Thursday, January 03, 2008
Daily Douchebag: my left tonsil
Name: my left tonsil
DOB: November 17, 1978
Occupation: annoying me, causing extreme pain
Hometown: the back of my throat
Current residence: halfway down my throat, up to the roof of my mouth, practically obstructing my airway
Douchebaggery: On New Year's Eve/Rack's birthday, I started to notice that my left tonsil, which was swollen and giving me a little grief, was more ouchie than normal. Ever since I had mono when I was a freshman at Smith, my tonsils have been slightly enlarged and whenever I get sick, as Biggie would put it, they blow up like the World Trade. However, on New Year's Eve, the left one seemed to be pretty sore, and not even massive doses of Advil, scotch, champagne, and beer were helping. Granted, I doubt the 5000 cigarettes I smoked helped much either. However, I managed to convince myself that this was the usual tonsil bullshit I've had to put up since 1996, when I was infected with Epstein-Barr virus.
By New Year's Day, that line of rationization wasn't working anymore. My tonsil hurt even worse, I ran out of Advil, and had to go to the drugstore to buy more. I also bought some of that Chloraseptic throat spray, which did nothing. In spite of taking four Benadryl Sunday evening to knock myself out, ostensibly to "sleep it off," I only slept about three hours. I spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, taking Advil, drinking tea, and looking up shit about tonsils on the internets. After a lot of examination in the mirror, I noticed a large pustule covering the entire side of the offending tonsil, which was decidedly NOT normal as I was trying to be a crack shot with the non-useful Chloraseptic. It's actually really hard to shoot that shit precisely into your own mouth. I decided to march myself straight into Columbia Student Health the second they opened and demand a massive antibiotic prescription, because pustules usually mean one thing: nasty bacterial infection.
When I got to Student Health, swallowing had become so painful that it felt like even water was like drinking a slurry of jagged glass chips, and I could barely speak. I took more Advil and braced myself to use a very-un-Razzy-like economy of words to describe my condition, because talking hurt so much, and because I embarrassingly sounded like the bastard child of Corky Thatcher and Sean Connery.
"Can you take ah walk-in?" I asked the receptionist. "Becautsh I'm exshperiesthing tshevere throat pain."
Nobody else was there, so that was no problem. Then a girl I know from grad school walked in, and started chatting me up.
"My tonshil isth hugthe," I told her. "I think I have an absthescth."
At that point the doctor came out to get me and cheerily said, "Oh, having fun with self-diagnosis, are we?"
I explained that not being able to sleep, I at least wanted to know how serious my condition was, so I looked it up, but I wasn't about to be one of those pain-in-the-ass patients who tells the doctor how to do his job. What I would have told him, however, was not to be so goddamn chatty.
He took one look at my name and then asked if I was Finnish.
"Norwegthian," I said, wincing.
"Oh, where are you from?"
"Stheattle," I said.
"I'm from Seattle, too!" he said.
"In that casthe, I'm actshually from Puyallup," I tried to banter with him, but DUDE. My throat hurts! Cut it with the chit-chat!
Then he looked in my throat and said, "Wow, one time someone diagnosed themselves correctly. Peritonsillar abscess. I haven't seen one of these in a long time!" Then he regaled me with tales of how he used to be an ER doctor, and asked if I had time to go to the ER.
"I'm sorry," he said. "But you have to see a specialist, and our ENT guys aren't coming in today."
"Tsho I have to go to the ER? Like the hosthpital ER?" I was not pleased. The Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital emergency room is a corner of hell that I have always dreaded going to, and I had managed to avoid it throughout my tenure here in New York. All ERs are bad, but the Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital--in the middle of Washington Heights and presumably thus filled with gunshot wounds, stabbings, and horrible car accident victims from the New York side of the George Washington Bridge--is notorious for being one of the worst. I was dreading going there, only because I imagined that even a peritonsillar abscess was far enough down on the triage priority list to mean at LEAST a two hour wait.
"They'll probably give you some painkillers before they incise and drain the abscess," he said. "So try to lay off the ibuprofen until they see you."
GREAT. So not only am I waiting to have them slice up my throat with a scalpel so I can swallow my own pustule's nasty exudate, but I have to do so WITHOUT painkillers. This just keeps getting better.
"But we will print out a letter for them, and call them to advise them that you're on your way!" he said cheerfully. Because I'm sure Columbia Student Health Services has dramatic pull with the triage staff at the ER, and that will put me on some kind of VIP list.
So I walked up the street to the hospital ER, and was completely unsurprised to see that the waiting area was exactly as I imagined: steel-caged vending machines, cops everywhere, bulletproof glass guarding the nurse's station, and an assortment of bums, ne'er-do-wells, and crack addicts lounging around. Also as I imagined, the nurse who took my preliminary info was entirely unimpressed by my letter from Columbia and didn't even respond when I said they had called. "Patients are seen in the order of medical priority, not the order in which they arrived," she said robotically. "Please have a seat."
I did as I was told, and tried to be patient. On the glass-encased TVs, they had the Discovery channel on, and I thought that was something. However, Discovery was showing a rerun of "Cash Cab," which may be the most annoying trivia show ever to grace network cable. Apart from a humorous incident in which some drug addict CLEARLY went to get high in the bathroom, only to be dragged out by the cops rapidly gibbering about how he was just pissing, no, wait, washing his hands, no wait, looking at himself in the mirror, and eventually thrown unceremoniously from the ER when he admitted he wasn't actually waiting for medical care, the one hour and forty-five minutes I spent grew progressively more excruciating as my Advil wore off. By the time I was called, I was actually in tears.
I probably could have held off the tears if I really wanted to, but they were really pushing out, and I can't remember being in so much pain since I was ten and poured boiling water all over my left hand. That injury was worse, but this was pretty bad. I hadn't thought the Advil was doing all that much, but I was obviously mistaken. The Advil at least made the pain somewhat tolerable. The nurse interviewing me was very matter-of-fact, but she at least seemed sympathetic. "Your blood pressure is a little high," she said. "But that's probably due to the pain you are experiencing."
Then she took me back into the ER proper, but there were no beds available. "Have a seat here," she pointed at a random chair. "We've got to get you into the system. It might take awhile."
I sat there, crying. Some old lady came over to take my information...AGAIN, and because of my combined Scottish-Down's Syndrome lisp and my sobbing, she had to ask me to repeat everything at least three times. She did, however, light up like a Christmas tree when I told her that I had insurance. My torturer left, but did say, "I'm sorry, you look so uncomfortable." Then some candy striper got me a pillow to cry into, and some Kleenex. Then some nursing assistant asked if there was anyone she could call for me.
"N-n-n-no," I spluttered. "There'sth n-n-n-nobody." Actually verbalizing this made me feel worse. It wasn't completely true. I could call my friends, but I'm not going to ask them to leave work at the drop of a hat to hold my hand in the ER. "What about your parents?"
"They live on the Wetsht Coastht!" I wailed.
"Don't you have a boyfriend? A pretty girl like you..."
Pretty? With my pus-covered tonsil and my decidedly not-pretty cry-face?
"I'm th-th-th-THINGLE!" I wailed. For the first time in a very long time, I desperately wished I had a boyfriend. They are good for this sort of thing.
"What about your friends? Surely, you have some friends!"
"My friendth are at work or out of town thstill from the holidayth!" I sobbed.
I felt like one of those "Jane Does" from "Law and Order: SVU" whose bodies go unclaimed because nobody in the world cares about them. While that's not true in my case, it certainly sounded that way when I was explaining it to the concerned nursing assistant staff. Apparently this sad, little story about me being alone in the world with absent parents, no boyfriends, and no friends was what they needed. Not five minutes later, they led me to a bed and the attending physician came in to examine me. She disagreed that I had a peritonsillar abscess.
"I'm not seeing the abscess," she said.
"I'm not making thisth up!" I wailed, alarmed. These assholes better not send me home after all this. Time to break out my credentials. "I'm getting a Ph.thD in microbiology, and absthethes are one sthep away from going stheptic! Even if thisth is viral, that pusththule is bacterial!"
"No, you obviously have tonsillitis," she said. "I'm just not sure there's an abscess we need to drain. What I'm going to do is put you on an IV. We're going to give you some antibiotics and some steroids to bring the swelling down, and you probably haven't drank much in the way of fluids the last day or so, so we'll rehydrate you too. And we'll give you some painkillers," she concluded. "We'll check back later today and decide what to do."
Within a few minutes a nurse was hooking me up to an IV, and doping me up. Within another few minutes, I stopped crying. Then the sweet candy striper came back with a fresh pillow and some blankets. "Do you want something to read?" he asked.
"No, I have my book about Kit Carthshon and the conquestht of the American shouthwetsht in my bag," I said. "But I think I'll go to sthleep."
All around me were the sounds of the ER: lots of machines beeping and humming, people shouting, squeaking of wheels as gurneys rolled by, pages going over the intercom directing translators here and there, the occasional shouting of the crazy person. I realized things could be a lot worse. The woman in the bay next to me had undergone a hysterectomy in the Dominican Republic, after which she had a stroke. Now she was experiencing severe neurological pain, and could say nothing except "Ay-yi-yi," a constant litany of which was issuing from behind her curtain. A hot-sounding doctor was explaining to her daughters that the narcotic painkillers standard in the ER wouldn't address her pain issues because it was "nerve pain," and she needed a neurological consult and physical therapy, but in order to get that, she had to get emergency Medicaid since she was uninsured. They had to wait for a social worker to get there before they could do anything. Across the ER from my bed there was a girl, completely unconscious and hooked to like 5 different IVs, whose mother or sister was sitting at her feet looking completely defeated. Somewhere in another section of the ER, someone was screaming occasionally. I said a little prayer of thanks. All of a sudden, my tonsil didn't seem like such a big fucking deal. I fell asleep.
"So, how are we doing?" The doctor was back, and she was feeling my throat.
"I feel a lot better, thank you. Whatever you gave me really knocked me out." My voice was even starting to sound more normal.
"You're probably also just exhausted. Pain is exhausting, and I'm betting you didn't sleep much last night. That tonsil obviously was hurting bad." I was impressed by the doctor's sudden display of sympathetic bedside manner. "Let's have a look," she said, peering into my mouth with her mouth/ear examination flashlight thingy. "The swelling has resolved some, but you still have that pustule. However, your rapid strep test was negative, but those are only about 70% accurate, so we'll just keep treating you empirically. I'm giving you a prescription for penicillin, but obviously as a microbiologist you know you have to finish it, and come back immediately if you spike a fever or if your symptoms get worse."
"Of course," I said.
"In that case, let me prepare your discharge papers. For pain, the high-dose Motrin you were taking should be just fine." Damn, no Vicodin scrip this time around.
She bustled off, and then the hot-sounding doctor peered in. He was a little young-looking, but still my instincts were correct: he was hot. Hot AND smooth. "Hey, honey, is it okay if you get a roommate?"
"Yes, I'm leaving, anyway."
"Oh, well, perfect!" he said. He walked out sight and returned with an empty bed. "I'm Dr. Pork," he said. Wait, did I hear that right? Dr. Pork?! Because that's precisely what I wanted to do to him.
"Dr. Pork?" I asked.
He laughed. "Dr. Bork," he said. Damn, I misheard. "Not that it matters to you, since you're about to make a triumphant exit from this place." Was Dr. Pork flirting with me? I couldn't tell. I was just glad that I could talk more normally.
"Yeah, I'm going back to my apartment to take Advil and penicillin and drink soup. It's gonna be a party," I said.
"Too bad I have to work," he said cheerfully, making the bed. "You could go back to my apartment and take codeine." Okay, he's DEFINITELY flirting with me. He just made a joke about me going back to his place! If only I didn't look like I just woke from a painkiller daze on a ER gurney...alas, I guess my porking Dr. Bork just wasn't meant to be.
"That sounds better than Advil," I managed. "How are you at making soup?"
He laughed, and wheeled in my roommate, some old lady. She had to change into a gown in front of me and this was embarrassing for her. I stuck my nose in my Kit Carson book. More embarrassing for her was when my nurse yanked back the curtain as she was half-undressed to undo my IV and present my discharge papers for my John Hancock. "Sorry, this might rip out your arm hair and hurt a little," she said as she tore off the tape on my IV.
"Too bad you can't do IVs on the bikini line, it would save me a trip to the salon," I said. She laughed uncomfortably. I guess it's not customary to make pussy-waxing jokes in the ER. I signed my papers, inquired about the names of the medicines they'd actually given me because I'm anal-retentive about my medical history like that, and got the hell out of there.
While my ER visit ended on a lighter note, with the resolution of my problems, I have to say that I would have gladly done without flirting with Dr. Pork to have gone to lab and gotten some shit done and not experienced 24 hours of excruciating pain. I really hate it when microbiology gets the better of me. It's like being impaled on my own sword. And that wouldn't happen if my left tonsil didn't slack on its pimping. So fuck you, left tonsil. Fuck you and whatever pathogen colonized you.
Labels: Daily Douchebag, epidemic geekery, gross, NYC, oh the horror, science
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razzy, you and i had the same gross throat ailment - i wonder if something in my apartment is causing this nastiness to occur? perhaps the rainier beer?
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# posted by 
: 1/07/2008 8:54 PM
: 1/07/2008 8:54 PM Links to this post:
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