Fevers, Stitches, and Totaled Cars: A Week Hand Delivered By Satan

First, please accept my apologies for not updating this for a few weeks.  I had all plans and intentions to put something up about every 10 days or so.  Unfortunately, as you’ll soon read, the Universe had other plans and has been having its way with me for a while now.  This brings me to the last week or so, a series of time hand delivered (COD no less) by Ol’ Scratch himself.

The week spawned by Satan began, as I suspect most insanely evil things do, innocently enough.  Sitting at home on a Sunday morning, catching up on episodes of “Blacklist” and “Supernatural”, Raquel, still getting over a case of the sniffles, decided to take a short nap.  She was rudely woken some time later by a punch in the face from a fever.  Gripping tightly, the fever had brought with it some body aches and chills that made for an overall miserable experience.  We both suspected she was in for a bout with the flu; a few aspirin, some soup, and Raquel began to weather the storm.

The following day her fever spiked to over 103, just as we were headed to doctor’s office.  Thankfully, we weren’t kept waiting for too long before Raquel was shuffled into the office for the nurse to begin taking her vitals.  Visibly sick, fever and blood pressure sky rocketing, the nurse still felt it necessary to lecture us on the importance of exercising at least three times a week.  While her timing was questionable, I still had to admire her thoroughness.  The doctor arrived shortly after, and the standard flu test was administered.  Much to everyone’s surprise, (including the good doctor), the test came back negative.  If I were a betting man, I would have surely lost.  We were sent home with some simple over the counter Ibuprofen and directions for Raquel to take life easy.  Raquel would much of the rest of the week on the couch, shivering and burning at the same time.

Wednesday rolls around and it’s now my turn to visit the doctor.  One of the more annoying aspects of my bout with skin cancer is that now anything that looks even remotely suspicious gets cut out, or “excised” to use the proper medical term.  Now (more or less) fully recovered from the surgery, the doctors have taken to excising me with a regularity I find disturbing.  Over the last two months, I’ve had over a dozen various excisions and I’m frequently sporting multiple bandages, gauze, and band aids underneath my clothes.  I started referring to these appointments as “Operation Slice N’ Dice” and I’m currently healing from Phase IV.  I’ve joked with a few people that, including the arm, I would make a decent Frankenstein’s monster. Most of the time, these excisions are normally small and cause more discomfort than true pain.  And truly, compared to what could have been, this is a small price to pay.  But Phase IV proved to be a bit different.

During my exam, it was determined that one of the suspicious areas had actually begun growing back, despite a previous excision.  Roughly two hours later and wonderfully numb from multiple injections, I left the doctor with a new personal record of “3 Places On My Body With Multiple Stitches”.  I was now sporting excisions on my right temple, the small of my back, and rather wide and deep excision right by my left knee.   My dossier was getting pretty impressive, roughly 30 stitches in one visit.  I was feeling a bit like a philosophical karate using bouncer working at a rundown road side bar.

The next few days passed in a blur; Raquel convalescing on one couch, me on the other.  Raquel slept, I hobbled, and we both worked our way back to health.  The Universe, however, was not quite done having its way with us.  On the way home from a follow up with the doctor, Raquel is involved in a car wreck that sadly totals our car.  I’ve been told that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll simply let them do their jobs.  After many years of good and faithful service, the Stratus deserved so much better than this.

 
I think it’s time we picked up some lottery tickets.  With our run of bad luck, we’re due an upswing of sorts. I’ve been wracking my brains trying to figure what god or divine being we’ve unknowingly offended.  I don’t remember breaking any mirrors lately and I studiously avoid black cats.  In any case, we may be headed to New Orleans in the very near future.  There’s some bad mojo that needs to be taken care of.