The Long Decline

Bad choices, bad luck.  Maybe they go hand in hand.  Three days of illness have worn me down in body and spirit.  I am not thinking well.  I look like shit.  My hands and feet and face remain swollen though the welts and redness are mostly gone from my body now.  But I itch.  I would wake in the night digging at my flesh.  Perhaps a bit of the madness comes from that.

Part of it, too, is suffering alone.  I stay in the house but for my futile trips to the medical clinics.  Yesterday I tried again.  One clinic near my house only serves students of the Country Club College.  The other let me stand in line for fifteen minutes before someone told me the wait would be two hours.  I left.

Staying alone with an illness is one way to let your imagination stray.  I am sure now that there has been permanent damage, that my face will remain lumpy for the rest of my life, that my hands and feet have suffered permanent damage, that the hives will be a common reoccurrence.  I've had help thinking this.  I've been online.  WebMD, etc.

I spent most of yesterday morning on the phone.  First a call to the dealership to make sure they could replace the window.  The service fellow there assured me that he hated thieves.  He also told me that they could replace the window the next day, but he said to make certain my insurance company didn't want to use its own company.  I waited for the call from the adjuster, then I called him.  And called him.  And called him.  And finally, I got him on the phone.  I could use the dealership, he said.  I had a $500 deductible.  They would pay me up to $250 on the phone as well.  I called the dealership back.  The window replacement should cost around $500.  It is time for my 90,000 mile service, too.  And I will get the car detailed.  All will be out of pocket.

I went to AT&T to get a phone.  They didn't have the new iPhone 5 but could sell me the 4s.  But since the insurance company is reimbursing me. . . I want the 5.  I called an Apple store near me.  Nope, they didn't have them in stock, but I could order one online and then I could see if they were available for pickup the next day. They weren't.  I ordered the phone anyway.  I will be without one for about three weeks.

I called the factory.  Work piles up.  I cancelled my appointments for the day, and then I was done.  The rest of the day and night was me, the cat, and the television.

I am O.K. as long as I am alone.  I mean sickness is an embarrassment.  It is a weakness that predators can take advantage of.  If my face were to be permanently deformed and if my hands and feet were to be permanently swollen, I could deal as long as I didn't need to see people.  I could read and watch television and remember life as it once was.  But I haven't the money for that.  I have thought much about how I will end up these last few days.  That is what illness will do to you.  It changes the way you think and feel.

This is dull and boring stuff.  But it is what I have.  It just feels like the long, slow decline.