Allergies are KILLER

Death Wash

"If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats."

-Lemony Snicket

I finally made an appointment to see an allergist next week after almost dying last night. Good god, allergic reactions are no joke. And it's ridiculous what triggered it.

I had scuffed up my knees/elbows Saturday night in Heather/Andrew's pool and wanted to make sure they were nicely washed out yesterday, so I used this antiseptic wash Tom's mom (a retired nurse) had given us. With a known antibiotic allergy (rocephin), I read the back of the bottle to make sure that it's not in there and sure enough, it wasn't so YOLO I decided, very dumb in retrospect. I washed my knees and my hands with the solution, rinsed off, dried & bandaged my knees. I put on pajamas and sit in bed next to Tom where he was playing games on my nook. My stomach itched... I scratched, then I noticed my palms & feet were throbbing itchy, then when I sat up to scratch my feet, a hot flash swept through my body and I stood up saying, "Tom, something is wrong with me. Something is wrong with my body." I couldn't think, everything itched so badly, I was short of breath & all I wanted was to rinse the itch off, so I hopped back in the shower, incoherent. I'm susceptible to anxiety attacks, so I try to mentally calm myself down to assess: is this all in my head or am I physically reacting to something. I realize there's a rock sitting on my chest & I need to go to the hospital. Tom helps me get dressed & we're out the door. I start seeing black spots walking to the car and I'm super flushed, super itchy all over. Tom speeds to the 24 hour Emergency Clinic right by our house (kind of like an urgent care, but billed as an ER) where I tell the woman I believe I'm having a severe allergic reaction. At this point, it's getting difficult to breathe and I'm beet red, covered in hives, so duh, severe allergic reaction. The woman then proceeds to hand me a stack of paperwork to fill out. I mumble, "can't" and push it towards Tom so I can flop down on the couch before I pass out. I'm sitting there, struggling to breathe, dying from itch, in pain, hot, trying hard not to lose consciousness, when she tells me my insurance isn't valid. I said, "You're wrong, I work there still & I pay for it, it's valid." So she takes her sweet time calling the insurance company, going through their automated system and she tells me, "Your birthday is wrong." It's my fucking birthday. I know it's when it is. ARE YOU KIDDING ME. I said, "please, I just need someone to help me," starting to cry because looking up, it hits me that I could actually die. It's so hard to stay awake. My heart is pounding out of my chest, my vision shaking with each thunderous beat. Tom is getting pissed at the woman and finally snaps, "We're going to the hospital if you cannot help her." The woman tries to slow us down by asking us if we wanted her to shred the fucking paper. Bitch, I AM DYING I DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE FUCKING USELESS PAPERWORK.

At this point, tears running down my face, I stumble back out to the car and Tom flies to the real hospital. I walk in, a cop takes one look at me and puts me in a wheelchair. They don't even ask about insurance, they wheel me back and start getting my vitals & info about what the hell is going on. My systolic blood pressure is 85 (which I learned from Roya is very, very bad). We have the bottle of wash with us to show them what I'm reacting to. They start pumping me with steroids & benadryl and can't stop commenting on how red I am. I can't stop shaking, I'm so cold. My muscles hurt from the constant convulsing. I can only imagine how revolting I looked, red of a thousand sunburns, hives, sausage fingers and toes. With the medicine, my blood pressure and pulse returned to normal, and I became my normal pale skinned-self. My doctor & nurse were shocked by my reaction & especially shocked by what caused it: chlorhexidine wash. It's commonly used in hospitals as pre-surgical scrub for both the doctor's hands and the person undergoing surgery. Even the soap dispenser in my room was equipped with the stuff (aka death all around me).

Roya pointed out as terrible as last night was, thank god it happened then & now I can tell them if I ever have to have surgery not to use it on me because I could die. The only other time I had such a severe reaction was to a different antibiotic & I was so sick already, I didn't really notice/remember. This was terrifying, I'm still pretty shaken from it. I'm on steroids, pepcid & benadryl for this week because they don't know how much of the wash my body absorbed.

Anyhow, thanks to my doctor & nurses at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center! Jerry was the best nurse I've ever had and made me feel safe when I was out of my mind. Dr. Chiang was so sweet, charismatic & I deeply appreciate the time she took to sit with me to answer all my concerns. Seriously, best bedside manner of all time.

Thanks to my sweet, sweet boyfriend. Tom kept his head about him the whole time & couldn't have been more perfect in the situation. His calming presence did a world of wonders for me, I just feel bad that I scared him so much!

I won't be YOLOing with antibiotics/antiseptics anymore.

My Struggle

Glare: Activated

"I am an optimist... I choose to be. There is a lot of darkness in our world, there is a lot of pain and you can choose to see that or you can choose to see the joy. If you try to respond positively to the world, you will spend your time better."

-Tom Hiddleston

Ugh. I've found myself complaining more & more & more & more. A disgusting habit. People are annoying, they do stupid things which piss me off. I'm treated unfairly, I face the consequences of my rash behaviors, I whine whine whine. Another complaint: I'm tired of it. I'm swirling in a cloud of negativity of my own harbouring and I want to excise these dark spirits. 

I'm choosing to embrace the positive, focus on the good. Well, I'm going to try. 

I can blah blah blah people do things which hurt me and by whining, I am choosing to be a victim. I don't want to... I want to be a maker of my own mind. 

I would love advice on how to vent my feelings without wallowing, how to release the pent up angers & frustrations without becoming a demeaning person. Ayudame. 

Why We Can't Kill

"I believe ..  that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system." - Neil Gaiman

I've wavered my entire life on my beliefs about the death penalty, but I cannot stand undecided any longer. It is wrong. It is inexcusably wrong.

At first, I believed justice was served by capital punishment such as, why should someone who commits such an atrocious act be allowed to live out the rest of his or her life while their victim(s) did not? Why do they get to play god? How could I, never having experienced such a violent loss, look a mother in the eyes and tell her that her child's murderer should not also die? To try and empathize, I imagined how I would feel if someone murdered a member of my family, would I relish in seeing the perpetrator die?

Nothing good would come from it.

This is why we are the good guys: we do not murder. Our descent into capital punishment has condemned us as surely as we have condemned the accused.

We are the good guys because we are better than that. We are better than rash thinking, impulsive violence, nonsensical rage.

I constantly refer to the Christian religion, the seat of my personal faith and the community which seems to rule this country; you guide yourselves by asking, what would Jesus do?

He did not throw the stone.

Oatmeal Cookies

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"So you have your price. Your soul for a cookie."

-James Patterson, Max

Dear Oatmeal Cookie,

I love you. People mock your healthy oats & squishy raisins, but I cherish your soft, textured consistency. The delight of biting into an explosion of fruity sweet sun of grape. Your subtle spiciness layered under delectable sugariness. 

Oatmeal Cookie: haters gonna hate.

We have each other. From now until eternity.

love

christine

Whites.

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"The irony of American history is the tendency of good white Americans to presume racial innocence. Ignorance of how we are shaped racially is the first sign of privilege.

In other words. It is a privilege to ignore the consequences of race in America."

-Tim Wise

I'm encountering a lot of people who are tired of political correctness as if the very act of not being offensive is exhausting. I mean, how tiresome it is to be mindful of what you're saying. 

Really?

I mean, really?

I think it is complete bullshit we have an NFL team called the Redskins. Call me a bleeding heart, PC liberal all you want. I'd rather be that than an ignorant, offensive racist. It is almost 2014, we need to be better. I try to explain it this way: if the NFL had a team called the Blackies with a black person as the mascot, we'd shut that shit down, because most of us by now know you can't do that. THE SAME THING APPLIES TO NATIVE AMERICANS. God, as if stealing their land, killing them, etc wasn't enough, we appropriate their culture and get offended at their offense. I am so sick of it. The worst part is that it's generally very privileged white people getting so up in arms against being "politically correct." Because god-forbid anyone takes away their comfort found in objectifying minorities. 

The kicker: when white people use the, "well, why can they get away with calling us cracker [insert any other white slur]." Please, tell me, are you truly offended by that? Is anyone? Right, no. Because we're fucking white and there are so so so many advantages to being white. See: arewhitepeopleraciallyoppressed.com/

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Sorry I’m being so negative. I’m a bummer, I don’t know I shouldn’t be I’m a very lucky guy. I got a lot going from me. I’m a healthy, I’m relatively young. I’m white; which thank God for that sh** boy. That is a huge leg up, are you kidding me? I love being white I really do. Seriously, if you’re not white you’re missing out because this sh** is thoroughly good. Let me be clear by the way, I’m not saying that white people are better. I’m saying that being white is clearly better, who could even argue? If it was an option I would reup ever year. Oh yeah I’ll take white again absolutely, I've been enjoying that, I’ll stick with white thank you. Here’s how great it is to be white, I could get in a time machine and go to any time and it would be fuckin’ awesome when I get there. That is exclusively a white privilege. Black people can’t fuck with time machines. A black guy in a time machine is like hey anything before 1980 no thank you, I don’t want to go. But I can go to any time. The year 2, I don’t even know what was happening then but I know when I get there, welcome we have a table right here for you sir. … thank you, it’s lovely here in the year 2. I can go to any time in the past, I don’t want to go to the future and find out what happens to white people because we’re going to pay hard for this shit, you gotta know that … we’re not just gonna fall from number 1 to 2. They’re going to hold us down and fuck us in the ass forever and we totally deserve it but for now wheeeee. If you’re white and you don’t admit that it’s great, you’re an asshole. It is great and I’m a man. How many advantages can one person have? I’m a white man, you can’t even hurt my feelings. What can you really call a white man that really digs deep? Hey cracker … oh ruined my day. Boy shouldn’t have called me a cracker, bringing me back to owning land and people what a drag.

The first thing we can do is recognize our privilege. And then not be such huge, massive dicks about it.

I don't want blogs like this to have to exist: http://thisiswhiteprivilege.tumblr.com/ I don't want to be associated with this awful, terrible side of a people. Which is why I take the time to be politically correct... it really shouldn't even be called that. It should be called, being a decent human being, thinking before speaking, considering those outside of myself. 

Link-heavy writing, I know, but there's a wealth of material on the internet about white privilege. Last one: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

It's frustrating... by writing (venting) this very post, I'm participating in my skin color advantage. As a white person, I can criticize white people more freely than a minority could, because I belong to this large, ruling group. 

Anyhow. I don't know what any of this means except that I want people to be better. I want people to stop being racist assholes in front of me and then being affronted when I voice my opinion as well. I'm through with remaining silent just to placate. I will not be a willing participant in society's expectations of me to be pleasing, quiet, diminutive, calm. If you feel so free to vocalize your ignorance, I will, just as freely, attempt to educate your ass. 

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