Down With The Sickness 2: Kingdom of the Crystal Rash
Is there a Photoshop doctor in the house?
I’ve found that throughout my education, there have always been students who are just plain prone to sickness, and who would absolutely drop off the scholastic radar for weeks at a time with one crippling illness after another. Whenever one of these illness-prone classmates would return, I’d always be disappointed that they looked about the same as they had when they’d left; no robot body, no genetic mutations, no missing limbs. As a generally anti-germ, pro-health kind of guy, I had little understanding of what these people were going through, and as politically incorrect as it was, a tiny part of me secretly regarded them as pussies. They, in the opinion of this tiny, callous, unlikeable portion of my psyche, would do well to follow my example and just not get sick. At some level, I felt like they had it easy – I would gladly have submitted to any number of flesh-eating-viruses if it meant I wouldn’t have to spend another day at Sprague High School.
Being sick in college, as I’ve mentioned before, is a different kettle of fish entirely. It’s one thing to be in Mom’s care when you start having bizarre symptoms, because ultimately she is the one who makes the call as to whether you go to the emergency room or not when you grow a third arm out of your chest. When you’re on your own, you have to make that decision and live with the consequences. Incidentally, I’d vote that you stick with the third arm, because it’d make for an awesome cup holder.
I had the privilege of being sick this past week, and coming out on the other end of it, now mostly cured, I can look back and sympathize with my sickly classmates. The whole affair started last Saturday, when I woke up at 6:00 AM with a pounding headache and a pronounced desire to throw up. My first instinct was to call the University health center, but it seems that they don’t open until 10:00 AM on Saturdays – y’know, because they figure that all 20,000 college students at UO were being really responsible the night before and were in no need of medical treatment or consultation. In lieu of an actual doctor, I did the next best thing and called the 24-hour nurse hotline that the school provides.
These nurses, I regret to inform you, are not naughty. Or, at least, the one I talked to wasn’t. For all I know, though, she could have been a naughty nurse who was going to medical school and had been studying for an important exam when she got my call, and, well, hey – excuse me while I write down my new idea for an awesome TV show.
The nurse I spoke to told me that what I had didn’t sound too serious, and so I refrained from visiting the health center. Lo and behold, not too long later my urge to puke dissipated, and I spent the rest of the day nursing an unpleasant headache. Still, though, I consider the day to be a success overall, because any day that I don’t throw up is a success in my eyes. It’s a real “Glass half full of Pepto Bismol” way of looking at things, because by this logic even my senior prom was a raging success.
On Sunday I woke up sans-headache but feeling dizzy. This was perplexing, as I’ve been pretty good at walking for the past 18 years or so. Admittedly, I’ve tripped and fell a few times when I shouldn’t have, but overall I’d still give myself a solid B+ in walking, and the sudden onset of dizziness is not something I’m used to. I would have gone to the health center to have this checked out, but as it happens the health center is closed on Sundays – but that’s cool, because it’s scientifically proven that people don’t get sick on Sunday. They’ve got God looking out for them, what do they need with modern medicine? By the end of the day, my headache had returned, and after consulting WebMD I became convinced that I was dying of meningitis, the symptoms of which include fever and dizziness.
(In addition to vomiting, severe muscle cramps, and the inability to touch your chin to your chest – I wasn’t experiencing these, but I assumed that I would be soon enough. Also, I’ve had a meningitis vaccine, but I figured that the industrious bacteria had found a way around it. I mean, germs do some crazy shit these days, after all.)
One of my childhood friends got meningitis when she was three or four. The infection spread quickly and she had to be airlifted to OHSU, where her legs were amputated to save her life. This story has always scared the living crap out of me and the hyperliving crap out of my mother, and we’ve both always been a little jumpy around the subject. Therefore, to possibly have meningitis while all alone was a really terrifying experience for me – not only was I scared of losing my legs, but I was also scared of Mom getting pissed at me for not going to a hospital sooner when I found out that I had meningitis symptoms.
The next morning I showed up at the health center ten minutes before they opened. A nurse opened the door for me.
“Have you got an appointment?” She smiled.
“No, but I think I’ve got meningitis.”
She laughed in my face – setting the tone for my experiences with the health center over the next few days – and let me in, pointing out that if I had meningitis I’d probably be dead already. I recounted my symptoms to a receptionist, who sent me in to see a nurse, who promptly diagnosed my ailment as a virus that had been going around a lot and urged me to return if things got worse.
Five hours later, walking through the 38 degree winter day to get to class, I started to sweat profusely. No good reason for it, just nonstop, inexplicable sweating. I took this as a sign that things were getting worse and went to the health center, where I sat in an examining room and sweated for 10 minutes until a nurse came in.
“So,” She said flatly, her eyes darting down to my chart. “You’re… Sweating.”
I instantly felt like an idiot for going to the health center with such an obnoxiously stupid symptom, and began to apologetically sweat through my shirt. The nurse left and a doctor returned, who seemed none too pleased to be visiting “the sweat guy.”
“So,” She said flatly, her eyes darting down to my chart. “You’re… Sweating.”
I tried as best I could to explain why I felt like this was a dire situation, and for her part she listened patiently before telling me that this was most likely an anxiety attack brought on by the fear that I had meningitis. It seems that the story of my misguided fears of meningitis had spread through the health center with all the ruthless tenacity of, well… Meningitis.
After examining me with a stethoscope, she crossed her arms and sighed, defeated. “Well,” She said. “You are pretty sweaty.”
That’s what she said.
She told me to get some more rest and sent me home to sleep.
And sleep I did, for a good three to four hours. When I woke up, I was no longer sweating and my headache was gone. However, my arms and legs itched like crazy, and when I turned on the lights I found that a giant red rash had begun to spread across my body.
(“No, Mom, I can’t come to dinner!” My reader shouts down the stairs. “I’ve got to finish reading this update! He just started talking about his rash! This is off the hook!”)
I spent the evening futilely rubbing various creams and ointments all over the afflicted areas with little to no success. For one thing, rashes were springing up faster than I could apply soothing cream, and also, the soothing cream was about as effective as rubbing a raw steak all over my rash, although not nearly as fragrant. As I made myself slipperier and slipperier with cream, I wondered if I had inadvertently joined the “Symptom of the Day Club,” After headache, nausea, sweating, and itching, I had no idea what I’d get next, although I considered pustules to be very likely.
After a poor night’s sleep – it is very hard to concentrate on sleep, or anything for that matter, when you want to rip your own skin off – I returned to the health center, sat down in front of the receptionist, rolled up my sleeve, and was finally taken seriously. I was ushered to an examining room, where a nurse oohed and aahed over the size and breadth of the rash, and shortly thereafter provided me with a shot glass full of bright pink antihistamine liquid, which made me sleepier than even my 12:00 Humanities lecture. I moved through everything else in a daze – the trip to get my blood drawn, the half hour I spent in the waiting room while they tested my very complicated, multifaceted blood, and other half hour I spent in an examining room while doctors poured over the results of my blood, which were clearly better than anyone else’s, given my blood’s inherent superiority. In the end, the doctor wrote me a prescription for over-the-counter antihistamine Zyrtec (she may as well have written me a prescription for a glass of water, too) and sent me home to sleep it all off.
I slept the sleep of antihistamine-infused kings, only waking up to a brisk “Shave and a haircut” knock on the door of my apartment. Thanks to my drug induced state, I figured that the only people who would knock so obnoxiously would be my friends, and that my friends would be willing to see me in my standard sleeping attire of boxer shorts and T-shirt. I stumbled to the door and flung it open, blinking in the early afternoon light.
Standing before me were two of the most beautiful, pristine Mormon girls you could ever want to see, clad in matching black pea-coats. Their smiles wavered slightly when they caught sight of my near-nudity, and wavered even more when, upon realizing my error, I shouted “Shit! Fuck! Jesus!” and halfway closed the door in search of my pants. I returned to the door wearing a pair of jeans, and one of them began to launch into a sales pitch for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I stopped her halfway, saying, “I’m sorry, but I think you can tell by now that I’m not really the sort of person who’ll buy what you’re selling.” They didn’t argue, and left without incident; like most women who have seen me without pants on, they were in a hurry to get away.
I look back on these experiences – itching, headaches, near vomiting, ridicule from the health center, and the very real possibility that the Mormon church has put me on a watch list of some sort – and am floored with sympathy for my ailment-prone high school classmates. After what I experienced in two days, I’d much rather go to school.
Truman Capps doesn’t have the rash anymore, ladies.