My Meth/Sex Addiction Almost Cost Me My Leg

Slammed: a Memoir — Chapter 5 Part 4

Warning: Graphic descriptions of medical trauma.

“Do you use drugs?”

“No.”

“Denies drug use,” the doctor said pointedly as he wrote.

I was sitting on the examining table of a walk-in clinic in black briefs and a white t-shirt. The golf ball in my thigh had grown into a deep purple mound, the skin around it yellow, almost green, ultra-thin purple veins branching from the center. It looked like something something from an alien horror movie was ready to burst out.

It felt like it too.

Returning home after Dexter and Laura’s wedding, I lay bed ridden, hardly able to put weight on the leg. It hurt so much I didn’t even want to slam. I mean, who’d wanna fuck a guy with an alien about to burst out of his leg? For a day and a half I tried to white knuckle through pain, but ibuprofen wasn’t working anymore. The pain became so great that it finally overrode my lack of insurance.

Still, I wasn’t going to go to an ER. Even without an ambulance ride, an ER visit was going to probably cost thousands of dollars. So I had Richard take me to a walk-in clinic in a strip mall by his neighborhood grocery store. I didn’t have any idea what the cost difference would be, but I was sure the clinic would be cheaper.

“What about skin popping?” the doctor asked.

“Skin popping?”

“Injecting drugs underneath the skin?”

Fucking what?!

“No!” I said, genuinely appalled over the potential waste of good drugs.

Though I usually didn’t have a problem hitting a vein when slamming, there had been a couple of times where I had lost the vein when I injected, sending the slam into the muscle of my arm. Though the Tina would eventually be absorbed, it made my arm ache and I was robbed of the initial exhilarating rush.

“It looks like Pyoderma gangrenosum,” he said.

Gangrenosum? Gangrene? What?!

I just sat there.

The doctor put down his clipboard, crossed his arms, and exhaled, like his day had just gone to shit. He was tall with dirty blond hair, rimless glasses, dark slacks, and a yellow dress shirt with a blue tie covered in white spots.

As he spoke, he seemed to be talking less to me and more directly to my leg. “Look, I can give you antibiotics, but that abscess needs to be lanced now. Though,” still talking to my leg, “I’m gonna be honest with you, even if I get it all, I can’t say for certain that you won’t lose your leg.”

The pain in my leg was the only thing keeping me from registering what he had just said.

Lose my leg? He can’t be serious…can he?

It took me a minute to realize, while the doctor and a female nurse started moving about, putting things in places, that when he said it needed to be lanced now, he meant right the fuck now.

“Go ahead and lay down,” the doctor said. I obeyed, fear now encroaching on what had been pain’s territory.

“Are you comfortable?” the nurse asked. She had an accent that I guessed was from somewhere in Eastern Europe. She had fair skin and light brown hair that was pulled back out of her face. For a moment I was calmed ever so slightly by the kindness in her face. Her light blue scrubs were covered in cartoon trains which I found oddly comforting.

“Yes, I…I think so,” I said, almost like a “thank you.”

The doctor settled next to me on a rolling stool with a tray of instruments that I couldn’t see nor did I want to see. The nurse placed blue paper cloth over my leg with a square hole framing the exposed alien golf ball. The doctor put on a clear plastic face shield, and I couldn’t blame him. Whatever was about to burst out of my leg, best not get it in the face.

“Ok, I’m going to give you a couple locals. Small pinch.”

I sucked air through my teeth as I felt the needle poke around the tight, ultra sensitive skin.

“Ok, ready?” He asked.

“Yeah,” I lied.

He made his first cut.

Richard was sitting out in the waiting room with a half dozen or so others, watching Headline News loop through the same six stories over and over on the waiting room TV. He absently flipped through old issues of People and Us Weekly when my screams shattered the quiet.

After a couple of minutes, when my moans and cries didn’t stop, people started becoming visibly uncomfortable.

“Oh my,” an elderly woman quietly remarked.

The nurses at the front desk looked at each other, not knowing what to do as I continued to involuntarily express my agony. Finally, the head nurse made an executive decision and rolled down the heavy wooden front desk window. This did very little to dampen my cries.

It wasn’t another few minutes before Richard was alone in the waiting room. After another couple minutes, he followed suit, thinking then was a good time for a smoke…or five.

“Please!” the doctor sternly said to me. “You have…you have to calm down and stay still. I can’t do this unless you calm down.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll try to…I’m sorry.”

Tears flowed down the sides of my face into my hair. I tried to keep my mouth clamped shut but that didn’t stop my cries. I clutched the sides of the table till my hands were numb. I tried desperately to keep still while it felt he was twisting a dull, rusty corkscrew slowly into my flesh.

“Ok,” the doctor said, signaling he was done.

I felt a coolness return to my body as it began to relax. While horrific and traumatic, my leg already felt better. The golf ball was gone and with it the pressure that had been so painful. I just wanted to cry after all that, but clamped my mouth closed and fought against the tightening in my throat.

The doctor continued, taking off the face shield. “I’m going to fill the hole with gauze and dress it and then we’re done.” I could see that he had been sweating.

Fill…fill the hole? The hole?!

That part hurt, but not nearly as much, and it was the weirdest sensation, like he was shoving tissues into my leg.

Because he was shoving tissues into my leg.

“Ok, you’re done,” he said, sounding as relieved as I was, if not more.

With the nurse’s help, I slowly sat up and looked at my leg. Where the alien golf ball had been, I saw a large, clean, white bandage.

The doctor stood and moved toward the door. He wasn’t done but it was clear he couldn’t get out of the examination room fast enough. “I’m going to give you a bag of free-sample antibiotics. I want you to take them every day for the next week. I’m also not going to charge you for the visit, just the procedure.”

I absolutely should have gone to an ER. In fact, I’m kind of surprised the doctor didn’t call an ambulance and send me to an ER himself with his “lose your leg” comment. Still, exhausted from the trauma we had both just been through, I was struck by this kindness.

“Thank you,” I said, whimpering and wiping tears from my face. “Thank you so much.”

“I want you to come back in a couple days so I can remove the gauze and see how it’s looking. Ok?”

“Ok.”

With that, he left, I hope to have a stiff drink.

The nurse with the kind face returned with a plastic bag full of the promised pills, each individually wrapped, I guessed the remains of a pharmaceutical promotion. Then, before I got up from the table, she put a comforting hand on my back, as if to say “you’re going to be ok.”

“Thank you.”

I hobbled out to the front desk where the nurses did not regard me so kindly. Their scrubs were colorful and cheerful, but their faces told me I’d taken a crap in their lobby and left them to clean it up.

A middle aged nurse with a severe dye job slapped a bill down on the counter. “So we’re not charging you for the medication or the visit. Just for the procedure.” Her disdain was as harsh as her hair color.

I looked at the bill: $500

“Oh…uh…I don’t…I don’t have $500.”

She looked at me as if to say, “of course you don’t.”

“You can’t leave until you pay.”

The fuck you gonna do, lady? Shove the golf ball back in my leg?

Richard appeared and handed his card to the nurse. I looked at him and nearly started crying again. “Thank you.”

“Don’t be too thankful,” he said, playful but serious. “You’re going to pay me back.”

“Yes! Of course. Of course I’ll pay you back.” How? Fuck if I knew.

Richard took me back to his place where I slept for the first time in a week, crashing from a very different sort of exhaustion

A couple days later, as instructed, I returned for my follow-up.

The doctor removed the gauze, by which I mean he pulled the gauze out of my leg like a magician pulling an endless line of scarves from his sleeve.

Where the golf ball had been there was now a hole about a dime wide and five or six dimes deep. I was literally looking into my leg. Honestly, as painful as the procedure was, I have to say I was a little disappointed that the wound wasn’t bigger. It just didn’t seem big enough to have warranted the level of trauma and hysteria I went through.

The good news was the antibiotics were working.

The two other abscesses that had been forming on the side of my calf were already smaller and the hole in my thigh appeared to be healing just fine too. The doctor didn’t like that it was still slightly inflamed — though that was most likely from the slam I had earlier in the day — but he was otherwise satisfied. He told me to keep taking the antibiotics till I ran out and every time I change the bandage, fill up the hole with Neosporin.

Not cover the hole. Fill the hole.

Then, almost as an afterthought, he let me know that they ran a full spectrum of tests on the blood they drew before the procedure. Everything, including the HIV test, came back negative.

I had completely forgotten that they were going to run those tests, so this was a pleasant and relieving surprise.

Rich and I returned to his place and slammed in celebration. Starting with that slam, we made sure, for a good stretch, to use alcohol swabs and a fresh needle every time.

Next Chapter

Chapter Guide

A lot of heart, time, and work goes into each piece. One way you can support me is by signing up for a $5/month Medium Membership. Use this link and I’ll get a percentage of your subscription fee. Huzzah for supporting artists!

If the spirit moves you, another way you can support me is by leaving me a tip. Thank you for reading!