Worker's Downtime

Cellulitis. An infection of the skin. Who the hell makes this shit up? Cellulitis? Seriously?

It is advisable never to read a Wikipedia description of an illness with which one has just been diagnosed. This will lead to inordinate anxiety and stress.

Cellulitis.

It was a Friday evening of fun spent among friends at The Weatherspoon art gallery. People dressed in 70's garb to herald the arrival of the Andy Warhol Big Shots exhibit. Rough Hands played Velvet Underground covers. I grooved to the vibe and good people present before winding my way into the gallery. It was one of those rare nights of delight. Fantastic music, inspiring art, stimulating people, happiness all around.

As my boyfriend, Danny, and I left the gallery and walked to the car, I noticed a sharp pain under my arm. I commented on it. But we both shrugged it off as a pulled muscle.

Once home, Danny and I began practicing the songs that I planned to perform at the 2010 Marijuana Wolf performance. I'd been asked to open for them, even though I've never performed in any capacity other than an open mic. Still, how can one refuse Marijuana Wolf?

In the heat of my room, which I'm convinced is the gateway to Hell, Danny hammered the guitar while I sang. But I continued to notice a discomfort under my arm, which seemed to be spreading into my side. After making a low-fi recording of my new anthem, The Floater Turd song, I had significant pain now moving into my back and my right breast.

For the record, I had a cancerous tumor extracted from my right breast last March.

I began to feel slightly alarmed. I went into the bathroom and lifted my shirt to examine the area that was in pain and I discovered a nipple-less, swollen and bright red boob. Ok, my nipple didn't fall off. I lost it to the surgeon's knife last year. But all the same, it was a pretty discomforting sight.

So the question became, do we go to the emergency room on a Friday night and deal with a long wait and weekend drama or do we wait til morning to go to the Urgent Care? With the pain in my breast, back and side increasing at an alarming rate and the emergence of a fever, the former seemed preferable to the latter.

I called the Cancer center and left a message for the doctor on call. He called me back relatively quickly and listened to my symptoms. He advised me to have it looked at. Whether I chose to have it looked at that night or in the morning was pretty much up to me.

Thanks, doc.

I decided if he was so nonchalant about it, I could wait til morning. But the pain grew more intense still. So I made a midnight phone call to an amazing woman whom I've never met.

Dr. Gilda Cardenosa, recommended to me by my radiologist friend at the time I was diagnosed with cancer, is an expert in the field of breast cancer. I've never met her face-to-face. I've had only one telephone conversation with her. It was around the time that I was weighing out my treatment options. She helped me gain the perspective I needed to make a decision that felt right to me. While she knows her stuff and addressed any question I had with confidence, she also had a terrific sense of compassion that was tangible over the phone. She generously invited me to call her anytime - day or night - with any questions whatsoever.

I took her up on this offer. I called, left a message, and within half an hour, she called me back. I don't pay this woman. She doesn't know me from Adam. Or Eve. And she advised me to get to the emergency room pronto. She expressed concern over the possibility of there being an abscess or fluid buildup which would require immediate medical attention. And thus it was decided. A total stranger to whom I've never written a check treated me as if I was an old client of hers and spoke as if she had my best interest at heart.

Danny took me to the Emergency Room.

For the record, Danny Bayer is a gem of a boyfriend. Over the past three years, there has been much health drama going on in my life and he's been right beside me. He still says I'm sexy even though I have only one nipple. I've never really cared about being "sexy." But I've heard horror stories about women whose husbands start hounding them immediately after a mastectomy. "When are you going to have the reconstructive surgery?" And after the reconstructive surgery, "When will you have the nipple rebuilt?" I guess because I've never been with anyone so shallow and completely selfish, I cannot imagine being subjected to that sort of brutality.

Long story short, Danny Bayer is the best.

Danny missed much sleep as he waited for me to be processed, examined, tested, diagnosed and discharged. This took about five hours - not bad for a weekend night at the ER.

The Emergency Room was pretty quiet upon arrival actually. I was immediately taken to admittance and then to an examination room. Soon after that, a physician's assistant came in and examined me. A chest x-ray was taken. A novice nurse tried to extract blood from one of my robust and protruding veins. Which likes to roll. So he chased it. And it hurt. So I told him to stop it. And the lady that was supervising him stuck me. And she chased my vein. But she caught it fairly quickly. So I didn't yell at her.

This whole series of events remains fairly dreamlike in my mind. Pain does a strange thing to one's brain.

The official diagnosis was delivered and I was hooked up to an IV full of antibiotics. Again, the novice nurse came in to remove the catheter after the IV had run its course. Apparently no one taught him to apply pressure to the spot where the catheter leaves the vein. Fortunately, he asked me to hold the gauze bandage in place for him immediately after removing it. So I applied my own damn pressure and successfully avoided getting one of those big bulgy blue remnants of intravenous therapy such as the one I experienced after a round of chemotherapy a long time ago. It only takes one bad nurse to make one acutely aware of correct medical procedure.

I was discharged at roughly 6:30. Danny took me to one of the few pharmacies open 24 hours so I could get my antibiotics and pain pills. Cephalexin. 500 mg. Hydrocodone/APAP. 5 mg/325 mg.

I have a high tolerance to pain. So it speaks highly of Cellulitis' ability to kick one's ass when I tell you that I took the pain pills. As a result, I was unable to hold a thought or a coherent conversation for two days. I apologize if you were one of the few people I spoke with on those two days.

The antibiotics that I eat are inscribed with the word "Lupin." Lupin is one of my favorite characters in the Harry Potter series. He's a werewolf. Each time I pour an antibiotic pill into my hand and prepare to swallow it, I wonder whether I'm about to ingest werewolf parts. Or whether I'm taking a pill that will promote the manifestation of my inner werewolf. Or whether this pill will just make me more of a lunatic than I already am.

To date, I've devoted seven days to getting well. Cellulitis has given me much "free time" to do with as I please. But I haven't felt up to doing much at all. And I've been doped up on pain pills, which impeded my already diminishing mental capacity. Free time spent being sick constitutes work time in my mind. Somebody needs to pay me for this.

I miss people.

I met with my doctor yesterday to see whether I could return to my normal activity level. She advised me to lay low until next Tuesday - four days from now. I have the obligatory annual family gathering to attend this weekend. She asked whether this would be a stressful situation for me. When I told her it would, she immediately said, "Don't go, then." I have a performance which I've been looking forward to. She looked at me with great skepticism and interrogated me.

"What's the worse thing that will happen if you don't do it."

"I'll be disappointed. Some of my friends will be disappointed."

"What sort of performance?"

"I'll just be singing. It's a short set.....roughly 15 minutes. But there is no air conditioning in the venue. It's hot. There will be a lot of people there."

"This concerns me."

Silence.

"This is important to you, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"I'm going to let you make that call but exercise caution."

She then told me the story of a woman with a similar infection who did not listen to her, who went back to work too soon and resumed her normal day-to-day life. She ended up in the hospital for a week with drainage tubes in her boob to remove the puss from the abscesses she developed. It took her six weeks to recover.

Oh Hell no.

So tomorrow's gig remains an uncertainty for now, as does the family gathering. Illness and the doctor's advice doesn't get me off the hook that easily the Linthicum clan. Even death would be viewed suspiciously as a dodging tactic.