Voices In My Head [Blog]

My nerves are shot. My therapist tells me that I have enormous anxiety (ya think?) and to take more Xanax, that that is what it is there for. I so do. Clearly, with each passing day I become less and less employable. Oh sure I can go spend the day in Manhattan walking around for six hours shooting. I do think my photography is getting better but I can't help but think that in the not too far off future I'll be sitting in some Social Security office somewhere filling out a form having to do with my ability to 'handle' a full time job.

It started with a weird cold that I caught within minutes of landing in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport this past June. While Martha went to rent a car, I walked over to baggage claim to grab our bag. It's always a surprise when it actually comes down the chute isn't it?

Anyway, the minute I turned around to the carousel, a rush of air blew over me and within minutes, I had a sore throat. It was weird and got really weirder. The whole visit I had a wicked sore throat and on the last day it turned into a cough. Thankfully, the flight home wasn't a cough fest but from the first night home and for a solid week after I slept on the couch every night coughing my fucking head off. And I mean COUGHING. I would cough all the air out of my lungs and then gasp for air. It was frightening.

So frightening that after Martha tried for days to get me an appointment with a doctor but no one would see me for four-five weeks, I walked over to the emergency room where they took an X-Ray of my lungs, gave me a scripts for antibiotics and cough syrup with some yummy Vicodin in it. The X-ray looked good so they diagnosed me with Acute Bronchitis and sent me home with instructions to follow up with my doctor five weeks from then.

I took the antibiotics and nurtured the cough medicine and for about a week, I felt better. But the minute the drugs stopped I started coughing again. Some days it felt like I just couldn't breath. I started to get worried and well, a little weirder so the head doctor decided to up my meds. Nice.

A week or so later is when I dropped Victor's Horizon 202 camera.

After $158 to fix the camera I go to my 'follow up' doctors' appointment where my new doctor reviews the X-ray and then asks me if anyone told me what they found in my lung?

WHAT?

Seems there was something 'funny' on the X-Ray; a grayish area in the lower right lobe. She wants to have another technician review the X-Ray and then decide if we should do a CT Scan. She'll call me.

Right.

So I TRY to go about my normal existence by obsessively chewing gum and working out and then jumping out of my skin every time the phone rings. Finally, after two days my cell rings while I'm out shooting in Manhattan. They want to do a CT scan. I call Martha and in what can only be described as extremely pathetic, I start crying while walking along the edge of the East River under the Brooklyn Bridge. (Yet I still continued to shoot photos, very odd) I am convinced that I have lung cancer and that I was going to be dead by Christmas, or at least by the end of September. I think I'm turning into Woody Allen.

The CT Scan was set for that Friday with my follow up visit two-weeks from then. On the day I walked over to the hospital for the scan there was a monster storm coming over the Catskills. Thunder, lightening the whole works. I walked over a little early so as not to have the heavens literally open up on me. They took me early, walking me back to the waiting area of the machine. Just as I am walking by the open door of the room, a flash of pure white light bursts out of the door. It was as though an enormous flash bulb went off to my left just as I was walking by. The timing was perfect and I bet my skeletal image is UV Ray burned into the wall that was on my right. Kind of like an early man cave painting.

Obviously, the hospital, which is on top of a hill, was hit by lightening. The CT machine was fried and they had to take me over to the other machine in the ER.

After the scan I'm told that if they find anything they'll call me, otherwise I'll see my doctor in two-weeks. What is with the wait for a phone call thing? Jesus Christ. After a few days I have both Jasmine and Martha up my ass to call the doctor but I just can't. I do not want to know. La, la la la la la la... I retreat, withdrawal and go into my own little happy place. Besides Jasmine was easily distracted because she was in the process of moving back to Pittsburgh having finished up school. She found a nice one-bedroom apartment in a good area of town and she's even going to have a cat.

On a beautiful Saturday morning and four days before I'm to go back for my follow up doc visit, I innocently check the mail. In the mail was a letter from Jasmine's college. I open it thinking it was a letter congratulating her or maybe even her diploma, but no, it is a letter informing us that she isn't graduating. She is one credit shy of a degree and they have put her on academic probation but she is invited back for the fall semester to finish up her course work. The one credit that she needs is an incomplete. They also sent along a copy of her miserable transcripts unlocking the 5-year mystery on just what the hell was going on in college.

This event was truly unfortunate for all of us.

After the crying, yelling and a few nasty phone calls, Jasmine swears that once she gets a hold of her professor that the incomplete will be changed to a passing grade, I walked out of the house stormed across the street and called the neighbor a jackass.

Monday Martha got an alert from Jasmine's checking account that she was $100 overdrawn. Upon further inspection, it was discovered that Jasmine had managed to motor through $1600 in four days. All of which is more or less explainable except for the $263 at Ikea.

Tuesday Martha got another alert from Jasmine's checking account indicating that there is now $270 worth of overdraft charges.

Thursday at 8:30 in the morning and with 1 ½ Xanax in me I stood in the doctors' small exam room pacing like a caged tiger. Finally, she comes in and immediately tells me that everything is fine.

The 'funny' thing on my CT scan shows a calcified granuloma that is usually benign and generally caused from either a prior early childhood incident with the lungs like pneumonia, or histoplasmosis. Histoplasmosis is commonly caused by a fungal infection and is endemic to the Ohio River Valley. Interesting. I'm thinking it's the combination of sitting in the Ohio River Valley woods sniffing glue at the early age of twelve. That would cover both. Oh hush, it was only for one summer and the damn shit gave me a horrible headache. What can I say, it was Ohio and I no longer live there for many, many reasons. Think Gummo. Seriously.

So right. We go to Pittsburgh this Thursday to visit with Jasmine where we will dance and sing songs. Should be a good time.

It's not the individual events so much as it is the stress of the all events happening at one time or for an extended run of time. I dropped a friend's camera but it was fixed and he's still talking to me. As far as I know, I don't have lung cancer but for over two weeks I convinced myself that I did. I just have chunks of things in my lungs. So far, Jasmine is a mess but she will figure it out, she has to.