Two months ago in early October, I had a bit of a health scare. Nothing terribly serious, but it was still alarming. I had a red rash on my leg that also hurt at certain odd spots when I moved. Notably on the thigh and below the knee. At the time, I thought I could simply tough it out, and wait for it to go away. Turns out that your motivation for toughing the pain away goes down dramatically when the pain doesn’t go away.
This perplexed me, because I hadn’t been in any kind of extraneous activity lately. The closest thing I could think of was when I accidentally twisted my leg while in an uncomfortable position around the debris in my room. But that shouldn’t have caused what was keeping me from moving properly. Another confounding analysis was that I’d bruised my leg before, but it was the other leg that hurt. My body has a strange reaction to pain.
My sense of taste was heightened, yet I could hardly eat anything, and was throwing up multiple times in the middle of the night. I couldn't eat a hardboiled egg, finding it loathsome even as I choked it down. To paraphrase a saying, when you're tired of eating, you're tired of life. But I developed a taste for fruit. I liked the strawberry jam, but didn't like the strawberries. The grapes and pineapple and the cantaloupe tasted good. I even ate some off-brand clementines that had too much pulp, and finished off the leftover grape juice.
The last time I’d felt this bad was when I had my Kawasaki, which ironically enough, has some Covid-related symptoms. If I experienced a milder version of what’s currently running around, then there was a chance I might be asymptomatic, and if so, take all precautions in preventing others from being affected.
What I was most upset about was that very same week, I had an appointment with my audiologist to get a replacement for getting my hearing aid replaced. I’d been given a loaner after my old h-aid conked out, and was fortunate to have that done in March when the Pandemic just started. (It's a wonder the loaner lasted as long as it did without breaking down.) But before I could apply for a new model, I needed to do a hearing test to be eligible for a replacement, proving that I was deaf and hadn’t been faking it all these years. And I couldn’t attend the simple 5-minute procedure since in terms of detecting dearness during a virus-laden society, it was low priority.
But now, it looked like I might not even BE able to make it to my audiologist, my mental willpower notwithstanding. The pain was starting to severely intervene with my motor functions, my temperature fluctuated between a high of 101 and a low of 98.6, and I had a headache along with a high fever, all typical symptoms of Covid, though my breathing remained the same. Any potential sniffle and cough was cause for alarm when they happened, and was only relieved when they’re gone the next day. It’d been two days now, and my leg still hurt, even with applying cold compresses to the affected areas. I looked up my symptoms online, trying to find a stronger link between my leg rash and Covid, and didn’t see much of one. Not seeing an obvious connection, I looked up pain in the leg. The results showed bruising and blood clots, but nothing specific.
Eventually, the pain got to the point that I figured I might as well bring attention to my parents. When I showed them the upper portions of my thighs, they reacted with alarm. Not at the discolouring rashes or my nonexistent shallow breathing, but from seeing the state of my knees.
I’d always had severely callused knees, not because of any kind of rough-housing, but because I often spent a large amount of time in front of the computer on my knees. This was a result from not only shifting positions from sitting down for long periods of time at end (I know, I know, sitting is the new smoking), and also needing to feel the direct pressure of the desk against my stomach, which the thin veneer of the edge isn’t enough to satisfy me. My early days of using the computer were of the bulky suitcases-sized variety which required heavy desks that could withstand their weight, and had large boards to press against. Today’s makeshift desks now have a flimsy slidable tray keeping a far distance away from the keyboard, which isn’t to my liking. To this day, I still have a kind of nostalgia for those oldschool wooden desks and chairs, even though my size and mass no longer fits. In fact, attempts to squeeze into that wedged space is something of a guilty pleasure.
But it turns out those days of kneeling on my knees more often than a church preacher had unintended side effects. In addition to building up calluses that flaked over my knees as a symbol of inappropriate pride, the resultant buildup was a pathway for pathogens to come through, and had a high risk of infection. And it was likely a malignant virus unrelated to Covid could’ve entered my bloodstream.
I’d been warned about my knees numerous times in the past, but this was the first time it really sunk in that it could be detrimental to my health. After all, one of the highest risk of old people is their legs, and like horses, when they can no longer properly walk, their independence fades away into the harsh sunset of the glue factory. For all my precautions at avoiding human contact, I’d foolhardily allowed a backdoor into my body at a knee-high level.
My parents had gone out of their way to make things easier for me during this state of emergency. My Dad braved out on shopping excursions, even though he could’ve simply ordered what he needed. My mother bought a bunch of transparent plastic masks to make it easier for me to lipread people, and here I was, making things more difficult for them at their most busiest. I always seem to get sick at the worst possible times, when it’s most inconvenient, such as when I had my gout.
Since going out to a clinic at this late hour (it was around 7:00 or so), my parents had to make do with getting a secondhand diagnosis with a family doctor by sending photos of the infected area. It’s much easier to get an accurate result when you can see the symptoms for yourself. After some back and forth conversation I was completely unaware of, the general consensus was that I most likely had Cellulitis, a deep infection inside my leg that could severely affect my internal nervous system and blood pressure if left untreated. For this, I needed to take some antibiotics and painkillers for 2 weeks until it went away.
I thought my old antibiotic cream would still work, and I’d only applied deliberately when certain body areas developed a scab from overuse. Turns out I wasn’t aware that there was an expiration date, and needed to get replaced, since it’d been sitting on the counter for over 10 years.
So my Dad went out to get the prescription for antibiotic pills and cream to apply over the infected area. The cream insisted on washing the affected area first, and since it was to be applied twice a day, I opted for simplicity by taking a shower. Easier than lifting my leg to fit under the faucet sink. Then, after drying myself off, I’d apply two kinds of cream on my leg, the clear one first, and the milky white one after, taking care to wash my hands before and after. While waiting for the cream to take effect, I noticed that the points where my leg hurt the most was the most used spots for when I’d rest my elbows in the bathroom. So I couldn’t even enjoy reading in the ‘library’.
I thought this would be enough, but my parents didn’t want to take any unnecessary risks, and wanted to follow the doctor’s recommendation that I go to the hospital immediately. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go to the hospital right at that moment because it was late at night, and raining, making for precarious driving conditions, even in the event of a potential emergency. No point in getting into an accident and having to go to the hospital via ambulance. Better to go early in the morning instead.
That night, I had trouble sleeping, not just from the pain in my leg, but my thoughts constantly racing over the certainty that I was going to die without having accomplished anything I’d set myself out for. I still had loads of notes that still hadn’t been jotted down for my Web Novel which I’d kept putting off. I had piles of old articles on Asperger’s I’d been organizing and left an awful mess out of. One thing I can tell you, the fear of impending death is a great motivator for firing up the creative juices. Nothing like the impending threat of morality breathing down your back to motivate you to get your writing down. That's why they call them DEADlines. It’s also an appetite suppressor, though I wouldn’t recommend it as a diet plan.
Even though we were supposed to leave at 5:00 AM, I was so upset I couldn’t stand waiting, and sleeping on the wrong side (my hurt leg kept me from feeling comfortable) and having a thick Reader’s Digest Medical hardcover pressed against my stomach during times of stress wasn’t helping me much either. I started off by preparing food for the upcoming trip, peeling the pulp off the off-brand clementines and packing grapes off their stems wrapped in napkins to absorb the moisture, not knowing just how long I would have to wait. (No point using perfectly good paper towels when we’ve got plenty of napkins)
My Dad found me in the bathroom at 4:00 AM, throwing up for the third time and decided to leave earlier than expected, which was something of a relief, getting the suspense over with. However, he was such a meticulous planner that, even with the two of us departing at an earlier schedule, we still wound up leaving at 5:00 anyways.
This early in the morning, there wasn’t much traffic, but still a few cars running at stop lights. I was annoyed that even in the presence of a pandemic, there were still too many people around. The air was cold, and the parking spot we found was far away from the main entrance, so we had to make our trek there, and I rushed peg-leg style, impatient to get this ordeal over and done with.
Upon arriving and seeing the white plastic sheet covering everything at the rear entrance of the Emergency room, all the strength went out of my legs, and I had to force myself to take further steps towards the daunting doorway, the enormity of the situation I was walking into began to weigh down on me.
I was guided to a waiting room with the resident nurse who’d determine the severeness of my illness, and where I’d get the chance to use the latest feature app on my Android cell phone, Live Transcribe, which I wrote an essay for a volunteer organization in a hearing magazine. (Reproduced below)