After the seriousness of all that Civil War history, I need a break to write something on the lighter side.
One of the greatest blessings of growing up in my family was the hilarity of living in our house. My father, despite being so serious on Sundays – as an Episcopal minister, had the best sense of humor I've ever come across. And when he found something funny, he reacted by howling with laughter until his eyes teared up and he'd be slapping his thighs with great glee.
My sister had a dryer sense of humor, and liked to express it through emails and short stories than verbally, but she let it rip one way or the other.
My sense of humor runs the gamut from bawdy to goofy. After all, I did cut my teeth on Mel Brooks and Monty Python and the Holy Grail movies ... not to mention Cheech and Chong.
My mother found humor in things, but was more serious than the rest of us as was my brother, who instead, had a huge streak of mischievousness. My sister and I were always his 'dumber than dirt' victims – he got us every time.
With the passing of my sister this year and my dad 11 years ago, gone are those daily doses of tongue in cheek humor. So, as I have gone through papers this year, I've come across some of the more hysterical sides of us – yes we wrote them down; specifically my sister and I who would banter back and forth via e-mail daily, despite the fact we saw each other every day.
The following are a few anecdotes from a flurry of e-mails after I had suffered through a six-week respiratory infection that I thought I'd never get over, considering I rarely get sick. This particular time I was out of work for at least a week straight and a few additional days here and there, along with having to take about five antibiotics until one finally worked.
The more I wrote to my sister, the funnier her responses, until I lost track of whose comments were whose. If you insult easily – read no further. But if you are human, and have a sense of humor ...
• You know you're really sick when you've seen every episode of HGTV and can now build your own home, buy a house on Belize, remodel the basement and lust after the hot landscape designer Jamie Durie in your sleep.
• You know you're really sick when, after the 19th day, you realize you've gone through five bags of cough drops, 1 1/2 boxes of Throat Coat hot tea, most of a lemon juice container, 12 oz. of honey, 1 gallon of water a day, a bottle of eucalyptus essential oil, half a container of Vick's, one entire package of mini pads (I'm over 50 and coughed A LOT!), a weeks worth of underwear in three days, two boxes of Tylenol night and day cold remedy – in the first seven days of sickness, one box of buttered popcorn that just didn't taste as good as it should have, and 24 sugar-free Popsicles in four days.
• You know you're really sick when you find the act of one of your cats washing the face of the other cat simply fascinating and you've just spent an hour watching them do it.
• You know you're really sick when you treat yourself to fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and biscuits with honey and it tastes like cardboard.
• You know you're really sick when someone, like your boss, really makes you furious and you experience untold rage that you express and then 24 hours later you realize you've been on massive doses of steroids for the previous four days. Oops.
• You know you've been sick for too long when on the 19th day you realize that the skin is hanging off the back of your hands – and it also strangely fascinates you for hours on end.
• You know you're really sick when you take five-plus prescriptions, are halfway through them and begin to panic when you realize that ALL of them cause constipation ... and you have hemorrhoids.
• You know you're really sick when you finally have a "BM" and exit the bathroom to find your two cats nervously pacing in front of the bathroom door – ostensibly because the sounds you were making in there were not really human – and they were worried that if you died who was going to feed them.
• You know you're really sick when you do finally have the long-awaited "BM" and you have to share it with someone – in this case – my sister who gets as much glee from it as I do and she manages to find a Dayspring Christian E-card with a psalm on it that is strangely appropriate for a hurt poop.
• You know you're really sick when on the night of your worst crisis, you are groggily planning your funeral and, on the one hand, you're grateful you don't have to pay anymore bills, and on the other hand you suppose your family will miss you, and on the other hand, who will take care of the cats, and on the other hand, you'll be in heaven and won't really care.
• You know you're really sick when you've slept in the living room for three weeks already and you find yourself moving from the recliner to the couch and back again nonstop throughout the night. And ... it takes three trips each time you move – because you have to take your blankie, your phone, a flashlight so you don't trip over the hovering cat, your nose drops, at least two cough drops, your water bottle and two Kleenex – one stuffed in your pants so you don't lose it and one crumpled up in your hand. Unfortunately, I always managed to lose the tissue stuffed in my waistband until the next morning when I found a white, half-moon circle full of crumpled tissues all around the toilet because they've fallen out of my pants during visits to the "torture room."
During my ordeal, my husband and I decided I needed to go to the emergency room. We both got up around 1 a.m. that morning, but we were having a full-blown blizzard, so we decided to wait until first light. We spent the early morning hours watching, you guessed it – back-to-back episodes of HGTV, while eating Popsicles.
The trip to the ER was an adventure – the kind you have when you go on a hiking vacation and find yourself surrounded by mountain lions, bears, snakes and mosquitoes ... no fun at all.
We have a very small hospital here and it's run by the HCA health system. If you know anything about HCA, they're not very good, despite being one of the largest health care systems in the country. It's all about the money-making, not service or care and they over-work the poor people who staff our little hospital.
I spent almost five hours in the tiny ER with just about two other patients that morning. Despite being in a room next to the nurse's station and the fact that I was coughing uncontrollably about every 30 seconds, they kept forgetting I was in there. Or maybe they forgot accidentally on purpose. I sure sounded like I had the cooties.
They knew I couldn't breathe if I laid down, so I had to sit, on the edge of the bed for nearly five hours and the only treatment I got was one respiratory treatment from the therapist, who handed me an inhaler, demonstrated how to use and said it would be done in 10 minutes. He then walked away as fast as his pudgy little feet would take him and I never saw him again. That 10 minute treatment I had to give to myself cost me over $800. The prescription for the same inhaler? It was $15.
At one point during my foray into the ER, I was told I needed a chest X-ray. Finally, after an hour wait, the technician came to get me and walked me over to the "room." For some reason the X-ray room is kept colder than a walk-in freezer. She asks me if I'm wearing a bra. 'Can't you tell?' I think to myself. I'm in my mid-50s, huge, and they're not hanging to my ankles. Of course I'm wearing a bra! Plus it's freezing in here!
But I was nice. I replied, "Yes," to which she said, "Please remove it and I'll be right back."
She doesn't give me the standard Johnnie to wear, which I find odd, but I remove my sweatshirt and bra and she knocks on the door a few minutes later.
"Come in," I say with my two wrinkled, woefully small hands trying to cover my size 40D breasts. The technician's eyes widen as she looks at me, starts to laugh and says, "I'm sorry, I wasn't clear. You only had to take the bra off, not the sweatshirt."
Um - the bra was UNDER the sweatshirt. Had to remove one to get to the other. Duh!
During this entire time I was completely alone. My husband, who had brought me to the ER, had been aghast at all the people sick in the ER (ya think?). And after pulling a crucifix and some garlic from his pocket, he retreated to the far reaches of the parking lot (even during a snowstorm, no matter how sick you are - you MUST always park in the furthest spot from the door, to prevent someone from hitting your car door with their door handle).
Three hours into the ER visit, the doctor announced I had bronchitis and an upper respiratory infection and said she'd be right back with the scripts and discharge papers.
I never saw her again.
An hour and half after that, a nurse whom I'd not seen before came in and gave me my "get out of jail free" card.
My last order of business was to wander through the parking lot looking for the man belonging to me hiding in the little car somewhere behind the plowed snow, way back in the parking lot.
Being sick is no fun. I rarely do get sick, but have had this two more times. Nevertheless, I'm much more savvy about it. As soon as I get it and three days have passed with no let-up to the coughing, I head to my doctor's office, ask for the strongest antibiotic they can give me, stop by the supermarket for prunes, bran muffins and Ex-lax, and get to healing before I end up back at that hospital again.
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