Another Close Brush with Death

Have you looked at your naked butt today?

I do not, typically, take off all of my clothes and look in the mirror at my old gluteus maximus. Last week, however, this became a problem.

You might recall that I had a fever and a terrible, piercing headache. Also, my neck hurt. I was only vaguely aware that I had a pain in my butt. I realized that I had a bug bite there, so I didn't worry about it.

After I could barely get up for fifteen minutes at a time, though, I scheduled a doctor's appointment. I fully expected him to say, "Drink a lot of water. You have the flu."

But, no. It was more like,

"That bite in your butt looks really bad... Did you say your neck hurts? No, you didn't say your neck hurts... did you? Oh, that's bad."

He called in a colleague to look at my butt with him. They both agreed it looked terrible.

"Wow. That looks painful," she said.

I tried to quip a little joke. I said,

"Doctor, am I going to live?"

Amazingly, he hesitated and said,

"Well, yes, but you are very sick, and you need to do exactly what I say..."

Because, as it turns out, there was this massive infection in my body that was just about to hit my brain and kill me. It's a good thing I went to the doctor about that.

I nearly fainted when he told me about the brain thing. He seemed strangely pleased to have made me nearly faint.

There were many unpleasant things, more doctor visits, terrible long shots, there were specimens taken for testing (that hurt!) and now I'm taking eleven pills a day, spread out throughout the day to combat whatever the evilness is. They still don't really know what bit me, but I am feeling better.

When I got home from the doctor, I took a look at what they were talking about (the bite on my butt) and it looked painful. It was painful to look at. They actually had offered me heavy duty painkillers for it, and I turned them down. What was I thinking?

I apologize for the delay in posting. It isn't that I have felt so terribly ill (just that one spell of believing that I was crying blood, in spite of the fact that I definitely was not crying blood, but clearly it was the fever to blame) no, I haven't felt terribly ill, I just had some internet issues.