Sometimes… fun hurts.

As you know, Gorm and I (and sometimes others) get together for music day every now and then. What you might not know is that music day has become an integral part of my life; something I look forward to. It has come to be so that I depend on it. Unfortunately, this day can only be organized and executed on so much of a regular basis. Often enough, but at the same time the length between sessions leaves me longing for more and my fingers callous-less.

As a result, I’ve been known to be… somewhat reckless in my music day commitments.

About a year ago, I was battling a bit of a cold and music day was fast approaching. I was convinced the worst that could happen was that I wouldn’t get the rest I needed that night and I might be over-tired the next day.

I hadn’t had strep throat in about 18 years, so I dismissed my assumption almost as fast as I made it. The next day, I could no longer deny that I needed medical attention.

I went to the walk-in clinic on my way home from work. The doctor asked what was wrong; I said that I was pretty sure I had strep throat. All doctors seems to react the same way when you self-diagnose yourself. They tell you why it probably isn’t what you think it is. This doctor was no exception.

And then she looked in my mouth. She said she’d normally take a swab before prescribing antibiotics, but…

I left the office a little smug, having known what the problem was, but also a little scared because I really didn’t want scarlet fever. Again.

You’d think I would have learned from this experience. But like I said, I behave a little recklessly when music day approaches and I’m not feeling well.

I’d been fighting a cold and Friday night I noticed my voice was cracking. In an attempt to practice before music day, I tried playing, but found that I couldn’t sing very well (mostly that I couldn’t project my voice. At. All.). But I was convinced that the show must go on.

The following day, I woke up feeling pretty good. I went to music day and when I started singing, I found again that I couldn’t project my voice. But I soldiered on.

By the end of the session, I was croaking like a frog and sounded reminiscent of the pimply kid on The Simpsons.

Thanks Gorm.

I completely lost my voice for two days. I went to work on Monday and quickly realized just how much I talk at work on a day to day basis. I was told just how fucked up my voice sounded. I received pats on the back in sympathy when I squeaked out a response to their question. I may or may not have had laryngitis.

Despite the pain, ridicule and pity I received:

Never interrupt me in the middle of a Star Wars musical!!!!!!!

Alright folks - it's 2% time! If you don't know what I'm talking about, go here or here.

A couple of years ago, a couple of weeks before Christmas, I got really sick with the worst flu ever. Once I recovered and started eating and drinking again, there were some... symptoms.

My pee was funny; it smelled weird and looked weird. I attributed it to the fact that I hadn't peed in four days because I was so damn dehydrated. I figured if I flushed my system, it would go away; a couple of days of drinking water and it did.

A couple of weeks later, I went over to my aunt's house for Christmas dinner. It was a particularly snowy year; K picked me up in her AWD vehicle, so I didn't have to drive my car. We also dug my car out because it was buried deep.

After dinner, we went for a walk in a park through the snow. I started getting this strong abdominal pain; the pleasant walk became a death march for me.

I slept over at K's house; the pain persisted through the night, but when I woke up, it was gone. That night for dinner, we had... you guessed it, leftovers. Yum!

Shortly after dinner, I developed the same abdominal pain.

I was certain it was indigestion; we attributed it to the stuffing: Uncle Barrence uses roughly 20x more poultry seasoning than most people. I was convinced I was simply experiencing a sage overdose.

Again, the following morning I woke up and the abdominal pain was gone. I went home; that night, I noticed the same change in urine. I thought I might have a bladder infection and I would see a doctor the following day.

I next morning, I woke up sick. Really sick. Really, really sick. I felt terrible. I had a lot of pain and needed a doctor fast. I went out to my car and it wouldn't start. This car has always started for me; I was crushed.

I called a taxi and one didn't show up for 45 minutes and then when he did show up he went in the opposite direction of where I told him to go. Fortunately, there was walk in doctor in that direction. Unfortunately, that walk in doctor was closed.

I walked to the Safeway so I could use one of those free taxi phones because I didn't know the phone number by heart. An hour and a half after calling first the taxi, I finally got to a doctor.

The receptionist asked me why I was there. I told her I thought I had a bladder infection. Here, pee in this cup. I did and then I waited for the doctor. He came in and told me that my urinalysis came back negative and asked why I thought I had a bladder infection. I told him about the pain, the changes in urine and said I felt terrible. What kind of terrible? I'm nauseous, I'm lethargic and my back hurts. Your back hurts? Yes. Where? I showed him.

He started hitting me in the back: Does this hurt? YES! He started looking at the chart again. I looked at him questioningly. He said he just wanted to review the urinalysis again. But, no, there were no signs of infection. I was sitting there feeling miserable, wondering why he was wasting my time going over test results that he already said were negative. Either they're negative or they're not - get on with it!

Doctor: This is odd. You have no sign of a bladder, or urinary tract infection, but I think you have a kidney infection. It makes no sense; in order to get a kidney infection you have to have a UTI and you have to let it go untreated for weeks before it'll move up to your kidneys.

Me: Maybe... I got the bladder infection weeks ago... after I got sick... and it moved up and now it's in my kidneys???

Doctor: The infection would still be in your bladder, it would be throughout your entire urinary tract. Your urinalysis would be positive, really positive; the infection should be rampant. *shakes his head* Bizarre.... Almost no one gets a kidney infection without having a UTI first.

Almost no one? Like maybe 2% of the population? Sounds about right.

I'm a medical marvel.

Big thanks to my special guest animators: JArt and JCart for providing the illustrations.

I decided not to hit you because you cowered as soon as I came over.

I thought I might roll with this 2% business because it occurred to me that some people might think the scarlet fever incident was an isolated event and I was just being overly dramatic.

Immediately following scarlet fever, I developed a 'secondary rash' after the antibiotics went in and blasted the strep out of my body. This rash was localized to three parts of my body: my hands, my feet and the inside of my thighs. It was quite painful.

The hand rash was absolutely disgusting. In the end, all the skin on my palms dried up and peeled off. The peeling exposed new skin. Skin that was not ready to see the light of day or to touch things. It was raw and it was angry.

Because of this secondary rash and because I never had strep throat, the doctor decided to send me to an internal medicine specialist, who deemed me healthy. Of course. The rash persisted on the inside of my thighs, so I was sent to a dermatologist, who prescribed me the most kick ass cream ever.

The rash disappeared, finally. The scarlet fever, secondary rash, peeling hands fiasco lasted about two months. I was miserable. But, finally, it was over. Until one day, several months later, I woke up on my friend's couch with swollen hands.

OH NO - I have scarlet fever again! I waited for the full body rash to develop. Fortunately, it didn't. Unfortunately, I developed the same secondary rash as the last time.

I happened to have an appointment booked with my family doctor. By the time I got there, I was at the stage right before peeling. He started asking me all kinds of questions, mostly pertaining to my work in the lab. Are you testing anything different? No. Have you switched departments? No. Have you been working with any different chemicals? No. Do you work with, or test for, heavy metals? No. He tells me that my symptoms are indicative of high level arsenic exposure. OH NO - someone has been poisoning me!

Have you started eating any new foods? No. Have you changed your diet in any way? No. Have you ingested anything at all recently that you don't normally eat?

Well, I did take pepto bismol last week. What? I... I... I took some pepto last week. You took pepto bismol? Yes. Do you normally take it? No. Well, I guess bismuth is a heavy metal... so maybe it could produce the same symptoms of arsenic exposure. I'm sorry... what?!?! Are you telling me that I exhibit symptoms of heavy metal poisoning when I ingest pepto bismol? It appears that way, yes.

Are you fucking kidding me? He wasn't.

Any guess as to the number of people that have the same reaction? Roughly 2%, perhaps? Sounds about right.

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations.

Quick - randomly say something random!

I am the 2%. What's the 2%, you ask? 2% represents the fraction of the general population that have unbelievable things happen to them, things that do not happen to the other 98%. Sounds okay, right? Riiiggghhht.

The 2% has two sides, two extremes. One extreme is: unbelievably awesome things happen to me! Things like winning the lottery or never having a sunburn. The other extreme is: I can't believe this happened... why me... wwhhhyyyy!?!

I have yet to win the lottery and I get a sunburn every summer. I'm the 2% that gets the shaft. Oh come on, I must be exaggerating... just being dramatic, right? Wrong.

One Sunday morning, I woke up on my friend's couch with a headache. We'd polished off more than our fair share of booze the night before so I wasn't so surprised that I was under the weather. What I did find odd was my hands. They felt.... weird.

Upon first inspection they appeared to be slightly red and felt almost numb. I was sure I slept funny and it would just take some time for the feeling to come back into my hands. I was right. But what I didn't anticipate was that the feeling that came back ended up making my hands feel worse. That and they were swollen. And I mean, sausage fingers kind of swollen. I convinced myself that it was normal and there was nothing to worry about. Denial can be a powerful force.

A little while later, I noticed my pants were chaffing me. They really seemed to be digging into my stomach and it hurt. A lot. And they had an elastic waistband. That's not quite right, so I inspected my stomach and it was also red. Nothing to worry about here. All is well.

A while later, after changing into some larger pants and they too became uncomfortable, I suspected something else might be happening. I, again, inspected my stomach.

Small raised bumps had appeared. The tell-tale signs of an eminent rash. I was convinced I was having an allergic reaction so I popped a couple anti-histamines and hoped for the best.

The following day I woke up, with swollen hands, a rashy belly and sore feet. But that's what Monday's feel like, so I went to work. After spending the day at work, I came to the conclusion that I might have more problems that I originally thought.

I still wasn't feeling well and I certainly wasn't hung over. I decided to go to the doctor.

I went to a walk in clinic, feeling a bit like a tool. I can't believe I'm here just because I have a rash and I can't make a fist because my fingers are so swollen and why do my feet hurt?... The doctor came in and asked why I was there. I think I'm having an allergic reaction. Why? Well, because I have this rash and look at my hands! He looked me over and asked some general questions: how are you feeling? have you been sick? how long ago did you have this cold? did you have a sore throat? how do your feet feel? They hurt, in fact.

He took some notes, my temperature and then looked at me and said: "I don't think you're having an allergic reaction. I think you have scarlet fever. Do you know what that is? I've heard of it... I think he realized that I had absolutely no idea what it meant because he explained it to me.

Scarlet fever is caused by the streptococcus bacteria (the one that causes strep throat). Now, certain strains of this bacteria secrete a certain toxin and certain people are sensitive to this toxin and it results in a full body rash. This occurs in roughly 2% of the population. Of people under the age of 12.

Seriously. I had a childhood disease at age 27. Fuck you, 2%.

He wrote me up a blood work order, took a swab of my throat and told me to come back in two days. Scarlet fever, left untreated, can cause kidney failure, so he was pretty concerned about it. He had also never seen anybody that picks out their own clothes get scarlet fever before. I went back in two days and he looked me over again and decided that he wanted to send me for more blood work. He wanted to test me for everything that could possibly cause a full body rash (sounds reasonable), illnesses such as mono (okay, that's not too bad) and syphilis (what!?!?).

Oh, don't worry, he said, I don't think you actually have syphilis, I just want to be sure. Okay... sure... no problem... I'm clean...

I went and had the blood work done and went back to the doctor in two days time to get the results. I had to go in the middle of the day, so I had to leave work and go back after my appointment. At first, I didn't really consider syphilis as an actual cause of my problems. But then the doctor walked out, went up to the receptionist and said "I need an infectious disease agent on the phone now." Infectious disease agent? Syphilis is probably an 'infectious disease'. Oh dear God, I have syphilis. How long have I had it? Can it be treated? Where did I get it from? Who gave it to me? Who have I given it to? Am I going to die?

By the time they called my name to see the doctor I was pretty much sweating bullets and had convinced myself that I was a dirty whore. I went into the examination room and waited. And waited. Oh no, he's probably waiting to talk to the agent before he comes in here. He finally came in and said: I got your test results. Uh-huh. And it came back negative for mono. Uh-huh... And negative for everything else, but we don't have the results for the strep tests yet. So, no syphilis? No, no syphilis, come back in three days for your strep results.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. No syphilis, I'm not a dirty whore. No awkward telephone conversations for me - success! So I went back to work feeling pretty good about myself and I told the story to one of my work friends. I was kinda ashamed that I had to have the test done in the first place, so I was trying to keep it on the down-low. But when I got to the point where I said he tested me for syphilis, my not-so-subtle friend yelled out "YOU HAVE SYPHILLIS?!!?!?"

Everyone turned and looked. I was mortified. NO! NO SYPHILLIS!! It came back negative. But that doesn't make it any better, does it?

So I went back to the doctor and got my results. I never had strep throat - my throat culture came back negative. My blood work, however, was positive. The doctor was slightly baffled... how can you have it in your blood if you don't have it in your throat? Almost no one gets strep in their blood without strep throat.... Almost no one? Like 2% of the population? Sounds about right.

Big thanks to EliseArt for providing the illustrations and being so damn excited about drawing the pictures that I had to write the post.