e.r., 6:00 a.m.

Okay. I’m officially sick. I shouldn’t blog on Nyquil, I’m sure, but …. eh.

This time last year I was sick as a dog with The Pneumonia. Went to the ER. The year before that — in November again — I had The Dreaded Obli. Went to the ER.

November now makes me very nervous. November means I go to the ER and I make an ASS of myself. As we all know.

But this latest malady has made me remember something from last year’s little pneumonia visit.

I ended up in the ER early Sunday morning. I had spent all of Saturday splayed and wheezing on our couch downstairs. MB was on a shoot all day, but before he left, he’d set me up to basically LIVE on the couch: books, magazines, tissues, OJ, bottles of water, DVDs, remote control. I imagine I could have lived there the rest of my life. We didn’t know what was wrong with me. I just had a bad cold, right, involving recurring bouts of not being able to breathe. Nooo biggie. We also couldn’t find our thermometer to take my temperature. Whatevvvver. How high could it be?

But that afternoon, I didn’t read any books or magazines. I didn’t watch any TV or DVDs. I didn’t need to because the raging, GLORIOUS hallucinations kept me spellbound. They oozed and undulated across my field of vision, great technicolor waves of nonsense. Breathlessly — literally — I slurred in and out of consciousness that entire afternoon. I was quite happy, really. Conscious? Great! Unconscious? Great! I was sick as a dog, but utterly blissful. Delirium seemed to suit me. Who knew that, all along, a higher state of being had beckoned from a bottle of Robitussin DM? Who knew?? Well, that was it. A light broke through the swells of nonsense: Helloooo, new life! I giggled to myself.

See, delirium really suited me.

That night, my convulsive growls sent MB flying from the bed to seek refuge on The Happy Couch.

Bye (rowwrrowwrrowwufff), honey!

Sorr-(wheezewheezeagghh)-y!

I barked the entire night until one particularly violent coughing jag finally knocked me out around 4:30 a.m.

5:30, I woke up. Somehow found the thermometer. Took my temperature. 103.7. Oh, these stupid digital things. That can’t be right. I chuckled, then coughed, then collapsed. Ten minutes later, I took my temperature again. 104.

Hm. Okaaay.

Tippytoe tippytoe to the top of the stairs.

“Honey?”

“Honey?”

“Whhhe?”

“Um, I think my temp is 104.”

“WHAT??!”

“Should I go to the ER?”

“Get dressed. We’re going right now.”

At the ER, I got the usual stuff done by a nurse first.

“Your BP is kinda low.”

Huh? Wha? Words just floated past me. I felt almost outside my body, except for the full-body slam coughing. I answered in a weird, sing-song voice, like a pre-school teacher:

“Ohh-kaaay.”

“And your pulse is 149.”

“Wow … ohh-kaaay.”

“Your body must be fighting something.”

“Ohh-kaaay.”

“And, yes, your temperature is 104.”

“Oh, so our themomenner wasn’t wrong.”

“Nope. Okay. Let’s get you a chest X-ray.”

After the X-ray, we waited in our ugly curtained cubicle. Strange shapes and colors still waved at me from the corners of my eyes. Finally, the curtain parted, in walked the doc.

“Okay. I have your X-ray. And, yep, you definitely have pneumonia.”

He slapped it up on the view …. thingie, started pointing.

Here’s your lung … blahblah …. see this dark area? well, that’s the infection …. blahblahblahdieblah …….

It’s not that I wasn’t interested and, yeah, I could certainly SEE it, and yeah, it was like, 3/4 of my right lung, but, frankly, I could not take my eyes off a strange blob to the lower right of the pneumonia lung. It looked like this:

Now, naturally, when you go to the ER for some basic antibiotics and discover that your body is hosting an alien life form, a ghostly presence, a fuzzy howling head, it’s disturbing. You might freak out. You might immediately ask the doctor, “Uhm, excuse me? Doctor? Yeah, uhm, what’s that Mr. Bill thingie under my lung there??”

Well, maybe you wouldn’t say the “Mr. Bill” part out loud. Or …. maybe you would because you have a 104 degree temperature and body-convulsing coughs and oozing hallucinations and you’re sorta outside your body, which means you’re kinda outta your mind.

So I heard myself saying:

“Uhm, excuse me? Doctor? Yeah, uhm, what’s that Mr. Bill thingie under my lung there??”

He whirled around towards me. I remember it made my head hurt how fast he turned around.

“What’s that again?”

Oh, now, seeee, Tracey? You have the chance to say it again — without the Mr. Bill deal. Okay. Do-over. Great. So …..

“What’s that Mr. Bill thingie??”

Holy God in heaven. I’m an idiot.

The doctor stared at me. Then he stared back at the X-ray and started to laugh.

“Ohhhh, that. Well” — he pointed with his pen — “this is some gaaaas and that’s a little poop.”

That word, “poop,” just hung in the air between us. I couldn’t even look at him. I stared at the floor. Everything was so hot, fiery hot, deathly hot. The heatwave of embarrassment surged up from my gut, through my chest, out the top of my head. I was going to die, implode — right then and there — because I just had to ask the doctor about Mr. Bill. Because I was outside of my body and had no self-control. Because I was, at the very core of my being, a deeply invested MORON.

My alien life form was gas. And poop.

And I remember exactly how he said it. Explaining to a child, in soothing tones, stretching out the word gaaaas, relaxed, like the actual passing of gas; pinpointing the word poop in a high-pitched burst, pushing the “p’s,” his mouth like the tiniest of sphincters.

“gaaaaaaas”

“pp!”

“You’ll probably have a visit from them later,” he chuckled, as he wrote my prescription, bid me farewell.

He was still laughing as he walked away from my curtain, leaving me alone with my gas and poop.