January 4, 2000
Uh... I was given an enema today. I was taken to the hospital for a CAT Scan so that they could see if there was extra fluid collecting inside me and giing me an infection from the appendicitis. There’s this stuff they give you called contrast that you have to drink before you do a CAT Scan, which absorbs x-rays better and makes things easier to see. It’s really chalky like Pepto Bismol and has a bitter orange Tang-y flavor. I had to drink four goddamn bottles of that one after the other and I felt like blowing up. Describing it right now is making me want to throw up. I was forcing myself to chug it like I was at a frat party drinking alcohol. Regardless, I hadn’t drank enough for the doctor to see anything. So, he had to give me the rectal contrast. Holy smokes. That was really lame and embarrassing. It made me angry. I wanted to sock him right in the face. He stuck a big tube up my ass and held up this big bag of liguid going, “Well, I know it’s uncomfortable but you’re gonna have to try to hold this in as long as you can, okay?” all carelessly like it was some kind of carnival game. As I watched this huge bag of fluid slowly draining right into my ass, the word “UNCOMFORTABLE” was scrolling in bright red letters like a marquee in my head. I had to carry on with it for a long five minutes or so. This of course is all after having to drink the contrast and having it injected into my arm as well. Torture. Afterwards I called up Jon and told him all about it.
Turns out I have the same crap they had to irrigate out of my lower abdomen when I busted my appendix collecting in a small space right in front of my tailbone. They’re going to have to drain it out or else it’s going to give me an infection. I’ll have to keep a small tube in to drain it out until the pocket of fluid has collapsed, preventing more fluid from building up. I was admitted back to the hospital a couple hours later, in the same room I had before, for another five days.
I had no idea I was in this condition. Jon came back from SF last night and came by to grab me this afternoon and I got a call from the doctor while I was hanging out at his house. He gave me my Christmas presents, which were a carved wooden box that you could lock with a key, a black Zippo lighter with a pink cat face on it on it, and a pipe that appears to be a lipstick tube, but you can open it up the bottom and smoke weed out of the lipstick part. I was so stoked, they were the perfect gifts. I couldn’t decide if they were more definitive of me or Jon. The only thing I told him to get me was “something gothic.” I’m so glad he found something better than a skull or a pewter gargoyle, or something extravagent and impersonal, like what I got him. I don’t think I’d like the stuff he got for me if they were from anyone else.
January 5, 2000 This is the last tube
Today they put a catheter through my right ass cheek to the space in front of my tailbone where all that abscess infectous fluid pus crap was collecting. They warned me they were gonna have to put it in my ass so when they were taking me down to interventional radiaology, I was just nervous as hell. I guess that’s why I started to get a little teary-eyed, but as I sat and waited, all I could think about was how much I just wanted to see Jon and I started crying. They didn’t use a CAT Scan but they put me under a bigger x-ray in order to see where to stick the damn tube, which was the same size as my IV. The doctor shot an anesthetic right into my ass which was a little painful and just awkward, and then he said “Gimme the purple marker” and drew a big X on my ass. I don’t know how he managed to get a tube that size through all the fat but he did, and it was awful. I felt it being jabbed into my pelvic area and I just had to cry like a newborn woman. The only way I could describe what it felt like to have that thing in is to compare it to someone stabbing your ass with a knife and leaving it in there. I would just be lying in bed and all it felt like was a throbbing cramp in my ass. I couldn’t move my whole leg or walk or sleep on my right side. What’s even worse is they connected the tube to a vaccum device that slowly sucked all the abscess out of my body, which was a yellowish-reddish liquid that looked similar to the water on the surface of ketchup before you shake it. There wasn’t a lot, but I could see it move through the tube to the little collection jar at the end. I looked like a human juice machine. And all the kids laughed at me.
January 7, 2000
I’m being treated with all kinds of shit for the allergic rash I got from my first antibiotic. They’re giving me a different antihistamine pill and two kinds of anti-itch cream. They described one of them as a “steroid cream.” I was like, Cool. Steroids. I should put it on my pecs and see if it makes my boobs grow.
January 9, 2000
I’m home. They took out that damn tube in my ass yesterday and didn’t find any incipient infection. After my parents left last night when visiting hours were over, I went to sleep at 8:00 p.m. and woke up in the middle of the night. I just lay in bed from 3:00 to 6:30 listening to Howard Stern show (since I asked my brother to bring me a walkman) and eating the candy Jon brought for me when he visited the other day. Tonight I got to check my e-mail and Asylum sent me another picture he drew of me. Of course the girl is too hot to be me, but I really like it. I spent all night catching up on journal entries for the website and designing all the new pages of pictures that I’m going to add in place of the ones I have up now. Damn do I hate working all of that shit out, it’s like homework. Meanwhile I’m not doped up on Vicodin anymore and the Swiss Army knife-sized stab wound in my ass is started to get sore again. God do I miss my friends. I’m such a poor little broken baby.
