almost too healthy.

"We're so excited you're here today," my nurse said, while she strapped that horrible thing to your arm that tests how tightly they can squeeze you before your arm falls off, and also checks your blood pressure.

"Doctor Anderson told me you were coming in, and I asked what we were doing and he said we'd need some bloodwork and I said 'Oh no. This is going to be a disaster.'"

Can we take a minute, or thirty minutes because that's how long it takes to check blood pressure, to talk about how much I hate the word bloodwork? You're a nurse, not a construction crew. What are we working on? All you're doing is taking blood out of my body. Is showering dirtwork? Is nausea barfwork? Is a traffic accident safetywork? This metaphor has gone too far but you get the idea.

"This is going to be a complete disaster." she repeated. "I told everyone in the office and we've all been talking about it all day."

The fact that a nurse I only vaguely remembered was so familiar with my phobias was only mildly unsettling and it didn't make me feel any sicker than I already felt (which was definitely barfwork level). We walked around a corner and saw two more nurses who I promise I had never seen in my life.

"Brooke!" said one complete stranger.

"Our favorite fainter!" said another complete stranger.

They held up three different kinds of juice. For some reason I chose the one that stained the easiest.

Aside from their (friendly?) threats to punch me in the face if I moved and "laugh immediately and literally talk about it for months" if I passed out again, the nurses at my doctor's office are ok. I got bloodwork done and it was not the worst thing. And they gave me the dinosaur tape and they gave me a new piece when I accidentally ripped it off in a moment of panic.

And they were really nice when I spilled red juice all over the carpet.

I don't know why they have carpet in a hospital. If I start coming any more often I'm sure they'll be switching to linoleum soon.



Anyway the good news is I'm the healthiest!

This seems legit but you have Oreos in your teeth.

The other day while I was wasting time getting my hair done I had these six ideas for how to waste less time.

Manicure fortune
You're already sitting there having a stranger touch your hands for half an hour, why not have them read your palms? As a bonus if you find out something horrible is going to happen at least your cuticles will look great.

Personal trainer doctor
In this one a doctor chases you for hours until he or she eventually catches you, annoys you, and charges you money. Unless the doctor can't catch you which means you're healthy.

ID and smile check
You're on your way into a party or bar or something and you want to look your best and this guy needs to look at your face anyway, now also he'll check if you have spinach in your teeth. It would take an additional zero seconds.

Treadmill Line
Why just stand in line for Iron Man 17 when you could be walking for hours? This would also help weed out people who weren't really serious about waiting.

Tanning concert
For shy rock musicians who don't want to perform in front of crowds of screaming fans, but instead want to perform for a room full of fans lying quietly in tanning beds. This is obviously also great for the fans, because they get tans.

Celebrity Dentist
No one likes the dentist + everyone likes celebrities = people are alright with celebrity dentists? The downside to this one is I imagine it would be incredibly expensive.

no cavities is a triple-word score

She was definitely only listening to me to be polite. "Have you seen The Cove?" I asked.

She hadn't. It would have been a great time to stop talking but I didn't.

"I watched it last night. In the cove where they slaughter the dolphins, there's so much blood that the water looks like paint - just red paint with boats full of dolphins in it. That's what it looked like when I brushed this morning. I just wanted to give you a heads up."

My dental hygienist's name starts with H and ends with a bad hand in Scrabble. She was so, so, so sorry that it was 7:30 in the morning but I didn't mind at all. The way I see it I have to be somewhere at 7:30 every day and really the dentist is at least in the top ten.

tep ten places to be at 7:30
1. running
2. at the coast and there are one hundred killer whales
3. just waking up from staying overnight at a planetarium
4. road trip with my dog
5. getting a haircut
6. at work being super productive
7. swimming pool of money
8. the dentist
9. the airport
10. in bed having nightmares about dolphins

Especially my dentist, where there are enough luxury options to make it almost seem like the worst spa ever. Heated neck pillow? Massage chair? Sunglasses? Bitter mouthwash that makes your gums numb for thirty minutes? Sure, I'll take all of it.

Hsqqmkji likes toothbrushes made of organic materials, and she likes anyone from Minnesota, and she loved that I forgot to take my glasses off before the 3D x-ray so I looked like some sort of happy robotic skeleton nerd. "Everyone is going to get such a kick out of this." said Hmjjqtfm. She let me made me take all the floss I wanted.

Now my teeth look great and my neck feels really really cold.

Why I have a scar on my ankle

When I went in to get my spider bite looked at the doctor was a retired military doctor who was not going to take any funny business from girls with spider bites and at one point she even said “You’ve got yourself some ‘splainin’ to do.” I have wanted my whole life for someone to say that to me.

She loaded me up with medicine (“If I got to make the rules you’d be getting a lot more than this but they get after you for stupid little things like that.”) and she drew a crooked circle around the spider bite with a sharpie and she told me “DON’T let it get outside this line” so seriously that all I could say back was “Yes ma’am.” I have wanted my whole life to say that to someone.

10 million things in Portland: blood edition

I like Portland. Some people have never been. Visit Portland! Here are four of the ten million reasons you should. These four reasons are servings of vitamin-rich nutrients administered intravenously over the course of four weeks.



WEEK 1 (nurse: Linda)

Linda is shocked that this is my first iv ever in my life and after I explain how scared I am (very scared) she gives me bravery medication that takes 15 minutes to work. Before it starts to work I am polite-scared, my signature mixture of loud screaming interrupted by "Thanks again Linda I really appreciate this, I wish I weren't acting this way" interrupted by loud screaming again.

Linda puts the iv in and puts up with me as long as she can. The liquids going in are room temperature, and my body is 97 degrees, so it makes me feel freezing. Linda gives me orange juice to keep me from fainting and I spill the entire carton on myself.

WEEK 2 (nurse: Randi)

Randi laughs when I ask for bravery medication, and explains to me that I’m not as scared as I was the first time. Evidence of this is the fact that I don’t pass out on the spot when she asks if she can ask put the iv in the front of my forearm instead of on the inside of my elbow.

Linda makes an appearance, and tells me to tell my mom that she raised the sweetest most polite daughter she has ever met. I know this is just a nice way of telling me that I am polite, but later I tell my mom anyway. Linda also asks if I have a brother her daughter’s age. I laugh because I am polite and because laughing reminds me of not having an iv in me, and because I like Linda.

WEEK 3 (nurse: Jennifer)

The first two transfusions didn’t hurt at all but this one feels like a thumbtack or fencing sword lodged in my arm for an hour, and some of my blood spills onto the hospital napkin Jennifer put under my arm. She says my friend Erin isn't doing a good enough job of distracting me. I wish I had tried to barter for bravery medication. But I’m still only half as scared as the time before, and ten times less scared than the first time. Bravery math is a good way to distract yourself.

Between yells, I reminisce with Jennifer about how this gets easier every time.
“It’s scariest when you don’t know what to expect.” she agrees.
“Unless it’s scarier than anything you could ever imagine.” I whisper to her, and start yelling again. Politely.

WEEK 4 (nurses: Linda AND Randi)

It only takes four weeks of something you're terrified of before it's not as terrifying anymore. I laugh nervously, the way an insane person would laugh, when Linda puts the iv in, then watch Seinfeld episodes on a laptop and only feel paralyzed with fear once when my iv cord gets tangled with the headphones. My veins feel cool and refreshing, like I just drank a Coca-Cola with my soul.

"This isn't scary at all!" I tell Randi as she takes out my iv for the last time.
"...she says as she winces and squirms in her chair." says Randi, who is no Linda.

My hospital bracelet rakes in compliments faster than my heart pumps fresh blood through my body. I'm not taking it off for one million years.

infused with sriracha and chocolate milk

We're always looking for new experiments to do and the latest is four weeks of… infusions?

There's been some debate about whether it's a blood transfusion or an infusion and I'm going with infusion, because I think it's the right answer and because it sounds like a day spa. A day spa that pumps you with fresh warm blood from a stranger and sucks your old news blood out into a plastic bag for an afternoon while the side effects make your veins itch and make your lips cold and make you dizzy and imaginative for hours. Or that's what I read. Reading about medical procedures online before they happen is the worst thing you can possibly do, because it makes it feel like you're getting whatever terrible thing done a thousand times instead of four times. 

I feel pretty ok already, but my doctor says I don't know what pretty ok feels like. After a few weeks of... infusions, I'll feel ten times better than I feel now. Ten times better! 

All these years I've been operating at ten percent capacity - no one has ever seen extra-strength Brooke before. I'll be able to run for years, my jokes will be so funny, I bet I'll finally be able to do that thing where you make your tongue into a straw. I can't wait. And while I'm waiting, I can't stop reading these descriptions online.

Look how that picture breaks up the text!

cake isn't even one of them.

My doctor says that we could do a bone marrow biopsy but that there's no need because I had one recently.

A bone marrow biopsy is where they drill a hole into your back and pull out a chunk of your bones, to look at the liquid inside them. The drill they use to drill through bones is extremely loud. And then while you're lying there and the drugs are wearing off, the doctor will bring by the piece of your bone, now outside of your body, and show it to you even though you asked not to see. The scar from my bone marrow biopsy is almost invisible now which is too bad because it was my favorite scar. So I don't need a bone marrow biopsy.

"But we COULD." My doctor says, as though it might be a good back-up plan if there aren't any promising movies coming out this weekend. "And it would be so easy because you're skinny, we could do it easy."

Now I'm deciding which of my remaining scars is my favorite and there aren't a lot to chose from. I'm wondering if I should begin husbanding large cats or enroll in a left-handed welding class so my skin will have more stories to tell. My doctor is still talking about bone marrow biopsies.

"And old skinny women - oh man. There's nothing better than doing bone marrow biopsies on old skinny women. Their bones are as soft as cake."

I can think of about 48 thousand better things.

30,078 pineapple-flavored foods

30,079 seeing a feral cat

30,080 getting sand in your eyes

30,081 trying to match a ton of similar-but-slightly-different socks

30,082 when you're not sure if someone is a man or a woman

30,083 free shipping

30,084 saving enough ice cream punches to get a free cone

30,085 new jeans that dye your legs blue

30,086 accidentally shutting the car door on your seat belt

30,087 heather gray

30,088 the number four

30,089 guessing the next word in a song you don't know

How about it, Science?

I've only had trouble sleeping twice - once when our fire alarm kept going off every thirty seconds and once when I found out every season of Arrested Development was on Hulu - but sometimes when I'm very tired and want the best sleep ever, I like taking ZzzQuil. Because ZzzQuil is like a party drug for people who like partying alone in their pajamas drinking tea and waking up feeling amazing.

Also because sometimes I feel just a little cheated for growing up when scientists have already told us we can't mess around with fun dangerous things people used to do, like leeches and electroshock therapy and soda. Just based on the way it's spelled we know ZzzQuil is probably horrible for us, but no scientist has said it for SURE yet. At least, not right to my face. 

Ten hours of sleep and no dreams! Not even that recurring dream where I can sense a nearby object's weight instead of its color, smell, or texture! That dream makes me dizzy all morning.

10 million things in Portland: the great outdoors edition

I like Portland. Some people have never been. Visit Portland! Here are five of the ten million reasons you should.


Two different people who do not know each other told me that they’ve found a naked man following them around Forest Park but I’ve been there many times and this has never happened to me. I have seen a wedding, and a picnic, and once there was a weird smell and someone said it was sulphur. Maybe those people were talking about sulphur. Maybe it was a metaphor.



Are you incredibly excited by roses? Neither am I. Neither is anyone. But, Portland has a rose garden. Possibly because Portland’s nickname is “City of Roses” or possibly it’s a front for a black-market fertilizer operation.



Just a city block covered in cement with a giant fountain in the center, and a few inches of collected slush from human/fountain residue. One of my friends says Jamison Square Park is “the best birth control ever” but he isn’t a doctor. If you asked a doctor about Jamison Square park they would probably take your blood pressure. Doctors love doing that.



The river might be my favorite great outdoors area. Not the river in the center of Portland, another one. This river is just infested with trees and nature and you can go swimming in it and get carried off in the current and lose your sunglasses and cut your feet but who cares, because swimming in a river is amazing. My friend was in a movie once that was shot at this river and all the actors were naked the entire time. Lots of nudity in this post. I guess that’s a common theme in the great outdoors.



Laurelhurst park has an off-leash dog park, and often men in dresses dance around in the open areas, holding small pieces of wood. Once when I walked through it there was a businessman standing in the middle of a patch of grass, holding a push-broom and staring at me. The leaves are amazing right now.

Surprise

I would like to open up a minute clinic where patients are treated in literally a minute. Quality would go downhill FAST. You would probably just roll a die or pick a random prescription out of a box. Or, I’d have one of those Halloween games where you reach your hand in and it says you’re touching eyeballs but it’s actually just peeled grapes, or amoxicillin, or used needles.

maybe it's radish.

GOOD NEWS: now that work is over, I have time to admit to myself that I've had a fever all week, and probably bronchitis.

GOOD NEWS: as long as I don't go to the doctor, it will stay "probably bronchitis" and not turn into "Brooke, you have bronchitis." I should write a book on how to not get diagnosed with any illness ever again. It would be very short.

GOOD NEWS:: today I finally did something I've wanted to be a tradition since I moved here, and bought myself flowers at the Friday market to cheer myself up. (I didn't want cheering myself up to be a tradition, just the part about flowers.) 

I may be the only girl ever to graduate from my university without taking a flower-arranging class. This probably would have earned me a C-. All I know about these flowers is their name starts with R in French and that the orange ones were moldy. What an exciting tradition.

Hope your Friday was as good as mine.

shredded head

I woke up this morning with a shredded head. At least that's how one of my friends described it. It's just a cold, but since my job consists mostly of dancing and being kissed, I decided to call in sick.

I'm a little annoyed that I'm sick, because I have the lifestyle of an 80-year-old woman - I sleep nine hours a night and obsessively take vitamins. Capsule vitamins, like any normal adult. My liquid-loving French friends think my taking capsule vitamins is like licking the bottom of my shoes each morning. "It's about time you got sick," they all say "what with those capsule vitamins." The last time I took liquid medicine my mom kept me home from kindergarten and I got to spend the day watching Mister Rodgers. What I'm trying to say is, liquid medicine is for children.

After everyone had said "I told you so" and made me drink eleven glasses of herbal tea, they sent me to the doctor's. I thought it was kind of ridiculous, but my head was too shredded to argue.

The doctor ended up being in the same building as me. And his office looked the same as my apartment, with a dozen chairs crammed into what would be the kitchen. There was no sign-in or anything. But there was a poster advertising the Utah National Parks. Not a valid substitution for a sign-in, but thought it was worth mentioning. One woman was appropriately knitting a scarf. I was reading a Hunger Games in French and writing down new words on a Kleenex. Everyone else was just staring into space - including a three-year-old boy, who did not make a sound for the entire two hours I was there.

When people meet me for the first time they do some quick math to figure out where I'm from, and doctors are no exception. It goes something like this:

   she has an accent
+ she weighs less than 500 lbs and isn't wearing a cowboy hat
= she must be British

At one point during the visit the doctor said "I don't know how they do things in England!" and I wanted to add "Neither do I!!" but I decided to just roll with it. Why? Because some people know what nationality I am and some people know what color my mucus is, and above all I like to keep those two groups separate. This seems like a good time to mention that the doctor was wearing what looked like a sheep costume. I am not well today, guys.

The doctor gave me the whole week off work. And four boxes of medicine, all liquid. None of them are flavored, and one of them is "effervescent." But then I realized - I get to stay home from kindergarten tomorrow. If I can find some Mister Rodgers on youtube maybe this will be fine after all.

Every half hour someone calls to see how I'm doing. "Are you eating enough oranges, Brooke? Drinking orange juice? Taking liquid vitamins? I don't know how they do things in England, Brooke..."

We'll probably never know how things are done in England.


Mandatory x-ray I received after arriving in France. And a wooden cat that probably thinks I'm not eating enough oranges.