Another entry of this thrilling series! As I mentioned in my latest life update, for the last five days or so, I had been enduring flashes of darkness in one eye: sometimes, when I looked around, I lost the vision in my right eye for less than a second, something that I had never experienced before. It looked like black lightning. Because I’ve been beyond busy, at the limit of my human capacity, for months, I didn’t bother going to the doctor. The day before I ended up in the ER, the muscles around my right eyeball started bothering me, and I felt a strange pressure behind them.

I’ll proceed to relate how the afternoon when I ended up in the ER went. The moment I sat down at my desk in the office, two coworkers approached me due to printer-related issues that had come up in the morning. Because I have been tasked with coordinating the replacement of 930 or so printers, apparently now I’m the go-to person for absolutely fucking everything having to do with those printers even if they were put in place months ago.

I don’t recall what one of the issues was, but in the other, some guy from another department, someone we don’t know in person, had gone to fix a problem with the printer, and for whatever reason he had changed its IP address to a new one that we have no clue where he got it from. While the new IP does work, it isn’t assigned to a network name, and the group policies only go by network names, so every other computer at that office could no longer use that printer. I told my coworker, who had that ticket, to demand explanations of whoever did it, so he could hopefully revert it. Earlier this morning, when I checked my office mail, I found out that my boss just assigned the ticket to me so I would fix the problem. I would love to say that now they can suck it, because I’ll be on a medical leave for a few days, but I’m sure that the issue will be waiting for me when I return to work.

Anyway, like every day for months, shortly after I come to work, I have to start dealing with printer technicians from another company, who are tasked with replacing and configuring the printers (the part that gets configured physically in the devices). I used to have to deal with two technicians, but now that we are finishing the work, I only deal with one. Let me tell you about the technician I’m dealing with now: this guy is the biggest incompetent I’ve ever had the misfortune of working with. Here’s a list of the issues I have regularly with him:

1. He lies even about inconsequential stuff. I recall one time he tried to deny that he had gone out for a smoke, even though I walked by him as he was doing it. He also lies to cover his ass with his company, not caring whom he has to bury for it. The guy went on vacation three weeks ago. The last day, he told me he would only replace two printers then take the car to travel to Madrid. I don’t have any issue with these technicians leaving earlier (less work for me), so whatever. But the following week, I ended up being questioned by his boss about whether it was true that the day this technician had to leave earlier, it had been because I hadn’t allowed him to replace more printers, which is what he had claimed. That day, this motherfucker had had the gall to shake my hand and tell me that he felt sorry for the troubles that him going on vacation might cause for me. The technician remains unaware that I know this.
2. He consistently fails to remember to take stickers to name the network printers, which causes a multitude of problems. Even if I physically bring him the fucking stickers, which he has available at his office, half of the time as he’s replacing the printers, he forgets to do it anyway.
3. I have to follow him around as he replaces the printers, because half of those he sets up, he does them wrong (even though the methods for replacing the same models are identical). That means I have to get out of my way to ensure that they respond to pings the moment he’s done with them, instead of configuring them in a batch as I do with the other technician.
4. Part of my job as a coordinator involves walking up to whatever departments and buildings the old printers are located, then negotiating with nurses, admins and supervisors when they’ll allow us to replace the printers. Some, we can do in five minutes, others require taking up the connected computer for up to thirty minutes. Never mind the fact that I’m autistic and this level of human interaction is above my pay grade, but most human beings are garbage: if they can complain about anything and cause you issues, they will. I can’t count how many times I’ve gone to a department to solve a ticket only to be bombarded with “now that you’re here…” A few days ago I went for a printer-related issue, only for a random nurse to try to get me to replace her computer for a faster one. They know they have to put up tickets formally for any real issue, but most of them don’t give a shit; they’d rather bitch and complain among each other than spend five minutes making a call to HQ so they can register a ticket and send it to whoever can solve it. Anyway, this whole thing was about the incompetent technician: plenty of times after I’ve determined what printers could be replaced that day, this technician brings up some excuse that forces me to redo the whole thing from zero in other parts of the hospital. This is often related to the technician wanting to do the easiest stuff that day, even though he would end up with entire weeks of the hardest stuff right at the end.
5. He’s always on the phone. Plenty of times I’ve had to phone him for work-related stuff, only for him to be busy talking to his friends or his girlfriend. He has also delayed work, or had me waiting for fifteen minutes, because his girlfriend was going to bring him lunch (why guys like these have girlfriends is one of those mysteries of life).
6. Every time I’m supervising this technician’s work, he complains about being tired, about how annoying it is, about how far the locations are, about his coworkers who aren’t present, about his bosses, etc.
7. Some printers require the technicians to dress themselves in appropriate attire. This guy has always delayed these, or even straight up avoided doing them when I tasked him, to the extent of forcing me to unload those locations to other technicians so they would get done. Mind you, I have to dress myself twice to enter these places: once to determine whether or not it can be done that day, and another to accompany the technicians, even if it boils down to pointing at the location of the printer.

Anyway, yesterday, I entered the office at one in the afternoon (doing a one to eight shift). For those shifts, I always send the technicians detailed instructions for what they should do for the few hours our shifts don’t match. Turned out that he had only replaced one printer, of the model I told him to replace that day. He told me that he would start preparing new ones afterwards (although he should have already done so in the morning). Later, he called me and told me that he had “accidentally” prepared a different model of printer, so those were the ones we could do that day. That forced me to reorganize the whole day of work, visiting and calling other departments to ensure they would allow me to replace their printers. This technicians knows perfectly well what he forces me to do whenever he screws me up like that, but obviously he doesn’t give a shit.

Some time later, he told me that he had finished preparing, and he was heading to our meeting point. After I waited about seven minutes at the meeting point, I called him to figure out what was going on. He told me that he was preparing some stuff, and that he would come in ten minutes. I’ve had so many of these that I bring with me my tablet to read some manga in the meantime. After he showed up, I was standing near his printer-filled cart, ready to ensure that the printers didn’t fall once he started moving it, when the guy messed with the elastic cord that secured the printers in place. Deliberately or not, he detached the elastic cord, that proceeded to whip around and lash me straight in the balls. As I stood straight, lips pursed, while pain coursed through my genitals, I thought, “Yes, this is my life. This is the kind of shit that keeps happening to me.”

Twenty or so minutes later, as I was configuring printers in a spare computer of some high-tech building, while the technician configured them physically in other floors, the nausea and dizziness that had started intensifying the previous day mounted up to worrying levels, and more troubling, an uncomfortable feeling radiated from my right eyeball to cover that half of my face, from the hairline to under my cheek. I don’t recall ever feeling it before. That part of my face had lost sensitivity. My right hand, holding my pen, felt clumsy, and I started feeling white noise coursing down that arm. After I stood up, I realized that the nausea had intensified, and I broke out in cold sweat. As I navigated my way to rejoin the printer technician, I felt like I was about to bump into people. I wondered if I was having a stroke. I usually avoid dealing with people even to my own detriment in the case of medical emergencies, but I didn’t want to end up crippled by a stroke and regret the rest of my life that I didn’t go to the ER soon enough, so that’s what I did.

Once again, I ended up in a hospital bed, hooked up to an electrocardiograph, tended by nurses whom I probably know from having solved computer issues in their department (although I couldn’t tell if that was the case, because I have some degree of prosopagnosia). They sent me to a very kind and patient ophthalmologist who subjected me to plenty of tests. She discovered that I have posterior vitreous detachment in my right eye, which apparently had nothing to do with my flashes of black lightning; the detachment may have happened at any time in my life. Apparently it is rare in people under forty, but happens to many old people. Just my luck. She told me that such a condition can worsen into retinal detachment if you lift too much weight, or shit too hard. There goes my weightlifting career (a joke, although I did plenty of weightlifting in my youth).

I ended up at the neurologist. He told me that what I was experiencing was a severe migraine, a different kind to those I had experienced since I was a teenager. Until I started taking beta-blockers for my heart condition, I used to have migraines every few months. They always started with dizziness and a very notorious white, squiggly line in my vision, that if not treated at that point with a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, it would develop into a massive headache. But that happened in a matter of two or three hours. This experience of a five days-long migraine with flashes of black lightning, and still lingering insensibility in my face and right arm, is completely new. If they hadn’t also done an MRI as part of the batch of tests and discarded bleeding in my brain or any brain abnormality, I would have suspected that they had mistaken my symptoms, but I suppose they’re right, and what I have experienced is a massive migraine triggered by the intolerable stress I have been under for months.

I see and deal with nurses and interns, plenty of them gorgeous, on a regular basis. They are usually hypersociable; when they have nothing to do, they tend to gather at the break rooms to chat. Their altruism, sometimes pathological, is wonderful when it comes to caring for children and sick people, but apocalyptic when applied to the whole of society. In any case, dating one of these nurses must be a nightmare; every time I’ve ended up in the ER, I’ve had at least one nurse or intern pressing their lower abdomen if not their crotch against me. Even a male nurse did this. This time was no different: while a pretty, bespectacled intern, or whatever the hell she was, gave me the summary of my issues and the treatments to follow, she kept herself pressed against my elbow to the extent that I felt the warmth and curve of her mons pubis against my bare skin. I was looking at her, squinting against the bright lights, as in, “Are we going to address this, or is it the kind of thing you gals do?” Mind you, I’m not complaining; I’m chronically untouched, so press your mons pubis against me all you want. It’s just fucking weird.

Anyway, the neurologist told me to go on a medical leave for a few days, so that’s what I’ll do. Because I’m dutiful like that, I’ve sent the incompetent technician detailed instructions for what printers to replace in my absence. Although I’ve told him in no uncertain terms that I’ll go radio silent for my medical leave, I’m sure he’ll end up calling me anyway.

I intend to spend my sick leave programming, reading manga, and masturbating. Fuck my job, fuck this world, and fuck every single one of you.

EDIT: the specific type of migraine is hemiplegic migraine.

Also, today’s song is I Bleed by Pixies.

As loud as hell, a ringing bell
Behind my smile, it shakes my teeth
And all the while, as vampires feed

I bleed
I bleed
I bleed

Prithee, my dear, why are you here?
Nobody knows, we go to sleep
As breathing flows, my mind secedes

I bleed
I bleed
I bleed
I bleed
I bleed
I bleed

Oh, oh, oh, oh
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh

There’s a place in the buried west
In a cave with a house in it
In the clay, the holes of hands
You can place a hand in hand

I bleed (I bleed)
I bleed (I bleed)
I bleed (I bleed)