December 19, 2000
Started feeling abdominal pains tonight while we closed at work at 11:00. I thought my stomach was shrinking in starvation. Then I got home and tried to eat wonton soup, which didn’t help, and I woke up in the middle of the night throwing it all up. What’s “wonton” spelled backwards? “Not now.” If stomachs could talk.
December 20, 2000 “Maybe you have pinworm.”
Had to go to school today for finals, shitty as hell. I was dying. Me and Patty O’ Brian did all kinds of experiments with Alka Seltzer and Snapple. None of it helped. He convinced me I had food poisoning, perhaps there were pinworms in my soup. I felt like I was rotting all day and thought it was the stomach flu, which ironically I got a year ago around the same time. I shrugged it off as maybe an annual event.
Tonight was Geoff’s party, but there was no way I was missing it. I told Jon to pick me up after he got off of work so that we could go together. Regardless of the fact that I had just finished puking when he called me before he left, I was ready to go when he got to my house. This was pretty much the only time I could possibly have my boyfriend and my best friends all in the same place at the same time, and I wasn’t about to miss it just because my dumb stomach was doing clothes dryer cycles. We got there around 10:30 and I did okay for most of the night, only I was too weak to drink or even smoke a cigarette. Smoking a cigarette made me want to fall over. After everyone was introduced, I spent the rest of the night sitting on a recliner with Jon, and we left at 1:00 since I was supposed to work at 7:30 the next morning and had to get to bed.
December 21, 2000 Damn appendix
A few hours later around 3:00 a.m., I woke up with my face buried into my blankets screaming and crying as if someone were murdering me. I must have wailed at the top of my lungs for a half an hour before I finally crawled out of bed and down the hall to my parent’s bedroom. My mom was yelling at me and telling me I was over-reacting, that it was the stomach flu and it wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t gone out and partied. They finally took me to the hospital after realizing how much pain I was in, and argued and screamed at each other the whole way there.
In the ER, my angry mother kept telling me to keep my mouth shut since there was nothing we could do but wait. My mouth was dry as hell but I couldn’t have water. I had to writhe in agony for an hour and a half before the one doctor who was working could get to me. He was a dick. My mom asked, “What could be wrong?” And he’s all, “I don’t know but she needs to calm down.” What a fucking dickface. Some nurse also fucked up sticking an IV in my left hand and said I had “funny veins for a 19 year old,” so she proceeded to stick it in the crook of my forearm, which I was later told the worst place to put it. No wonder it got all sore and bruised. I was also bleeding and the doctor stuck a goddamn speculum up my vagina and poked and prodded around and it hurt ten times as much as it does at the gynecologist. That was probably the most painful thing I remember. I never screamed so loud in my entire life.
They did a CAT Scan on me and saw nothing but blood. Narrowing it down from an ovarian cyst to a kidney stone, they finally figured it was my appendix. I had surgery that afternoon at 5:00 to have it removed, and it turned out that mine had ruptured, and they drained 500 cc’s (17 ounces) of puss out of my stomach. I was a walking blood balloon. 9% of people have their appendix taken out, and I just had to be one of them. Ruptured. I not only have to get mine taken out but there has to be a hole in it. Tht fucking sucks. The other 91% that get to keep their appendix are just bastards.
December 22, 2000 Fuck Jello
Well, I had to eat Jello alright. If there’s any semi-reality in t.v. and movies that depict people eating in the hospital, it’s the Jello and ice cream. Fuck Jello is what I have to say. Fuck it. If I were to write a book about post-appendectomy recuperation I’d call it Fuck Jello. I’m sure it’s trivial to complain about that, but I’ve never had to eat orange Jello for breakfast, lunch and dinner before. Plus orange flavored Thirster juice to accompany orange flavored Vegan kosher ice cream. Ah, the consumption of the flavor of orange in every form possible.
My mom and my brother’s friends came to see me tonight, and shortly after Ryan, Josh, Anthony and Tom Baumgartner followed suit. I looked the shittiest ever. Even Anthony couldn’t help but say, “You look bad.” I was lying all crookedly in bed on the opposite side of the room like an aborted fetus, of course I looked bad.
December 24, 2000
My whole family came to see me tonight, including my aunt, who entertained us with the speculation that she was a black man in a previous life. She thinks she has all the features of a black woman—broad nose, big lips—and at one point she even had Tina Turner hair. But it’s the way she cusses, according to her, that makes her a black man. That’s the only thing. If she didn’t cuss so much she’d be a completely different gender. I should probably tell her how I think I was a white guy in a past life. Then we could have racial tension.
December 25, 2000 Christmas
Last year it took a birthday to realize what good friends I had, but this hospital stay has also served the same kind of purpose. Will and Ray from my “Fresh Brains Society” circle of high school friends came to see me today. Ryan also visited again, this time with Kings, who gave me a Garfield plush that I’ve grown extrememly attached to. Tom has come to see me every day I’ve been in here. Being in the hospital over Christmas isn’t horribly bad. If I were at home it’s probably be the same old thing, waking up and sitting around taking for granted the fact that I’m healthy and that my family is right downstairs, or the fact that I can get up and take a shower if I wanted to and take a piss without having to drag an IV with me into the bathroom. I astonishingly finished off my plate tonight—traditional green beans and pseudo-sirloin strips. It must be true that listening to music makes you eat faster because Rage Against the Machine was playing in the discman and I tore right into all of it like a madman even though it looked like dog food.
So they took out the stitches from my incision and taped it over, which the doctor said wouldn’t be painful but I, of course, cried like a freakin baby. Dr. Mueller sewed me up with messy cross-stitches that looked like goddamn football laces. I looked like a holiday ham. The nurse took the scissors right down the middle of the two flaps that were sewn together and I could feel them tear apart as she severed every binding. Oh my god. Then she pulled out the stitching with tweezers after my skin had grown around them so they all came out with bloody clumps. UGH. Shit. It hurts just writing about it.
December 26, 2000 This is getting tedious.
They decided to keep me in here one more night to be sure that my fevers have subsided. Apparently I had a temperature last night so all the nurses are gossiping about how I had so many guys in my room, my own family couldn’t even hang out with me, and how they all gave me a fever. I don’t know why but I’m anticipating another breakfast in bed. Jon says it's like being in jail because the only thing you really look forward to is the food. I’ve been living in a kind of incubator. Being in such a sterile environment for this long has enabled me to detect lingering cigarette smoke on the scrubs of a med assistant across the room. I miss not having an IV stuck in my arm all the time. I also really wish Jon were here. I’m currently writing this in the dark under the light of my t.v. and flipping around the channels to find one with the brightest screen. This is the most TV I’ve watched in years. I have all the Anne Murray songs memorized from that commercial.
December 27, 2000
An alarm on my IV woke me up this morning at 6:35. A minute later a guy came in to draw more blood from my arm. Where was he last night when it was trickling out of my nose? I look like a heroin addict.
December 28, 2000
Ryan and Kings came over today and watched t.v. I finally gave both of them their presents—Ryan, a pair of Calvin Klein pj’s and some ICP/Twisted posters I picked up from the record shop, and Eric, a picture frame box with Drakkar, Nautica and Cool Water cologne inside. My parents made us dinner, and we corroded Ryan’s vegan diet with beef and milk. I am SO going to hell for that.
December 30, 2000 Happy Birthday Eric King
Ah, my first day out. I spent the day with Tom in Coronado drinking coffee and smoking the first cigarettes I’d had in a week and a half. I walked around like a chick that just had a baby, whatever that looks like. I sure as hell felt like one. Around 5:30 we left so that I could get to Kings’ house for his 21st birthday. We were all meeting at The Old Spaghetti Factory in San Marcos. Mrs. King bought all 17 of us dinner. I got to see Troy for the first time since November at Nick’s house. After that we went back to Kings’ house, where we were joined by a few more guys and the whole goddamn RBHS Dance team—Thea Dela Cruz, Heather Prida, Katie Artiano, etc. They danced their little routine to a Dr. Dre song when it came on. Ugh. I could have sworn we all graduated years ago. Isn't the end of high school accompanied by the demise of those little dancing teams? Or do they still get together to do their giddy little numbers and feel superior to everybody? That’s pretty sick.
The stripper arrived, but requested that all the girls leave for her performance. That pissed everyone off, even the guys, but the stripper insisted that most of the time she comes to house parties and dances for the guys, one of their girlfriends gets pissed and it turns into a fight. I personally couldn’t care less. Nevertheless, no one went anywhere and the stripper left to go to another party, not without 60 bucks for showing up, however. Heather and Katie of the Dance team ended up trying to perform for poor Kings who sat ineptly in a chair as they shook their little asses in his face. No clothes came off, but they tried desperately to dance seductively. They took themselves really seriously but laughed girlishly in embarrassment. Probably because they knew they were making everyone leave the room. They made me want to have an appendix again just so that it could rupture in my disgust. Me and Josh kept looking at each other with that face that people have on when they're trying not to laugh. The only funny part of it was Geoff coming out and pushing his crotch in their faces.
Later that night, Wrestlemania Max, back by popular demand (okay, there was actually no demand, but he’s quite popular) came out strapped in his spandex wrestling outfit and mask, shaking his skinny white body to old school R&B for Eric. Everyone was taking pictures and laughing, it was the highlight of the night. Meanwhile, Ryan was nowhere to be found. It has been speculated that he might be behind the mask of Wrestlemania Max, but that was the last thing on anyone’s mind as he relentlessly humped Eric’s leg. After Eric got up from his chair, pretty Heather Prida sat down in it looking obliviously around the room while Wrestlemania Max was catching his breath beside her. Everyone pointed her out to Wrestlemania Max as more lap dance potential, but what did Wrestlemania Max do? He dismissed her with the wave of his hand. Oh man. I love Ryan. I mean, Wrestlemania Max.
I didn’t drink much at all seeing as how I was on medication. Troy went out and picked me a rose from the neighbor’s yard, which was odd. Of course he ended up being super drunk and mixing it up with Ed and Geoff in their typical battle of masculinity, which pissed Mrs. King off because they were being so loud. They broke glass outside on the street and Kings had to go out and sweep it all up. Not a good ending to the party. Ryan took me home in disgust. I was just falling asleep.
