Notes from Aboveground

CW: needles, oversharing, complaining.

My fingernails are long enough for a decent French tip, and I can feel my toes snag a run in the bedsheets. Every other day I might shower. I don’t normally slack on maintenance like this, but malaise washed over me like rain in the Wasatch. I’ve counted close to 100 needles, four fixed IV’s, one picc line, three MRI’s, two x-rays, two CT scans, two ultrasounds, two ambulances and one plane ride. It is now January 7th, 2025 and I’m back home from a 12 day stint in the hospital with an infection of unknown provenance that’s crept its way into my bones. Did you know, when they life-flight you somewhere, they don’t come back to get you?

Immunocompromised by Cushing’s Disease, a gentle soak in the hot springs opened my pores up to cellulitis that I let linger, hoping it was just a nondescript allergic reaction. Days pass and the pain in my leg feels like Hell and half of Texas. Like I’m being microwaved.

I was only two months into my new job, not long enough to qualify for any type of temporary disability. This mini-vacation was a wrench in the machine. I was preparing for surgery to remove the 6mm tumor causing the Cushing’s, but now will be on house arrest licking my wounds for six weeks, dumping drugs into the 1 ½ foot long catheter that snakes from my bicep into my heart. After that can I finally get this fucking lobotomy. Corporate saw this was going to be a months-long process.

“The best option would be to let you go do your thing and then look at rehiring you if we have availability, since it’s a position I’ll have to fill in the meantime.”

A soft firing. Fair enough.

I’m wheeled to my room past labor and delivery. I heard him, or her, wail into life after nine long months of holding their tongue on the matter of being alive. He, or she, came out with their arms flailing, conducting the choir of nurses and new parents. I said keep crying, Buddy. You’ll be doing plenty more of that on this Earth. The first few years are great for crying. It gets you fed and coo’ed back to sleep. Being helpless is part of what makes you so precious. The middle tears are different. They’re generally frowned upon because you’re overreacting or just found out about love, but in general you still get to cry. 28-year-old man tears aren’t allowed. They earn you no sympathy. The insurance man hands you the bill and you have to look him in the eyes like it’s any normal Tuesday and try not to open like the sieve you are. If I have one piece of advice for this newborn him, or her, it’s get lucky enough to have a sister, or have women roommates. Your roommates will always let you cry.

A second piece of advice is to work on your tact. Use good words and not doctor words. Don’t tell patients about scraping bones and amputations on the first date. Make sure the blood cultures and biopsies are clean before you start using worst case scenario rhetoric. I wasn’t hypertensive until Doc started suggesting an endoscopic stroll into my aorta. God, let me drink my vancomycin in peace.

I drank and drank pharmaceutical cocktails through one of the many portholes they stabbed in my flesh vessel. Some for bacteria and some for fungus. Some for contrast that lights you on fire. Eventually, my blood ran clear and I got to come home. Did I mention when they life-flight you somewhere they don’t come back to get you?

I was New Year’s Baby, helpless and naked in my hospital gown. Less precious. I laze on the couch tracing the picc line through my chest. I see out the window a ruffled Magpie no worse for wear. He has one good wing to hop branch by branch up onto the roof where he can see the clouds billow and lift off the shoulders of the butte. Love may look like a box of tissues and past due bills but if I can make it onto my roof, I guess I can brush the clouds off my shoulders too.

I’m fucking angry with my body and wonder what I did to deserve this suffering. I then think of the many hours friends spent at the foot of my bed, their cards, warm meals, and Joey’s 10 hour round trip to get me out of Salt Lake. And then I wonder what I did to deserve them.