2005-02-02

Staph Infections - the latest celebrity accessory!

So didja hear?! Hilary Swank had a staph infection! So did Rosie O�Donnell! It's the latest celebrity accessory!

Honestly, chickens, this just proves that I am SO ahead of the trend. Because I�ve had two � count �em � TWO staph infections, and I had them, like, YEARS ago, before it was cool.

Let me preface by saying that I was, quite possibly, the World�s Sickliest Kid. If the germs were out there, I�d contract them, and I�d do �em all one better by having said germs mutate into diseases so bizarre, that specialists had to be involved. You name it � I�ve had it. German Measles. Impetigo. Walking pneumonia. A case of swollen glands snowballed into some insane problem that kept me out of 4th grade for a month, and required a trip to Mass Eye & Ear Infirmary, where they stuck teensey little tubes up into my salivary ducts.

So, one spring day when I was fifteen, I didn�t really panic when I felt a bit sore under my right ear. I was more or less used to constantly having these odd glandular problems, so I took some aspirin and just figured it�d go away of its own accord, as it usually did ever since the bit with the tubes and all. But then I noticed that the spot was rising, and turning about the color of an eggplant, and that it was starting to HURT with a pulsing, pounding pain. My mother, long since accustomed to my predisposition to diseases which needed looking up in various medical journals, promptly stuffed me into the car and took me to the doctor, who took one look at the throbbing purple wen and announced: �STAPH INFECTION. We need to lance and drain this NOW.�

For some reason, �lance and drain� sounded so medieval. I tossed that phrase around in my head as I was stuck on a big metal table, given a �local� which proved utterly pointless, and subjected to what was, quite possibly, the most blindingly Technicolor pain I have ever endured. I gripped my mother�s hand and let loose with a torrent of obscenities that would make Linda Blair in The Exorcist look like Mother Theresa. My mother laughed hysterically, partially out of panic, but most likely because she was picking up some new vocabulary.

I was sent home with a huge bandage on my neck, and detailed instructions regarding my aftercare. Several times a day for the next two weeks, I was to insert a hydrogen-peroxide soaked Q-tip into the HOLE IN MY NECK, swab it around, apply some antibacterial goop to the outside, and bandage it back up. That evening, I stared in the mirror with perverse fascination as I slowly, methodically moved the Q-tip around inside what was essentially an epidermal pocket under my ear. Seriously -- I could've kept loose change and guitar picks in there.

The next day at school, one of the more popular girls noticed the bandages and asked me if I was okay. Proving once and for all that I possessed absolutely no internal gauge of what was appropriate conversation with my peers, I gave this poor young woman a breathless, blow-by-blow description of my procedure AND the aforementioned post-procedural cleaning and dressing, thus sealing my fate as One Who Is To Be Avoided In The Hallway.

Don�t get a staph infection, chickens, no matter how many celebrities jump on that wagon.

lisamcc at 12:56 p.m.

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