I’ve just learned a couple of lessons. Allow me to share. Roughly a week ago, while being outside on an exceptionally georgeous weekend I was bitten by, I think, a spider. Little did I know that such a small creature could inflict such pain and suffering. It’s the little things.

A couple of days later, I noticed that I had a sharp stinging pain near my elbow. In between exchanging phone calls and figuring out why this electron was not flowing the right way, I took my terribly long fingernail, I have long fingernails, and scatched at the itch thinking that this little itch was no different than any other mosquito bite, ingrown hair, or whatever else could cause the sharp pain I felt. It’s the little things.

Almost immediately a sharp pain came when pressing my elbow on the table. ‘That’s odd’, I thought, as I just continued to work. The next day, the small little pinprick of a bite had turned into a red raisin-sized bite looking up at me. ‘That’s odd too’, I thought as I watched that raisn grow into a quarter, become raised, and a pancake-sized area surround it. It’s the little things.

Thursday I went in to get looked at at promptcare. Since it was the end of the day, I managed to avoid the oxymoron of prompt care (which, in my experience, has never really prompt). To their credit the receptionist, who was dressed from head to toe in a very imposing, out of place, black scrub, was really responsive about getting me in. I was given a strong antibiotic and told to go home and ice what had become a boil. It’s the little things.

Boils are essentially the worst thing you could wish on someone. Hearing Sunday school stories growing up, I never really could visualize a boil and neither could I find too much sympathy for the Egyptians who were given boils all over their bodies. Wow, I was wrong. One boil has brought back those stories countless times this week and as I stared at the almost inch high mountain raising up from my skin I wondered what it might have been like to be an Egyptian and having countless versions of these all over your body.

Well, Saturday comes and while on a road trip the boil, well, exploded. Puss and gunk just started shooting out of this skin volcano while we were at a zoo in Springfield. Needless to say, it was a little awkward. That night I made a return visit to my black scrubbed friends at prompt care; again, it was the end of the day so prompt care was really quite prompt. I was greeted by a wonderfully surprised nurse who took one look at Mt St. Helens and was a bit taken back. We joked that I brought a small ray of light to her otherwise dull day. She was wonderfully kind and helpful as she re-dressed my arm after getting some of the evil out of it. What surprised me was that I felt proressively better as the day progressed.

If this were a play, though, today would have been the final act. I knew my fate. This morning when I woke up my suddenly quiet friend on my arm had died back down a bit, and there were just faint whisps of steam coming from it’s summit. I got tested on Saturday for MRSA and was to receive the results this afternoon. This time around there were no black scrubs, but I did get called up and the nurse while walking me back grabbed my chart. She asked me in the room ‘Do you smoke?’ ‘No.’ ‘When did you stop?’ Slightly confused and recalling the groucho marx skit where he asked ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ I laughed. She didn’t. She looked at me, the chart, and the little ‘Hi, my name is pete juvinall’ paper that I carried in with me and realized she grabbed the wrong chart. She went hurriedly out of the room. It’s the little things.

Well, my doctor came in and we got down to business. My doctor is wonderful; he’s very kind and compassionate, and watches homestar runner and reads stuff on C-Net; in essence, my kind of guy. He took one look at it and I told him he my permission to go a digging and a digging he went. In true Jack Bauer/24 style, we pulled out the bright light and the prodding began. When it was all done I had what amounted to a hole in my arm but I felt tons better; the infection had begun to dig into my skin and had made it’s way in quite deeply. The other shoe dropped when i found out I did have a methacyllin resistant staph infection. Fortunatly, it was not resistant to other antibiotics which I’m now promptly on.

Driving back, it made me appreciate the age I’m in. I can’t imagine having an infection like this 100 or 200 years ago. Suddenly, it made sense why the average lifespan was so low. It amazed me that such such a little thing like a bacteria can do so much damage and inflict so much pain, but of course, it’s always the little things that sneak up.