It began as an itch on my arm late one day at the office. No big deal, just a slight tickle on the old epidermis that causes the hand to move to the spot where your fingernail brings instant relief. It actually feels kind of nice when you, “Scratch that thing and make it feel good.”
So I scratched and it was gone. Then it was back. Still nothing seemed out of the ordinary as I went through the non-thinking motions again. More relief.
But then my face began to itch and I rubbed my eyes, then my arms again, and my back and hands and, well, pretty much everything.
At last, the little guy in my brain said, “Don’t you think you’re scratching a lot here?”
So I walked down the hall to the bathroom, scratching the back of my leg as I went, which I must have been doing for awhile because I had broken the skin.
The face in the mirror startled me. Small red bumps had appeared over my left eye and on my cheek. That’s when I checked the back of my leg and saw the blood.
No real panic yet, but I did wonder if it had anything to do with the Butterfinger Blast Susie had brought me back from Sonic.
It was now around four o’clock so I decided to head home and do my scratching in private. My phone rang as I drove down I-630. It was PB (Publisher Boss). I told him what was happening with me and he suggested I drive over to my doctor’s office, which I did. I had called my wife Kathy, and she wanted to meet me there.
When I arrived, it was 4:17 and the doors were locked. If anything, the itching and swelling were getting worse, so I called Kathy and told her to meet me at the Doctor’s Hospital ER. But when I got there, I found they had moved to St. Vincent’s ER on the other side of University. I called Kathy back to tell her and then scratched my way back to my car.
St. Vincent’s ER was packed. “Was this an outbreak?” I wondered to myself. Anthrax in Little Rock distributed through Butterfinger Blasts! How diabolical.
The woman at the ER desk indicated without saying it that I was to write my name on a piece of paper and find a seat in the brightly lit room filled with depressed looking souls and sounds of late afternoon television.
The other afflicted looked up at me as I walked past, and why not? I was changing, and not in a good, Batman type of way; more like The Joker.
Kathy came in, took one look around, and said, “We’re not staying here.” I didn’t argue. She had already talked to my doctor at his home, and he said to give me three Benadryl and go to the ER. We got the drug and headed west to Baptist.
Baptist was a different world. The friendly and attentive nurses put me on what they called the “fast track,” and in 15 minutes, Kathy and I were in a room and seeing a doctor.
He looked me over, and I told him that I was scheduled for a root canal the next week and had been taking antibiotics for about 10 days, specifically Amoxicillin, which is penicillin. I told him I had taken it all my life with no problems. He didn’t think that was the cause and was leaning toward something viral.
They watched me awhile, and the Benadryl had kicked in, so I was feeling better and they let me go. He wrote me some prescriptions, one for an Epipen, in case my throat began to close up. He said you jab it into your thigh and “walk back to the ER if you have to.”
“Couldn’t I just have some pain pills instead?” I asked.
Back at my house, I lay on my couch, with fears of a swelling throat. About 9:45, I looked in a mirror and my eyes were more swollen, as were my lips. I looked like Jake LaMotta, “The Itching Bull.” My arms and backs of my legs were covered in hives. I could breathe though, which was nice.
Kathy took me back to Baptist and their “fast track.” The same doctor was still on duty, and he seemed a bit embarrassed, saying he was changing his earlier call. The penicillin was causing this.
They gave me a steroid shot and an antihistamine shot. The doctor moved to the area next to me with another patient. We were separated by a thin curtain and I was reminded of the Seinfeld “Spongebath” episode.
The doctor was telling the man it was time for another pain shot. “Some people have all the luck,” I thought.