i haven't been in the hospital for over a year. which is a major feat considering that at one point in my history i was there so often that nurses knew my name and what i was there for without having to look it up and shit. i'd just walk into the ER with my overnight bag and they'd be all, "let me warm up the CT scanner. gurl, you still prefer vegetable broth? let me get your room ready." i haven't written about the charred wasteland that is my intestines lately, and i'm sure that's keeping most of you up at night with worry. so let's talk some shit.2011 marks the sixth year of living with this dreaded crohn's disease, and for the first time in a long time i've been feeling pretty good on a pretty regular basis. last summer i was totally stressed the fuck OUT: working all the time, not taking good enough care of myself, keeping people in my life who drove me fucking apeshit, and that stress manifested itself into one big giant knot dead in the center of my stomach, followed by a week spent flat on my back watching "up" and "the time traveler's wife" on constant repeat while getting shot up with dilauded and steroids and insulin. because although a bitch is not diabetic, too much prednisone sent your girl into diabetic shock. HOLY SHIT.
it's nearly impossible to sleep when you're in the goddamned hospital. i go to a really nice one where i get my own room and my own cable television and my very own personal assistant to help change my shitty diapers and flip my pillows over or whatever else i am too lazy, or entangled in tubes, to do for myself. anyway, it's 2am and i'm on so many drugs and have a port in my arm and i had dozed off sitting up like your granny does, and four nurses come crashing into my room and shake me awake because apparently i've stopped breathing and a bunch of alarms are ringing and bitches are shouting, and they're yanking my gowns off, and all i could think was, "how smelly are my underwear?!" while they're shooting shit into my veins and holding the oxygen mask down on my face. i fully expected to go into cardiac arrest, because i don't know if anyone's ever told them, but shaking a bitch awake at 2am in a hospital is some terrifying shit. when all of the drama died down i could care less about my blood sugar or my inflamed intestines, i was just mad that they'd cut off a FIFTY DOLLAR GODDAMNED BRA. blarf. it pisses me off just thinking about it.
one of the problems with not dying in the hospital is that real life still goes on outside those sterilized walls. the cat needed to be fed! my dry cleaning needed to be picked up!! my directv bill needed to be paid!!! i never end up in the hospital right after the ONE TIME i clean my goddamned apartment every year, and after my sister went to my apartment to rescue helen keller and drop her off at the kennel she called my room and was like, "are you okay? i mean, is your life okay?! how could you be living like this?!" listen bitch, had i known i was going to need for anyone other than that cat to see what i do with my empty beer cans i would have maybe taken out the recycling. just step over the piles of laundry and magazines and get the fuck out. i know that's how i'm going to die, surrounded by all of my poor choices and bad habits. but at least if you're dead people feel guilty about talking shit about the porn you don't even bother hiding anymore.
i was there for a week. graduated from ice chips to broth to broth with three peas in it to broth with three peas and one noodle in it to applesauce to please let me the fuck out of here this shit is costing me $10,000 a fucking day. on release day everyone is extra super nice, skipping into my room with the menu that people with broken legs get to choose from and sneaking me extra apple juices. the "intestinal distress" menu looks something like this: a variety of unsalted broths, apple or cranberry juice, jello that i never order, black coffee, and textureless oatmeal soup. "who in the hell gets to order chocolate cake and roast beef while they're in the hospital?!" i asked the PCT who stood awaiting my food order. "really?! FRIED CHICKEN DINNER?! who gets that shit?!" she smiled patiently and said, "what about a hard boiled egg? you can have that. you want a piece of dry white toast with it?" what a tease. no, asshole, i want a double fucking cheeseburger with it, not some goddamned toast. but i just snapped the menu shut and said, "for seventy thousand dollars, i want TWO pieces of dry white toast." all of you people who shit normally don't know just how lucky you have it. next time you feel like complaining about something dumb, i want you to think "OATMEAL SOUP." see how awesome your life is? that there is called perspective.
in october i vomited down the front of my sweater while talking to this woman about prescription dog food, but until then i'd been feeling perfectly fine. well, diarrhea every few days perfectly fine, but fine nonetheless. that warranted a trip to the ER, where i got two bags of fluids, some zofran, and some dilauded. my feel-better cocktail. i was only there for a few hours, which means that either i was doing pretty well or that my insurance was like GET THAT BITCH OUT OF THERE RIGHT GODDAMNED NOW OR WE AINT PAYING SHIT.
there's no known cure for crohn's. i just kept dutifully taking my pills and trying not to drink so much and trying even harder to stay away from fancy french cheese. right now i'm not on steroids or rheumatoid arthritis drips, and i'm no longer on immunosuppressive drugs, either. i haven't had to depend on special undergarments (see what i did there?!) in months. no rubber sheets. no scopes, no xrays, no scans, no colonoscopies, NOTHING. and the only thing that has really changed in the last year, because let's face it, i still get drunk and stress out sometimes, is that i haven't been messing around with any goddamned DUDES. celibacy cured my shit disease. alert the new england journal of medicine.
seriously, man. it can't be a fucking coincidence! we already know that when i raised my fucking standards a while back that all but dried up my romantical prospects. for reals. and i was a little salty about it at the time, but what an amazing trade-off. swapping raggedy knuckle-dragging assholes for a clean bill of health for my own precious asshole?! YES, PLEASE. every time i've saddled myself some lie-faced, under-performing wack piece of shit "boyfriend," i've ended up in the hospital two or three or ten times during the course of said relationship. i need to call my hot butt doctor and tell him why my camera endoscopy had unclear results. because ASSHOLE DUDE obviously doesn't show up on an intestinal rad. this is a revolutionary medical breakthrough i'm making here, people. think of all of the money i could've saved! all of those colonoscopies i could've avoided! the first time i had a barium series i wanted to slice my wrists open on the goddamned table. if the doctor would have said, "listen bitch, you can avoid being subjected to another one of these if you just get rid of that human garbage texting some other broad out in the waiting room," i would have done so in a HEARTBEAT.
who knew that not having to worry about the state of my pubic hair at any given moment would result in no longer shitting myself in public? i'd never talk to another person AGAIN if it meant i could stop spending half my paycheck on maintenance drugs. FOR CEREAL. besides, sex is boring and totally gross. and i'm obviously growing up, despite whatever reflection my ailing credit score might be of my adulthood, because every time i think about banging i just think, "GONORRHEA." and about how i don't have it. and about how other people do. and about how easily i could catch it. especially now that there's a drug-resistant strain of that shit. sex is stressful and ridden with disease and people are soul-sucking opportunists just waiting to rob or betray you, so is it really that surprising that now that i don't have to worry about blemishing my otherwise perfect STD tests that my stomach doesn't hurt all the fucking time?
i'm just saying. constantly worrying about who a dude is calling when he takes his cell phone into my bathroom in the middle of the night = SHITSPLOSIVE RAGING STOMACH PAIN DIARRHEA BUTT DISEASE. see also: when he doesn't call me back, or sees me only once a month, or hits on my friends, or fucks wrong, or basically does any of the million things some asshole could do to make you want to hit him with your car. meanwhile, only having to worry about what time basketball wives is coming on = I HAVEN'T BEEN SICK FOR A GODDAMNED YEAR. i finally have something to say to these assholes who keep asking why i ain't got no mans. "well yes, nosy bitch i went to high school with, i most certainly would like to be married with six and a half children and a golden retriever right now. but, you see, it turns out that i have a physiological reaction to men and their insipid nonsense. relationships give me baby guts. it's downright dreadful."
so that's that. i'm not horrible and intolerant and physically unappealing. men don't hate me and think i'm stupid. I'M ALLERGIC TO ASSHOLE DUDES. man, i'm so relieved. and so is my asshole.
