I must be okay if i’m blogging

billygean ♦ April 23, 2008 ♦ 5 Comments

For some reason today I can’t even lift my head off the pillow.

I huff and lie back to paint my newly-grown finger nails. The paint slicks on, a glossy wet line along my nail.

And that’s when I see them.

One on my ring finger. Three on my arm.

Two on my other arm.

Bright pink spots.

It’s nail varnish, I think. Until I see them on my back, my shoulders.

My mind is surprisingly clear as I walk into the kitchen for a glass, roll it over the rash, watch it clear as day underneath the pressure of the glass; spidery suns under my skin.

***

The woman on NHS direct is not as calm. “Call an ambulance,” she says. “Now.”

I still do not think as my fingers dial 999. I think of the only times I have seen these numbers – on horror films and dramas, shouted as buildings explode and people collapse.

I crumple on the phone to MadFather and MindReader. The reality of that word – meningitis – so different from the glandular fever that rolls so easily off my tongue even in the dead of the night.

“I’m on my way,” they had both said, dropping work colleagues as money quickly lost its meaning.

The paramedic is trying to distract me from the ECG sticky thingies on my arms and ankles, my pulse (125!) echoing around the ambulance. He touches my rash and goes slightly white. He chatters to me about conveyancing, his wife’s will, whether I’d sue him if it hurt when he tested my blood sugar levels.

“I need to not sit up, in the waiting room,” I say, wondering when I got so bed-ridden. “I know I look fine but I actually can’t.”

He nods as my phone jingles, interrupting the rhythm of the heart monitor. His eyebrows reach his harline and I place a hand on his arm. “It’s my phone, not my heartrate,” I say and he visibly relaxes.

He hands me over to the Accident and Emergency team and I feel strangely lost without him in his green overalls.

I am poked and prodded for a further hour. A junior doctor looks confused and says I look too well for meningitis. The registrar comes in (complete with GIANT grey beard I would like to put my hands in) and SCRATCHES at my spots, shrugging casually. A consultant comes in last.

“Taken any antibiotics lately?” he says abruptly.

“No,” I say. “I know amoxycillan can cause this rash with glandular fever.”

He raises his eyebrows. “I’m a Googler,” I explain.

“I see,” he says.

he makes me take my pants off and wear a gown. Then he pokes and prods at my buttocks (why?) and pushes his stethascope INSIDE MY BRA.

“We think you have low platelet counts, because of the mononucleosis,” he says.

“I knew that,” I say. “Does that mean I can go?”

He nods. The room is still spinning. I walk out into the car park. And then.

Relief.