MRSA is not Flat

non-subject: "what happened"
(AWW ~ Wednesday, 01/13/10)

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What happened recently that causes me to feel like I'm writing nothing of value.  Recently?  I feel like that too often.

It's like I have nothing to write about.  It is like the earth is flat.  Flat.  Flat. All people are just milling around aimlessly. There doesn't seem to be cohesion...or at least I don't feel a part of it.  Life seems small.

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A week ago Monday I ended up at the doctor's office.

Over the previous weekend my right knee had developed some sort of infection.  I never cut it, at least to my knowledge.

I plopped down on the couch that Friday night and pulled up my pants leg thinking, Something is wrong with my knee.  It was hot, reddened, beginning to swell, and had a black dot in its center.

Saturday I slept for 19 hours.  My knee was continuing to worsen. I iced it.

Initially, the knee had an irritation that seemed like a carpet burn but without any abrasion.  I paid it no mind until it started hurting a few days later.  It started gradually swelling and developed a large bump with a black dot in the middle.

By Sunday I almost went to the Emergency Room, but told myself I could hold off until Monday morning for my regular doctor. Thoughts of gangrene and staph and blood infections and amputations went through my mind.  I elevated my leg and also decided to dress the area where the black dot was prominent.

What was that black dot?  My knee hadn't bled.  Was my body trying to push out a foreign invader?  Was it something left in my body from the hip replacement surgery 16 months ago?  But it was my right knee giving me the problem.  My left hip was the one replaced.

As I lay in bed Sunday I told myself to stop thinking about amputation; that was silly.  But maybe it wasn't.  Keith, a friend of ours, died from kidney failure within a few weeks after he got a cut on his leg.  Keith was in pretty good shape.

I calmed myself and told myself I'd call the doctor first thing Monday morning.  I'd started taking extra Vitamin C and I took a couple doses of homeopathic silica in case my body was trying to push out a foreign object.  I'd read and seen silica help in those circumstances.

By Sunday evening there was a boil on my knee, where the black dot had been.  Later that night I felt like my skin holding my knee was being stretched and at some point it would tear from the tension.  Like a suitcase that is packed to full and the corners rip.

Was this somehow associated with my period and hormones?  The knee stuff started at the beginning of my menstrual cycle and over five days had gotten worse.

Perhaps I've been smitten with a blight because I've posted some supportive links for gays on Facebook and Twitter.  I tossed that thought right away.

I silently spoke in tongues, an automatic reflex when danger is near, left over from Way indoctrination. I then thought, Father, please don't let my body succumb to another chronic condition. I caught myself.  Why am I praying; I don't even know if there is a heavenly Father?

Was it a healing response to something in my body?

I used to break out regularly with hives that would blister. Sometimes the itchy blisters still erupt on my toes or fingers.  They are like tiny pinheads in a patch that itch for 30 minutes, calm, and disappear.

In the wee morning hours of Monday, sometime between 3:30 AM when I visibly checked my knee, and 8:00 AM, when I checked it again, the boil had burst and begun to seep.  The doctor's office had an opening at 11:15 with the Physicians Assistant.

I sat on the doctor's table in my panties and shirt with one of the paper drapes across my legs while I waited for the PA and carefully took the dressing off my knee.  Gross.  I felt like I had leprosy.  What was happening?  I felt like I had some sort of skin-eating disease.

The PA entered and took a look at my inflamed seeping knee.  She was concerned. She took a culture and had me get x-rays to make sure the bacteria, whatever it was, hadn't gotten into my knee joint. She gave me a prescription for some sulfa drugs, SMZ/TMP DS.

The culture was positive for staph. MRSA.  My stomach turned; my heart sank. Why couldn't it have just been a spider bite?

What had I done to contract MRSA?  How could I be so stupid as to not have looked something up on the web?  I was embarrassed and felt tainted.

Tainted.

I used to feel that way when I'd be so sick with asthma and my body would make enough mucous to produce a whole family of ectoplasmic entities, and I'd wheeze and I'd break out in hives and I wouldn't respond to treatments. I would feel at fault and would get angry with my body; I had hated my body.  I had felt grotesque, a blight, a sorry excuse for a believer, a sorry excuse for a mother, a sorry excuse for a human, a problem that needed to be fixed.  Why couldn't I believe to be healed or at least believe to breathe freely?  Better yet, why couldn't Jesus come back and give me my new body that was promised in the scriptures, the same scriptures that promised me healing....if I'd only believe.

Shame; deep, deep shame had coursed through my veins. I can't go back there.  I shan't go back.

How did I ever get MRSA?  I haven't been to any social clubs and no one in my family has it?  Does this mean I have to watch out and be extra careful to not get cut?  Was my immune system that whacked out that I'd just spontaneously erupt with MRSA?

So what does MRSA have to do with the world being flat? Of me feeling like there is no cohesion?

I want to backpack part of the Applachain Trail this summer with my son.  It isn't flat.

I shall hike.

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Click here to read an introduction to memoir: Journey through Memoir: Introduction

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