Halloween 2006

So my last entry was all about my various medical, physical, and bodily predicaments since turning 40. I don’t know if this one has anything to do with turning 40 as well, but it was no less mortifying and painful.

It started just as my nightshades episode was drawing to a close. (And for those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, I have no shame. I tell all secrets: well, my secrets. Yours are safe with me. I have lived a life so very rich in bizarre-ness and oddities, and I feel it is my duty to share it with others. Why should I be the only one scratching my head and saying, “Do these things really happen in real life?”) Therefore, I tell the story, just like it is.

While shaving my legs (yes, hubby, I do shave them once in a while) one day around October of 2006, I noticed a little bump, high up on my leg and kind of on the inside of my thigh. Looked like a pimple. Maybe a hair bump. Huh. Let’s shave over it and see what happens.

Fast forward a few days. My leg is now red and hurting and I’m thinking that that hair bump must have been sprouting out one wicked weave! It hurt! Actually, it turned out not to be a hair bump, or, if it was, it got infected. Yuck....but nothing earthshattering.

A few more days go by, and it heals with the help of some ointment. Then, I notice that my right leg is burning. Now, ya’ll know me and hot flashes....we don’t get along. But this was different than a hot flash...for one thing, it was not above the waist, which is where most of my hot flashes occur. This one was sort of in my groin area, way up high on the inside and the top of my right leg, and I thought, well, maybe this was a new variety of hot flash I was having.

Another day goes by and it starts itching. Now, to completely tell the story, you need to know that I was just coming off my “time of the month” and I was wearing panty liners. I did a little investigating and thought to myself that by gum, I must have been wearing these dern panty liners upside down in my panties...you know, with the adhesive side sticking up! Coz I sure was burning and itching down there, high up on the inside of my right thigh! Right at where the elastic in the panty leg opening touches the leg, where the leg becomes the groin, it was burning red and hot to the touch. What on earth do they put in the adhesive on those panty liners anyway, SuperGlue?

I mentioned it to my mom, and she thought I had hives. So I started taking Clortrimeton for hives. A few hours go by and I knew it wasn’t hives....I didn’t know what it was, but I was now in PAIN! EXCRUCIATING PAIN! I went to my doctor that same day and he advised me I had a staph infection. Now, a staph infection was what killed my step-daughter in 2004, and that freaked me OUT! STAPH! Oh, dear Lord, I survived hot flashes, allergies, weight gain and Lupus (well, not really, but I am a certified hypochondriac) only to die right here of a staph infection on my pantyline! My poor husband, he loses a daughter and now a wife to a staph infection! The horror! The agony! The misery!

The doctor, who should have slapped me across my face, but instead just gave me a cold cloth and told me to calm down, took immediate action and lanced that bad boy right then and there! Oh, the relief, the release, right there....I felt better immediately.

The doctor drained that nasty thing and sent me home with ointments, antibiotics, gauze bandages to cover my upper-thigh-panty-line-staph-infection, and instructions for my husband to use those long handled Q-tips to dig around in the wound and get out all “that junk” (his words exactly) every night. And come back in 10 days.

So, I ended up walking around for 10 days like I had a corn cob up my butt. And the questions: Oh, dear Lord, the questions I endured, at church, at the office, at the grocery store, anywhere out in public: “oh, dear, do you have a sprained ankle?” Or, “did you hurt your back?” Um, yes, sure, that’s it! Well, folks, I wasn't about to describe to co-workers, fellow worshipers or strangers what was REALLY wrong with me. Just you, Internet! You get to hear everything!

Well, I go back 10 days later...and I’m all better. Now, if I were anyone but MYSELF, the story would have ended here, because isn’t the story thus far full of enough embarrassment and misery? Yes, it is. Alas, however, I am not lucky enough to simply have one horrific upper-thigh-panty-line-staph-infection and be done with it.

Oh, no...not me. I got another one...but this time: straight on my ASS! Yes, right smack-dab in the middle of my right butt cheek! A boil, if you will. A boil on my ass. Is there no worse humiliation?

My doctor was out of town for a few days, and our annual Halloween party was just a couple of days away. So I went to one of those “doc-in-a-box” urgent care centers. I had a fever and excruciating pain and a boil on my ass. So, another display of fine craftsmanship was worked out on my posterior, and the damn boil went so deep, they HAD TO PUT A STINT IN MY ASS CHEEK to drain all the infection out. Again, I was sent home with ointments, antibiotics, gauze bandages to cover my ASS-CHEEK-staph-infection, and instructions for my husband to use those long handled Q-tips to dig around in the wound some more, because he had so much fun the first time around.

So, it’s the day of the Halloween party. I’m still a bit feverish and I am extremely tired, because I CAN’T SIT DOWN, AT ALL, PROBABLY EVER AGAIN, due to the drain stint in my ass cheek. I can lay down, on my stomach, but it turned out to be a little difficult to get ready for a Halloween party for 20 guests while laying down on my stomach. So I had been walking around, upright, for about 10 hours straight.

One of our first guests was my stepdaughter and grandson. Now, I love the boy, I really do, and I can’t fault him for this. But I wanted to throw him out the window at the time it happened. That stint was still in my ass cheek, you see, and the whole area (meaning, my ass) hurt. Little Jared did not know all this, I mean, who wants to hear a story about your grandma’s ass? So he didn’t know. But, he was 5 years old at the time, and what to 5 year old little boys like to do? Run and push and shove. So he can up to me, while I was STANDING at the kitchen sink, and in order to get my attention to ask me a question, he used both hands, TO GENTLY SHOVE ME IN MY BUTT!

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!

The pain! I let out a scream that could raise the dead! I thought I was the dead....or at least the dying! I cried for about an hour, all while my husband had to delicately explain to our grandson that you can’t beat grandma on her butt because she has a tube sticking out if it. The poor kid is probably going to need therapy for the rest of his life.

So a few hours go by, the party gets underway, and a few shots of my high octane jello shots with brandy and rum and vodka help to ease my pain. However, one guest showed up (a friend of a friend) with her little girl in tow. The little girl was precious: about 4 years old, and with cerebral palsy. She had braces on her legs to help her walk, and her walk was very wobbly. So it was with great caution that she toddled with the other little kids all over our house that night.

Later into the evening, some of the bigger kids were getting a little rowdy with some of the littler kids and I went in to calm things down. I’m so used to being Mommy-On-The-Go and hustling and bustling everywhere, that when I barreled into the room to see what the fuss was about, I almost ran straight into that little girl. Now certainly, I don’t want to bowl over any small child, much less a small child with braces on her legs. And there were about 4 other small kids underfoot at that precise moment. So? You guessed it. I braked myself very quickly from running into all these kids, especially the little girl with braces on her legs, and with all these little ones right underfoot, I stumbled and toppled myself right over: landing straight down on my ass!

Well, that was it. Party over. It had been a good one, but it was time to wrap up the night. The party itself had actually been fantastic, until the very end there. Pete, Alex and I had been a pirate family; Adrian came as a devil woman, with THE highest-heeled pair of shoes I have ever seen in my life; Jessica came as Betty Rubble from the Flintstones; Jared came as a Ghostbuster; Mason was a kickboxer; Kiley was a ballerina; Ro and Deb were cool ghouls; Gloria was a witch; Sandy was a prisoner; Joe was Jason from Friday the 13th; and my dad, as always, wore his “This IS my Halloween Costume” T-shirt that he wears every year. The highlight of the party was the treasure hunt we had prepared for the kids. Pete built a box and we filled it with fake jewelry, bubble toys, candy, gold coins, you name it. We buried it and then drew up a treasure hunt trivia map and boy, the fun the little kids had in deciphering the clues and finding the buried treasure! Even the bigger kids got in on the action! What a great night! Another Halloween success!

I do love our annual Halloween parties, they are always so much fun and everyone always has a great time. Gloria, Darrell and Sandy spent the night in their motor home, parked out in our driveway. I think it helped moved the party along a lot that I was constantly on the move, helping people, taking care of my guests, but I was tiring out. Those who were not in the know about my little problem kept telling me to take and break and sit down, or “come join me and let’s talk and catch up”, but I couldn’t. Literally, I couldn’t sit down. And I just couldn’t bring myself to tell everyone WHY.

Until I fell....then all bets were off. I started crying, again....most people probably thought unreasonably so. But a couple of my girlfriends, and of course, my hubby, knew what the problem was, and they herded everyone out of the house, and then everyone pitched in to clean up while I was sent to my room! HA, that hasn’t happened in a few years! But it was nice to not have to face a dirty, partied-out house the next day... and I am thankful to my friends for helping out.

So Halloween of 2006 drew to a close. The stint in my rear finally came out after 3 days, and while I my behind was sore for a few weeks afterwards, it eventually healed without needing any further visits to the doctor. I have not had a staph infection EVER in my life, either before then or since then, so don’t ask me why I happened to get those two, those awful two like that. I’m just chalking it up to another family Halloween mystery! Trick or treat!