I’m not a big fan of the Christmas season. I’m a bit of a Scrooge, from his pre-haunting days, and I’m typically sick of all things red and green before December even rolls around. I could conceivably get into the spirit if everyone would wait until the week of Christmas before they started celebrating, but that’s just not going to happen.

I do enjoy visiting with family and friends in Kamloops, but that’s really it. Christmas, to me, is a time of pain and suffering and misery. Suffering through crowds of sweaty, overweight people in the shopping malls, cringing in pain whenever a terrible, high-pitched Christmas carol is blared in my direction, and wallowing in misery as everyone around me tries to hold me down and waterboard me with holiday cheer.

I moved to Victoria, British Columbia’s capital city and tourist haven, at the beginning of this year, and my apartment is close to the downtown core, so as an added bonus I get horse-drawn carriages full of tourists singing Christmas carols outside of my window. Unfortunately, the street is just a little too far away to be able to properly pour boiling water on them as they pass.

I don’t mind Christmas wishes, and even Christmas music, within a week of the holiday, but if you bring it up any earlier than that, I will hurt you. I’ve asked for a taser this year, and I will be using it next winter.

When last I visited, I was given Amoxicillin, had a swab taken, and was told to place a heating pad on the area a few times a day and to keep it wrapped in gauze. I had done that, and the wound was feeling much better, but the follow-up was just to be safe.

After sitting in the waiting room for half an hour, I was brought in to see the doctor, one I hadn’t met before. He asked me what the problem was, and I explained what had happened. Either the last doctor hadn’t written anything down in my file, or this man hadn’t read it. After dealing with him, I’m placing my bet on the latter.

I asked if the test results from the swab had come back, and he said he hadn’t seen anything about a test. I’m fairly sure the swab sample is taken to test for which bacteria caused the infection, allowing them to adjust the medication accordingly if needed. This seems like a fairly important safety check, but apparently he didn’t think so.

He asked to see the area, and immediately after I pulled off the gauze bandage he said, “An abscess can often be a sign of diabetes. That’s fine now, you can stop bandaging it. You’re cured, go home and have a shower.” Without another word, he left the office.

There are a number of reasons why I was dumbstruck by this:

1. He dropped the diabetes bomb and then left without any explanation. After researching it a bit and phoning my parents, who are both in the medical field, I’m not too worried about this. While it is apparently true that people with diabetes get abscesses more often, assuming someone could have diabetes from an abscess is a fairly large leap.
2. He just looked at it. He didn’t put gloves on and poke at it or ask me any questions about it, he just looked.
3. He told me to stop wearing a bandage on it and that I was cured, but the wound was still open. I’m not a doctor, but even I could see that it was most certainly not cured. You also don’t have to be a doctor to know that walking around with an open wound is not really a good thing to do, especially when it’s on an area that will rub up against your pants all day.
4. He left the office so abruptly that I couldn’t tell if the appointment was over or not. I didn’t know what he was doing. I spent the next few minutes standing there awkwardly, smelling myself because of the shower comment, before finding him in his administrative office and asking if we were done. On top of that, I had just showered an hour before seeing him, and I smelled mighty fine, thank you very much.

It occurred to me after leaving the clinic that he might have not even looked at the abscess. It seems like he just looked at the gauze bandage for signs of drainage instead. It’s possible that he assumed I hadn’t changed the bandage in the five days since my last appointment and, since the bandage was still in place, hadn’t showered. Upon seeing that there wasn’t much drainage on the bandage, he declared me cured. In reality, I’ve been showering, although awkwardly, and changing the bandage every morning.

Good thing I took time off work. I might have missed the chance to have a doctor completely brush me off. After leaving, I promptly discarded all of his advice, and I seem to be healing nicely.

I have this magical gift that allows me to find the stupidest doctors imaginable. If there’s a fool with an M.D. in the city, you can be sure I’ll track him down.

Kiwi!

[via my still weblog-less friend, Chris]

As a side note, what’s with WordPress’ awful post formatting? I moved to WordPress from Movable Type, and I’m incredibly happy with everything except its post writing forms, which is unfortunately a large part of a content management system. If you’re trying to embed an object or do anything with DIVs, it will just auto-format your post into an unintelligible mess. Here’s a tip for future CMS coders: if you’re going to offer a straight HTML entry form, do not auto-format the HTML I enter. It’s like giving someone the choice of what movie they’d like to watch, only to switch it to Glitter five minutes in. Just let me do what I want, you damn system!

I had to return to Kamloops to attend a close friend’s wedding last weekend (more on that later), and I needed to buy a couple of new all season tires to get me there in one piece. After having the tires installed and balanced, I learned that my entire braking system was trashed. Pads, rotors, capilars, and other stuff I don’t know anything about – everything needed to be replaced. I ended up spending 60% of my car’s worth on repairs.

Today I come home, and I have gutter water draining from a ceiling light fixture onto my new bed.

Some of my friends believe I spent a large part of my youth punching babies in the face, because that’s the only way to explain my horrendous karma. I’d just like to say for the record, and hopefully whatever karma-controlling being or energy that is out there is listening, those babies totally deserved it.

There was a time when I wasn’t bothered by birds. It feels like a lifetime ago, but I’ll even go as far to say I quite liked them. A little piece of nature within the confines of downtown. The closest most city-dwellers will get to spotting something wild. I remember seeing a pigeon on my balcony when I first moved into this apartment. I remember thinking how great it was, nature on my doorstep. What a fool I was.

These birds, these winged demons, have become the bane of my existence. They invade my home. They ruin my car’s gleam. They haunt my fleeting steps as I leave the apartment. I lay in bed at night, rocking back and forth in the fetal position, listening to their taunts until exhaustion takes hold and dreams overcome me. Even in the dreams, I cannot escape them.

It all started with a pigeon.

A single pigeon on the balcony, what harm could it do? Sure, it was a little noisy occasionally, but it wasn’t too bothersome. I left it there and was out of town for two weeks. Stepping onto my balcony after I returned, I knew I had been terribly wrong. It was as if the balcony had been abandoned for years. Six pigeons were now calling it their home. They were also calling it their toilet. The wall and floor were covered in droppings, and the herbs in my planter box had been stepped on and crushed. The noise was overwhelming. My balcony had become a cruising zone for wanton pigeons. They cooed and they cooed, looking for their next casual encounter.

The following morning, I was the victim of a senseless attack. Unbeknownst to me, I had a silent stalker in pursuit as I made my way to the car. Just before reaching the door, a crow dropkicked me in the back of the head. It then flew up to a telephone line and proceeded to laugh at me, each caw cutting into my very being.

Each day the agony continues. I’ve chicken wired the balcony. Does the wire keep them out or keep me in? It no longer matters. As I leave my apartment and walk down the dark street, I see a man pushing pigeons away from his ground-floor balcony with a broom. Our eyes meet, and I nod my head to him. He knows instantly that we suffer from the same pain. This pain, it changes men. We move inconspicuously through the crowds, our torment hidden from the populace, but this change is unmistakable to those who know, those who have faced the birds.

It’s a losing battle we fight, but fight we must.