Not Like Tiny Tim at All

For those of you reading this who haven’t already realized this on your own, I am not an angelic tragic invalid of the nineteenth century literary model.  Firstly, I don’t intend to die dramatically in the near future.  Secondly, I’m stubborn, pushy, and argumentative.  My family and friends assert that I’m brave, but I’m not stoic, and if I feel like I want to curl up in a dark room and make everyone leave me alone because my bones throb, I’m going to say so.  Complaining makes me feel better, really it does, which is why I’m going to tell you all about the two week trip to the doctor’s from which I just returned.

My disease is rare enough that the only doctor who treats it in the States is in California, which necessitates a cross country drive and a two week stay once a year with my mother and my grandmother in tow.  I mostly listened to music while they had bizarrely happy mother daughter chatter, but sometimes I had to intervene.  Midway through the journey, my grandmother opened the window and some smoke blew in.  Smoke is one of my worst allergies, and anything more than a few seconds worth of exposure will send me into a terrifying seizure.  This is much better than before treatment, when it didn’t even take those few seconds to trigger one, and I reacted below where I could even smell smoke, but it still isn’t good.  I begged my grandmother to close the window, but apparently she misheard me, because my mother had to close the windows with the driver side controls.  I love power windows.

Grammy: There’s soap flying in the window?
Mom: Yes, Mom, Dove soap flies really well.
Fish: And Irish Spring has a lovely bounce to it.

By lovely coincidence, the family of a fellow patient lives in the same town as my doctor, and they have a guest house.  They’ve graciously allowed us to stay there for two years now.  Because this patient is fifteen and relatively new to treatment, and because she goes with us every day to the doctor’s, I spent a lot of time with her, and to a lesser extent, her siblings.  We watched the Olympics together, and watched old movies.  While watching Olympic cycling with me and my fellow patient’s ten year old sister, her older brother had an epiphany.

Older Brother: Oh, it’s women’s cycling!
Little Sister: Those don’t look like women; they don’t have any boobs.
Fish: That’s because they’ve been training so hard that they don’t have enough fat left to make boobs.
Older Brother: Which is why girls shouldn’t be too skinny.  It looks wrong.
Fish: You wonderful male person, you.
Little Sister: You mean boobs are just sacks of fat hanging off of a girl’s chest?
Fish: Yep.
Little Sister: I can’t believe boobs are made out of fat.
Fish: Ah, but they’re supposed to be.

I didn’t have much time to write, despite the fact that I sat in a doctor’s office all day long for two weeks.  Testing different antigens made me so sick the whole time that I spent most of the trip staring at my computer screen and the pretty picture that I have for a wall paper.  Sorry about that…  Well, I’m back to writing now, and halfway through the next chapter, so if you’re waiting for it, hang in there.