Rainy Night Weekend

It's a rainy night, warm.

My thoughts are all over the place, some guided by my the predictable waves on my emotions, other veering off in random directions, and it makes me think that maybe tonight isn't the night for me to be writing, especially not my first post in almost three months. But I had too much sugar (half a pint of peach sorbet while watching television) earlier and I'm a bit wired for one a.m., and perhaps writing's what I need to wind my head down.

The sound of the rain is comforting. It connects me to other moments in my life, connects me to this life, and to some degree, to my insignificance. The rain doesn't care about me. It can't, and shouldn't.

I had a brutal and surreal weekend. I don't know why but the word surreal sounds like it should always bring some element of serenity or at least amusement, but I think that's a wrong impression based on too many Myst-like videogames, too many Dali prints. On Wednesday I suddenly developed a sore throat, or I should say, a swollen throat, but this happens to me often and I thought little of it. Thursday morning the throat issue was still there, but not significantly worse, so I went out as I usually do, coffeeshop and too much time sitting outside smoking cigarettes in the cold. I took a nap after that and when I woke from the nap I knew something was wrong, and was ever running a slight temperature, but I didn't think all that much of it. I agree to have dinner with a friend as I thought it would be good to get out of the house, and put thoughts of sickness out of my head.

When I stand at the window, I listen to the rain, and feel it on my face. Spring rain reminds me mostly of college, and I think of the person that I was then, twenty years ago. I imagine for a moment that I could visit him, that the rain could bring us together for that moment, but I am not sure that I would much like his company, or him mine. He'd probably like me fine, but would be scared of me, and I'd have to bite my tongue not to lecture him about everything he's about to do wrong. It's better this way. I listen to the rain. It feels good on my freshly shaved head.

Friday arrived with a different story. I had gone into what I thought was a full-blown flu, overnight. The swelling in my throat had become severe, the worst I seen it since that strange September in 1991 when I came down with the illness that no doctor could diagnose. That illness had started with a swollen throat and I had spent eighteen years dreading its return, and here it was, accompanied by a fever. I slept a lot of the day. I sent a message to Kurt asking him to come over but he was busy with work. I went to the Safeway to buy soup, lurching through the fluorescent aisles like the undead, and wondering if I might be infecting every person I encountered. I slept some more. Kurt finally arrived at six, or seven, and he wanted to take my temperature. 102.9. I knew he was worried and he didn't want to leave me with a fever so high, so I bundled up, got under my heavy blankets, and set about breaking it. It's an odd, rarely useful skill that I have, that I can break a fever almost at will, and when I was young, I could also bring a fever on at will. Eventually Kurt took a break from the night watch to go to the gym, promised he'd be back in a few hours, leaving me under six blankets, wearing four shirts and pants in bed, plus my bathrobe, and a knit hat, left me to my duty.

In quiet moments, my mind always wants to pull together a random and usually unnecessary connect. May fourth.... well, that's the day I started as a busboy at J.B. Danigans when I was eighteen years old. I struggle to remember that first day there and fail. May fourth is probably someone's birthday but I think May fifth is more popular. The seventh is much more popular, but that's still a few days away.

By the time Kurt returned, I'd gotten my temperature to 98.3. He was astounded and so relieved. He'd been worried that it might go higher and if it went higher, well then what would we have done? My throat was still bad but I felt like I was on the mend and I went to sleepy, pleased with myself. I slept terribly, the vestiges of my fever causing me to have the same dream over and over and over throughout the night, a series of images repeating, and sometimes they meant something to me, sometimes they didn't. I got up early on Saturday, aggravated by my inability to sleep deeply, and aggravated by the increased pain in my throat. I had reached the point where solid food was not an option, soft food was tricky, and even drinking had become a wincing affair. I couldn't swallow my own spit without practically doubling over. I tried to distract myself with television but the pain was intense so I decided to take a percocet to help allow me to function. It worked in that I could talk and swallow without making that horrible face, but eating was still out of the question. The numbness was nice, though, so as I felt the pain returning, I took another, then a vicodin, then another percocet, and another vicodin. At some point Kurt came, as did my dear friend David, but I spent most of the evening in a narcotic fuzz, drifting in and out of sleep. I wondered if this might be the way to beat this. I decided I had strep throat and found a bottle of unused amoxicillin in my drawer and I was good to go.

I wish the rain could quiet my head. I wish that sound, arrhythmic and peaceful, could overtake my panics. I wish I could overtake my own panics. I close my eyes for a moment and imagine there's someone else here with me, but no, just me. I thought it was Janice from the Muppet Show. I must be getting tired at last.

Sunday morning I woke up feeling better. I got out of my sweaty clothes and put on new ones. I ate a pint of peach sorbet, which David had brought the night before, as a substitute for breakfast. It felt like the swelling was going down and maybe I could drink without wanting to scream. I watched television, waiting for any of my friends to wake up. I discovered that my antibiotics were not really antibiotics at all, just Tylenol that I just have at some point put into a prescription bottle. I felt stupid. My stomach started to disagree with me. I found myself salivating and I knew that was a bad sign and the next thing i knew I was running, trying not to step on the cat who misunderstood my enthusiasm, for the bathroom where I threw up everything into the sink. The vomiting itself was painless, as these things go, but the aftermath was a new burning sensation on my sore and tender throat, and a loss of all the progress I'd made. I was listless and depressed and in a lot of pain, afraid to try to eat anything and especially afraid of taking more pills, though they might have helped with the pain. So I waited. Kurt found me first, a shell of the person he'd said good night to just twelve hours earlier. David arrived not long after. They brainstormed a bit on how to get me real antibiotics and this led to a trip to the same doctor i saw last year when I went unexpectedly deaf. The pain in my throat had become unbearable. I could barely drink, barely talk. I withdrew and wasn't even sure how to react when the doctor diagnosed me with a peritonsillar abscess. He gave me a shot of steroids to force down the swelling, a shot of an antibiotic, and a prescription for both. Hours later, still in unbearable mouth pain, waiting for either drug to ever kick in, David pointed out that I seemed dehydrated. I couldn't handle more than a small sip of water at a time so I wasn't really sure what to do.

The rain. I always return to the rain. It doesn't mean what I wish it did, but what does, really?

After David left, I came upon the idea of trying to drink through a straw. I don't know why I hadn't earlier, but I hadn't. Kurt found a straw in the kitchen and I was able to drink an entire glass of water in a minute, and another half glass. In a day of mostly setbacks, I needed that one little victory, and I perked up quite a bit. And then more, and as I noticed that either the steroids or the antibiotics seemed to be working. The pain had decreased. After Kurt left I dared to try to look into my mouth in the mirror. In the beginning, I'd been able to watch one side turn red and swell and then the other, but then the swelling had gotten so much, taking my tongue into the mix, that I hadn't been able to see much of anything. But my tongue had returned mostly to normal and so I could see... what had become of my mouth. It was shocking. The left side, a distorted and red swollen mass, had spread and spread and forced my throat off to the right side, my uvula an angry afterthought. The right side was equally red and misshapen but it couldn't compete for pure size. And at the very left of the back of my mouth, there was a hole, about the size of a tictac, and it appeared something was oozing out of it. I was repulsed and fascinated. It looked like something out of a science fiction show, my mouth, as redesigned by H. R. Giger.

I used to believe the rain could baptize me and make me someone new. Hell, maybe it did and I didn't notice. Now I find that all I want from the rain is to remember, to continue to remember, who I am and how I got here, as if this will ever be relevant somehow.

Today I felt like the ordeal had ended. I went to an ear nose and throat doctor who told me that the hole I'd seen the night before was a drainage hole and so, in essence, I had drained the abscess myself and saved the doctor the trouble. Score two for my immune system. I felt mostly normal today, dressed in clean clothes, showered and shaved, converted my sick bed into a nice place to sleep again. All over except for the healing. There was no brush with death, really, no danger to my health except in my most melodramatic mental ramblings. But still, one of the most unpleasant things I've ever endured, the combination fever and debilitating throat pain. I have no idea if was better or worse than other painful or sick or scary episodes in my life; my brain is not wired to make that computation meaningfully. But it was certainly dreamlike, in that my dreams during those days never strayed far from what was really happening, and it was brutal, bouts of pain difficult to recall even now. Three days gone and all I have to show for it is that I didn't die, didn't have swine flu as many tried to joke, and have a hole in the back of my mouth that still hurts like the begeezus if an errant bit of food or beverage looks at it funny.

I don't know what will happen next. But I have the rain, to help me remember and to help me forget. The rain, my occasional visitor, always to reminds me what I've lost, always to stand in its place, something like a friend, or someday.