speak
Bed-ridden
Photo courtesy: Kathryn Anderson
The happy life of a sick girl
I was supposed to be riding in the national championship horse show. instead, I laid on a cool, damp hospital bed holding a sterile telephone as my best friend spoke of the trophy I was
supposed to win. The day a nurse wheeled me to my room at Children's Hospital, was the day my plane took off for the show.
I'd grown accustomed to such disappointments. I was always ill, perusing the medicine cabinet each morning like a refrigerator. As a little girl, I ate amoxicillin chewables for breakfast and strep throat claimed many a
Back in the hospital, the nurse entered the room. She held a catheter and was accompanied by two assistants. It was time to get off the phone. They smiled pleasantly while I wished death upon them and held my crotch with a defen-
Kathryn Anderson Jayplay writer
sick day. By high school, I had learned more about common illnesses than the average first-year medical student. My sickly childhood was an educational experience. Youth taught me to find light in the darkest places. It taught me resilience.
sive hand.
Who knew a pesky case of mono could land you with a tube up your pee hole? I didn't, but after 17 years of getting the worst of every common illness,
I should've predicted it.
I was sick before I could spell the word. Missing two weeks of kindergarten to recover from pneumonia, chicken pox and strep throat, I sought solace in saltine crackers and the dim comfort of my bathroom. I could take a strep test with the best of 'em. Barely flinching when a nurse stuck the wide popicle stick down my throat, my gag reflex all but
destroyed. I hone the skill to this day.
destroyed. I hone the skill to this day. Eventually, my illnesses forced me into all-out fights with the school district about my absences. I always missed more than the allotted amount of school.The district perpetually threatened to give me half-credit.Mother, furious, would march into the administrative offices waving doctor's notes like a flag, while I lay in bed, missing all of my junior year final exams.
"Don't talk," my mother would bark, one hand on my damp forehead, fingers of the other hand between her clenched teeth. When it beeped, I'd have her look. "98.8," then she'd sigh, because I rarely ran a temperature, a testament to my lousy immune system. I learned that a nice hot fever was crucial to earn the attention of a doctor.
I became paranoid that the doctor didn't believe me and all of my medical complaints. "Your tests came back normal," he often said with a raised eyebrow. I imagined they flagged my file with a Post-it reading, "Hypodhondriac."
Me describing the sharp sporadic pain in my stomach, the doctor staring at me exhaustedly and jotting futile notes, I had to once drink 20 ounces of chalky pink barium (yeah, it's an element on the periodic table) in front of an x-ray machine. And another time I sipped a lactose and water cocktail to see if I was intolerant. My mother and I sat in the exam room reading Everybody Poops, laughing until I thought lactose would shoot out my nose.
In eighth grade, I contracted whooping cough and spat blood for two weeks. I couldn't decide which was worse, sporting a surgical mask in public places or enduring tests in which a doctor inserted a wire through my nose and into my trachea. When a grim call came from the doctor, notifying us of my positive test results, the Center of Disease Control was notified. Evidently, I was an epidemic risk and I wore a surgical mask for days and felt just like a leper for many of them. Nobody wants to ride in an elevator with a pale girl wearing a surgical mask. Nobody.
It was all that I missed that made being the sick girl the worst. It was the whole summer I missed from mono, the horse shows I couldn't attend, the school days i skipped for fear of passing an illness on. I hated all that.
Sometimes I think about how much of life I let pass during my bouts of illness. Sometimes I get royally pissed remembering the days in bed or on a paper-laden exam table. Now, primarily healthy, save for allergies and the occasional kidney infection, I look back and realize it wasn't so bad. There's even something comical about catheters and bedpans.
Life is funny, including the sick parts. After all, I'm alive, aren't I?