I'm no longer used to this quiet. I wandered around my apartment on Friday afternoon, trying to get myself ready to come down the shore, trying to unpack my massive, 75-pound bag that I've been carrying around for the past three weeks, trying to do anything besides stare into the very, very empty space around me and wonder where all the noise, laughter and raunchy jokes went.
I've been sleeping almost nonstop since. Most of us have been, but I have more reason. When I woke on Thursday (curled into a teeny hole in the really bad hotel room eight of us shared for three nights) with a bloodshot eye, I attributed it to scratching my eye while sleeping, or from irritation from some speck of grossness picked up from some of the male detritus spewed haphazardly across the approximately four square feet of carpet left in the space, or perhaps from sleeping in four places in two weeks. When it didn't subside throughout the day, and when the boys continued to make jokes about my diseased face, I figured it was pink eye. We treated it appropriately: completely ignored it. We had all spent too much time together to ruin the last night by quarantining me in the hotel bathroom. That none of them got pink eye is, well, nothing but a stroke of luck.
I figured it would go away, but after an insanely fun Thursday evening (I was originally intended to go home late that night, but was persuaded by two things - eight boys chanting "stay stay stay" and the fact that driving home could have resulted in my death, I was so tired) I drove home with an eye that was demonstrably still a magenta hue. So, when I showed up to work, it went like this:
Editor: "Hi! Welcome back!"
Me: "Hi! The question - do you want me here?"
Editor: "Huh?"
Me: [Points to eye]
Editor: "What? I don't see anything."
Me: (In duh voice) "I have pink eye."
Editor: "Why don't you go to the doctor?"
I went. I came back two hours later with three prescriptions in hand: one for my two ear infections, one for my conjunctivitis (doctor-ese for "pink eye"), one for the upper respiratory infection that I thought was a mild scratchiness of the throat. The doc looked in my ears and went "Mhm. Yeah. Your ears are full of pus."
I'd left for my three-week odyssey with a slight ear infection, or so I thought; I got antibiotics from my regular doc, who thought we should just treat everything just in case. I had about two minutes for an appointment so it was like, "Hi hi hi, yes, your ears suck, here are the drugs, bye." I took enough meds to feel somewhat clear throughout, certainly clear enough to do the podcasts and travel around. Toward the end of Vegas, I said to Cheryl, "My other ear is starting to hurt." It wasn't a good sign, but it certainly wasn't terrible; after some drops it all reduced to a dull ache in both sides of my head.
Yet it appears that it was the same infection, just back in full force. All it had done while I was away was fester. Now it had found a new orifice - my eye - in which to express itself.
This happens, though. My body is like a woman scorned. It plots and schemes, and exacts revenge. It usually does this every time I push it just a little bit too hard. After I spent the last semester of college under an unbelievable workload, I graduated to a responsibility free life, and as such contracted a mystery illness that lasted three weeks and baffled my doctor. All we knew is that I was sick, no one knew how or why or what it actually was. Now, it's happened again; I pushed very hard over the past three weeks, and now my body has saved it all up and is spewing it forward as if it had digested badly.
The worst part, however, is that I've been in three cities meeting all of you, and have shaken a lot of hands and signed a lot of things. Might want to throw some Purell over your autographs, guys. Sorry.
