For reasons too stupid and depressing to explore at this juncture, I’m starting and ending my days the last three weeks and counting with a semi-literal fistful of pills.

My historically bad and until most recently well-managed allergies got some kind of Manchurian Candidate activation from either the cheap detergent I bought (I would deserve this) or because they got an Instagram post about perimenopause (no one deserves this) and decided to unionize every mast cell in my body to coordinate my death. My passive suicidal ideation has always been more of a “drift away beautifully, without any pain or suffering” approach however so I said, “absolutely fuck that” after only four weeks of using my agency and free will hoping it would go away. When that somehow didn’t work, I sucked it up and finally went to my allergist, a man who I — sincerely, lovingly — describe as the type of old timey doctor that tells me I have ghosts in my blood and that I should do some cocaine about it.

(I am not kidding at all: this man is 300 years old and my favorite medical professional. I was worried for about a year he would retire because he sold his practice, but he still sees patients and recently he started rocking an unbelievably terrible Just For Men dye job and I’m revivified in my belief he will be buried under the floorboards of his office and that I will benefit from his benevolent form of insane guidance for the rest of time, either from this worldly or via a spiritual plane. That this man’s office once sent me into anaphylaxis while the Supreme Court was actively striking down Roe v. Wade is just a shared adventure that brought us closer together, emotionally.)

Dr. Blood Ghost, who always looks like he is either on the tail end of or about to have a heart attack, listened to my ring cycle of woe, and then suggested I take 100 pills about it. When that didn’t work after a week, he nodded kindly and revised that estimate from 100 pills to 130 pills. This is only a moderate hyperbole, because every morning I’m popping two OTC 24-hour allergy pills, two OTC antacids (that are actually antihistamines?), a new prescription pill — that’s apparently $4.5K a month if I rawdogged that out of pocket, but that Dr. Ghost Blood handed to me from a mystery closet in his practice; again, love this man — and then whatever other pills I’m supposed to be taking to ensure I don’t die of anything else before my autoimmune system gets me. Dr. Blood Ghost also assured me if I was struggling to sleep I could take some Benedryl before bed.

Oh, okay, because what my liver and barely sustained hold on lived reality needs now in this tsunami of medication is yet more opportunity to invite the fucking Hat Man into my life. The first two or three weeks I was on this cocktail I made other people drive me to the grocery store because I wasn’t confident I could tell left from right or that I wasn’t tasting purple. I defy anybody in the greater DMV area to produce a more encouraging and gregarious plug than Dr. Blood Ghost, my best friend and Hat Man facilitator.

Anyway my latest set of “medical guidance” is to keep taking my fistful of pills 2x a day, and to check back in four weeks from now. I assume this is because if I am still actively in flare by then Dr. Blood Ghost will do the kindest thing and take me out back in an alleyway near Foggy Bottom and put me out of my misery. He has characterized this as “consider adding a new rx shot into your monthly regimen,” but I am confident that is just allergist for “make it quick so you won’t suffer.”

It has to be.