First of all, allow me to answer a question from last week. You can find Brevity at www.comics.com. I was able to find a copy I had saved of the hippo picture, which I am including here:
Now, on to the promised expose! Warning, there are parts that some people may find gross.
In general I am a pretty tough cookie, but I do have a weakness. If you have seen Disney’s version of The Sword in the Stone, you may remember Merlin defeating Mad Madame Mim by becoming a microbe and getting her sick. My story might begin with a tiny speck of dirty metal.
We don’t know that this is the actual cause, but it seems like a good guess because every time the infection flares up it centers around the scar. Basically, I was taking down a dilapidated above-ground pool and deck. You know, just because something looks like it could fall down at any moment does not mean that it actually will when you want it to. And don’t get too impressed with me. Taking things down is a lot easier than putting them up. I am good grunt labor, but if it requires any know-how or finesse, I’m not your girl. Maybe that’s why I got injured.
Basically, when I was working one of the girders out I jerked too hard and it ricocheted back, cutting my leg slightly. I did not see any rust, but I got a tetanus booster anyway and figured I was good until a few years later I suddenly became ill and ended up in the hospital for four days.
The cause was a condition called cellulitis. I know, it sounds like cellulite, but it is not directly related to cottage cheese thighs. Instead, it is an infection of the skin cells, where the flare up. So while I felt like I had the flu, what differentiated from that is that from ankle to knee my right leg was swollen, burning to the touch, and bright red. Also, it hurt really badly.
It often starts with a spider bite, cut, or burn that lets the infection in. It can be treated fairly easily with antibiotics geared towards skin conditions. There are two problems. One is that, at least in my case, the leg was left scarred, so I have this blotchy red patch on my leg. This is one reason I don’t go barelegged. The others are that I don’t think my legs are very shapely and I don’t shave very much (actually, the not shaving is as much a result of the covered legs as a cause).
The second problem is that it tends to never really go away, and just lie dormant until your immune system dips low enough for it to take over again. This is what happened on the last day of my vacation.
I woke up fairly early and felt fine. I packed up everything except for what I would need that day and the next morning, showered and dressed, and (feeling really ahead of the game), sat down to read for a bit. I was feeling cold, though, despite putting on my coat and wrapping up in a blanket. My teeth started chattering.
It’s not just that it wasn’t a cold day. It is also that I do not get cold very easily. It was a joke between us because Tara was always getting cold and I would give her my coat, which she would put on over her own coat, and I would be fine. It didn’t seem like a good sign.
I started to get a little better, but then was overtaken with extreme drowsiness. Unfortunately, this hit right as we got to church. I could focus for a moment here and there to do what I needed to do, but I kept dropping off. It was embarrassing but also completely out of my power. You can kind of get away with sleeping through sacrament meeting, but not in Sunday School, so I was going to see if I could find a cry room with a couch or something, until our hero, Brian appeared, and offered us a ride back to his place.
Finally I could sleep, which was really the only thing I was capable of right then. I did manage to wake up and stay coherent through dinner, but it was so much effort and everything tasted really bland. I probably could have slept more. My main concern was holding it together until we got home, so I could go to my doctor and be at home. On Sundays the only option is an emergency room, and I just knew I would end up checked in and missing my flight, with out of network hospital charges followed by the cost of a new plane ticket. Nope, I just wasn’t going there.
Still, it can be hard navigating airports in a feverish haze. The worst moment was when my boarding pass disappeared. They issued a new one, but later on when I was unpacking I found both together. I have no idea how that happened.
I don’t think we can ever consider the death of a human being, especially a good one, fortunate, but it did sort of work out well that while I was gone a family friend died, and my family had all arranged time off for the funeral Monday, the day I came home. This left Little Sister M available to take me to the doctor.
I was able to go over my issues pretty well with her, but somehow the minute I got back into the car, all capability deserted me again. Perhaps it was the lack of food or sleep or that I had just used up everything I had. She asked what the doctor said, and the answer was that I had some prescriptions I needed to fill and then come back tomorrow to see that the injection already administered was working. I knew that, but all I could say was "Scrip...scrip...scrip." It just didn't sound right, and so I couldn't finish. Well of course it didn't sound right; I was leaving off the first syllable, but I couldn't figure out how to fix it. She just shook her head and started driving.
At home I pretty much just threw myself face down on the bed and kept sleeping for three-hour intervals. I would then wake up, look at the clock (that's how I know they were three-hour intervals), and go back to sleep. At one point I handed off my prescriptions so they could be filled.
The next day I was supposed to return to work, but was not really up to it, so I called in. I thought I was sounding lucid again, but when I returned to work on Thursday, well, my manager was surprised to find out that I had ever been less lucid than when I spoke to him on Tuesday.
The recovery went okay. Monday and Tuesday I slept a lot, Wednesday I slept and watched television, and Thursday, even though my world was still moving in slow motion, almost like being underwater (when everyone else is above water), I got a lot of work done.
It's a bad thing, actually. As I worked away in diminished capacity but still outperforming many other, strange feelings of grandeur and euphoria came and went. This would have been a bad time for someone to approach me with plans for taking over the world, because I probably would have said yes and that would have led to awkwardness when I came to my senses.
After that I was fairly normal. There were a few days of only doing work and sleep, because there was no energy left after the work, but eventually your strength comes back until the next round.
That occurred about a month ago. This time I started feeling very cold and achy on the way to church, and it just kept getting worse. Again, it was a Sunday night, and I had the early shift the next day so all I wanted to do was sleep and then go to the doctor tomorrow, but my family kept bugging me. They laugh about it now, but Mama Spork was really panicked when she was saying we should go to the doctor and I told her I was focusing on my education. I think I was shooting for recuperation, but I just couldn't get it out.
I knew what the message I wanted to deliver was: "Please shut up and leave me alone so I can sleep!" Maybe I should develop a gesture. The one that comes to mind is already taken, and it's so out of character for me that it would only make matters worse. I wonder if I would be able to write or type, but when staying awake is torture, it's hard to feel motivated to experiment. I'm not going to go over to the computer, and if I tried asking for pen and paper I would probably just scare them worse by asking for a tractor or sock or something.
That's the whole problem really. I am aware and comprehending of what is going on, I just can't prove it. It's not delirium, it's febrile aphasia. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Despite this, I was able to arise early, get to work, and be completely functional there, leaving at noon to go to the doctor. Once there, I was discovered to have a fever of 104. Back to the old regime, but with a much faster recovery time. Those direct injections really work.
The most interesting thing last time around is that I started thinking about how the onsets have been so different, with many milder outbreaks consisting of me just feeling tired and my leg going somewhat red. I believe the first day is just some other disease starting, and then the cellulitis acting up. So maybe the mild outbreaks were starting with colds, and the worse ones with flu. If that is the case, I should basically try to never get sick. You would think I'd be more consistent about taking my vitamins, but I just forget. And I can't resist helping out sick people when they ask. At least I wash my hands a lot.
My real concern is that, on that first day, I appear so sick that medical staff might overreact. The fever would probably be enough to keep them from automatically sending me to the psych ward, but you never know.
So here's the nutshell: If we are together and I start shivering (out of proportion to the current temperature) and saying strange things (that don't appear to be jokes)...
Taking my temperature: Good
Taking my blood sugar (to rule out hypoglycemia): Good
Asking me questions: Bad
Taking me to emergency room: Bad
If you can take me to my doctor, okay. Otherwise, please let me sleep.
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