MA get the state insurance. So many problems can be avoided. And I don’t mean to get political but one of the big reasons this health care bill can’t work, though it should, is because of idiots like me. People who depend on the ER, that’s what fucks up helping everyone out. People like me 4 days ago are selfish, go be a little more selfish and get a Dr. all for yourself. Because I saw and talked to people like this:
A woman in a dirty yellow parka, which was probably orange at some point, comes in wincing and holding her back. She looks like a Wal-Mart woman: fat, ugly, dumb and dependent of everyone who has the balls to make eye contact with her. She is complaining of “shortness of breath.” She gets checked out and the PROFESSIONALS deem her healthy, despite some high blood pressure. She all of a sudden gets her wind back, enough to yell and complain that she deserves better. When all she really deserves is a push in the right moving train.
Or:
The four separate people who shared a ER room with me that complained of tooth pain. GO TO A FUCKING DOCTOR why are you wasting precious Dr.’s and patient’s time?! One man did have a very interesting story. When he smiled his four top teeth were completely gone, but that was from a different accident, today the entire row of his back teeth has cracked on gone and he was in significant pain. His oral problems stemmed from a wooden plank caught up in the winds or Katrina down in New Orleans.
So I finally get admitted. A man wandering the halls whispers in my room, “squirrels,” and I am welcomed with open arms, insane ones, but open all the same.
What happens Saturday on “Le Hospital. (A Serial.)”?? Will Shaun have a rampant flirtation relationship with a man named Luigi? Will he run into “squirrel” man again? And will he ever recover from a stupid infection on his foot?? Stay tuned for another bed-ridden episode of “Le Hospital. (A Serial.)!!!!
