Last Sunday, after a week in which my health seemed to stabilize, and I had opened up my meal options to include almost all regular foods, Josh and I made one very fateful decision.
"Hey, are you craving a Chipotle burrito?" Josh K. asked.
I was. I hadn't had Chipotle in ages, long before my Christmas hospital adventures. We set off to the Chipotle on Ninth Avenue in Hell's Kitchen and plowed down our burritos, practically licking our fingers afterward.
"How'd it go?" Josh K. asked. "Any rebellion from the tummy?"
Blissfully, no. Even at bedtime everything felt normal. Finally, I thought, even with the last vestiges of a small infection in my ileum, I could eat as I pleased.
That was, of course, until I woke up at 3:30 a.m. doubled over in pain. Apparently tummy didn't appreciate the spicy salsa and fiber-rich black bean combo. At all.
Later that day I once again found myself in the emergency room of St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital on 59th Street. This time Dylan wasn't around to go with (he was out of town on business), and Josh K. absolutely wasn't able to leave work, so I plunged into the melee solo.
On this particular Monday night I found myself staring at the speckled ceiling of the ER in a bed a few feet from an elderly black man who had Sickle-cell anemia and continually pressed the emergency button for more narcotic pain medication. On my left, a few feet away, was a young Latino guy, fresh out of prison (as he repeatedly told everyone around him), suffering from severe diarrhea and dehydration and asking for an HIV test.
In the main hallway of the ER, just a few paces from my bed, a middle-aged white woman handcuffed to her gurney screamed at regular intervals about her restraints. "Get these f***ing things off of me! You're killing me! You're killing me! They're cutting through my skin, oh god, you f***ing cops, you're killing me! Please, I won't f***ing kill you if you take them off of me!"
So, you know. Just the average peaceful evening in a New York City emergency room.
Josh K. arrived from his work emergency just in time to witness all of this. I had just been shot up with a heavy dose of morphine before Josh arrived, so I was shaking like a dying dog, but smiling up at him and very happy to see him. I'm sure it's the most terrifying reception he's ever received, but despite my morphine-addled flailing and Josh K.'s general hospital phobia, he handled the whole situation remarkably well.
A few hours later they rolled me in for a CT scan and had good news: The small infection, possibly related to my earlier appendectomy, had gotten smaller. I would need to get on another course of antibiotics, and see a specialist within twenty-four hours. They wanted to keep me overnight, but I begged the doctor to let me go home until she became almost visibly uncomfortable, and magically the discharge papers showed up on my bed a few hours later.
At 4 a.m. Tuesday morning I stumbled out onto 59th Street (Josh K. had to leave when visiting hours ended) and caught a cab home.
The next day my specialist had similarly good news: Keep going with the antibiotics, take a new pill to try and calm things down, and come back in a week to see how it's going. Oh, and a bonus: A nice healthy prescription of codeine for any time pain crept up.
Now, almost a week later, I pretty much feel like myself again. We finally seem to have this thing figured out and under control, for which I'm incredibly grateful. My fingers are firmly crossed.
And, of course, I will not be stepping foot into a Chipotle anytime soon.
This weekend Josh and I hit up a Saturday night screening of Cloverfield, the monster action/disaster flick from wunderkind producer J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost). It's a fun popcorn movie, packed with a few interesting new twists on the genre and some great visuals, even if the ending did slightly leave us wanting more (how very Open Water, right?). We had a few good scares, gripping our armrests once or twice, and enjoyed piecing everything together afterward on our walk to our favorite Chinese place. If you're looking for a few engaging thrills and a bit of amusement, and maybe an excuse to cling to a date in the dark, this is the movie for you.
Josh and I are following the presidential primary season the way that most Americans are following the pre-Super Bowl run-up. On Saturday night, after Cloverfield and our chicken-and-broccoli Chinese extravaganza, Josh and I rushed to my place to sprawl out and tune into CNN to catch up on the latest on the day's primaries and caucuses. (Hillary and Romney won Nevada; McCain took South Carolina.)
Our favorite moment (besides anything having to do with Anderson Cooper)? CNN reported that, in one of the smaller caucuses in Nevada, there was a tie between Hillary and Obama that had to be broken. In consultation with caucus rules, a card draw was used to decide the winner.
(Um, by the way, do caucuses kind of scare anyone else? This whole thing with strangers meeting up in VFWs or somebody's living room or a casino conference room to stand in a corner in support of their candidate and follow random local rules at the discretion of a once-every-four-years event chairman doesn't strike us as a particularly brilliant way to pick the next leader of the free world. Perhaps we could just go ahead and stick with voting booths? Anyone?)
In any case, in this tiny Nevada caucus tie between Hillary and Obama that required a card draw, a representative for each candidate picked a card.
Obama's rep drew a ten of spades; Hillary's got the queen of hearts.
We're just sayin'.
We'll definitely be watching the Democratic debate tomorrow night on CNN and the Democratic primary in South Carolina next Saturday.
It's getting juicy, people.
One Year From Today: January 20, 2009
One year from today the new President of the United States will be sworn into office. The worst president in the history of the United States will have moved out of the White House and the Oval Office, and starting on 1-20-09, at noon Eastern, our future begins. We can't even begin to explain how excited we are. Only 365 days to go!
