Amber's Abode

Why me?

When I was in high school, an English teacher of mine would let us know by writing on the chalkboard if she was in a bad mood for any reason.  She would write something like:

Fair warning: I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, so please try not to irritate me.  Then we would know.  It was better than being taken by surprise.  So I will follow her lead.

Fair warning: this is not going to be a happy Amber post.  If you choose only to read happy Amber posts, or if your world is turned upside down when Amber is not a happy person, then you do not want to read this.  If you are taken aback by the possibility of swear words, you do not want to read this.  Stop now and come back next year.

I am very very very very angry.  Yesterday morning, I woke up in a soaked bed.  For one thing this always kind of scares me because of the abuse I received if I wet the bed when I was younger.  The people here are not like that, but your body always remembers fear like that.  Or at least mine does.  But anyway, it was decided that since obviously nothing was going into the catheter that was supposed to, I needed to go to the emergency room again.  Why?  Because some home health nurse somewhere has again decided that they should not do their fucking job, which would only take five minutes if they came out every month to do it right.  Take one tube out, put another one in after cleaning a little hole.  Not too complicated, really.  It hurts a little, but my body is used to pain, so I get over it pretty quickly.

But if I have to go to the emergency room, it's usually gone beyond a five-minute job.  The tube is usually blocked so that my bladder cannot empty, so the pain level goes from something I can deal with to excruciating.  But they don't treat me like I know anything about my own body, so the nurse was like "just lean back in your chair, and I'm sure it will only take five minutes." So I did, but I told her that it hurt so badly that I was sure that it was actually adhered to me.  This means that skin starts to grow around it, or in yesterday's case, scar tissue, and it won't budge.  But she assured me that wasn't the case, and proceeded to try to yank it out, with me desperately trying to squelch tears and screams.  Then she leaves for a long time while I try to hide in the music of my iPod.  She comes back with the doctor who again tries to get it out just the same way she did.  This time I'm not able to squelch anything, and I begin blubbering like a baby, wanting someone there who actually cares.  But as usual, I'm by myself, and I'm sure that makes the pain even a little worse.

The guy who is the doctor then tells me that he is sure now that the catheter is adhered to me, and I'm going to have to actually get out of the chair and lay down for them to be able to do anything.  Why doesn't anybody ever listen to me in the first place?  They laid me down on the little bed thing and left again, me begging for a pain shot of morphine or anything, I didn't care.  They were gone for a long time again, and this time they had taken away my iPod, so I didn't even have my music.  When they came back, they gave me the pain shot, but didn't really give it a chance to kick in before they resumed trying to extract the tube.  So I didn't even care about blubbering and screaming anymore.  Four people had a turn at it before it finally worked loose.  Apparently my stomach is a little bloated for some reason, because all four people asked me at different times if there was a possibility I could be pregnant.  I kept saying no, but they kept asking.  Finally I shouted not unless I'm the next fucking mother Mary.  That shut them up, finally.

Turns out that there were, and still are more than likely, blood clots in my bladder.  Those don't belong there.  One or two of them was blocking the entrance to the tube.  I'm still putting blood into that stupid bag, and they stood there for like a half an hour with a syringe just trying to draw them all out.  The rest, they said, will just have to come out on their own.  Which hurts.  It's like somebody squeezing a water balloon as hard as they can like every five or 10 seconds.

I'm in less pain now because the tube is new and I'm keeping the pain medicine coming.  But I'm still very frustrated.  I don't often feel sorry for myself.  Most of the time it just feels like a waste of time to me.  But I really don't understand on days like that why I have to go through all this.  I mean, I'm not perfect by far, but I really try not to hurt anybody.  In fact I try to take away pain from other people all the time.  So who was deciding what when they were handing out life assignments?  I don't mean to be disrespectful to God or anyone, but I really want to understand what I'm supposed to do with all of this.  If I knew there was a point, it might make things easier to deal with.  Then again, I doubt it.

Sigh.  And there go any thoughts I have about going out on New Year's Eve.  It hurts too much to drive over bumpy sidewalks and streets for the next couple days.  Anyway, I'm almost superstitious about not going out at night on that day.  Too many drunk idiots, and I want to stay alive.  I'll probably just spend the day inside the world of second life.  If you don't know what that is, Google it.  It's pretty interesting and fun, and will give me the ability to be among friends, even if they are just pixel people.

I really don't feel like writing anymore right now.  Here's hoping 2008 is a lot better than its predecessor for me and all of you.

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