pity party

Dearest friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances,

I would like to cordially invite all of you to my pity party this evening. I am throwing it in honor of all the stupid, stupid stuff that is wrong with my body right now. Yesterday, I wrote about twisting my ankle. Well, the feeling of glorious independence has quickly worn off. It only took one time trying to get in and out of the bus today to suck all the fun out of it. Everyone just stares at me. At each rest stop on my trip from Munich to Venice, people say things to me in Italian with a facial expression somewhere between patronizing pity and mild annoyance. No one from my bus offered to carry my tray at McDonalds. Finally, after watching me struggle to hold each side of the tray with a finger I had lifted off of my crutch, coke spilling everywhere, a random German woman walked me to my table. (God bless the Germans. They get a bad rep.) Then, no one from my bus offered to help me carry my backpack to my room. They all just walked away and let it sit there on the gravel. I couldn't even get it on my back. I just stared at it, trying to think of how to solve this conundrum, until another random person staying at the hostel offerred to hold it up for me while I put the straps on my back. Not to carry it for me, mind you, but to put it on my back. After I hoisted the thing on, adding 30 pounds to the weight I am already putting on my ankle, I hung my shoulder bag around my neck and began the long trek to my tiny hostel room.

This brings me to the update on my bedbugs. I don't have any new bites, but the 70,632 I already have still itch as much as day one, and I have run out of medicine (despite the Viennese pharmacist's insistance that I would have enough - she obviously couldn't see the disaster that was hiding under my clothes). For added fun, I allowed myself a few spectacualr moments of uninhibited scratching last night before the ankle debaucle. Unfortunately, the place I chose to receive this blissful scratching heaven was on my right ankle. So after scratching open all the bites on my right ankle, I twisted it and had a bandage wrapped around it. Today, all the bites have been oozing pus and nastiness, which has dried onto the bandage. When I removed the bandage to shower this evening, I removed several layers of skin along with it. And I'm not even going to go into the joys of showering in a shower the size of a refrigerator box with a hand-held shower head while standing on one foot.

Glorious independence is overrated.

I hope you've enjoyed attending my pity party. Sorry there was no cake.