Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Gladys Has Coxiellosis of the Blowhole

I’ll admit it; I’m a little bit neurotic with a touch of paranoia added to a scosh of hypochondria. Now I know that is hard for those who know me to believe but it’s true. I like to think of it as having symptom empathy for my fellow medically challenged humans, oh and animals too.


You see I have always been a little, as my Granddad would say, puny. In my defense, when my fellow 1st graders filed out into the play yard I was the runt. They were all robust healthy 6 year olds and I was half their size, pale, skinny, buck teethed and big eared. It continued to be that way my whole school years. Why even my first day of junior high school gym class Coach Perris thought I was lost and thought I was some elementary school kid dropped off at the wrong school.

Just the fact that I was small and thin made other’s think that I was unhealthy. I would hear things like “oh, my! Are you alright? Can I get you some water, a doctor or perhaps a pint of 0 negative?” I of course would begin to believe that I was dying of some mysterious illness. It didn’t help that I was highly impressionable and imaginative also my mother was a nurse and I had access to medical journals. A typical morning before school would go something like this:

Momma, I’m sick and can’t go to school today.

Really Gladys? What is wrong now?

Well, I have green snot coming out of my nose and my head hurts. Oh and I have a tingling on my tongue.

Oh really? Well maybe you just need to blow your nose and get dressed.

Oh NO! I think I have coxiellosis of the blowhole and that is terribly contagious.

You have what? You don’t have a blowhole. That is a disease a whale would get. Whales have blowholes.

Well, I did read Moby Dick last week.

I would have multiple days of multiple symptoms of deadly diseases to which Nurse Meme would always answer “pull up your big girl panties and go school.”

I tell you all of this to tell you I am convinced I have a brain eating amoeba. I know this because I use a netti pot. I use a netti pot and I have been using tap water.


I know this because I use a netti pot with tap water and I read this article yesterday, Amoeba Netti Pots Prove Deadly. See now you are wondering if you have a brain eating amoeba too aren’t you?