For the last couple of weeks, I haven't been feeling well. I've been lightheaded, and my sight glitched every morning like a bad internet connection. I now know why.
I was hoping it would go away, but on Thursday I couldn't take it anymore. I went to the ER to be told, much to my surprise, that I'm anemic. I was missing a whopping 58% of my blood. FIFTY FUCKING EIGHT PERCENT! More than half of my blood was gone. Where?
The #1 suspect was my GI tract. They said it happens often, people bleeding into their stomachs without knowing it. But they scoped me, and ta-da! No blood. There's the outside chance that I have a tumor in my intestines, but it's unlikely because I just had a colonoscopy, and they would have seen it growing there. They were at a total loss, so they decided to keep me a couple of days.
During that time I got a couple of blood transfusions, and by the time I left they said my blood content (weird talking about my blood content and not my blood ALCOHOL content) was stable. That thing with my vision glitching? That was due to a bunch of my iron missing, so in addition to the transfusions they also pumped me chock full of iron, and my vision no longer glitches. I still have those fucking floaters driving me crazy in my left eye, but at least I know I'm not going blind now.
Although if I had continued hoping everything would go away? I'd possibly be dead by now, and the local forensics team would be tearing their hair out trying to figure out where my blood went. Perhaps they would even get desperate enough to entertain the idea of a vampire. I'd rather be spared the suggestion that maybe a dead horror author with no blood in him should be a vampiric mystery, so we'll skip it.
Of course my back chose this particular moment to bring back my usual pain. Maybe it was sleeping in a different bed, but my back was screaming when I woke up that first day. Morphine helped, and I'm back on opioids because of this fuckin' thing. But sweet unholy fuck, now that I remember what being in the hospital is like? I'd rather not do it again. For a while there I was romanticizing it a little. Isn't it nice to do nothing all day and have people do stuff for you? It is, but it's also a trap. So I no longer have to think about that shit.
Here's what I am thinking about, though: who did the transfusion blood come from? I'm grateful, don't get me wrong, but whose blood do I have running in my veins now? The unpoetic answer is, yours, stupid. It's your blood now. But did the transfusions come from the same person? Who was that person? Why did they donate their blood? Etc. Also, it's a little silly to think about, but I've gone through 45 years of life without knowing my blood type. I know it now: B+. Be positive, man. I'm trying.
So what happened to my blood? It's not as tantalizing a mystery as you would think. I read the discharge papers, and there are plenty of avenues for me to explore. I'm sure one of them will let me know what happened to my blood. When that day comes, I'll let you know.
Dammit! It's not a vampire!
The mystery I'm more interested in is, why do I have such shit luck? My life was going all right about a year ago. Maybe not great, but it wasn't driving me crazy. I am officially fucking batty over all my goddam problems. I'm paranoid. I'm not sleeping well. I'm irritable. And I'm fucking furious and impotent to do anything about it.
Speaking of impotence, here's a thing you might find funny. Well, some of you might. For the last couple of weeks I haven't been able to jerk off. I thought it was a combination of getting old and the 'Beetus. However, while I was getting the transfusions, my dick stood right up, reporting for duty, SIR! Only after letting my mind wander a little did I realize, oh, that's why I couldn't get a hard on. I didn't have enough blood in me to get it up. Now I do, and surprise!
You'll be proud of me for not jerking off in my hospital room. But to be fair, I had other things on my mind at the time.
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