I Don't Think I'll Die Today At Least. Hopefully.

Image taken here.

I don’t go to the doctor.  At least, not voluntarily.  In fact, the only time you can make me go to a physician is when I’m in enough pain that I start dreaming about death.  And even then I’ll probably need to be unconscious so you can carry my limp carcass to his clinic.   

Taking into consideration the fact that I live in a cramped, smoggy and dirty city probably teeming with a gajillion viruses (in spite of which I still love), this probably means that I’m now a carrier of a number of undiagnosed diseases.  Undiagnosed diseases that would most likely commingle and produce new baby mutant viruses that will spread throughout humankind and turn us all into brain-eating zombies. And still, I won’t go to the doctor unless I’m in enough pain I might as well be actively mauled by a jungle cat.

Consider this scenario. This week I had a bout of gout. Or at least I think it’s gout since I only self-diagnosed (Google is wonderful for latrophobics). My foot swelled to almost twice its size, and I had to go to the office wearing dark socks and slippers half a size smaller than my foot. I’m not really sure what I ate which triggered the disease, but it was torture.

Gout is the essence of pain, distilled agony. It’s like God hates feet and decided to make people pay for having them.  For those who don’t have gout, this is how it feels like:  Imagine you are kneeling on a pile of salt.  Except the salt is in your feet, in the joints, and in whatever awkward cranny malicious evil salt can sneak its way into. Then imagine those sharp edges grinding inside those tender nooks, daring you to cry like a big baby.

You know what, forget salt, imagine needles instead.  A bajillion needles poking inside your foot every time you lay it on the ground. That’s what gout feels like.

J thought I should go to the doctor.  Since I didn’t want to argue, I told him it didn’t hurt that much and smiled. Or at least tried to smile, the pain was killing me.

And still, I refused to go to the doctor and just decided to wait it out. The pain subsided eventually.

I also don’t go to the dentist.  The last time I went to the dentist was years ago. As a consequence, I have horrible teeth. Or at least one horrible tooth.  It started to crack a couple of years ago and slowly disintegrated until it became a tenth of its original size. Sometimes I stare at it in the mirror and poke it with a finger. There’s a slight twinge of pain there, though it’s nothing serious.

Until I had an apple a couple of days ago, and what small amount of tooth left broke and splintered, and  a sharp cruel tooth sliver decided to painfully position itself in my gums. I tried removing it with a barbecue stick, and it didn’t help. I stopped subsequently because my gums started to bleed and I didn’t want to die because I was stabbing my mouth with what was practically a giant toothpick. Also, I’m afraid of blood.

I still poke it with a finger every now and then.  I know, gross.  But really, if you had a tooth splinter stuck in your gums, you know you would do that too.

I tried googling ways to remove tooth splinters from gums, and the results led me to a site about mouth cancer.  With pictures.  Seeing mouth cancer pictures did not help assuage my fear that the tooth splinter would worm its way through my mouth, eventually leading to my death by killing me from the inside.  It certainly didn’t help that one man looked like his jaw was about to fall off. 

So I set an appointment with a dentist this weekend. I’ll probably need to explain to her that the last time I went to the dentist was years ago, just so she’d know what to expect. That way, if she starts talking about how horribly I treat my teeth, I can say that I did warn her.

Anyway, here are the lessons you should learn from my story: 

1. Gout is painful. 

2. If you leave a cracked tooth untreated long enough, it will splinter and a piece of your own tooth would attack your gums in cruel revenge.  

3. Mouth cancer pictures are gross.  They are also very great tools at reminding people they don’t want to die with their jaws falling off.