My job sometimes requires me to intensively play-test a game, then hand in a written review within 48 or 24 hours. This is by no means how it usually works, but if my publisher tells me they'll be extra grateful if I can finish a project early and if I feel I can do it, well... you get the idea. I'll get to work and crank that shit out like a boss.
You need to prioritize your crap like crazy around some of the tighter deadlines. So stuff like Youtube, Youporn, feeding the cats or, say, not completely ignoring your thirst for 8-12 hours, all just have to wait. I had one of those nights not too long ago, where I worked well into sunrise, then realized I had nothing to drink all day and just murdered a big box of tomato juice without thinking about it. You know, drink nothing, then down a carton of salty tomato goo. Super healthy!
Another fun side effect of these nights it that you'll be super fucking tired afterwards. You'll fall into bed and snore. Who needs to brush teeth, take a shower or go piss when the sweet, sweet embrace of bed awaits? BAM! Lights out for twelve hours. And when you finally wake up the next afternoon, you get to enjoy ten minutes of what feels and sounds a lot like taking the biggest morning leak in the history of the planet, but the result looks like Coke. It's alarming, but so is the amount of work waiting in your inbox, people poking you on Facebook and Skype, where's my translation, can you handle these support tickets, DO STUFF ALREADY!
Had a bit of pain in the lower back that day, but the Coke eventually turned back to piss and I didn't really have the time to worry about any of this. It was probably nothing.
Two nights later I had this sharp, stinging pain in my left flank. It was ridiculously painful. I sat in all kinds of weird poses, tried to curl up and die, but nothing would make the pain go away, so I really just walked all around the house like an idiot. Moving around was the only thing to make it borderline bearable. I'm not sure I've ever felt anything that came even close on the pain scale and believe me, I had broken bones, torn springs, had to endure English football and soap operas, but this searing pain was on a whole new level. When it was at its worst, I threw up. I just wanted to pass out, get a few moments of relief, but what actually happened was me puking until there was nothing left but bile. It looks pretty awesome when you vomit slimy green stuff, though, especially since half of it got stuck in my epic mustache. I considered rocking the walrus and picked the best possible moment for it.
So I did something I have never even considered for as long as I've lived in the UK - go to a doctor. We made an appointment at some emergency walk-in center thingie where they asked me to piss in a tube, they pricked my finger, then asked me if I had been a diabetic for long. They took blood twice more and asked me to fill so many test tubes with piss, I'm surprised I didn't just fart dust clouds for the rest of the day.
Eventually, some nice Asian doctor with a name I'm not even gonna try to type out, let alone figure out how to pronounce, gave me a speech about how my body is unable to produce insulin and that he'd send me to the hospital, because my pain would only get worse from there. Oooo-kay!
They also asked me to piss in yet another tube and take it to the hospital, because apparently their results from three tubes of that stuff weren't enough already. So they called us a taxi, karted us off to the hospital, where we greeted the receptionist with a bottle of my finest pee and a whole lot of screaming pain. There were about 38 trillion other people there, because the Queen's Medical Centre is just about the biggest place around and people from all over the country go there. So a doctor saw us about an eternity and a half later and she took my blood and asked me to piss in a tube, because that's the hip new thing to do, apparently. Then she asked me what I thought was wrong, so I told her the doc at the other place said I had Type I diabetes. Her reaction was awesome, starting with the fact that nobody told her I had already been going through the exact same tests she was doing (for the third time), but also because that whole insulin stuff was apparently bullcrap. Whee!
The doc said that I probably had kidney stones (duh, Google told me the exact same thing the night before, also cancer, pregnancy, cancer, syphillis, cancer and cancer), so they queued me up for a CT-scan. After 38 weeks in the waiting area a nurse showed up and tried to get a blood sample. Poked me with a needle once, twice, tried a bigger needle, tried something that looked more like a hollow broadsword, managed to squeeze out half a small test tube of the stuff, then gave up.
Oh well, scan time! A cheerful lady who was totally Ellen DeGeneres in a lab coat put me in a giant metal donut and blasted my bits with magical rays or some shit. Then we went back to the waiting room.
I finally know Iolo's terrible, terrible secret.
Another fine Asian gentleman introduced himself. A Doctor Tarik. Asked me if I could provide a urine sample, because that one never gets old. I was hooked up to a (stationary) IV-drip, so he just handed me a tube and asked me to do it right inside the waiting room. He left us to ourselves, so I pissed in yet another tube and all over the floor, because this shit is difficult when you're full of wires and have limited movement and visibility. I awkwardly shoved the puddle under the bed with my shoes.
Then a doctor with the most Japanese name tag I have seen in my life showed up, telling me he needed a blood sample. Great, another one! And out of what must have been something like positive racism, I desperately wanted to be his friend, because... I dunno, Japanese doctor taking my blood, whee! The guy tried to impress me by saying all sorts of random shit in German. Apparently he was desperately trying to be liked by me, as well. I shoulda tried to spout some random Internet-Japanese so both of us could have felt stupid. Anyhow, the guy tried bigger and bigger needles with no luck until I begged him to just get it over with and punch me in the nose, instead. That usually gets the blood to flow, but he opted for sending in another guy with even more needles, instead. I've never seen him again and presume he went to commit seppuku.
Anyhow. Doctor no. 3 failed to draw blood, so they called in guy no. 4. True story. You see, I'm made of 95% pure awesome and a bit of cheese, so it's hard to even find any blood. When their expert had difficulty reaching any of my veins I told him that this shit right there was why I never managed to get into heroin. He opted for an artery, I bled like a pig, everyone was happy. We had been there for about six hours now and nobody had asked me to piss in a tube for a while, so when the nurse replaced my saline drip for something a lot more entertaining (we'll get to that), I asked her if she could wait just a second to reconnect me, because bathroom and all that. "Don't worry, I'll bring you a bottle." Hurray! More pissing in the waiting room. Except the bottle never even showed up. Hey, that's cool, have me sit and wait all day, force-hydrate me with IV-drips, then explode my already messed-up kidneys by preventing me from pissing all day!
But I didn't even care. About anything. For I had just received morphine. I swear, there's this nurse working there, who only has the job in order to experience the reactions of first time recipients of this stuff.
"So, have you ever had morphine before?"
-"No, but I've heard lots of great things."
"Oh, it's the good stuff, alright."
-"Can't wait! But when you're done injecting this, do you think I c... whoooooooooooooa.... dude."
She laughed. Look, if any of you decide to turn my life into a sitcom after I die, please play some Snoop Dogg when you shoot this scene. It feels like... hm. Have you ever been in a pool and you got so relaxed, you just float on the surface of the water? Some people get scared to do that, because you'll start to sink if you panic and cramp up. But if you're completely relaxed, if you just stretch out, close your eyes, you'll just float, gently bobbing up and down. Morphine feels a lot like that, except ten times more intense and relaxing and without the risk of drowning your stupid face.
Meanwhile, CT results said I was gonna give birth to a bunch of lovely kidney stones, so they had to cart me off to a different hospital. I was transported there by this hulk of an ambulance person. Tall, bulky, wide shoulders, a broad, chiseled chin, coarse skin with large pores covered in just a hint of make-up, a pony tail, held together by a cute little rubbery hairband and the low-pitched voice of a blues singer. The name tag read "Emma".
Emma had the heart and soul of a gentle, loving young lady. "Are you cold? Is this alright? Please stay in the wheelchair, I'd hate for you to trip and fall, even though you're handling the morphine really well." Emma also had a body that would have made most male pro-wrestlers absolutely jealous. One of the most genuinely fun people I had met this weekend!
Half an hour later I was in a hospital full of huge, bald, middle-aged folks with the odd walking corpse sprinkled in here and there for variety. Most folks there addressed me as "young lad", which felt incredibly weird. I could have been twelve years old at that moment and it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. Absolutely everybody working there was female, including my doctor, who asked me how I was feeling that night.
-"You mean apart from the kidney stones, oooor...?"
"Right, sorry. I know they must be rather unpleasant."
-"Wouldn't recommend 'em."
She told me the stones were small enough to fuck off without help. "Otherwise we can treat them with shockwaves."
-"I don't know what that is, but it sounds awesome. Let's do that!"
"Oh, it's seriously cool, actually!"
Well, at least I was making friends. Or so I thought until I realized she was a bit stingy with the morphine. She offered me a choice of painkillers or a suppository. The latter option was supposed to be the most efficient, but I opted for pills. "You've had two days of screaming agony and vomitting. Wanna shove something up your ass to make the weekend perfect" didn't seeem too appealing at the time. Of course she didn't literally say it like that, but she may as well have done.
The bed opposite of mine belonged to Steve, who was all to happy to tell me exactly that. He also talked about how they cut a guy's dick open because the urethra was too small to pass a clot. He suffered from some nasty form of cancer and had to get a whole lot of nasty gunk flushed out. "It's nothing personal, but basically they just take your penis, then they shove this hose up y..." ANYWAY. I was ready to go home now and tried my hardest to tune Steve out. From that moment I heard nothing but the crashing waves and the gentle breeze of the ocean whenever he opened his mouth.
Claire, who had to put up with my shit all day was finally allowed to go home. This was also the point where I realized that the hospital's "pain killers" were really just candy. The morphine had worn off and their pills... well, imagine you just had this really perfect steak and when you go for seconds they offer you a block of wood, painted in cow's blood. I gnashed my teeth, tried to ignore the pain as best I could, kept asking for more and more pills until the sum of them finally knocked me out for a bit. And then I woke up in hell.
It was almost completely dark. Snoring and farting everywhere around me. So. Many. Farts. One of the worst offenders, some 90 year old gentleman named John, suddenly rose from his bed and kicked off his covers likey they were on fire, then pissed all over the place. The night nurse alarm thingie beeped for what seemed like an eternity, but nobody showed up. I was too drugged, in too much pain and frankly a little too put off to do anything, even if that makes me a bad person. It didn't take much for me to hate him that night, even if I hated myself a little for hating him. He couldn't help it, he was just old and messed up. A nurse eventually showed up and freaked out at him for pissing everywhere. "I TOLD you! I have told you I pee every hour!" He wasn't kidding. He was incredibly matter of fact about it, really. "I have gone 17 times in the past twelve hours." He kept repeating that line over and over for the entire duration of my hospital visit. Over and over, as though he was rehearsing for a big Broadway show.
Thing is, John's timing was a little off. He literally rose every fifteen minutes, kicking off his blanket in this wild, exaggerated panic, jumping on his feet and pissing in one of his 38 bottles if he could fine one on time. Try really hard to go to sleep when that shit happens right next to you. "Okay, I can hear him fill up the bottle now... ten seconds... twenty... he's totally still going...". Splash. Full bottle. He wouldn't fucking stop. I ended up throwing all of my piss bottles at him, since he clearly needed them more than I ever would.
John wasn't the only one who made sure I wouldn't find any sleep that night. One of the elderly folks resting his bones among us urinally challenged would make dog noises in his sleep. He growled and barked, just like the real thing, I shit you not. My bed was also right next to the toilets. Granted, all the bathrooms have doors and everything, but if fart noises and people pissing all over the place aren't entertaining enough, imagine a whole bunch of old people puking and shitting less than twenty feet away from your bed.
Meanwhile, I was writhing in agony until I just couldn't handle the pain any longer and started walking around the place. The painkillers made me drowsy, so I kept bumping into things, but stubbing your toe or slamming your face into a wall can make a nice distraction from a bunch of fucking kidney stones. It didn't help when the sun started to come up and John just stood there, sticking his ancient dick into piss bottles every fifteen or so minutes. I don't know where his pants had gone, but I had enough problems of my own, really.
They gave me all the painkillers that night. Whole trays full. Just no morphine. Bastards! Eventually I had so much I just passed out and slept until lunch time. It was surreal. They went around the place with a menu, pictures and everything, asking folks if they wanted minced lamb or roast beef, fruit salad and custard or ice cream. Or whatever the fuck a vegetarian cobbler is.
I'm used to hospital food being served on a tray full of stuff, that not even a self-respecting dog would touch. What we got was a dinner lady with a massive cart that came loaded with all sorts of vegetables and sauces and meat and... it almost looked like a mobile hotel buffet! The sight and smell of food was so overwhelming, I couldn't help but run and puke my fucking guts out.
Everybody heard it. Funny thing is, nobody even gave a fuck and they all just continued to eat like it was nothing. Men, amirite? The nurse offered me some medicine to help counter the sickness.
-"Nah, I should be alright now."
I threw up again five minutes later. She handed me the pills with that look on her face that said we had been married for thirty years and if she fucking tells me so, then she fucking tells me so. Why do I have to be so difficult? She knows what's best for me. Amazing stuff. She didn't say a word. Didn't have to.
There's no spectacular ending here or anything. The pain eventually just disappeared as suddenly as it came. No cool shotgun noises when the stones eventually went. I'm supposed to come back in two weeks to make sure everything's alright and that's that. I think I'm gonna have to bring a bunch of flowers. These people, everybody working there, spend countless hours every day, every night, pulling ridiculously long shifts, putting up with so much abuse, piss, puke and bullshit for wages, which cannot possibly be anywhere near enough. How they all manage to function and to retain such a friendly, positive attitude is entirely beyond me. I shook Steve's hand on the way out and wished him all the best. I'm whining like a baby about fucking kidney stones. That guy has fucking cancer. And he was so happy for me when I could leave and didn't need any complicated treatment. Still, I hope I can avoid shit like that from now on. I need to drink more. Where's the vodka?
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