I woke up yesterday morning and became vaguely aware that my right toe felt like - well, the best way to describe it would be "dying-death-kill-maim-destroy-ness." �
This was only slightly more annoying than the fact that it was 6:00 AM on the only day I could sleep in and I could not get back to sleep.�I tossed and turned until 6:37 and then decided that going to the ER would be a good idea because I was 96% sure that there was a firemonster in my toe. �
So it was that I found myself competing for medical attention with a burn victim, a dying six-year-old and a man with what appeared to be a dragon-conquering wound. �They were all looking at me like I did not deserve to be there. ��
When it was finally my turn to be seen by the doctor, he asked me what was wrong and I had to look him in the face and say "my toe hurts." �
He asked me if I had a blister. � I was a little offended that he had so grossly underestimated my ability to accurately assess pain. �
"It's not a blister," I told him with what I hoped was an icy glare. �
He proceeded to ask me if I had a splinter. � ��
"It's not a splinter," �I said in a low, menacing tone. �I wanted to tell him that it was probably a firemonster, but doctors don't like it when you beat them to a diagnosis. �I decided to play it cool. �
The doctor asked me to remove my socks. �Upon seeing my bulbous, throbbing toe, he appeared to take me a little more seriously. �
After asking me about several pleasantly legitimate possible sources of pain, like hammer wounds, rabid spiders and gout, he said "I'm going to order you some antibiotics just in case..." �
As it turns out, I may have an infection in my bone. �This means that I have to take a ludicrous amount of antibiotics every six hours to prevent death. �
My body doesn't seem to understand that the antibiotics are on its side. �So far, it has tried virtually every trick in the book to violently expel the antibiotics from my system. � I've tried to talk to my body about its behavior. �I told it that it was going to die if it didn't learn to get along with the antibiotics. �It didn't seem to care. �It is a stupid, stubborn little body - the kind of body that would die just to prove a point. �
I have since changed my angle. �I am now trying to appeal to my body's competitive side. �I told it that death means failure. �I asked it if it wanted to fail. �It made a gurgling sound which I interpreted to mean "no." �I said "Okay then, if you don't want to fail, I would suggest not dying. �Nobody wins if you die." �
I don't know whether or not I got through to it, but I am encouraged by the fact that my body has yet to follow through on dying. �Though I'd like to give myself credit for convincing my body not to die, the truth is there is another more plausible explanation for my continuing survival: �For all of its stubbornness, my body is also lazy - so lazy that it may forgo dying simply because it is too much work. ��
