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I broke my leg as a six-month old infant when i fell down the stairs in a townhouse. per the cliche, i was also dropped right on my head once as a baby. One time I was kicked in the head by a man much larger than myself who was wearing steel-toed workboots when I was twenty.
But on to the past maladies.
When I was seven I had a near-death experience & nearly drowned to death. I didn't speak & barely ate or drank for about 2 weeks after it. I wouldn't go to school & read in my room & this is when I began to draw things constantly which I continued to do for years afterwards. After wasting away until I looked like dehydrated malnourished skeleton, I was taken to the hospital & diagnosed with meningitis & told that I was terminal. I forget how it came about, but a short while after that it was explained to me that I had asthma & I took the skin tests & came up allergic to just about everything. For many years, i was given a regimen of allergy treatment shots twice weekly. I took a plethora of medications & up to 6 or 7 different types of pills a day at some points in the illness. I was taken to the emergency room with asthma attacks too many times to remember & was told after one attack that it was a chronic attack which meant that there was a 25% chance of me dying without the doctors being able to do anything about it. Typically, when I went to the emergency room they would take blood, hook an I.V. into my arm, make me deep breathe & force me to drink like a gallon of water & administer one to several epinephrine (adrenaline) shots to get me breathing again. Many times I was allowed to go home after that, but on at least on 10 ocassions (if not more) I was hospitalized afterwards for 2 weeks to a month with an I.V. in my arm. One time we were on vacation visiting relatives & I had had a serious attack & was taken to the hospital; when I was left alone, I ripped the I.V. out of my arm & proceeded to amble around the military base aimlessly until some M.P.s brought me back to the hospital room.
And then one day around age 16 I just told my mother that I wasn't going anymore for allergy shots. I stopped taking all the pills. I was told that I was "possessed" because I made such a loud, violent scene every time I was told I had to go to the hospital. Thank God I was one of the ones that "grew out" of asthma. It's terrifying not being able to breathe. I kept my inhalers & kept using them less & less until I was about age 20. I have now been a two pack a day smoker for over 15 years & have had no asthma attacks in all that time. I never get allergic reactions or hayfever, not even if the wind is blowing pollen right in my face. I haven't been sick in almost three years & the last time was only because the people I was living with at that time were sick. That was, in fact, the only time I've gotten a flu even since I started posting at the fan forum back on '02. I eat reasonably healthy & fairly well, but nothing too overboard for too long a time & I drink a good deal of water every day. < I know, too much is bad for the kidneys. > Back in the emergency room during those days when I was ill, drinking water was like trying to drink gasoline. Nowadays, I love water. The biggest health problem I've had was that one day after a typical binge of what have you, I woke up & a spot on one of my feet was cold & numb. I had just met a man the day before that lived on my street & hung out on his porch a lot that had just had one of his lower legs amputated due to blood vessel blockage, so I believe my injury was a sympathetic psychosomatic ailment. The numb spot grew over a few days until one of my whole feet went numb & it was difficult to walk or get around. I called the hospital & made an appointment with a neurologist. The next day the spot was shrinking again & it went away on the night before the day of the appointment. When I go to get a check-up once every year & a half or so, the nurses & the doctor always are dumbfounded that all my vitals & weight & everything is normal given the vices that I have. They still tell me that I have to quit smoking though, of course.
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