Last night, my fever was creeping up around the magic 101 degree “bad news bears” mark, and I was getting nervous. I took some ibuprofen and we settled in to watch (another) movie, this time one picked by Joey, and an hour and a half into The Great Escape, my temperature still hadn’t dropped.
“I’m calling the on-call doc,” I said to Joey.
I explained my situation to her, told her about my fevers for the last 3 or so days, and she called in a prescription to a 24 hour pharmacy near where we live. At 10:00 p.m., Joey and I left to go pick it up. I was also instructed to get in to the doc this morning to have her evaluate me.
I learned two things at the doctor today:
1.) Scar and MiniScar are both infected with a “superficial skin infection”, whatever that means. (MiniScar, of course, is what used to be my belly button…they pretty much dismantled it to stick the camera through it and DID NOT PUT IT BACK THE WAY THEY FOUND IT.)
2.) I have lost 10 pounds since this whole ordeal started a week and a half ago. Go me. (Although, I must say, I just checked and I don’t think it looks like I lost any weight. If I did lose it, it must have all come off my feet or something, because I look pretty much status quo to me.)
My doc ordered two tubes of blood to be sucked from me, and Joey insisted that I lay down. He held my right hand while I squeezed a brain shaped stress reliever in my left and tried not to pass out.
He dropped me off at home and I hobbled up the stairs. Since I started running fevers 3 or 4 days ago, Scar hurts SO much worse than he used to, making it impossible for me to stand upright for any length of time. This makes me look like I’m near death and random people I don’t know give me strange looks whenever I leave my house. (Which, granted, isn’t often.)
I figured I’d better eat something for lunch, so I found something in the fridge and threw it in the microwave. I was also searching for the chip dip Joey had made me last night because it was so, so tasty.
I couldn’t find it at all, which struck me as odd (he’d made a lot) so I dialed him up at work.
“Where’s the chip dip?” I asked.
“Oh. That. Uh…I took it to work with me,” he said.
“The whole thing?” I wailed, then stopped short.
Under the kitchen counter, on the other side of my kitchen was the largest cockroach I had ever seen inside my house. That sucker had to be about 4 inches long, including his horns, and he was on his back, twitching in what appeared to be the throes of death.
I have a paralyzing fear of cockroaches. I also have an infected 6 inch Scar and 1/2 inch MiniScar, which hurt really badly. I had blood sucked today. The last week and a half have not been easy on my brain. I was tired. I was alone.
And so I completely freaked out.
“JOEY!” I screamed unintelligibly into the phone, “THERE IS A COCKROACH! A HUGE COCKROACH!”
I was screaming, literally screaming, into the phone. I was shaking and pressed up against the opposite wall in my kitchen while Joey, who was driving back to school by this point, was trying to figure out what in the heck I was trying to tell him.
“A cockroach?” He asked. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“YES!!!” I screamed. “AND IT IS MOVING!!!”
I was incapable of doing anything but scream by this point. The microwave beeped and my food was done, but I couldn’t take it out of the kitchen because it would mean passing the cockroach, and I couldn’t get to the forks from where I was at, because that also would mean passing the cockroach. I have a personal rule when it comes to cockroaches: I must be 6-8 feet away from them at all times, just in case they start to fly or something. I don’t want to have to worry about them flying onto ME, or infecting me with their cockroach germs.
“Do you need me to come home?” Joey asked.
I wanted to say YES! so badly, but I had just wrecked his work morning by having this unscheduled doctor’s appointment, and he had to miss an important shoot to take me. I wasn’t about to cause him more lost work.
“I’ll be fine,” I said in a slightly more measured voice.
The cockroach twitched and I shrunk back further against the wall, dropping my red checked blanket to the floor. I hung up the phone after assuring Joey that I would be all right (he suggested I trap the roach under a Tupperware for him to kill when he got home) and gussied up enough courage to run (RUN) out of my kitchen.
I immediately called the maintenance office and scheduled a full extermination of our apartment.
I then put on socks, shoes, and winter gloves. I didn’t want to accidentally have skin to cockroach contact when trying to trap him per Joey’s instructions. I selected the Tupperware I thought would best serve my purposes, making sure to pick one that I have three or four of so I wouldn’t ever know which one I had used once they all were clean and back in the cupboard together.
So there I stood in my kitchen wearing tennis shoes, high socks, my 7-year-old black, faded yoga pants (my post-surgery fashion statement, and still all I can wear), a bright yellow Iowa t-shirt, and white winter gloves, holding a Tupperware and poised to strike the cockroach.
I got close to him. I took a deep breath. I was going to do it!
And then, suddenly, everything went wrong. I screamed “I CAN’T DO IT! I CAN’T DO IT!” and burst into hysterical tears (which are a rarity for me, but unfortunately becoming more common post surgery), tore off my gloves and went to the couch, where I hyperventilated and screamed and cried and yelled “I HATE COCKROACHES” for a good 15 minutes or so.
All of our windows are open, and I’m sure the neighbors heard me if they were passing by.
I calmed myself down some and tiptoed back into the kitchen.
He was still there, still twitching.
I pretended to kick and squish him from a safe distance, but the thought of getting close enough to him to actually kick and/or squish him brought on the hyperventilating tears again, so I returned to the relative safety of the couch.
Once I had returned to my senses, I remembered that our friends are moving out of their apartment today, and thought perhaps my friend’s husband would be willing to take a few minutes to come over and relieve me of this cockroach.
He did.
A few moments later, he arrived with a large paper cup. “So I can take home my quarry and show my wife,” he grinned.
“It’s a very large cockroach,” I said. I hobbled over to the kitchen and pointed out the evil, twitching beast.
“Woah,” he said. “You weren’t kidding. That thing is enormous.”
Within 25 seconds, he had scooped the dying cockroach into the cup and had him trapped in there with a post-it note.
“Thank you so very, very much,” I said.
“No problem at all,” he said, walking out the open front door, which I had purposely left ajar while he was in my apartment.
I was still all wigged out over the cockroach and was feeling nervous anywhere around my kitchen, so I took off my socks and shoes and went to bed, where I napped until exactly the time I was supposed to have my next dose of antibiotic.
Anybody want to trade lives with me for a week or so? This vegetating around at home is just about to push me over the edge of whatever sanity I have left.
In other news, I feel fair to middlin’ today. Yesterday we went to church and I started feeling dreadful about 3/4 of the way through the service, and by 1:00 was reduced to whimpering and laying on the couch. When the ouchies hit, they REALLY HIT. Mom ran to the pharmacy for more painkillers (of course I had just finished the bottle that morning) and Joey sent me to bed. I woke up an hour later without the stabbing pains, but still not feeling well enough to stand up straight.
And the water display itself.
