Early onset hypochondria

This is just great.

Every morning, Dad gives me a wake-up call to say "hi" and make sure I'm actually conscious in time for class. Most of the time I am actually able to pick up and mumble a fairly convincing "Good morning!" but then sometimes I forget to put the ringer on, or am so tired I think it's just another alarm (I have 7) and turn it off automatically and climb back into bed.

Yes, I have seven alarms. Five on my phone and two on a clock radio/CD/aux across the room. In fact, on my phone you're allowed to name the alarms, aside from the first one. Mine, in order, are:

WAKE-UP ALARM
GET UP
SERIOUSLY
NOW, BITCH!
YOU'RE COMPLETELY USELESS

Anyway, my inability to wake up properly is not the point of this entry. This morning, Dad called me to say hello and also inform me of the new outbreak of swine flu that has killed a hundred people in Mexixo City in the space of about two weeks. It's spreading fast and has been reported all over the world, and there have been twenty cases in the US by now. It's an entirely new virus, with a combination of human, avian, and swine DNA, which makes it nearly impossible for our bodies to deal with it, and it's hitting young and healthy people the hardest because their healthy immune systems go into overdrive.

Dad's afraid of anyone who has traveled to Mexico in the last several weeks (spring break, anyone?) and has asked me to wash hands excessively and obsessively and maybe grab a couple bottles of the alcohol hand cleanser to carry around with me.

The problem is, instead of reacting in what I would think to be a normal manner, with maybe some concern and plans to keep clean and what to do if you get flu symptoms, my first thought was, "I have the world's worst luck; I'm going to die."

This a really uncomfortable feeling. It's never happened before (the feeling, I mean, not the death--though that is also true), but with the last two years being what they have...anyone could see a pattern here.

*Note, flu epidemic information comes from Dad, with me as a sleepyish intermediary. You should definitely check this out on your own. Be safe.

Public Restroom Doors Phailure

This is not a Struggle, it is a rant.

Why the hell do bathroom doors open backwards? Am I the only one who has noticed this?? You push to get in, and have to pull to get out. THIS IS WRONG. For one thing, isn't there a fire hazard issue the like of the Iroquois Theatre? (1903 - look it up). Yes, I will admit that at any given time in a women's restroom there will be considerably fewer than 602 people (though not by much, at larger public events), but the same principle applies; the door opens against the direction of travel.

Fire hazard is the least of my worries, however. HYGIENE. I wash my hands, as I pray does everyone else, but I know there are various idiots and smallish children who do not. These people open the door by the handle just as I am forced to do. ICK. So I have to keep the towels I use to dry my hands and use them as the hygiene equivalent of oven mitts to protect myself. Then I can only pray there is a garbage nearby outside so I can dispose of them immediately rather than carry this thing (now covered with idiot-and-smallish-children germs) around, or alternatively pull the door open as hard as I can, chuck the trash in a bin and try to jump out the door before it closes on me.

Don't get me started on those air-dryers; sometimes it's just so goddamn disgusting I'm basically stuck there until someone else comes in. Actually, being stuck in a bathroom just because of sudden spell of hypochondria would probably count as a Struggle.

But the fact remains, SOMEBODY NEEDS TO FIX THIS.

Uneven sidewalks...

...and the resulting puddles when it rains.  And it has been doing so for quite awhile here.  No one seems to have told April that it is, in fact, supposed to be spring now.  Don't give me that "April showers being May flowers" garbage, I want sun!  I want to go outside and stand on people!*

Anyway, seeing as how I have been falling over a lot due to the vertigo, those cracks that jut up in the sidewalk pose a more serious threat than usual (which, honestly, is pretty serious for me in general).  Add the rain and the puddles that come with it, and you get a bruised, wet, and unhappy Strugglebucket.

At least I can laugh at myself.  When there is no need for immediate medical attention, anyway.

*It's called acro.  There'll be an explanation and related Struggle from the archives in a forthcoming post.

Ambulance rides and Jell-o for breakfast

This technically isn't a Struggle; it's a misfortune. However, its effects are far-reaching and will doubtlessly come up in future Struggles.

I have Labyrinthitis, which is a virus of the inner-ear. Technically, I had it and am getting better, but every now and then I still lose track of the world around me and fall over. It seems I contracted this sometime right before spring break (almost three weeks ago, now), because I spent a night in the hospital a couple days prior to leaving for break. It was my first, and hopefully last, experience riding in an ambulance (I just got the bill from the city; it was an $800 chauffeur service).

The short story is that the labyrinthitis gave me so much vertigo that it made me nauseous, and I spent an hour vomiting into a friend's toilet before it looked like it was coming up blood and she called 911. The bad news (oh yes, there's more) was that the sleep medication I take had already kicked in, so my body was trying to both throw up and fall asleep, which are somewhat mutually exclusive.

At the hospital I was misdiagnosed with gastritis because I was too out of it to explain that the fact I kept falling over was because I had vertigo, and wasn't drunk. I've never been fall-down drunk, you bastards! I've only ever been pretty-damn-but-still-standing drunk at the bachelorette party of one of my best friends, and because I was the one throwing it I reserve the right to get sloshed.

Anyway, they pumped me full of fluids again and sent me home. I spent the next few days eating carefully and feeling generally okay, until the vertigo and nausea kicked in again when I was down in Anacortes with my mother. Now there was a fun five hours driving home. Finally my primary care physician got me proper meds for labyrinthitis and I spent the second week of spring break in bed eating only "wild strawberry" flavored Jell-o and occasionally sipping a whole plethora of differently flavored Gatorades.

Blah blah blah, didn't get the chance to finish any homework or study for my major exams, etc. etc., but the school is being very kind to me to get it all worked out. That is the story as it stands.

This was not a Strugglebucket-related fault, but I do seem to attract misfortune, especially that of a bodily injury nature.

Two important things I would like to share to wrap this up:

1) It was my best friend whose toilet I was throwing up in, who called 911, who stuck with me in the ambulance and at the hospital, translating my drug-slurred responses to the medical-type folk, who was the first thing I saw when I could pry open my eyelids, who stayed until the wee hours of the morning to make sure I was okay, and who--most importantly--brought me a hedgehog named Francois.* I owe her a ton.

2) Here is a description of what vertigo feels like, for those of you fortunate enough to have never had the experience: my inner-ear suddenly goes, "Holy shit! The ground is over there now!" and my body is like, "Okay!" and my brain is like, "No it isn't! Move, feet! For fuck's sake, MOVE!" But they don't. And I fall over and crash into things.

*Apparently I clung to Francois for dear life for most of the night. One of the only things I really remember of my hospital stay was the man at the X-ray saying, "Okay, honey, I need to take a picture of your stomach; you have to let go of the hedgehog."