I refuse to start another newsletter with an apology. So I won’t! Sorry!
I would love to start by saying that I’m back and better than ever. But I won’t do that either, because it’s not entirely true and you know I really don’t like lying. Well, I love lying, I just hate lying to you.
The truth: I am back stateside, and although I am more naturally tan and unnaturally blonde than I’ve ever been, I am hovering at about 80% mental and physical capacity right now at best.
A few weeks ago, in a cruel but ultimately very funny twist of fate, within days of returning from my heavenly Mexican getaway, I was plunged into the depths of my own personal hell, getting extraordinary sick and eventually having to go to the hospital.
Fortunately, the worst is behind me and I am on the mend and will probably be completely fine. Unfortunately for you, I am extremely dramatic and love to overshare and therefore must recount this whole story for you. And disclaimer before I start: I promise I’m not just writing this so that you feel bad for me. I also think it’s a good story!
I got home from Mexico and came to the slow realization that there were a lot of things wrong with me — which is also what I kept telling myself at age 12 after searching ‘Zac Efron shirtless’ on my iPod Touch and promising it was the last time. Quick message to 12 year old me: it’s never the last time, thankfully. But Zac will get so aggressively ripped that it becomes kind of hard to look at and he’ll also get some sort of strange chin job that everyone briefly freaks out over and then moves on from because it’s maybe body shaming buuuut you’ll always have that 2007 Rolling Stone cover.
Back to 2022, though. I suppose the realizing started while I was in Mexico but I was just reluctant to realize said realizing: I started not feeling well a few weeks into my trip but I powered through it. I figured the whole traveling-to-a-new-place-every-few-days thing, complete with a wildly inconsistent diet and sleep schedule, was probably taking its toll on my body. I was right (aren’t I always?) but I wouldn’t realize the extent of said toll for a few more days.
I had a few normal days back in New York, during which I got to see friends for the first time in months and assure them that, despite my bleached hair, I really am doing okay mentally, promise!
I ventured to CitiField with Ryan and some friends where we watched their beloved Nationals lose 10-0 to the Mets. I famously hate baseball and think it is the “go girl, give us nothing” of sports — this despite the fact that my twin brother was a baseball prodigy and was recruited to play in college. I was just so excited that things were happening that I didn’t mind cheering for the Mets’ home runs while wearing my borrowed Nationals hat. I wasn’t rooting for a team, I was just rooting for drama! *cue Derek from Happy Endings exaggerated ‘dramaaaaaaaaaaa’* (If you haven’t watched Happy Endings in the Year 2022, you’re a part of the problem! It’s streaming on Hulu and HBO Max! You have no excuses!)
I also ventured (so much venturing !) to Forest Hills to see Bon Iver in concert which was great and also hilarious because I have truly never seen more straight couples on dates in one place, and thus more girlies in head-to-toe Aritizia outfits, in my entire life. Shout out to my sister Siobhan for taking me and apologies for getting extremely ill during the one weekend you were able to visit and flaking on the rest of our plans.
As Nelly Furtado once sang, all good things come to an end and unfortunately my days of feeling normal were over. Normal in this instance means “not feeling extremely sick” because I am disqualified from most definitions of normalcy on account of my being delusional. I am, after all, writing a newsletter about myself while sitting criss-cross applesauce on my bed in my underwear drinking Diet Coke. I’m not like the other girls!!!
I thought I learned enough about myself during my spontaneous six-week Mexican adventure to take a break for a bit but was a lot more waiting to be discovered.
I learned that I could get so sick that my eyes and skin turned yellow and I could spend so much time hunched over my toilet bowl that I eventually started perching my laptop on the sink and watching full episodes (plural!) of Gilmore Girls while I vomited. I learned that I could sleep for eighteen hours a day and still feel tired and that I could wear sweatpants, a sweatshirt, and thick socks around a 72-degree apartment and still feel cold.
I learned that somehow I’d feel this sick and still drag my feet to get treatment. Part of this is due to insurance bullshit but I think it’s also because I’ve been so fixated on Covid as the scariest sickness that I convinced myself if I tested negative (which I kept doing) I was fine? Even though I clearly wasn’t? It didn’t make sense but luckily I came to my senses and went to Urgent Care.
I learned that your liver function can apparently be measured in points? I know this because after getting bloodwork done, the nurse practitioner at my urgent care called me to tell me mine was 1000 points above average and I had to come back that day to get more tests done. I appreciate them telling me this but I wish they’d understand that I have no perception at all for what that means. My medical knowledge starts and ends at the four seasons of Grey’s Anatomy I mainlined in one week during the summer of 2020 and all I really remember is that I shouldn’t cut an LVAD wire, even if I am hopelessly in love with a patient who needs a new heart. Like, are we talking a scale of 1-5 and I’m at 1,005 ? or a scale of 1-1,000,000? Those are very different scenarios! But based on the concern in her voice, I can assume it was closer to scenario one.
I learned that the easiest way to be radicalized against the American healthcare system is to be unemployed and then get sick. I am EXTREMELY lucky to be at an age where I can still bum off my parent’s health insurance. That being said, their insurance is EXTREMELY local to Massachusetts and literally not a single hospital in New York takes it. So when they called me after two consecutive days of blood tests to tell me my levels had only gotten worse and I had to get to the hospital immediately, I panicked. My options were to either get seen quickly but go to an out-of-network hospital and likely incur hundreds if not thousands of dollars in medical debt or risk it and wait to be seen until I could get back to Massachusetts.
After confirming with the nurse that I would not die if I didn’t make it to the hospital until that evening, I booked the last available seat on the next Amtrak train, which was predictably absurdly expensive. Again, I’m lucky that going home was even an option — what if my family didn’t live so close? what if I couldn’t wait to get home? It’s a scary thought exercise and one that fills me with rage about our deeply fucked up profit-driven healthcare system where people are regularly forced into crippling debt just to get the care they need. I’m almost positive I’ll be hit with massive bills for my urgent care visits. I’m really looking forward to getting those and crying!
The only seat left was in business class (hence the deranged price) so at least I could ride to the hospital in style. “In style” here means wearing long sleeves on an 80 degree day while covered in a Pride flag beach towel with Country Time Lemonade yellow eyes, dehydrated beyond belief. Most times I’m on the Amtrak I’m either excited to be going somewhere or relieved to be going home. This time was just purgatory vibes — I knew I would be driven to the hospital as soon as I got back and I was so tired I couldn’t sleep but also couldn’t do anything else. When I did have a little bit of energy, I was writing the run of show for my funeral in my Notes App (have I mentioned I have anxiety?) which involve Lucie singing at least one Bruce Springsteen cover.
I learned that in times of medical crises, you should make sure you have at least one friend or sibling who works at a hospital. Shout out to my angel of a friend Sarah, a smart med student who had helpful, kind responses to every frantic message I sent to her about my symptoms and urged me to see a doctor even when I was convinced I just had a stomach bug. Shout out to my older sister Bridget, a nurse slash tech girlboss slash TikTok star, who took me to the hospital, talked me through what the nurses and doctors were doing, and made sure I was comfortable for my overnight stay. Sure, this was under the least ideal circumstances, but it is always feels good to see people you love be very good at what they do. I am very glad that their real patients will get to feel the same way as I did because wow, medical stuff is terrifying and isolating and the kindness of those helping you goes very, very far.
I learned that I am impatient. OK fine, that’s been an established fact since the late 90s, but I was confronted by just how impatient I am as I did test upon test upon test and waited for the doctors to figure out what was wrong with me. I kept having to repeat the answers to the same questions: Yes, I left the country; I went to Mexico; I was there for six weeks; No, I did not intentionally drink the tap water; Yes, I promise I’m not lying about drinking the water. Every time I recounted my symptoms to a different doctor or nurse, I hoped one of them would hear this and magically know the diagnosis and the solution (which, in this fantasy, would be instant and painless) right then and there. I do not do well with uncertainty of any kind and especially not medical uncertainty: hearing scary potential diagnoses like “colon cancer” as you do your fifth round of bloodwork in 72 hours is not fun! Getting multiple ultrasounds without really understanding what said ultrasounds are for is not fun! Staying overnight and not being able to sleep for more than an hour because you have more tests to do is not fun! Thank god my exhaustion kept me from having a full-blown panic attack.
I learned, after twenty-odd hours that felt like years, that I had a viral infection targeting my liver. Good news: I could go home an I’d be fine and I’d probably already gone through the worst of it; my infamous “levels” were down. Bad news: there are no antibiotics or treatments despite the pain, just time and good vibes !!! :)
Just when I thought I was finally done learning, I learned there’s almost always more. Maybe this is just because I have comically bad luck (with the notable exception that sophomore year of high school I won a vase full of jelly beans because I came closest to guessing how many jelly beans were in the vase) but I wasn’t at all surprised when, after being home for one day, the doctor called me and said “‘hey girlie, so it turns out you also have E. Coli.” I think I laughed out loud on the phone — because it’s funny! It IS funny because my only reference point for E. Coli is that time when everyone was getting it from Chipotle. It is FUNNY that after live laugh loving my enviable, care-free, seemingly never-ending holiday in Mexico, I come back to learn that my body had fully betrayed me. Of course it happened this way — low lows after the highest of highs. I choose to take it in stride! The bright side of the surprise E. Coli diagnosis — there are antibiotics for that and they work very quickly and the worst of my symptoms would be gone within the week.
So yes, I came back from my amazing trip not only with twelve vintage button-down shirts but also two viral infections targeting different parts of my body! I’ve always wanted to go viral <3
To quote one of the best musicals of our generation, I feel so much better than before! I’m now about three weeks out and I’m back in New York, Beyoncé has released a dance track, and cancer season has officially begun. I got to make my debut as a Real Person at my friend Kyra’s lovely lovely lovely wedding alongside my friend, confidant, and future podcast co-host Danielle. We cried a lot (they’re just such a happy couple!!!) and I learned the hard way that crying brings out the still-somewhat-visible yellow in my eyes. It’s a slow and steady road to recovery, indeed.
This dispatch has been very woe-is-me but I didn’t call this Whining in Public for nothing.
I wanted to write sooner but my brain has been mashed potatoes for the last few weeks. And of course when I say mashed potatoes I mean the kind that comes in the packet. If you weren’t raised on Idahoan brand mashed potatoes… I simply can’t relate to you.
I have so much I want to tell you about from Mexico, about how I learned to surf and crashed a motorbike and got locked out of my hotel room in my underwear at 3AM. I will find a way to share these tales over the next few weeks —tales of overnight buses and nudist hotels and local productions of Mamma Mia! — while still giving you some real-time updates / culture recommendations etc. etc. etc.
Thank you all for reading! Please don’t feel too bad for me. I mean, feel a little bad for me but also I’m fine so don’t feel too too bad for me. I trust you to find a good balance.
xoxo Colin