And so begins the telling of tellings. I shouldn't kid myself that this ordeal was anything more than an ordeal, but I am melodramatic, and infused with an over-inflated sense of self, and so it begins.
I have some irrational fears, yes. I am afraid of car washes with long, ropy brushes. I am scared that people might be able to hear when I pee, and that this will repulse them into never speaking to me. I am TERRIFIED that the dead will come back to life and try to devour me. Up until recently, I fancied my fear of contagious and infectious disease to be one of the irrational fears.
Nope.
There is a name for my pain (and subsequent, albeit temporary disfigurement). It is MRSA. For the unfamiliar (ie, people who DON'T sit in their basements muttering about paranoid conspiracy theories), MRSA stands for "methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus". It is one of the of the "superbugs" that have adapted faster than we have. It now thumbs its nose at most regular antibiotics...
...but this is not the problem, per se.
On Friday, I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing week off, as I had been struggling through three (!!!!) weeks of bronchitis. Ugh. I noticed a raw spot under my nose from too many tissues. Embarrassing, no doubt, but certainly not dangerous. On Saturday, it looked a little inflamed, so I gave it the ol' peroxide clean-neosporin-treatment. Metaphorically clapping my hands together and congratulating myself on a job well done, I decided to take a nap to fight off the residual aches. Oh...oh dear. I woke up on Sunday morning with what looked like a vienna sausage stuck to my face. Nope. it was my upper lip, swollen and inflamed. When I phoned my local ER (doctor's offices are not open on Sunday, silly!), I described it as "Angelina Jolie gone wild", when it actually looked more like "abused Mississippi housewife" (the ER doc did not think it was funny. Boo.) She transferred me to a Kaiser doctor (Kaiser Permanente, not a German ruler) who, I'm certain, was talking to me on a car phone...unless people were honking horns in the ER. This doctor listened for about ten seconds to me DESCRIBING the symptoms (because, after all, if she doesn't physically SEE me, what else is there to go on? Perhaps I should have told her I had sprouted a second head out of my neck.)
Inhale.
Exhale.
"Ummm...it sounds to me like you have a garden variety impetigo. Don't worry. Little kids get this all the time because they can't keep their hands clean while they have the flu, then they can't keep their hands out of their noses. They transfer germs in and out all the time. Let me call in a scrip for an antibiotic at the pharm. If it gets worse, come to the hospital." First of all, clipping your words into smaller syllables does not make you sound cool, and it definitely does nothing for fostering credibility. Secondly, DID YOU REALLY JUST ACCUSE ME OF MAKING MYSELF SICK BY PICKING MY NOSE?!?!?!?!
(ahem)
I took the antibiotics she ordered, which did nothing more than make me vomit in technicolor. After a four hour nap (can you call them naps when they're that long? I digress), I awoke with the foolish optimism of one who believes in the power of healthcare. At this point, I had gone from "abusive relationship" face to "elephant man" face. My lip, cheek, and eye had swollen, the latter being so swollen that I could not see out of my right eye. Alarm bells started to ring. I drove myself to the ER, and promptly burst into tears in front of the first person who was nice to me. The doc put his hands on his knees and bent down to look very kindly in my face. In a gentle voice, he said, "that looks like it might be MRSA. Does it hurt?" Following a snuffle-snuffle-snuffle, I squeaked out, "Yes", and began to cry. He didn't dismiss me as being a hypochondriac. He didn't try to minimize the obvious pain raging through my face. He also didn't gasp in a mix of horror and revulsion. The combination of these three things reassured me that, while I wasn't making something out of nothing, I also wasn't about to die. It was comforting, to say the least. He gave me a prescription (not a "scrip") for Hydrocodone and one for a MRSA-strength antibiotic, and then told me go to my own doctor in the morning (Kaiser does not allow out of network doctors to treat their patients...perhaps they ARE German). At the hospital the next day, the Physician's Assistant (and what the hell is THAT, anyway?!?!?!) told me it looked like a skin infection (duh), did NOT culture it for MRSA, told me to go home, and told me to come back if it gets worse.
I
FLIPPED
OUT.
I told him what the ER doc said, that the original Kaiser doc didn't even LOOK at it, and that somewhere, a very nasty lawsuit was brewing and just how bad does it have to get before someone will actually TREAT me?!?!
He took a culture.
To make a long story only slightly less long, it was NOT impetigo.
It was MRSA.
I was right. FOUR antibiotics and TWO minor surgeries later, my face is healing but looks like the final ten minutes of Rocky IV. Ugh.
...but at least I'm not a hypochondriac.
Today's word of the day is sulfamethoxazole.
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