Sexuality Happens

Last night, I was just typing online and I started getting a migraine. I took my migraine medication as usual, and 30 minutes later, a wave of dizziness, light headedness, nausea, and disorientation washed over me. I could feel my pulse beating through out my body, and couldn’t type any more. I thought I was having a heart attack or something, though it clearly wasn’t. I couldn’t type clear sentences. I went to lie down because I was too out of it to sit. I had trouble dialing phone numbers and accidentally called a tile place when trying to call Risa’s cell phone, and some crazy guy in NJ when trying to call a friend about possibly driving me to the ER. I called J to see what he thought, and he was incredibly sweet, and waited with me on the phone…when I didn’t get better, he suggested I call a few friends to see if I could find someone to take me to the ER if a nap didn’t help.

Everyone was either drunk (celebrating the final paper of their semester…I still have two papers and class to go to) or wasn’t answering their phone, but luckily one person picked up and she’s a worrier, so she came over. The triage nurse must have been worried too (also, the fact that that she is a bit pushy helped), because I avoided the 3 hours wait time in the waiting room and was taken back to a bed right away. When the doctor came to look at me, my eyes were doing some jiggly thing where they couldn’t follow his finger, but just popped around back and forth (I forget the name), and my legs and arms still felt like they were filled with helium. So since I was peeing all the time anyways, he had me pee in a cup to test for a bladder infection (and maybe drugs?) and they started me on an IV in my wrist (of all places – OUCH) to re-fluid me and to give me drugs for my migraine, which was going full strength by now.

Well, apparently, the test came back. I had the early stages of a bladder/kidney infection, and they weren’t able to process my migraine meds, which was why I had suddenly felt like someone had slipped me some GHB in my apple cider. I’ve never had one before, and it didn’t sting or burn or hurt (although my kidneys hurt today), which is why it didn’t occur to me to be concerned about that. So after leaving the hospital at almost 4am with a prescription for antibiotics, I fell into bed. I’m clearly working from home today.

However, what pissed me off is this: they knew about the infection by about 1:15, 1:30 at the latest. I was given drugs via IV at 1:30. I was lying in bed, getting a saline drip for hours…waiting. Waiting to go home.

What was I waiting for? A pregnancy test on my urine. What. The. Fuck. First the doctor tell me this. I tell him I haven’t been sexually active with a man for two years, and that there is no way I’m pregnant. (They all think that my friend with my is my girlfriend because of how pro-active she’s being about my care, and because I’m wearing my rainbow pride bracelet). He laughs and says something about immaculate conception. I tell him I’m Jewish. I ask him if they’d change my care if I was pregnant; I’m just getting antibiotics. He says no. So why the heck are they even bothering to test me? And more over, why can’t they take the god damn IV out of my WRIST, which I cannot bend, while they’re waiting the TWO HOURS for the pregnancy test (which I think takes like 15 minutes if you do it at home)?

Then the nurse comes in. “We’re just waiting on your pregnancy test so we can release you.” As if they’re not going to release me back into the wilds of Philadelphia if I, the hysterical woman with malfunctioning kidneys and bladder, cannot be re-released if pregnant.

“Um, there hasn’t been a sperm near this vagina in over 2 years. In fact, if you count condoms, ever!” She freezes, paper work in hand, unsure what to say to this directness.

“Well, I guess you’d know better than we would!” heeheheh.

Yes, yes, I would. I have to pee. Again. Why? My bladder is infected. However, it hurts to get up and move this whole contraption with me, and I’d rather you just take the needle out of my wrist so I can pee in peace. But apparently I have to wait for you to test and see if this femmey dyke with the rainbow wrist band, sitting here with my FRIEND who you keep calling my girlfriend (she is NOT my girlfriend, kthanksbye) is pregnant, which should not take two hours. I cannot imagine how offensive this would be if that WAS my girlfriend, and you kept going on and on about how I might be pregnant. What part of this do you not get?

I’m telling you I’m not sexually active with men, I’m doped up and want to go home, I’m wearing rainbows, I’m letting you think she’s my girlfriend, my care will not change if I am preggers,I AM ON MY MOTHERFUCKING PERIOD AND AM CURRENTLY BLEEDING FROM MY CERVIX INTO MY VAGINAL CANAL AND HAVE TOLD YOU THIS, and I still have to wait TWO HOURS to get a needle removed from my WRIST in order to pee and go home because I MIGHT be pregnant.

We pathologize women and pregnancy in this culture to no end. Any woman walking around is a possible receptacle for a baby. If she has no working uterus and ovaries, she is infertile and something is wrong with her. Pregnancy is our number one issue, before health, safety and comfort. Save the baby, not the woman.

God damn it, I’m a person, not a uterus. And I’m not fucking pregnant.

And my kidneys hurt. I want hugs and love, please.