You need to go back to the doctor

Although I wanted nothing more than to sleep all the time, I was determined to run again. It was becoming the benchmark of my health. If I could run, I must be getting better. So instead of going outside and facing that hill, I set the treadmill for an easy half-hour run. After two minutes I had to change the setting from run to fast walk. A minute later I changed it to slow walk. I was sweating like a pig. Within five minutes of getting on the treadmill I had to stop. I was afraid of having a heart attack. I turned the machine off and held on to the handles allowing my breathing to return to a normal pace. I stepped off the treadmill feeling completely defeated. I put the machine into storage mode. There was no point in even trying. I couldn’t do it anymore.

In July I discovered a strange bruise by my right eye. I had no idea how it got there. We had been to Rainbow’s End, the amusement park, the day before and I thought maybe I had been hit with a stone that had flung up from the ground while I was on the roller coaster or something. The bruise was perfectly round, dark purple and about the size of a pea. I tried to cover it up with make-up but it was still obvious. Alex asked about my black eye and I told him my theory about the stone. He didn’t buy it. I shrugged my shoulders and joked that I was falling apart.

Things got worse. I went to a book club meeting one evening and during a riveting discussion of the merits of Mr Pip my nose started to haemorrhage. The blood poured over my mouth and chin. There was so much blood I used half a box of tissues to stem the flow, which the host had kindly offered me. The other ladies were very polite about it, carrying on the book discussion as if nothing unusual was going on, but I was horrified. The amount of blood was scary and so was the way my nose bled – instead of dripping, it streamed. There had been no warning. I was chatting happily one minute and the next I was covered in blood. After using too many of my host’s tissues, I excused myself to leave. In the car I remembered the doctor’s words. “You should only be concerned if you can’t stop the bleeding.”  The bleeding stopped after a minute of dabbing my nose in the cold, dark car. By the time I got home I looked normal again. I knew it would only heighten Alex’s concern and after I ignored his advice about going to the doctor again, I decided to keep the incident to myself.

The next two weeks went by without much circumstance. But at the day care the following Monday, after feeling like there was something in my eye, I went to the toilet and looked in the mirror. My right eye looked infected. It was bloodshot and there was a disgusting yellow discharge oozing into my bottom lashes. One of the teachers commented that it definitely looked infected. It was near the end of the work day and I wasn’t due to work for the rest of the week so I slipped away hoping that if I rested the next day the infection would resolve itself. By Wednesday the infection was in both eyes and my lids had swollen to three times their normal size. I looked like a zombie shuffling around the kitchen in my robe trying to see out of the slits below my puffy eyelids. Alex was really concerned.

“You look very ill. You need to go back to the…”

“I know, I know.”

This time I went. I made an appointment for Thursday. After the examination I was told I had an eye infection, an ear infection and a sinus infection. It was a different doctor than the previous time so I repeated my concern about my bloody noses. She said adamantly that I should not be having a bloody nose every day and gave me a slip for the lab to get a blood test.

By Friday morning my inflated eyelids hung over eyelashes that were so encrusted with hard jewels of mucus that I couldn’t open my eyes. They were glued shut. I was completely blind. Alex had gone to work so I made my way out of my bedroom by feeling the walls. Identifying the things I knocked off of shelves helped me orientate myself to where I was in the room. In the hallway I found the linen closet and put my hands on a face cloth. Stumbling farther down the hallway I located the bathroom and ran the face cloth under warm water. I pressed the warm cloth to my eyes. After several attempts I unclogged one set of eyelashes enough to see through a small slit. The reflection in the mirror made me groan. I could hardly recognise myself. I looked like I was recovering from violent plastic surgery. My eyes, cheeks and forehead were all really swollen. Picture a Neanderthal who has been in a bar fight. I stumbled back to my bedroom, got under the blankets and spent the next five days in bed. This time I blamed the children. Working at a day care was always a risk to one’s health. Children were like little incubators. A seemingly harmless germ would warm up inside of their bodies and multiply causing high fevers, vomiting and diarrhoea. We were faced with that on a daily basis. The teachers were always getting sick. An eye infection was not so surprising. Ear and sinus infections were just as unremarkable, weren’t they?

      I finished the course of antibiotics within two weeks and as I looked better but still felt sick, I was given another two-week course. By September 27^th my infections had all cleared up but I still was not feeling well. I had tickets to leave on October 1st for my trip to America. I wasn’t going to cancel it but I wanted to be well. I went back to the doctors one more time. I complained that although I had finished the two back-to-back courses of antibiotics given to me for the eye, ear and nasal infections, for some reason I had not completely recovered. The doctor, the same one who told me not to worry about the nosebleeds, again did not think anything was out of the ordinary. She prescribed me another ten days’ worth of antibiotics and wished me a good trip.

Packing my suitcase, I convinced myself I would be fine. I still believed in mind over matter and I was prepared to push my minor physical complaints to one side for the trip of a lifetime. I had so much to look forward to. I was about to begin a nine-week holiday visiting San Francisco and New York, seeing family and friends, shopping and eating great food. A few infections were not going to stop me. I stuck the slip for the blood test in my diary for when I returned. I could not make myself get it done now. I needed this trip and I did not want anything to jeopardise it.