 |
| Don't look at the camera, emo Shay. It will steal your soul. |
For a period in my life, my body had this fun quirk where it would acquire old-timey health conditions that are generally unheard of in first world countries. For example, this one time, I stapled my thumb while making a paper plate craft and had to go to the Urgent Care (because my mom didn't want to pay for a hospital visit because her dumb kid stapled her thumb) to have it removed. What, that's not an illness? Okay, well this other time, I was in class and messing with one of those tiny school supply kit staplers and I accidentally stapled the same thumb, and thought to myself, Oh no not again, and ripped it out quickly before the teacher could notice what an idiot I was. What.
FINE. When I volunteered in a hospital in college, I had to get a TB test and discovered I had latent Tuberculosis. (happy now?) For anyone that has not had a TB test before, it involves the placement of a tiny bit of inactive bacteria under the skin of the forearm. If it gets inflamed, it means you've got an immune response, and damn girl you could have Tuberculosis. A full blown infection is kind of hard to miss though (cough cough), so for young people in the United States, a positive test usually means you've simply been exposed to someone with TB, but don't actually have TB.
I had one other TB test in the past, and the inflammation diameter was right on the edge of okay and no-okay so they let it slide. When I got tested again in college, my TB dot swelled to the size of silver dollar. Wuh oh. I'm your Huckleberry?
My doctor told me that I had a I had inactive Tuberculosis in my body and that if I left it untreated there was a 10% chance that I would develop active Tuberculosis at some point in my life. So I went on a 6 month course of antibiotics that was so hard on my liver that my doctor told me I shouldn't drink alcohol during that time period. Since this was the heyday of my drinking career, I was like, Yeah right doc, aint gonna happen. Of course he asked me, quite seriously, Shay, do you have a problem with alcohol? And I laughed and said, I just turned 21. I need it like you need cotton balls and tongue depressors.*
Anyway, it turned out fine. My liver is fine and I never got Tuberculosis. Don't worry about me guys, I'm fine.
A much funner story occurred a few months prior to this. It was right before winter break and I noticed I had this weird red rash all over my torso. It didn't itch and I didn't feel sick, so I though it might have been a reaction to some lotion I was using. I threw my fancy new Aveeno in the trash and headed up to Lake Tahoe for a ski trip.
On day one I was fine, but by day two I felt like someone had dropped me off a tall building. I chalked it up to being sore from snowboarding and falling a lot (I was never good at snowboarding), and decided to stay in the hotel room for the day and take creepy pictures of my rash.
By the time I got home a few days later, the rash and mysterious illness were gone, but I developed a really gross new symptom. *Warning* (If you'd be grossed out to hear that the skin from the tips of my fingers and the tips of my toes started peeling off in sheets, don't read what I just wrote.) This was before the days of widespread WebMDing, so I went to the doctor with my peeling hands and asked for assistance. He told me that the skin-peeling-thing was a dead ringer for Scarlet Fever, but it was very rare for someone as old as me to get it. I had always thought the Scarlet Fever was reserved for little kids that had Velveteen Rabbits, but then I remembered that I HAD A VELVETEEN RABBIT as a kid and it all made sense. I went on an antibiotic for a week or so, and I was fine. My parents didn't have to burn all my stuff or anything.
Moral of the Story: We live in the future. Thank goodness for antibiotics.
--
*You got me, I never said that. I actually am an alcoholic.
This essay is from my "Painting the Blog Red" series. For more red, go HERE (There are no other rash stories, I promise).
No comments
Post a Comment