The Terror Which Is Thyroid Storm

All I could think about, as I lay there possibly slipping into a coma, was my ex husband's reaction-

"Juan is going to feel so bad when I go into this coma. What if I am having a stroke? I should find a pen and paper so I can write a note for people to post on Facebook about how his shitty attitude jacked my stress so high that I had a heart attack. Maybe I will just have them print out all of his dick emails to me and use them at the funeral for programs."

But I couldn't get up.

It was like my brain was in a cloud. I had to type really slowly-like making more spelling mistakes and forgetting where the keys were.
It was hard to breathe and my chest hurt. Waves of heat went through my body but my hands were icy cold.
(Stop your occasional social smoking.
Why don't you shut up)

I was lucid enough to send emails, then I felt like I was going to pass out so I laid down. The room was blurry. It sucked.

( No-I wasn't drunk, even though May is not quite over)

I thought about calling the Picky Bastard and making him bring me something since he only lives two minutes away from me. People always offer to bring you something when you're sick. They never mean it. It's just something you say.

"Can I bring you something?" they always say.
"Yes. Can you bring me a whole rotisserie chicken and some tampons?'
"Well, I have to get back to work actually..."
No one really means that. No one actually wants to go hang out with someone who is sick. It's a drag.

I decided not to call Picky Bastard. Because I knew the first words out of his mouth would be-
"This is what happens when you drink Dr. Pepper! I told you!"

So I called my Mom who had also been doing her own version of my Online Freakout Research. My symptoms matched this thing called an "Apathetic Thyroid Storm."How cool does that sound? So cool, like a comic book character.
I could see a Dust Bowl family in the middle of Kansas looking up in the sky as a massive black cloud came rolling in.

"Look ma!" yelled one of ten or twelve little barefoot hayseed children."There's a Thyroid Storm a comin!"

And the hatchet faced, tired looking mother wipes her hands on her apron and says "Jimmy Jon get your brothers and sisters into the root cellar. I'm gonna go git yer Pa out of the chicken coop."
Because all the people who live in Kansas or trailer parks know that if you don't get into the storm cellar you'll get taken up into the Twister with the Wicked Witch who rides by on her bicycle laughing at you and deposited in Munchkinland where everything is in color. Which is fine-because they get sick of living in black and white-but the County Fair is next week and it would be a Damn shame to miss out on the pie eating contest.

"Are you high?" my Mom asked.

"What is this? Junior high school? No, I'm not high. You're going to feel really bad about asking me that when I slip into a coma."

Then she sent me an article from Web.MD that I'd missed in my own Paranoid Internet Research that described a whole bunch of symptoms that I totally had. There was an ominous warning in big letters at the bottom.

"Friends or family members of anyone experiencing these symptoms should call the individual and ask them if they are high on drugs. Then if they say No make them go to an emergency department immediately even if they hate the ER and are healthy enough to sit at the computer and obsessively write on their blog. It could be a THYROID STORM."

"I'm not going to the E.R." I told her."I'm going to lie down and slowly try to text people before I die so that everyone at the funeral can talk about how I knew it was coming because I was psychic. Even if each text takes ten minutes because I can't see the keys."

"I don't understand you sometimes." she said."You're going to the doctor tomorrow. If you absolutely won't let me come over there I'll leave my phone on tonight. Call me if you go into a coma."

"Thanks Mom."



I hate the E.R.

Hate. It.

I would ride out the Thyroid Storm. It made me think of George Clooney who toughed it out on that fishing boat in the "Perfect Storm"
He didn't go to the ER, he just steered his boat right through the storms yelling at Marky-Mark to tie up ropes on the starboard bow or whatever
and look-they made a movie about that.
I hoped that Zoey Deschanel would play me in "Thyroid Storm"


There are two different kinds of these episodes-the regular, boring kind of Thyroid Storm with a super high fever that lots of people get and another, more rare one called Apathetic Thyroid Storm that doesn't have the fever.
I was happy that my symptoms matched the Apathetic one. It seemed to have more cachet-the storm that Andy Warhol's disaffected entourage might have. Or the Beat Poets.
Anyone can have a regular Thyroid Storm. But I went to art school. It made sense that I would get the Apathetic one.

"Yeah, whatever man," I could see myself in a black turleneck drinking rye and soda with a bunch of Nihilists, sweating through my chest pains and dizzy but sexy anyway-like Zoey Deschanel -because my liquid eyeliner was still artfully applied.





I really hate the emergency room. It's cold and you have to wait for four hours for them to run a million stupid tests and then finally come back and say "We can't find anything wrong with you Nutbag. Maybe you should go home and take a Tylenol PM."

"Okay-I'm not having a "Thyroid Storm" Then you feel stupid. Especially if you make someone go with you.

One time I was having one of those seizures I had last year and no one was around to take me to the hospital so I called all of my Match.com dates until my favorite one picked up.

"Hey, I am blind all of sudden. Can you take me to the ER?"

He came right over and took me. He even waited for me to get seen by the doctor before he split. We'd only been hanging out a week or so. His heroic rescue made me think I was in love with him for about three hours until the Hydrocodone wore off.

So that ER trip was fun. Because I turned it into a "date"


"I Cut off my left arm" you tell them at the front desk.
"Don't worry." yawns the nurse " I'll get an orderly to clean up all that blood. Just go have a seat in the waiting area until your name is called and fill out that form. You missed line 4- your entire family history."


Then you have to sit there for eight hours watching them wheel in old ladies that got here WAY after you did just because they have "chest pains". It sucks.

"I'm not going to the ER to check whether I have some crazy coma death-storm because it's boring and I never get the cute doctor. I will just write about it."

"That sounds like the DTs," said Trixie when I painstakingly texted-I'M DYING!
"Maybe its because your little Drinking Month is over. Sleep it off."

"But I looked it up! On Web MD! I could go into a coma tonight!" Its kind of hard to convey panic in a text. Just use a lot of exclamation points I guess. Which is hard to do when your hands are shaking and you can't keep it still enough to punch the right keys. Why are the keys so God Damn small? If I'm going to be having thyroid Storms with any frequency I am going to get an Iphone.

But I could feel Trixie sighing in her message.
"Get off the fucking internet and go. to. bed."

Your mother could turn stones into doves and levitate

I suddenly feel really weird this afternoon. Like weak and and my chest hurts, hot then cold-just WEIRD- but the worst symptom is that my back-where the kidneys are-hurts like crazy.

So-besides drinking about forty gallons of water I looked it up on Web.MD.
I should put one of those controls parents use to disable sexy websites to block my computer from accessing Web.MD.Because it is telling me that-

I am either having a mild heart attack-
Dizziness
trouble breathing
shooting pain in the arm(that only started about 30 seconds after I read it though)
and a weak heart pumps less blood to the kidneys

or I have -

Kidney Failure

Just like I told those bitches last week at Family Dinner and then they laughed at me.
Now one of you jerks is going to be a blood type match and have to donate me a kidney.
I will trade it for a dress.
And you can't say No. because I will post it on Facebook if you do and then everyone will know you did that.

I have all the symptoms of that-
kidney pain
hot and cold
Feeling confused, anxious and restless, or sleepy. ( This might explain EVERYTHING)


I just want to tell everyone what my advanced directives are. And what my ideal funeral will be like.
It's hard for a grieving family to make these kinds of choices.
You're welcome.

If I'm only dying in the ICU or critically ill then Daisy is going to go into my Facebook and post a list of items that people should send to me so I can feel better and make a dramatic comeback.
No, don't send flowers. Everyone does that. Flowers will not help me come out of that coma like a pickled appendix in a jar will.
Stop being so selfish and lazy.

I'M DYING. Step it up.

Send me-
1. Taxidermied big game animals
2. Human teeth(I don't care how you get them. just do it- I'M DYING)
3.Preserved medical stuff in jars like eyes and intestines
4.Fake love letters. Long ones about how you'll never get over me. With poetry. From women or men. I'm not picky.

Every ex-boyfriend I have ever had since high school has to come into the room, get down on one knee and propose. They will be easy to find. Just check the local bars or the AA meetings.
Then they have to stay in the room, assembled in a circle around my bed so I can finally figure out who is the most attractive one-because it's hard to remember accurately and compare/contrast until they are all together. The winner will be chosen to change the channel on the Tv while we watch "Law and Order". The losers will be sent home, weeping, with a subscription to Match.com.

If I do end up dying suddenly-

Make sure my Mom doesn't throw away all of my cool stuff. She is already trying to do that. Every time she comes over I find something I like in the trash.
"How did this get thrown away Mom?" I will say.
She shrugs.
"I don't know. It must have fallen. But look how pretty that plant looks where that ugly thing used to be.
Make her keep it all for Ruby. She will say she doesn't have room in the garage. That is bullshit.
EVERYTHING gets saved. Even the piles of unopened mail and melted snickers bars under the bed.

At my funeral I want-

fire eaters

a marching band that only plays "Boom Boom Pow" over and over again.

a Celine Dion cake from Wal-Mart
a dozen ferrets dressed up like ballerinas should be allowed to run free in the church underneath the pews.

Please hire either Ice Cube or Luachris-whoever is cheaper of course-to officiate the eulogy entirely in Gangsta Rap.

Jeffs new girlfriend can have my Grandmother's sapphire ring if she will throw herself on my coffin weeping and screaming "NO! She was too young to go!" she gets the matching bracelet if she faints or has to be dragged away and medicated.

Sugar Weasel the clown will read from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gabron.

My dad can pass out like gift bags full of Vicodin, commemorative coffee cups with my face on them and mini Dr. Peppers.

My body should either be
1.cremated, the ashes put in a Folger's coffee can and buried somewhere in my ex husbands backyard without telling him where.
2. Preserved like a mummy and sold to a traveling circus sideshow.
3. Immolated on an Indian funeral pyre next to the Ganges. Everyone has to fly there at their own expense so they can all gather around me and sing the "I'm on a Boat" song. Don't let any of my creepy Match.com stalkers jump on the fire like an Indian bride because then we would be stuck together in heaven and it would be an eternity sitting in the clouds with a harp and a phone made out of cloud like in cartoons sighing and thinking- "God Damn it will you STOP calling me?"

I'm just kidding. We all know I'm going to Hell.

Last Wishes For Ruby When She Grows Up and Says "Tell me about my mother"


Burn all of my journals from high school. They make me look like an asshole.

Everyone I know should write her a letter about me. She can open it when she's eighteen. Be creative-here are some examples.

1. Your mother single handedly saved all of the people aboard a Carnival Cruise ship that got lost and ended up too close to Sudan by using a combination of karate and charm to out wit the sea pirates that had hijacked the ship right before everyone was about to be pushed off the boat into shark infested waters.

2. Prince Harry proposed to your mother first but she turned him down because he wasn't funny enough. Plus he kissed weird-that thing where they put their entire mouth around yours like they are eating your face and dart their tongue in and out like a lizard on a hot day and then you pull away and say "Prince Harry. I have a ring of saliva on the second half of my face." So that was a NO. Get on match.com Prince Harry. I know you love to travel.

3. Your mother won the Guinness Book of Records award for both speed -texting and sending/receiving the most texts of any person in North America over thirteen for two years in a row. After that she became a Champion Speed Eater-specializing in wet hot dogs. Although very popular with the crowds she never surpassed the record of that Japanese kid so she retired at age thirty to have you.

Or whatever. I'm not trying to micromanage you.