The Night Of The Dying Leg

Well, I have good news and I have bad news.  The good news is that my lung cancer seems to have gone back into hiding.  It’s also good news that I don’t have lung cancer.  Unless you fuckin hate me, in which case I’m sorry to disappoint you.  But I felt like I had inhaled a flathead screwdriver for a while there and now I don’t.  Problem solved.  The bad news is that my leprosy has taken a turn for the worse.  I’m not sure what caused it.  I may have been nipped in the knee by a zombified squirrel.  I just don’t know.  At least he didn’t get me in the nuts (which seems like what a zombie squirrel would naturally go for) but the fucker got me nonetheless.  Whatever the reason, if Jesus existed I’d ask him to rub my thigh.  But that’s it.  I don’t wanna get any freakier with Jesus than that.  He can go masturbate about it later.  Though, anybody who masturbates about my leprotic leg deserves to be nailed to a cross.  Hell, they’d probably get turned on by that too.

Anyway, my leg’s all fucked up.  I went to the doctor to see what he could give me.  He said, “Son, son, you’ve gone too far.  Cos smokin and trippin is all that you do.  Yeah.”  Oh wait.  That’s what Ozzy Osbourne’s doctor said.  What my doctor said was, “Yep.  Your leg’s all fucked up.”  I’m paraphrasing, but that’s pretty much how it went down.  She gave me some antibiotics and creams and whatnot and sent me on my not-so-merry way, instructing me to go to the emergency room should I develop a fever and blah blah blah I forget what else she said.  I hobbled into the pharmacy where all the pharmacy people were pretty and friendly women, me looking haggard with my rotten, pussey, oozing leg.  What a charmer I can be!

I got home after a while and felt progressively lousy.  I didn’t have a fever but my stupid leg was killing me.  It looked all horrible and it was leaking some kinda terribleness that hurt when my shorts rubbed against it.  In fact, it had swollen to the point that my shorts were tight on my thigh, whereupon I donned a slinky little skirt that I borrowed from a friend.  This prompted a few “The Kevitron 6000’s wearing a goddam skirt” jokes that weren’t all that funny but which were to be expected.  I eventually got hold of a colleague of the doctor I had seen earlier and he told me to get my motherfuckin leg into the E.R.  Again, I’m paraphrasing.  Doctors don’t talk like that to their patients around here.  They’re much more professional than that.

Except for the doctor in the emergency room.  Holy wow, that guy was a piece of work.  He stood about 6 foot 2 and had to have weighed at least 300 pounds.  He wore black sweat pants and a black pocket t-shirt from Wal-Mart with his name tag hanging from a lanyard.  His wild, gray hair swam in every which way from his enormous head.  He scowled down at me in condescension from all of the space that he managed to occupy while I lay on the E.R. bed.  With every question he asked about the history of the progression of my miserable-looking wound, he seemed to imply that I probably deserved whatever it was that was happening to me.  And maybe he was right.  But it’s difficult to accept admonitions regarding healthy living from some morbidly obese slob who’s probably gonna get his own goddam leg amputated next month due to the Type 2 diabetes he’s developed by gobbling down a box of Twinkies for a pre-breakfast snack every morning.  Christ, I just got bit by an undead rodent.  What the fuck you want me to do?

He told me that they were gonna have to keep me on an I.V. overnight, so I told my friend who was kind enough to drive me to the hospital that she could go home, that I’d get hold of her the next day.  Not long after that, after I was all hooked up to the I.V., Jabba the Hutt asked me if I had health insurance.  I told him that I don’t, that in fact I’m between jobs and had only recently moved to the area.  This caused his monstrous gray slug of a unibrow to slither and to form the letter “V” in the middle of his fat forehead.  “Hm”, he sniveled snottily.  “Well, I’ll be back in a while”.  He then lumbered out of the room, momentarily getting trapped in the privacy curtain that hung near the door.  Whatever they gave me for the pain must’ve kicked in pretty good cos I awoke 4 hours later with the T.V. on some stupid channel that I would’ve never landed on on purpose.  The grouchy white giant loomed over me and told me that I was all done, that it was time to go.  I was healed.  I exercised an impressive amount of self-control by not telling him to go fuck a Pepsi machine as he waddled away.

The RN’s were generally pleasant and respectful.  I mean, they looked like they could walk down the hall without risking a fuckin cardiac arrest like old Jumbo.  They also had  professional bedside manners.  I politely bitched that I was 10 miles away from my friend’s house out in the country at 2 in the morning with a fucked up leg and wearing a dress.  I tried to be pleasant when I pointed out that I had been told I’d be kept in the hospital for a day and that there was a significant difference in lengths of time between 4 hours and a fuckin day.  I also didn’t mention that I’d had this skin condition a few times before and that they’ve never decided to kick me out after a few hours before, that they had always kept me for at least 24 hours.  After all, I didn’t wanna question the blob’s professionalism.  One of the nurses convinced a deputy to drive me home which is never my first choice of travel, but under the circumstances I was glad for one of the few times in my life to get a ride in the back of a cop car.  The cop was kind of a douche but at least he was friendly enough.

Long story short: fuck you if you don’t have any money.