[Warning : This post could VERY EASILY slip into the "FAR TOO MUCH INFORMATION" category. I originally posted it, then hid it again because it felt too, well, intimate. Then I realized, you know, this Vox thing is my secret place precisely for things like this that would be far too much information in any other sphere. So I'm posting it back again. Caveat lector !]
*
There was this time in France, when I had an uncomfortable itch. To be specific, because honestly the story doesn't make any sense if I remain vague - and please forgive the inexcusably and unavoidably intimate nature of this writing - well, to put it bluntly, the itch was of an anal nature. On, you know, the inside. This time lasted roughly 7 years. No, I am not kidding.
I saw doctor after doctor. And all I could think of to say, to one doctor after another, was that it felt like I had a yeast infection, only anal. Inevitably, each doctor gave me The Look (TM) and said something to the effect of "well, it's not that." And prescribed some medication or other that did nothing to treat the problem but got me out of their offices.
Over the years, I have applied steroid creams, Desitin (or its catchier new cousin, you know, "butt paste"), hydrocortisone creams, hemorrhoid creams. Nothing touched the problem. Or, everything touched the problem but nothing fixed it. And to this day I live in fear of having some innocent houseguest open my medicine cabinet and wonder where I've been concealing the infant with the mean case of diaper rash, all these years.
"It feels like a yeast infection," I told the next doctor. And got the usual scoffing rejoinder. "Yeast? That doesn't make sense."
[It was, for the record, worse in France, because in order to describe the feeling of a yeast infection I had to say I had "des champignons." And in case your gynecological French vocabulary is a teensy bit shaky, yes, that means mushrooms. I had to tell the doctors I had butt-mushrooms.]
OK.
I am not a medical professional. All I know is what my own body has lived. And my body has lived through some goddamn yeast infections. Since the age of, I don't know, 3? I know what a yeast infection feels like. But I kept listening to people who were not listening to me, because (a) I did not know what a hemorrhoid felt like and (b) they made me feel stupid and unknowledgeable about my own body.
Flash forward to 2009.
This past winter, I had to go to the gynecologist. I was ill at ease from the start, bothered by this unmentionable problem that had arisen without my consent and been ignored by all my professionals for nearly a decade. The irritation had become so intrusive that it involved blood. I could not sleep through the night, and the hours I spent in front of my classes were excruciating. I lived in fear, at the edge of an ever-present potential gaffe (of the "OMG my prof picked her BUTT in class today !!!" variety). I had reached my limit. My doctor ran some tests while I cringed, and I finally, tearfully, told her "I am so sorry about this, but I think I have a yeast infection."
"I didn't see any yeast," she said.
"No, I mean - anally."
"Oh !" And she got her little eye-piece back out and examined the area and, sure enough, there was yeast.
"How long has this been bothering you?" she asked, eyebrows furrowed.
I was so embarrassed, I mumbled. "Ummmm, Mnnfghshfg shugaghsgneta."
"How long?"
"Seven or eight years," I answered, head turned to the wall.
"Hasn't it been driving you crazy??" she asked, and there was no judgment in her face, nothing but concern. After so long of having to shout just to be heard, and then backing down anyway because one medical "expert" after another made me feel like an ignorant, misinformed hypochondriac with a poor grasp of anatomy, I felt almost like the cartoon guy who scrabbles at the edge of the cliff, arms circling wildly, only to realize the cliff is about a foot off the canyon floor. My doctor - long may she prosper - prescibed a pill to take orally and sent me home. A pill for yeast infections, I want to be sure to specify. I went home and cried. Half in relief.
*
The last seven weeks of my life have been caught up in the attempt to buy a home. And over the past two weeks, I have come to some harsh words with my realtor. We were supposed to close 3 weeks ago. Tonight, I still have no confidence that we will close. The contract could fall through at any moment. See, the house I have chosen needed to be rewired electrically because the old wiring (installed at some point in the 1930s) was a fire hazard. In the course of events, the electrician doing the rewiring had to cut the power completely, contact the city, and file for a permit to get the power turned back on. This has been a subject of some major stress. To say the least.
Granted, nobody ever promised that I would be a homeowner in southern Louisiana, or that I would have the privilege of making monthly payments on a historical house with a porch swing and an arbor, a fig tree and a natural privacy-hedge made entirely of morning glories. The Good Lord never promised me anything like that at all, and I certainly never imagined my crazy life would lead me here. But I work hard, and I try really hard to be a decent human being - albeit with varying degrees of success -; and I like to think the Good Lord would smile on my morning coffee on the porch swing, and that any other relevant Powers That Be would not object too obstreperously to my haphazard and amateurish attempts at gardening and grilling. And call me hard-headed (my realtor has), but I want this the way I want it, and not otherwise. I have already had a fabulous old house that burned down. I don't want that again.
Every day for ten days I have called my realtor and said "I think you need to call the power company. They won't turn the power on without a name to turn it on into, and I don't want my name on this account until we close."
And every day for ten days my realtor has told me, "No, that's not how it works. They will just turn it on in the seller's name - that's procedure."
The following morning I call the power company - "any news on the connection at [address]?" "No Ma'am, we need a name to turn it on into. The seller has to call us to request this." - and then call my realtor back. "They say they need the seller to call and turn the power back on in her name." And my realtor responds, "You must have misunderstood. That's not how it's done."
Today, finally, I called the realtor and told her to call the power company herself and find out this information. Lo and behold, the seller needs to call the power company to turn the account back on ! Amazing ! Who would have thought !
I would have thought. Did think, but second-guessed myself. Now closing has been pushed back another damn week and I don't know who I'm more angry with - the realtor, for dismissing me and making me feel stupid ; or myself, for falling for it?
Maybe I should have told her I had mushrooms in my butt. I have the feeling it might at the very least make her pay more attention.
Les commentaires récents