Here's What Happens When Your Body Betrays You

One of the last times I updated this (over a year ago, holy shit! shame on me!) I talked about going through perimenopause, and all the weird myriad things my body was experiencing because of it.

Well. Funny thing about that.

I’m still almost certainly going through perimenopause, mostly by default of being 49 years old. However, all that weird shit that was happening, the sleeping problems, the nausea, the fatigue, the skin issues, turned out to be not related to my uterus at all. It was my kidneys.

This is, of course, why I’m not a doctor. But anyway.

Right after Christmas of 2020, I went to the ER, following several days of being unable to sleep, and shaking like I was Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend. I didn’t know if emergency rooms could help with insomnia, but I didn’t care, I’d throw a bedpan or something if it meant getting a sedative. Bloodwork was done, and while I don’t remember the exact words the doctor said (I don’t remember a lot of that week, save that I watched Wonder Woman 1984 on Christmas Day, which, as my daughter pointed out, would have been a terrible last movie to watch before dying), the lab results were run a second time, because they were simply impossible for someone who walked themselves (albeit barely) into the hospital. They weren’t a mistake, though, my body was filled with toxins, because my kidneys had stopped working.

Why? Well, that’s a good question. Again, I am not a doctor, but my theory is that it’s related to that long COVID that all the kids are talking about (and that much of Twitter and Facebook insists is simply not a thing). At some point, before I got the first jab, I reviewed the results of some post-hospitalization bloodwork, and it showed that I was positive for COVID antibodies. So, I had it at some point, presumably an asymptomatic case, but it evidently made a beeline straight to my kidneys, which is, apparently, something they’re just discovering now can happen (when it doesn’t affect your lungs, your brain, your heart, or your pancreas, shit’s great, let me tell ya). Sometimes it gives you acute kidney failure, other times it gives you chronic kidney failure. I seem to have gotten that one, regrettably, which means I’ve had to go to dialysis three days a week since getting out of the hospital, and facing having to get a transplant. If I can get solid proof from an actual doctor that COVID-19 is what caused this, I will celebrate by punching dead in the face the next person who is just champing at the bit to claim that it’s “just a cold.”

The important thing is that I’m okay. Really, I am. I’m probably about as okay as any dialysis patient you’re likely to meet. I’ve been able to continue working, my health has remained stable. I have insurance, for which I give thanks just about every day.  The reason it’s taken me so long to write about it here is that (a) I’m still struggling in general with the desire to write, which is something the pandemic killed good and dead, and (b) I simply don’t like talking about it. “Chronically ill person” has become a sort of social media persona that I just do not like playing into, for a variety of reasons, most predominantly stupid pride, and because the more I treat it like that, the more “real” it feels. I’m not in denial, mind you, I take my medications, I do what my doctor says like a good soldier. I realize that what I’m dealing with is very, very serious, and I’m lucky to be alive.

Nevertheless, this is not who I am. I don’t want to introduce myself to people as “Hi, I’m Gena, my kidneys don’t work.” I don’t want it to have that massive hold over my life. It’s just something I’m dealing with that someday I can look back on and think “Well, that was shitty and scary.” You know, kind of like every other goddamn thing that’s happening in the world right now.

But anyway.

I was in the hospital for ten days, cared for by an excellent staff and eating food that absolutely lived up to every terrible hospital food joke ever written. I watched Avengers: Endgame three times, Thor: Ragnarok four times, The Meg once, and that awful Liberty Mutual commercial where the maniacally grinning mom gives her child a life insurance policy for Christmas more times than I can possibly count. I went from being aggravated at the ancient woman I shared a room with who screamed “I’m burning in a fire! I’m burning in a fire!” at all hours of the day and night to feeling sorry for her. I had no shame about announcing to everyone that I could still pee. When I was discharged, my hair had matted itself into dreadlocks, and my arms would have put Sid Vicious to shame.

I’d say it’s been a wild ride, but it honestly hasn’t been. Other than some complications with trying to get an arm access for dialysis started (which it eventually was), again, I’ve been stable. Frankly, I’ve been far more worried about dying from COVID-19 than dying from this, and who thought we’d still be worried about this two years later? When I look back on my last couple of posts here from 2020, it’s wild to realize that not only has nothing changed, it’s actually gotten worse in many ways. I lack the words to fully describe how utterly let down I feel both by my government, and my fellow man, and I realize that by saying that I sound hopelessly naive, but pardon me if I was a fool to think that in the face of a highly contagious and potentially deadly virus the primary concern wouldn’t be “Well, do what you can to keep that economy robust, little worker bees.” And yet…here we are. 

If I’m trying to push myself to get back to productively writing and reading, it’s not because I suddenly feel better about things or because there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. It’s that things aren’t getting better, and enough time has already been stolen away from me because of it. So I have to scoop up the melted remains of my brain, put it back into my skull, and do the best I can to feel like a functioning human being. I don’t know if these are the end times. But either way, I can no longer lay curled up in my bed waiting for it to happen.

So what does that mean for this blog? I honestly have no fucking idea.

I’d love to commit to posting here again once or even twice a week. It feels like a lot, though it isn’t. I could do it if I really pushed myself, even though it’s not really serving as anything but a graveyard for pitches that were either rejected or never pitched because I’m either too much of a chickenshit or convinced myself that somebody else has already done it better. Or maybe I’ll keep drinking deep from the well of nostalgia, although given The Discourse around Ghostbusters: Afterlife that’s become just as much of a toxic stew as everything else. 

I really don’t know. One thing that changes you after almost dying is that you become a much bigger fan of taking things day by day. That’s not to say I don’t think about the future because I don’t think I’ll be around to see it, but rather that it’s simply better to think of things in terms of “let’s get through tomorrow before we start thinking about next year, or even next month.” Surprisingly, it causes a lot less anxiety, which of course I appreciate.

So I could come up with big plans for this thing (and it wouldn’t be the first, fifth or even tenth time I’ve made “plans” for what I’m going to do with my writing and then didn’t follow through on them), or I could just see how I feel on a day to day basis. I’m trying to get comfortable with the idea of “I don’t know” as an answer for a lot of things. That’s scary, right? It’s scary, and people find it an absolutely unacceptable response. Even if you have to make some shit up, it’s still better than admitting you don’t know the answer to something. But it’s freeing at the same time.

Will I keep this blog up and running as best as I can? Yes, emphasis on as best as I can, a vague measurement which I am not going to attempt to clarify. I am trying to get past comparing myself to those baffling machines who can crank out blog posts every day, along with film reviews, articles and myriad other writing. It’s no longer a question of how they’re able to do it as accepting that I cannot. I wish I could, but if wishes were fishes you could shit in your other hand, or something like that. So I’m just going to do what I can, when I can, and be grateful that I’m still around to do any of it. 

Maybe I’ll write about the many ways the pandemic has shown that the bedrock the United States was built on in a destructive lie (not that we didn’t know that already), or maybe I’ll write about the pilot for Half-Nelson, a 1985 comedy in which Joe Pesci plays a private detective who’s somewhat short for man, and…well, I’m pretty sure that’s it as far as the jokes are concerned. I don’t know. Ask me again tomorrow.

So here we are. Where were we?