Whitney

  Three days after they attached the wound vac, a nurse came to my apartment to change it. She struggled with the contraption for two hours before finally getting it to work. My cat was very interested in the operation but the nurse said she was deathly allergic. 

    Monday I went to the podiatrist and she took off the vacuum and reattached it differently. The following day it started losing pressure and finally stopped running. I called her and she said to take it off. The next day a different nurse showed up to try to reattach it. The cat instantly jumped up on his shoulders. He just laughed and put her down and she sat in the chair glaring at him for the rest of the visit. The nurse took one look at the wound vac and started making phone calls. He called his supervisor, the wound care specialists, and the head of their social work department. He left without reattaching the wound vac. 

    That afternoon the podiatry office called to ask if I could come in the next day, which worried me. I was already scheduled to go in Monday, why the extra visit? 

    I brought the wound vac, expecting her to reattach it, but she did not. All she did was clean the wound and rewrap it, and tell me that she wanted me to see if a vascular specialist to see if there was a circulation problem, despite my having just undergone testing in the hospital for just that. She said there was a possibility the infection had damaged a capillary in the toe. If so, I would have to undergo further surgery and possibly amputation. She gave me the number for the vascular specialist, told me it was up to me to contact them. “You need to advocate for yourself,” she said. “I’m so tired,” I said. “I know,” she said. She called in a prescription for a thirty-five dollar ointment she said may or may not help. A mournful cover of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” played as I left the office.

    A friend drove me home and bought me lunch, and another couple of friends had dinner with me. It was good to have some distractions but afterwards I felt more alone than ever. I was so tired of being the only one who was always in crisis, tired of being the only one anyone knew with seemingly endless health issues. I was tired of having to rely on people, tired of them worrying about me. Chronic illness isolates you, puts up a barrier separating you from the healthy. Everyone has something to deal with, but I didn’t know anyone who had to deal with something like this. “Find a support group,” people recommended, but the last thing I wanted to do was talk about this shit to other people like me. 

    I was especially fed up with being the only one of my friends who was always alone. Despite feeling like I was a good person who had plenty to offer, I had gone through my entire forties without dating anyone for more than 90 days. I felt awash in self-pity and resentment. I envied  my friends their health, their owning houses, their having loved ones to come home to. They had made good choices in their lives, whereas I had ignored all the Dead End signs and sure enough the street had come to an abrupt halt at the curb. A part of me had never expected anything else, yet I still found myself surprised to be here, standing at the guardrail, staring out over the abyss.

    The next day, none of the people the nurse had said would call did so. No nurses showed up, though they were supposed to. The temperature was dropping. Snow was expected that night. I had plenty of food and my apartment was warm and I had books and music and projects to work on. The cat was sleeping peacefully on the couch. I knew I should be grateful for all of this. All I wanted to do was scream.