Nil by Mouth

I got to this :

I got to this :

hopefully a comedy, pt. 1 – 0(zero)format

from TMN today and it’s Really freaking me out. I woke up today with both my eyes swollen (on monday it was just the left one). This happened to me once before a few months back. I went to the pharmacist here (pharmacists here actually know a few things and are helpful) and she gave me this topical gel. It helped that last time, but i forgot i had it until this morning. It didn’t occur to me until just now that waking up with 1.5 black eyes could be more serious than some sort of practical joke that fate plays every so often. I may be the opposite of a hypochondriac; i always think that any ailment i have is just an accidental blip in the wiring. And that it will go away on it’s own in a coupla days. Residual feelings of immortality that one should have put to rest at age 13. That’s why it took me 4 months straight (and a few years on and off before then) of shooting pain my my hand for me to maybe consider having someone look at it. Diagnosis on the hand: Tendonitis in two places. Treatment: a)Take triple the recommended dosage of over the counter anti-imflammatories for apx the rest of your life, or b)Switch careers to one not involving Adobe Illustrator and/or a mouse. Bleeding ulcer vs. poverty? I chose the former but am certainly still holding the latter under consideration. And just so nobody gets the wrong impression, i’m certainly a neurotic bundle of neurosis, but i tend to focus it on problems of the psyche. That or the weather.

Erm..ok.. back to the swollen eyelids, so ordinarily, i’d make a doctors appointment and put it out of my mind. That would be if i were in a country where the doctors spoke my language and i understood how any of it works. Granted, despite fluency in English, health care in the States can no way be called comprehensible. But after a few years on the field i get it. Here? Well.. i did once have a really hot doctor make a house call in the middle of the night, but i was pretty much dying then. And i hadn’t french health care yet, and besides when you’re dying (violently), you’ll pay full fare, and happily. Now i’ve got a health care card, a booklet i can’t understand, but no social security number. I’m supposedly going to get that letter about the SS# any day now. Hmm.. In the face of all this, Wegener’s granulomatosis hardly seems worth it. By the way, if i’ve got a terminal illness you can bet the first thing i’m gonna do is start smoking again.

But really, i can’t start thinking terminal illness just cause fate decided to make me look especially assy today. I would add snarkily, just in time for valentines day, but valentine’s day is such a bore from all angles that i’m already mad at myself for mentioning it twice in the last sentence. The good side is that i poked around 0(zero)format am quite the convert. i.d. is pretty much the best “about me” type thing i’ve ever read. This eye thing better be a joke, for everyone. Yeah comedy, yes.

• Feb 14