Dear Creative Writer-Type Folks,
So here we are, two weeks into the school year, and I guess we’ve pretty much all fallen back into the swing of things. (Does school “swing”? Hmmm...) The start of my year has been wonderful, from a teaching perspective, because I think I have four great classes. On a personal front, though, I seem to be the magnet for bad freaky physical phenomena. The weird virus that felled me for a day this week with pain so intense my doctor was worried about my heart? That’s just the latest in a series of bizarre events.
First a small kitten, still possessed of dagger-like front claws, decided that my right leg looked a whole lot like a tree that was just demanding to be climbed. (I suspect that my scream could be heard in outer space, but as I know no one on the International Space Station who could verify that, it will have to remain mere speculation.) The scar is fading, but I’ll probably be able to see it until the weather gets too cool for anything above the knee.
Then my daughter decided that my right shoulder was a really good punching bag. She may be only eleven, but that fist of hers, unleashed, packs a wallop. Three consecutive times, she smacked it (in “jest”) into the same tender spot on my shoulder, and now (two weeks later!) I still feel soreness up and down the muscle that runs along the upper arm. No outer bruise, but I’m convinced that something beneath the skin has turned to mush. Imagine if she actually wanted to hurt me!
Of course, I should not forget to mention the outrageous allergy incident of last Friday, when my nasal passages simply decided that breathing is optional and closed up completely (except for the apparently one-way opening letting them drip drip drip and occasionally explode in earth-shattering sneezes which I also think the guys on the space station must be wondering about). When I got home, I immediately called my doctor to get a prescription (since Claritin, Chlortrimeton, Benedryl, and other medications were doing little more than making their manufacturers richer) so I could enjoy my evening at Ravinia. After picking up my kids (and getting my oldest from the train station in Palatine so there would be a babysitter), I stopped at Walgreen’s down the street on the way to the park. No prescription. No record of a prescription at any Walgreen’s on the face of the earth. (I didn’t ask about the space station.) Wonderful.
So we went to Ravinia and listened to John Hiatt and Robert Cray, who were both great even though I was fighting for every breath the whole evening. Mars rose directly above the pavilion, so we and the rest of the crowd could watch it all night long. On the way home after the show, I stopped at a different Walgreen’s, and...they had my prescription! And, even better, it was some kind of miracle medicine that simply wiped all signs of the allergy out of my system. Better late than never.
Maybe I’ll be healthy this week. Or maybe I’ll end up in the hospital for two days because of an infected finger from a mosquito bite. (That actually happened to me once.) I know I can’t get appendicitis; that already happened. I was a sophomore in high school, and I was in bio class about to dissect a frog--which I really did not want to do--when I suddenly doubled over with extreme pain in my abdomen. They sent me home, but my Registered Nurse mother did not accept my opinion that I had appendicitis, and we didn’t go to the hospital until about 2 AM, when I was permanently in a fetal position and screaming in agony. (My screams were measurable on the Richter scale and many people at SETI sites were convinced they had finally found extra-terrestrial life.) It turned out that I was about four hours from death when they operated; the thing had burst and I ended up in the hospital for two weeks.
That’s not even mentioning the time my head went through a window on the classroom door during French class, the skiing incident which left me with a half-moon scar on my knee, the day I realized that I probably shouldn’t try playing baseball (because I managed to get hit in the face with a swinging bat), the broken arm I sustained from falling off a slide in second grade, the time I ripped my foot open on the edge of the screen door and the time I ripped my leg open on a screw sticking out of a table, the several fishhooks which found their way throgh my feet swimming in ponds as a child, or the head to head collision playing IM soccer in college.
All of this, though, pales next to the ultra-weird injury my middle child sustained two weeks ago. She’s a soccer player, and I finally agreed this year, after two years of cajoling by other parents who knew I used to be a soccer coach, to be an assistant coach for her U-12 traveling team. I thought it would help with bonding with her at a crucial time in her life. And she’s a really good player who doesn’t like to work at it, so I hoped I could instill in her some better practice habits. So, what happens? At her first practice, after warming up and running a bit, she lines up to take her first shot of the year and...breaks her pelvis! The orthopedist said that sometimes a pre-teen’s musculature is more developed than her bones, and in this case she simply kicked so hard that her muscle ripped off a piece of bone. So she’s on crutches and probably out for the season, her team is without one of its best players, and I am coaching her team without her even being there!
As I said, I’m a magnet for weird physical issues. (Today, at her team’s game on the lakefront in Chicago, I was eaten alive by carnivorous ladybugs!) Still, I’m (relatively) healthy, my school year is starting well, and I haven’t contracted pneumonia (yet) this year. So all in all things are pretty darn good.
:-)
I hope your health is (and remains) excellent,
Ms K