After I moved out we all traveled as a family to L.A. By train, because I don't like airplanes. I have an extreme fear of planes, actually. One time I got so possessed by fear that I looked like Linda Blair in the Exorcist, and I behaved like her too. My hair was soaked from sweat, tears and water, my voice was someone's I didn't know, I have no recollection of a big chunk of time and when a nice flight attendant gave me water, she only got to watch me spit it back at her when we hit a bump... all I was missing was telling her that her mother sucked eggs in hell...
Anyway, on the way to Los Angeles I developed my very first ear infection. It somehow traveled through my ear faster than we were on the train and by the time I got to L.A. I was ready to cut off half of my head. I ended up in some nasty hospital sharing the waiting room on a stretcher with a couple of convicts (shackles and all) and their "escorts".
The pain was so severe, that the first thing they did was give me morphine, which did NOTHING for me. Then the good stuff came through a needle to my butt cheek. No sonner did they stick me that my knees buckled... The painkiller caused me to promptly start making friends with those unfortunate souls surrounding me, the ones who clearly didn't get stuck with the Wonder Needle. I wanted to take care of everyone, even though I couldn't take a step to save my life.
To make a long story short, I ended up in Cedars Sinai because the infectious fluid was now in the bone and there was fear it would spread to my brain (which could, I suppose, be fatal if you had a working brain to begin with). I didn't take any time at all to point out to my husband how badly he would have felt had I died at this moment in our lives.
This whole saga helped me see that things can change at anytime and without notice, by forces much greater than us mere humans can attempt to control...
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