Ah, Winter. You cold, heartless bitch. You birthed me and you will be the death of me.
It would seem that for 2005 the Season To Be Skipped is Fall. Every year a season is skipped. It's usually Spring. Here in the Northeast, the second the land is green and mushy again, weather akin to the environment found in Satan's armpit blankets the region for the next 5 months or so. Then we usually have a nice Fall, which should really be renamed The Season of Pining and Dread. We pine for warmer weather while dreading the cold, hard, icy winter to come.
It's really a very anxious time. Especially if you're like me and didn't save up any money for Christmas and so therefore will be forced to spend YOUR OWN BIRTHDAY MONEY buying OTHER PEOPLE PRESENTS. But 'tis the season, right? It's all about "giving." There is no value to the feeling of generosity and fulfillment that washes over you when you watch people open up the gifts you bought them. You should know me well enough by now to insert the appropriate amount of "pause" right here.
Moving on. It's mothereffing cold here. Today was nice, but the cold approaches, I can feel it. It HAS been in the 30s here all week. But I feel it elsewhere. Like, in my lungs.
I've inherited many things from my father (rough transition, I know, but stay with me here). Among them are: Big hands, big feet, a taste for whiskey, terrible eyesight, wanderlust, music lust, height, weird sleeping patterns, block handwriting, asthma and - I'm convinced that if I had worked on it hard enough - an uncanny ability to imitate Donald Duck. Oh yeah, and moodiness.
Anyway, my father developed asthma when he was 18 and I developed it when I was 19. Let me tell you the story of how I almost came to my demise in the presence of a Devers - FOR THE FIRST TIME.
Freshman year of college. Went to the Devers' for a weekend getaway. Ate some pizza, drank some grape soda, had a sneezing fit. None of this was out of the ordinary. Except I got a fever. And then got a cough. And then got delirious. And then found it difficult to BREATHE. I sought the advice of both parents, as they are medical professionals. Plan A: Robitussin. Worked for about a minute. Then the electricity went out, and therefore the heat. It was COOOOOOOLD. Cold, cold, cold and I was dying, dying, dying...
I remember huddling around the woodstove in the kitchen. I remember calling Vic at Rutgers. He had just recovered from pneumonia and I thought I might have it, so I called and his roommate told me that Vic was, in fact, NOT recovered. Why, just hours before he had passed out and fallen face-first onto the bathroom floor, breaking his nose and some teeth. But he'll be fine.
Finally, it was Sunday. I knew I needed medical attention. Nobody believed me that I was dying. DYING. We went to Kelly's neighbor's house since they had heat and hot water and were on vacation and we could use their showers. But the house had been empty. The thermostat was off. By the time it was my turn to shower, the water was COLD, COLD, COLD and I was dying, dying, dying...
I went back to Kelly's house where I boiled a kettle of hot water, took it upstairs to Kelly's bathroom sink and shaved my legs, because I KNEW I was taking my ass to the ER as soon as I got back to Boston. I knew I was dying. I passed out on the bus back into the city. I didn't even go upstairs to my dorm room, I just immediately jumped into a cab and took myself to New England Medical Center.
Here's a tip: If you need medical attention right away, and the ER looks BUSY AS HELL, tell someone that you CANNOT BREATHE and your ass will get seen STAT.
They did that thing where they put something on your finger to see how much blood is getting to your brain (???) and they were like, "Only 97%. Holy crap!" I was like, "But...that's an A!" They gave me this awesome mask-like thing with humid air and medicine in it. I thought it was some sort of laughing gas or something because I felt so good...alas, it was merely OXYGEN.
I did have bronchitis, but also "Undiagnosed asthma." They gave me an inhaler of Albuterol. Humid weather doesn't bother me. Dry weather doesn't bother me. Allergy-ridden weather doesn't bother me. COLD, COLD weather bothers me. And this year, I've already had to hit that shit. ALREADY!!!
Winter is going to BLOW.
Thanks, DAD!
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3 comments:
Yes.
And the Tylenol PM story is on deck. I'm trying to space out retelling all the ways you've tried to murder me so that someone doesn't try to prosecute your ass. I imagine it would be hard to plan a wedding from the clink.
I suppose these instances are all payback, though, for the time I jumped your turn when we were parasailing. My ride was fun and fine.
Yours went horribly, HORRIBLY AWRY.
we gave $5 to some drug dealers to take us parasailing, what did you expect??? in the middle of a hurricane..maybe we shouldn't of drank 4 bottles of tequila before we went up;)
an angel?? did you forget to take your medicine today??
I just manifested a nice case of cold weather athsma about two years ago. It was the final straw in my nerdification.
I liked the cold/dying triplets, good job.
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