Back Up Off My Splints

Shin splints, they are real, and I’m tired of people telling me they’re not. Given, I’ve been known, at times, to “imagine” afflictions (such as throat collapse and organ combustion), but shin splints—like cancer—are as legitimate as I am crazy.

And it’s not the gnawing pain in my lower legs on which I’m basing this conclusion. Nor is it my recently acquired limp that’s convinced me. I have all any person could ask for: acknowledgment from Wikipedia.

That’s right suckas! Lesson adjourned.

Speeding Down the Hill

In the words of my loving boyfriend:

“You’re a crazy anxiety nut job…”

…sadly, I must agree. This month has been a mental health mishap, that started with the pap smear from hell.

You see, where I come from, hospitals are impressive ten story buildings. They’re equipped with cafeterias and gift shops (and teenage candy stripers), and pharmacies the size of single family homes. They’re cold. Quiet. Impersonal. Clean.

Where I live now, hospitals look more like funeral homes, by which I mean they’re literally converted Victorian cottages. If they didn’t have large-lettered signs on their grassy front lawns, you’d never know they existed. And that’s all fine and dandy, bigger isn’t necessarily better, or so I thought before that fateful visit.

An aura of naivety must have radiated from every inch of my being as I wandered into the cozy waiting room, and then calmly followed the nurse in Christmas scrubs through the cramped hallways into one of the three examination rooms.

And although her fifteen minute diatribe on the shitty-ness of Christmas was comical—considering she was decked out in reindeer scrubs—I was happy to finally be alone on the tissue lined table when the elderly nurse left the room.

Laughing to myself about the irony, I exchanged my clothes for a backless, polka dot gown, when I suddenly noticed a bead of sweat stream down my forehead; the goddamn room must’ve been 110 degrees! But before I could curse the good lord for the extreme temperatures I was cruelly being subjected to, I noticed something on the floor: CARPET! Carpet in a fucking hospital room! I was beside myself. And that wasn’t all, where a sink should have been, for oh I don’t know hand washing, there was a 1980’s boom box blaring, of all things, country music. It was like I had been sucked into The Twilight Zone.

I won’t go into the details of the pap, but I will say in my seven years experience, it was the WORST I’ve EVER had. The procedure was an exorbitant thirty minutes of excruciating pain that left me bleeding for the rest of the afternoon, and singing this song...

Which brings me back to the point, bigger is definitely better. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Truth be Told

Do today's duty, fight today's temptation; do not weaken yourself by looking forward to things you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them.
-Charles Kingsley