h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I just don't feel like going to bed at the moment and need to say perpendicular with the ground long enough to stock up on oxygen. Today was rather interesting. I went to bring my parents dinner (they were out running fence as I couldn't help my dad because I'm sick) and found them talking to a neighbor. We moved out here to get away from people. So, like the darling I am, I hid in the woods for twenty minutes and took a nap until the bozo went away. They ate, I returned to the house puttered about, mostly spending time on the good ol' internet. Inevitably, my mother hears me wheezing and panting in an attempt to walk to my room and demands that I put on clothes and get in the car. I'm really not one to disrespect my parents, but I go a wee bit mad when I'm sick and feeling lousy. I asked where she was going to take me and she told me that I was going to the emergency room. I whispered with an angry intensity at the insufferable woman while she answered back in a crazed uproar. Apparently, I'm stupid, insufferable as well, stubborn as a mule, going to die like my grandfather (that cracked me up as my grandfather went rather loony in his latter years. I was forced to say something about how I was always his favorite.), not taking my medicine (which I am), my father's child, stupid, sick, and, have I said stupid yet? Anyhow, I refuse to go to the hospital and my father enters the scene. Damn, here goes, he can manhandle me. I collapse into a boneless lump of dead weight and flop around as he tries to pick me up and force me to get dressed (picture a 250-lb, red-headed man trying to pick up a tiny little ragdoll weighted with 50 pounds of lead) before he gives up. Now, it gets to be like some sort of deranged comedy hour at the house as my mother picks up the phone and threatens to call the ambulance. Oooooooooh, no, by chance, I happened to have the cordless with me. She starts dialing, I click on the phone. She stops dialing and acts like she's setting the phone down, I lower the phone and she tries to start dialing again. No go, I click on the phone. Needless to say, I won. I am not going to the doctor though I just received the worst dressing down I have ever had in my life. Yowza, talk about singing the delicate ears of the innocent. I was further threatened until I made a concession. I will go to the doctor MONDAY. (I will eat your soul, Øyvind.) I refuse to miss school and will attend. I will find some way out of going to the doctor because I hate them. Doctors, doctors, doctors since I was nine years old. Hi, my name is Stacy and I'm a lab rat. They can put me in the hospital and I will escape. I have tried to escape the hospital once before and failed, but I will succeed if they lock me in one of those nasty, white rooms and stick needles in me. I'm a horrible patient and will bite anyone who tries to come near me. Let me die in peace and keep those sappy, cooing nurses away from me. They make me ill. If they try to sedate me, I'll have an allergic reaction and die (don't ask me how, but I'm sure my body won't let me down). I hate the doctors, I hate the hospitals, I don't want to go. I WON'T GO! Notice how I'm resorting to whining like an incessantly stupid four-year old? I was five about four hours ago but I am feeling worse. Monday or they'll have to drag me out dead. I WILL NOT go to the hospital and am only allowing for anyone with any medical experience to give me a chest x-ray. Hospitals have staph. If I have pneumonia, I'm not going to a den of staph that will kill me. I think I'm getting tired now, but I'm still winning.

Well all I can say is that hang in there, and don't die, as life would be so much worse without you. I can say that I won't pray for you (because I don't pray), but I will think of you.

Oh my... you must really hate hospitals... I think I now understand better, but don't blame me... It's not my fault that your mother decided to get you to the doctor... Even though I'm egoistic enough to agree with her. I want you to survive, and if that involves a visit to the doctor's then that's what you're going to have to do... I too, will think of you. Try and survive this, will you?

Have yourself a listen to Aphex Twin - Come to Daddy

Maybe that will cheer you up .

I wouldn't think so...

No, that would end up with me in ICU and possibly in a body cast. Maybe with half of the nursing staff tied to hospital bed that have all been wired together so that they are constantly moving.

I was outwitted last night at about 12:30. I was lying comfortably in me little bed and ambushed. The doctor met us at the Den of Infection and laughed until he cried. I told him that, if he wasn't an old man, I would have decked him and he laughed harder. I have double pneumonia and am feeling rather nasty. The people at the hospital wrote 'tendency to become irate when touched without warning or reason. hostile towards staff.' in my folder. I won the Bad Patient Award for 2004 apparently and am being bulldozed into going to the doctor every week for six to eight weeks since I refused to stay in the hospital. I can only sleep for 8 hours a night with no daytime naps, nor can I run, do extensive exercise, spend any great amounts of time outdoors.

Thank you for your thoughts and I am still alive...for the time being. My mother got me up at 7:30 (I have only had 4 hours of sleep), force fed me two waffles and an orange, then stuffed 10 pounds of pills down my throat all while laughing hysterically. Cheery, cheery, cheery me.

I hate to say this, but I KNEW this would happen. I had nothing to do with it, but there's nothing like hysterical mothers when it comes to predictability and pure stubbornness... I wonder why they were all laughing, though? That sounds traumatic. Are you sure this isn't all a very bad dream?

They were laughing because they're mean and hateful, antagonistic and pleased with themselves. The whole lot is a bunch of loonies and perverts. I would really like for it to be a dream but my mother wouldn't laugh at me every time she saw me if it weren't true.

Oh my, that sounds horrid... It's good that they got you to the hospital, but I don't like the fact that they're PLEASED with themselves...

Neither do I. Apparently it's a game that I'm just now learning about it. In two years, I will be able to sign myself out of hospitals at any time. I'm waiting, here, Time. It tickled my doctor to death. He said that I look exactly like I did when I was four and having to go to the meat market because I was sick.

This is NOT good... Not a good way of bringing up a child, that's for certain. You're going to have to get rid of your hospital fright before that, or you risk dying from something as ridiculous as a common flu...

Tell me about it. That is their one failing in child rearing. They brought me up to be independent minded and prideful. I have my reasons for hating hospitals, and I'm sure no one wants to hear about them. I would never go to the hospital for the flu. Talk about a humiliating death.

Nothing wrong with that, a true feminist raising... Still, laughing at you... sheesh, also, pride should go hand in hand with humility. Otherwise, it turns to arrogance. I might be interested in hearing your real reasons, yes... But you shouldn't hesitate to go to a doctor if you get double sided pneumonia, that's dangerous, and you know it!

I know some of the stuff I do is incredibly foolish, and am willing to admit it most of the time. I am incredibly arrogant and have never forgiven people who have managed to hurt my pride. If you destroy someone's pride, you have no reason to live. It's not dangerous unless you die and you surely die when you enter a hospital. They're breeding grounds of death.

It's not about destroying someone's pride. It's about making them realize that morale and pride and honour doesn't stand in the way of humility. Arrogance should be broken down as much as possible... I'm currently trying to work on that side of myself. See, that's where all the evidence contradicts you. Most people who enter hospitals come out alive... Granted, there are incurable cases, but they don't die BECAUSE of the hospital. You're likely to survive this time, even if you had gone to the hospital, but if you'd postponed that visit to the doctor, you might not have made it...

Most people that enter hospitals die or leave sick and injured. Arrogance I can see getting rid of, but humility and honor? Never.

Well, marginally less sick and injured than they were when they entered, I assure you... I didn't say you should get rid of humility and honour...

Right, that is, of course, if they even make it out alive.

meanwhile I haven't been to hospital since my operation of my foot when I was four.

I take it you won't be joining the medical profession then Stacy?