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Elephant
By The White Stripes, White Stripes
Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine
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When I was in sixth grade, I lost a tooth during a Greenville Christian School pep rally. I think it was my last baby tooth. It bled, and I had to leave the pep rally a little early to stop the bleeding.
While I was gone, rumor spread into the gym that someone was having seizures in the parking lot. Coach Wombaker had it announced that a sixth grader named Alyssa Keysor was having seizures in the parking lot. They all prayed for me.
When I came back into the pep rally, Lisa was crying, since she thought I was going to die, and people I didn't know were hugging me. All I did was lose a tooth.
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My new doctor changed some of the doses of my medicine this week, so I've been a little loopy. The biggest side effects have been nausea, drowsiness, and abnormally vivid dreams. The combination of drowsiness and vivid dreams, though, means that I doze off easily, and, when I am still half-awake, have a hard time figuring out which things I'm dreaming and which things I'm not.
For example, if I were to doze off while I was hanging out with Steve and Liz, and while I dozed off I dreamed that I was talking to Stephen Hampton, I would wake up confused. Because I would know that Stephen's dead, but I would also know that I just talked to him. And I also know that I was talking to Steve and Liz. So does that mean Steve or Liz or both are dead, too? Once I wake up all the way, I'm ok, but those few minutes of half-awake can be upsetting.
I went to the Health Center on Friday to check my blood pressure. Apparently, abnormal blood pressure is a side effect for some people, and so it seemed smart to make sure mine was normal. The nurse, Judith, checked my blood pressure, which was normal. Then she left the room and told me to wait.
Judith came in and out of the room several times over the course of an hour. Whenever she left, I would doze off. Consequently, whenever she came back to wake me up, I would get confused and have a hard time communicating. I tried to leave a couple of times, and she kept telling me to sit back down while she talked on the phone with my doctor (who wasn't actually in the office, since this was supposed to be a check-up for temperature and blood pressure).
Several arguments and hours later, I found myself in a locked ward at Linden Oaks, the psychiatric hospital in Naperville. The psychiatrist asked me questions I expected him to ask me, and I knew how to answer him. A medical student, Carlo, sat in on the evaluation.
After an hour or so, the psychiatrist said, "What we've got here is a normal case of clinical depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. But you're telling me you knew of that already. Well, I'm sorry, Alyssa, but I thought you were going to be a lot more exciting than this. The nurse from Wheaton told us you were in an altered mental state.* She thought you were having delusions.** I even brought a med student in to observe you. I mean, it's great for you, but it was a little boring for Carlo here." Sorry, Carlo.
From the time I walked into the Health Center to the time I got back to my apartment from the psych ward was seven hours.
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Coach Wombaker thought I was having a seizure. I'd lost a tooth.
Nurse Judith thought I was having delusions. I'd fallen asleep.
Skizz says that I am surrounded by incompetence. This may mean that I am a carrier, so I'm immune to it myself, but I can pass it on to the people around me. I would recommend washing your hands thoroughly before and after interacting with me in any way.
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Unrelated and anticlimactic, but I have to add this. If you find yourself in north Chicago late one weekend night, check out Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind at the Neo-Futurists theater. And call me so I can come, too.
*An altered mental state (AMS) is like a trance. Think Trelawny when she prophesied, or Donnie Darko when his therapist hypnotized him, or when he wreaked havoc on his neighborhood, or when he did pretty much anything, actually.
**Delusions are when you firmly believe in something that
is verifiably false. Like invisible-to-everyone-else pink and benevolent rabbits. Or invisible-to-everyone-else prophetic and terrifying rabbits. Or invisible-to-everyone-else rabbits of any kind, really, from
Harvey to Frank. If you end up with a particularly rationalistic doctor, he may chalk your faith up to delusion, even though religion is not usually verifiably true or false. The same cannot be said for invisible-to-everyone-else rabbits.
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| | Posted 2/17/2008 1:06 AM - 216 Views - 13 eProps - 7 comments
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