I’ve
been contemplating my mortality recently.
The airplane thing just reminded me that I haven’t discussed it yet.
Last
summer I was seriously ill. As in “I
might theoretically die” ill. Unfortunately
I was taking classes over the summer as well.
My determination to continue impressing this professor who at that point
held complete power over my career was such that even though I was sick enough
for my grandmother to show up at one a.m. with a cooler of soup and orange
juice I still went to class. And very
nearly passed out and was commanded to go to the health center forthwith. After two hours of IVs and every test they
could think of I was prescribed broad-spectrum antibiotics—the fancy new
time-release kind—and sent home. Three
days later, once a critical dose of meds had built up, it turns out that I’m
allergic to the antibiotics. Which I
found out via my hands stiffening up to the point where I couldn’t move my left
at all and the right was barely functional by the time I got back to the doctor
(which was super-scary as someone who occasionally relied on accompaniment gigs
to pay her rent). “Sign here,
please.” Not possible until after massive doses of prednisone,
thanks very much.
Remember
how I said these were the new fancy time-release antibiotics? Yeah.
I
ended up spending the next week in my bathtub to control the stiffness and
itching, forbidden from attending class and really bored because obviously
books and laptops (and pianos) do not belong near water.
But
the point of this story is that I found out later that unlike, say, snake
venom, it is not possible to build up a tolerance to an allergen. Some people grow out of childhood allergies
to a certain extent, but apparently not ones that started as bad as I’ve got
this. Instead, they get progressively worse.
According to a paramedic, the next time I am exposed to this particular
class of antibiotics, I will go into anaphylactic shock and be dead in less
than five minutes. Hence the
bracelet. But Mathematician, you’re
saying, in a bit of Fridge Brilliance, antibiotics are not like peanuts. You don’t randomly find them wandering about
in the world, waiting to kill people with allergies. You’d have to already be in some sort of
medical environment, and surely you can just tell them not to give you
those.
That’s
what I thought too. But the paramedic
pointed out that the most likely scenario that would precede death by medicine
would be some sort of car accident type thing, where if I was taken to the
hospital I would automatically be put on antibiotics—and I’m allergic to the
most popular class. So get the damn
bracelet and stop whining about it.
I
spent the week between that conversation and actually getting the thing
freaking out every time I got into a car, on a train, or just left the house. My new bracelet is very shiny and has the
allergy, my name and a couple of phone numbers in a font that screams pay attention to this! [A friend pointed out that it’s made out of
surgical steel (as opposed to actual silver) and ‘really isn’t very pretty.’ No shit, the idea is that isn’t not supposed
to be mistaken for jewelry. I’m not the
bracelet-wearing type, but unless you’re looking for the little red caduceus on
it I can wear it with a proper suit and not have it look really out of place.]
Okay,
so the actual point of the story is that now I have this thing on all the time,
and I have to wear it for the rest of my
life. I am only twenty-two, so I
hope that the rest of my life is still a long time. That being said, I thought that I had my existential
crisis in junior high, and that I had come to peace with the idea that my life
could theoretically be cut short at any minute.
Provided that I don’t have to think about that possibility all the time. After the shit-show that was my childhood, I
finally got to a really good place in my life, and I’d like to keep it that
way. Or at least enjoy it while it
lasts. Except now every time I use a
mouse or pick up a book, there’s a little jingling noise that reminds me that
death is more imminent than I might like to think.
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