Feathers and down

I’ve had a rough weekend; one spent contemplating life and death and hearing aids. I’ve thought about loneliness and ugliness and all the other conditions of life that make people feel lonely and ugly. I kept thinking about these things and I would almost start to write about them, but then it was time for my steroid or my antibiotic and all I wanted to do was crawl under a down comforter (get it? down, as in sad) but then even that joke fails because I am allergic to goose down and that is what my bout with my body is all about – allergies, and I can’t seem to laugh about it.

I’m allergic to my house and to my dogs. I’m allergic to my car and my kitchen and the bed that I sleep in. My life is, apparently, one big allergen, causing all sorts of chronic pressure and pain in my head until my body’s only response is to close ranks around my acoustic nerve until I can’t hear anything. Sitting in the doctor’s office on Friday night, watching the doctor watching me and telling me he “wants to see how the muscles in my face move” just in case I was showing signs of a stroke. I left the office, my hand bandaged from where they gave me an IV and read the doctor’s notes. I called my mom and tried to not to cry as I told her, matter of factly, what they doctor had said. Follow up with an emergent care provider if you experience: headaches, fever, facial drooping, pain behind the ear, or other worrisome symptoms. I just thought my body had disowned me - writing me out of the will and cutting my face out of all the family pictures, but it seems more sinister than that after this weekend.