It began on the sofa. It continues on the sofa, even now.

My near near death experience.

My almost almost fatal condition.

I just got home from six hours at the hospital. After days of lying on the sofa, sweating, occasionally vomiting, even less occasionally feeling somewhat ok-ish, I decided to go to find out why, it seemed, I was dying.

Going to the hospital was a good thing. I told my shrink about my symptoms, but he didn't think they were all that bad. I told one of the twenty-four-hour hotline nurses provided by my insurance company. Oddly, the nurse, despite agreeing that I was expiring, thought I should see if I could avoid dying until Monday when I could see my doctor rather than make an expensive trip to the emergency room.

The first twenty minutes sucked, though. The waiting room.

The Waiting Room.

Yes... the room... of waiting.

Screaming babies. Really depressing scenes of people who aren't just almost dying, but dying. No vending machine. Bad magazine selection.

And my Stargate book.

I accidentally discovered a whole line of Stargate books. I don't remember how, though. It happened while I was still being treated with anxiety meds that wiped my memories as they were forming. I only know because I have the book and the receipt indicating the book was paid for.

The Stargate Book.

Yes... the book... of Stargate.

I've read sixteen pages, and I don't know what it's about. The writing is so bad that I had to rewrite it in my head as it was entering. It was 90% adjectives and adverbs, which is confusing.

"Major Carter's polished low-heel business-casual matte-finish shoes tapped across the burnished marble government-quality floor reflecting the golden yellow orb in the sky that was blue as the bluest azure polished sapphires on bands of gold like the golden yellow orb in the sky."

It would have been sufficient to say:

"Major Carter walked."

Fortunately, I was already experiencing every possible malady the book could have produced in me. That's why I was at the hospital in the first place. Convenient, then, that I happened to start reading the book there - the one place I could have been treated in the event that I, probably through duress, might have read seventeen pages. Or eighteen. Any further, and we reach the limit of 21st century medicine.

I was very happy when I heard my name called and knew I would have to put away The Stargate Book. I sat and enjoyed the feeling for a moment. The feeling that I knew I was about to get up and leave. Basked in it for a few.

A really hot orderly led me back to my room. It sounds glamorous - having "my" room - but, although the space was packed with tens of thousands of dollars of equipment, it was all designed to do any one or combination of the following:

1. Hurt me.

2. Invade a bodily orifice.

I wasn't almost dying enough for the second. Which is nice. (That's why you don't read to page seventeen of The Stargate Book.)

I looked at something on the bed. The orderly, obviously staring at my hot, sweaty, pale, clammy face, looked at it, too.

"Do I have to?" I asked.

"Yes."

"But..."

"Yes."

"It's just so..."

"Yes."

I pulled off my shirt and put on the gown.

The Gown.

I got to keep my pants on. Although it has nothing at all to do with the hospital, those pants have gotten my buttocks pinched twice by unknown saucy women recently. Getting to keep them on allowed to me to hang on to a little dignity. Or I thought it would. Now I associate those pants with the gown. I tried to leave them behind with the gown, but a gang of nuns in the lobby objected to my nakedness and ordered that I return to my room ("my" room!) at once and cover my shame. The police said the same thing. Due to consensus, I complied.

But none of this matters.

That's right! Everything you've read up until now doesn't matter!

You're an idiot!

What matters is that I'm almost dying.

Gown-donned, I hopped in bed and awaited the phlebotomist. A "phlebotomist" is one who practices phlebotomy. If you slept through Phlebotomotology 101, a phlebotomist is someone who sticks things in your veins. Appropriate or otherwise. Like, you could cram a sofa into someone's arm and still call yourself a phlebotomist. They might call you "asshole" or similar, but that doesn't make you any less of a phlebotomist.

I'd been seeing hot nurses everywhere. I thought I was living in a cliche, but an AWESOME cliche. Based on my observations, I expected to get phlebotomized by a foxy little naughty nurse.

My dreams were exploded to hell when in came Quasimodo. He had a wheel for a leg, a robotic arm, a whole-body limp, and was missing an eye and also the other.

He was a little sloppy, but I couldn't fault him too much. After all, he was a blind cyborg. You'll notice I didn't call him a "phlebotomist." I would have, but he indiscriminately jabbed needles into muscles and organs, and that, if we're going by the book, isn't phlebotomy. That's "illegal."

Two hours later, hospital staff had availed themselves of 75% of my fluids. After the first half-hour, I stopped caring.

"You want some of that? Yeah, sure... go ahead. Let me know if it's squirty. I can shift positions or tighten other muscles if it's squirty."

I assume my liquids were combined in a big pot, heated, and fed to interns. If an intern made a "yucky" face, I was broken.

I was... and is... broken.

As I understand it, I'm having some big allergic reaction to a medication, and that I've probably been having this reaction for quite some time. It wasn't until the past couple weeks that it progressed enough to douse my social-life in gasoline and toss a flaming redwood on it. I haven't seen my friends because there are BAD liquids and chemicals in me.

BAD.

But I'm home, with medicine, and the doctor assured me that I almost likely won't die before noon. He gave me some uber antihistamine that was supposed to help me and knock me out (the latter being useful if The Stargate Book fell out of my bag and opened to a page I accidentally saw).

It isn't knocking me out. My old drug habit was such that my daily allotment probably would have killed several dozen non-users. I'm used to brushing comas out of the way.

I'm also kind of scared. That makes it hard to sleep. Although it'll be much later when I post this, it's nearly 5:00 AM, and I'm wide awake.

Some of the symptoms have stopped, though. The antihistamines must be doing something. I'm hungry, which is new and exciting. I'm not sweating. I'm not changing color like a cuttlefish. No tremors.

In fact, except for the sniffles and a huge rash on my back, I feel pretty almost not dying.

I'm not wearing any pants.

I leave you with that.

[Hey, people - wrote this yesterday morning. Since writing it, I had to go back to the hospital. This... whatever-in-the-hell-it-is thing is still causing problems. My doc should be waking me up this morning with a phone call so we can chat about how to keep me alive. Tah.]