Better Living Through Chemistry

My bathroom is now littered with plastic sticks soaked in urine. I expect a comfort with bodily fluids is good preparation, should this project ever come to fruition, though frankly it's not my favorite part of the process. The plastic sticks are supposed to tell me important information, using a complex visual code of bright lines, faded lines, absent lines, crossing lines, pink lines, blue lines, and in one instance, a flashy smiley face. Though I'm pretty sure my urine was corrosive enough that it fried off the flashy smiley face after a few hours abandoned on the side of the sink.

I've made one sally to an acupuncturist. My smile began as genuine, and then it too was fried off as the acupuncturist - "witch doctor" in my husband's idiom - explained to me about temperature-taking and charts and herbs and cupping and went on and on and on and frankly, it just sounded like a lot of work.

I smiled and nodded, all the while thinking "You know what? I don't feel like doing any of that."

 By the time I wound up stretched on my back, socks off, fists riddled with stick pins, clutching a remote doorbell button to summon the doctor in the case of panic, I realized a mistake had been made. Is taking your temperature really so much work, compared to the amount of work that goes into caring for a totally dependent small animal? I mean, no. But that doesn't mean I'm willing to do it. As I reflected on the limits of my own willingness to use a portion of my limited time on earth charting my temperature obsessively and swallowing herbs I don't understand, tears started squeezing out of the corners of my eyes, and painful electric heat began zapping around under my skin, through my muscles. The doctor reappeared, remarked that I looked emotional, and pushed the needles in deeper.

It really hurt. I made it another five minutes before I rang the doorbell and insisted on being allowed to leave.

The doctor panicked. But why, she wanted to know?

"I'm sorry," I said, wiping tears and snot away with the back of my sleeve. "But I am in pain. And I don't think this is for me."

She fluttered around me, apologizing, feeling guilty, saying I should keep coming, that she would keep my file so that I could come back any time. I said "That's won't be necessary," and flexed my hand to bring feeling back into my thumbs before signing the credit card slip. No cupping. No herbs. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not for me.

So, it's back to the plastic sticks. I catch myself wondering if the housecleaner has noticed the surfeit of plastic sticks in the garbage can. They rattle when you kick it.