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Post-Modern Drunk: Hungry Like The Wolf
Starting a couple of weeks ago, my hands started to hurt when I woke up. It seemed like I was lying on them wrong overnight, and they were going--not numb, but pained.
A day or two after that, my legs started to hurt. And my back. My back started feeling like I'd lifted too many weights. I don't lift weights. My legs felt like I'd hurt something somehow. Like, strained a muscle or something. I became unable to raise my arms much higher than John McCain can.
Then I started to be feverish all the time.
The constant pain made me feel sick to my stomach, too, and so my appetite suffered.
And I got splotchy. Like, Bill O'Reilly splotchy.
Today the diagnosis came in. I have Lupus. Perhaps the lamest named incurable disease on the books. Treatable, but permanent. I'll have flare-ups for the rest of my life, and there's a possibility it'll kill me. "In the 1950s, most patients diagnosed with SLE lived fewer than five years. Advances in diagnosis and treatment have improved survival to the point where over 90% of patients now survive for more than ten years, and many can live relatively asymptomatically." - Wikipedia.
Michael Jackson has it.
Flannery O'Connor died from it.
Seal was scarred by it.
I'm on drugs now. I can't drink for an entire month. And I was told that, since it's an autoimmune disease, more than most other illnesses it depends on moods. My doctor requested that I not get stressed out by things. Not get angry at people "who cut you off or offend you." Smile, and be more tolerant, and let things slide off my back more often.
Did I mention I'm not allowed to drink until I'm done with the pills? A whole month.
I didn't even get any painkillers, either.
