This a continuation from part 2 of Making Illness Payoff. If I didn’t already have enough drama in my life, my landlord was now hounding me to pay more than a week’s rent at a time since I had fallen behind not too ago. I was barely able to come up with $165.00 each week and now he wanted more! It seemed like everything was beginning to pile up around me and I didn’t know how I was going to get through it.
I had about $200 left that I was saving to pay my rent, but with my car now in police impound I wouldn’t be able to work, and to make matters worse the wound on my inner thigh was beginning to hurt quite a bit. I had to drain it a few times already and each time it was very painful. I couldn’t stand it any longer so I called my Friend Jimmy and asked him if he could buy the antibiotics for me.
I was in a lot of pain, and I also had a prescription for some pain medicine, but if figured if I just took some Tylenol with the antibiotics that would reduce the infection and the pain would subside, but mainly I didn’t want to seem like a fucking leech since I had already asked Jimmy for money not to long ago. It now had been 3 days since I went to the emergency room to have this boil lanced and it had grown to about twice the size it was when I originally went to the hospital.
As soon as I felt the wound had grown in size, I got into the shower and with the temperature as hot as I could stand it I soaked the wound until the scab had become soft, then with a quick squeeze I drained all of the pus out of the wound and then washed it thoroughly with the antibacterial soap they had given me in the emergency room.
The next day, it seemed as if the swelling had gone down. but it was still tender and very painful. I continued to wash it with the solution they had given me. Along with the antibiotics, I felt that it would heal soon enough. My wound was the least of my worries at the moment. I needed to find some work, any work so I would have the rent money. I had the $165 for the coming week, and even though the manager said he wanted at least two weeks rent, the $165 was going to have to be enough.
I started calling all of my friends and asked them to put the word out that I needed to make my rent money for the following week, and the next day my friend Jackie called, said she need me to look at her network in her apartment. She had a small list of little jobs she needed then care of so she came and picked me up and we went to her house so I could take care of everything.
As soon as I got to Jackie’s house I noticed that the crotch of my pants was damp, so I went into the bathroom and as soon as I dropped my pants I saw the smear of bloody pus on my boxer shorts and inner pant leg. As soon as I bent over to clean myself up I became dizzy and very weak. I was sweating and not feeling well at all.
I steadied myself and cleaned my wound and pants as best I could, and returned to Jackie’s living room to begin fixing her networking issues. It seems she and her husband just recently bought a large widescreen television and the wireless application needed to be configured to connect to her home network along with her color printer. While I was not feeling especially well, I was sure I would be able to finish the work here so I could go home and rest. I didn’t tell Jackie that my wound was becoming infected, because I wanted to finish this small job so I could get paid. I desperately need this money to help with my rent, so I sucked it up and pushed on.
I took me roughly another 2 hours to correct the rest of Jackie’s minor networking issues, and soon we were on our way to the local store where Jackie said she was going to buy me some cigarettes, after which we stopped for some dinner. Jackie was a truly good friend, I had been friends with her and her husband Tom for years. We met at a local social club where we played Pinocle and we sort of hit it off right from the start.
It took every ounce of energy I had to keep my pain from Jackie. Looking back I really don’t know why I went to such lengths to hide my pain from the growing infection, but I did. Once I was home, I immediately got into the shower to clean up. When I checked on my infected wound. It seemed like the swelling had gone down, but I was very tender and hurt considerably.
As I was walking back to my room from the public shower, my phone started ringing and my friend Sid was calling. I answered my phone as I unlocked the door to my room and went inside. Sid was my oldest and best friend. We had met each other when I owned a tattoo shop in Orange County and had been friends ever since. So Sid was coming over to pick up a few things I had sold him and I asked him if he could help me out with the money for the pain med script I had. I really hated asking my friends for money, but I just couldn’t stand the pain from that infection any longer. Sid said he would and he was at my place at 30 minutes later.
When Sid got to my place we talked for a bit then headed out to a 24 hour pharmacy in Long Beach. I couldn’t believe that my prescription for the pain medicine was only $12.00, when my antibiotics cost closer to $60.00! Since I had enough money to pay my rent for the next three weeks with a little left over, I told Sid I would take care of the prescription, but Sid told me to just hold on to my money!
We went back to my place and talked for a while then Sid said he had to take off, so I spent the rest of the night relaxing, and after taking one of the pain pills I was able to actually sleep peacefully for the first time since this infection began.
The first thing I noticed when I woke up was that my boxer shorts were very wet with drainage from my infected wound. I rushed into the shower to clean up as best as I could. As soon as I got into the shower I gently touched the wound and found it hadn’t grown in size but it was really tender, inflamed, and oozing. I tried to drain it but each time I attempted to squeeze it the pain as just too intense. I knew this wasn’t good at all and i needed to go the hospital right away.
After my shower I called my friend Jake to ask him for a ride to the hospital. Jake was on the road picking up some Harley Davidson parts he needed for a motorcycle he was working on for one of his customers, but said he would come over as soon as he dropped the parts off at his shop.
While I waited for jake I put a few things In my small backpack to take with me to the hospital, I didn’t know if they would admit me, but if they did i wanted to have my laptop, phone and charger. As much as I hated taking this pain medicine, I was in serious pain now so I took a couple of the pill hoping they would relieve me until I got to the hospital.
I didn’t have any medical insurance, so I knew I would have to go to Harbor UCLA hospital in Torrance, California. I wasn’t too thrilled about that since it was a county hospital and didn’t have a very good reputation, but I knew from experience that if I went to one of the private hospitals in the area that they would simply refer me to Harbor UCLA anyway, so why waste time!
When Jake showed up at my place, he was shocked at my appearance, it seems I was very pale and sickly looking. While we drove to Harbor UCLA I told Jake about going to the hospital and having the boil lanced and how it had gotten infected. As we got closer to the hospital I began feeling weak, and asked Jake to stop at a store so I could get something to drink. We stopped at a 7-11 and I got a bottle of Gatorade and a Snickers bar. While i hadn’t eaten much in the last few days I knew if I didn’t get something in my stomach that I would feel worse while I waited to be seen in the hospital emergency room.
The worst part of going into a county hospital in Los Angeles County is going through the metal detectors, it reminds me of trying to enter the airport, not a place to get medical treatment, but that is the wonderful Los Angeles County system for you. After jake dropped me off out side of the emergency room entrance, I went and sat down to smoke a cigarette because I knew once I went in side and got past the metal detectors i wouldn’t want to go through the ordeal again to come outside for a cigarette, so I got one in before I checked in for treatment.
To my surprise, as soon as i got in line to check in at the emergency room I must have looked really bad because as soon as the admitting nurse took one look at me, they promptly put me into a wheelchair and took me into the back to be seen by a doctor.
Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of Making Illness Payoff, or simply subscribe to my blog and get email notifications when ever new stories are published!
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