And the sad truth of the matter is that they actually really and truly are doing it for my own good.
I could even die if they didn’t do this for my own good.
Which makes it all the more incomprehensible. How did we get to a point in this society where deception or outright lies are the automatic knee jerk unthinking solution to any situation that might produce resistance?
What the hell ever happened to telling the blunt honest truth.
Why couldn’t they just have said look, this is what you need to do or you will die? Why con me into it?
I’ve had what I thought was a chest cold for the past 3 weeks. Lungs are sore from all the coughing, and then this morning I woke up and coughed again, but this time with a bit of blood coming up.
Not being stupid, or a tough guy at my own expense, I got dressed and walked down the road to the clinic to ask the doctor what she thought. She hemmed and hawed and poked and prodded and sent me around the corner for an x-ray.
X-ray tech says hey, this looks like you’ve got pneumonia, but tuberculosis is a possibility, so we want you to go over to the TB Clinic at the Disease Control Centre and spit in a cup so they can analyze it.
Well, ok, makes sense I figure, so off I go to the TB Clinic where they have me spit in a cup, see a little blood too, and then say well look, just to be on the safe side we’d like to repeat this test 3 or 4 times a day for the next couple of days, so why don’t we get you a bed in the hospital across the street for those couple of days.
That way if you have TB and are contagious we can have you fixed up real quick. Just a couple of days. Or maybe three at most.
Sure I say, why not. Better to be safe than sorry.
Off to the hospital. Up the elevator to the 8th floor. Hisssss….pop. The doors open into a negative pressure lobby. No germs get out to the public that way, apparently.
Looks like a real nice place. Nice smiling friendly caring people.
Hey, two or three days in here shouldn’t be too bad, I think to myself.
Nice room too. Though it would be nicer if the windows opened. And I thought it was a little strange that the fire exit door I passed in the hallway had a lock on it.
A lock on a fire exit door? Hmmmm.
Oh well, it’s only two or three days.
Doctor knocks and comes in the room all smiley and friendly. Wonderful bedside manner. Taps on ribs, listens to lungs, nods sagely and makes sympathic noises.
Looks up and says he thinks he can have me to a non-contagious stage in about 4 to 6 weeks, and until then I’m in fucking quarantine.
Anybody feel like feeding Magic for me while I’m in jail?
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Whatever happened to honesty?
…this is like, literal, right? Not an Edger metaphor?
Djeez…
Honest?????
I know you’ve mentioned being sick off and on for awhile. This is the shits though!!!!!!!!!
And seriously, do you have someone who can take care of Magic?
OMG you can’t play with that diagnosis, but do you have to be in quarantine? Can’t you go home and take your antibiotics? Why do they have to lock you up like some sort of criminal?
{{{{{Edger}}}}} Oh my fucking god. Please be well.
… to hear this, Edger. What a terrible thing to happen, being sick is bad enough but then this kind of idiotic treatment on top of it. Oy.
Take good care of your fine self and be sure and charm the nurses … maybe they’ll let you out sooner!
All you have to do is lure them to your computer and you can hypnotize them with your music!
Seriously, thanks for letting us know about this. I hope you have a complete healing and are let out of that place soon.
I’m so sorry.
Yeah, while the truth would have been hard, it would have been better than luring you in with lies.
Do you have insurance or are they going to ream you there too?
Love You ((((((Edger)))))
This seriously sucks. 🙁
Dem bugz can’t get thru teh tubez, can they?
Author
They want their computer back now, so I’ll try to get online tomorrow sometime if I can.
Arrrrrrgggggghhhhh! Fuck. :-/
hang in there bro.
i’m distraught with the idea that you were conned, and i am nearly still in disbelief that the essay on the top of the rec list by you wasn’t about the bailout, but my overriding concern is for your health. jeez, i sound like a mom or something. good for you for getting things checked out and chances are the 4-6 week thing will be shorter. send me an email with the address of the hospital and i will send you books and things tomorrow. (in case you don’t have my email accessible – sharon dot lynch at verizon dot net.) there must be things that you have been wishing you had time to read (hint, tell me). trying to look on the bright side here – is there some writing you have been putting off that you can use this time for?
edger, hang in there best you can. you’re very special to me. let me know whatever i can do to help get you through this.
I know the way they got you in there was crummy, but on the other hand they may have just saved your life.
Lung diseases like pneumonia and TB are nothing to mess around with, and patients who contract them are notorious for doing more than they should before they should, with often tragic results.
Winston Churchill contracted pneumonia during WWII. He insisted on continuing to work until his doctor told him why they call the disease ‘the old man’s friend’ – because it takes them quietly in their sleep when they least expect it.
When you look at it that way, 4-6 weeks out of your life may not seem so bad, especially if it means you have many more years afterward.
…going to bed and maxed tomorrow…don’t know if I will be on during your window but you might check this. Robyn indicated you might be in Van? If that’s a deep dark secret sorry 🙁 Anyway, if you are going to be there some weeks, and would like a visitor, drop a line to my [email protected] account and I’ll get back to it within a day or two. I visit my folks slightly to the south every week or so and often enjoy going up for dinner on Robson and all the other provincial things that suburbanites enjoy in the city. If you are allowed visitors with appropriate precatuions, I’d be happy to come by and bring smarties or books or a cell charger or whatever. I’m kind of broke but b’ham to vancouver is like, 10 bucks in my escort round trip…and it’s good, I think, to have visitors.
Just an offer, not a whit offended if my geography is off or it just doesn’t work out to be the thing, y’know…but since you’re possibly 45 minutes away it seemed like an idea…
is some legalese that allowed them to do this to you.
Everyone reading this should be aware of the possibility of signing your rights away when you enter a hospital. This was a wake up call for me and I suspect for many others.
I’m really sorry and if you post a mailing address I will do what I can about also providing books and stuff. Also let us know if you get a laptop.
good luck!
are you being civil? @;-)
and let the mail flooding commence! lists! make a list!
Author
I managed to get access to one of the staff computers here again but only for a couple of seconds, and I just want to say thanks to everone here for all the great comments and well wishing last night and his morning.
You guys are all great. I’m a little more settled down and not as pissed at the “system” as I was when I wrote this essay yesterday, even though I really don’t like the idea of being locked in here for a month or more.
But they tell me that quite a few of the other patients here had come in here with very advanced TB that they’ve had for months, some even 6 months or more, and they will be here for a long time. I see from the board on the wall in the nursing station that some of them have been her for 4 or 5 months.
The nusrses tell me that having had it for only 2 or 3 weeks means that treatment to the non contagious point will probably only take a few weeks, maybe 4 or 5, although apparently TB is a very slow healing bacterial infection so it takes 8 or 9 months of antibiotics to get rid of it completely, but th first few weeks should get the concentration in my lungs low enough that they’ll let me out of here. I hope they’re not bullshitting me again.
I might even be able to make a quick run home to pick up a few things. I mentioned to them this morning that I wanted to and they didn’t argue, just said they need doctors ok, and that I’d have to wear a surgical mask out in public, so maybe I’ll get to go out and scare the public on the street for a minute this afternoon, and go say hi to Magic!
They need this computer back again, so I have to get off it, but I’ll try to reply to individual comments later today if I can.
Thanks everybody for being you!
Can we get McCain and Paulson and Bernanke quarantined? 😉
lung stuff is nothing to fool around with!
there is nothing quite like the feeling of not having enough air.
please, pleeeeeze, do what they say….they ARE trying to make you better!
kisshugs to you, dear man!
♥~
I guess they thought you’d run? How weird.
I guess you can read, like, all of Russian literature or something while you’re there. (Joke.)
Get well.
Dude, get well soon or….or…or…You’re banned! (that’s all I can think of to help, lol) Sounds like a sucky but necessary time
I’m sure glad they caught it, tho!
after reading your post. it sounds highly curable but takes forever with a four pronged attacked (no pronged is not literal – thought i should clarify given how you ended up where you are) and one type of pill is supposed to be quite large (maybe you know this already). the sense i got is the medical profession is concerned that,because the med cycle is so long (months) and the symptoms not overwhelming, that people will not follow the full cycle and end up relapsed. hence, the oversight with the meds. so if you convince them that you are responsible and blah blah blah, chances are you will get sprung sooner than the 4-6 they told you.
also sounds like tb is only airborne contagious and you are only recently so. (gotta love the internets for all the info that is available in your very own home these days.) i bet they let you out to get some sanity saving devices like your computer and books and things. who knows – maybe this is your moment to write the great american novel?!
hope you’re holding up and they get it that you’re a veg. also hope they don’t steam the hell out of everything! when you send me the hospital’s addy, i’ll send some non-perishable snacks with the reading material.
hugs, kisses, and good thoughts!
their sneaky treatment of you sounds so bushie like.
please try to rest so you can get better faster. sending healing energies your way. hugs!
Sounds like you’re getting the basic essentials worked out.
And, isn’t this a great commumnity! So much caring and love.
When you get the chance, we’d love to hear!!!!!!!!!
just sent you one. please hit me back if you can by the end of the day tomorrow before i send off a package to you.
edger did not tell me where he is, but a little bit of internet detectivery allowed me to figure it out. since he hasn’t told us himself i hesitate to post it, but my guess is that if i was able to figure this out others can too….
…and sorry that you weren’t treated more honestly. It reminds me of a scheme bounty hunters would use to lure in a bail jumper. How is a patient expected to trust the medical staff for the rest of this 4-6 week period after starting off with bullshit about the quarantine?
But your health is more important. And those around you, too. Hope you recover quickly and avoid insanity during the quarantine. Good luck to you.