Like a damn waterfall.

So Tuesday night I did trivia at Corner Pocket, headed home, and started working on a big zine project. Around 3 am, my nose starts to run. I look down and it's blood. A lot of goddam blood. Grabbed some toilet paper, stopped the flow, and starting deciding whether or not to freak out.

It's winter, so it's dry, and that can cause nose bleeds.
It's not stopping.
I never get nosebleeds.
This is so much blood.
Shit.

I called my mom, but she was asleep. Called one sister, she didn't answer. Called another, she grabbed the phone, said she'd come take me to the ER. She's got two kids, though, and I hated that she was going to lose sleep dealing with me.

Still bleeding.

I cut off my computer and tv. Changed toilet paper. Got the septum ring out of my nose and put it safely aside. The first sister called, announced she was coming to get me. I called the second and told her to go back to bed. She said, "Ha!" and told me to text her as soon as I knew anything.

Still bleeding.

Do you know how hard it is to lace your shoes when you are a fat man holding toilet paper clamped to your nose? Got dressed. Grabbed my hoodie. Locked the door, there's my sister and her boyfriend. Went to the ER.

Still bleeding.

They took my blood pressure, which was on the high end of not good at all. Got me into a room pretty much straightaway. I was pretty freaked out, but the nurse said I wouldn't die. She had on scrubs, so I believed her.

Still bleeding. For the next 3 and a half hours, I held gauze to my nose and swallowed everything I couldn't spit out. Gross, yes? Grosser in person.

Dude, I swallowed so much blood.

As the doc told me afterward, "With pressure and time, every injury stops bleeding. Either it clots of you run out of blood." Funny guy, that doctor. It finally stopped. He took a look, said it was a tiny hole, but my high blood pressure made it gush.

He said, lower your blood pressure. He said, seriously, you don't have insurance. He said, fill out your paperwork, here's a scrip for your bp, go home. Don't pick your nose so hard.

My entire adult life has consisted mostly of red meat and beer. Crap.

All last week I had a cold. I snuffled. I coughed. I sat in my chair. Sit sit sit, with my cat in my lap. I watched Battlestar Galactica dvds, I ate soup, I drank OJ. Drink drink drink.

How much fun was it? None. None fun.

Oh, sure, my cat loved it. She was in psycho kitty heaven, sucking up my body warmth and biting me every time I went to take yet another hot shower or make a tuna sandwich. Bite bite bite. That's Baggy's favorite trick.

After something like 7 or 8 days of sitting and sipping and being bit every so often, I now declare myself healed. Discount the rough cough I may be wracked with every so often. Please ignore the slightly distant look on my face as my addled brain catches up with the conversation. Because there's no way those things are going to kill me, but cabin fever was about to.

Dead dead dead.

not up to snuff

It's not the sore throat. Not the developing drippy nose that threatens to glue my septum ring to my face. Not the overwhelming urge to nod off in my chair with a quilt over my lap like an old man. No, it's not the physical symptoms that make me hate being home sick.

It's daytime tv.

Talk shows and court shows and game shows and dance shows, and all I want is a god damned story that doesn't involve one of the Ten Sitcom Plots.

Mom brought me mango sorbet and fruit salad, and that's making the whole thing easier to take. But I wish there was a service that delivered John Waters movies and mind altering substances. Now that's how you get through a bad spring cold.