I’ve stated, on a number of occasions, that posting gratuitous medical details on the internet is, in my book, about as bad as kicking puppies or dropping babies.  That being said, this post is about a rash, a sinus infection, and the possibility that the medication I’m on will make me fat and psychotic.  Read on, if you dare.

Thursday, June 25
Five minutes after getting on the Turnpike on the way to work, traffic came to a halt.  As I found out 35 minutes later, this was because a flatbed truck exploded — no, seriously, it blew the fuck up, shrapnel and everything — and was a hot fiery mess up in two and a half lanes of traffic.  This should have been the first sign that I should have called out of work and gone home.  Nevertheless, my neurotic tendency to leave the house a full 45 minutes earlier than is strictly necessary to get to work had me arriving at Apple right on time.

Five hours later, what had started as a sore throat turned into a sore throat with sore muscles in my neck and shoulders, and a complete distaste for whiny customers.  This happened to be on a day when a half-dozen people from Apple corporate were in the store (for the “graduation” of our high school interns), all of whom gave me looks that clearly read, “Who are you? What are you doing here? And who made the mistake of hiring someone so sullen-looking to work in customer service?”  I asked to leave early for the day.

Friday, June 26
Ordinarily, I like to spend my days off sleeping until noon.  Yesterday, though, I woke up at 7:00 in the morning to go to a physical so a doctor would fill out my two-weeks-overdue paperwork for my study abroad program at Oxford.  My sore throat had gone away and was replaced overnight with a sinus infection.  My doctor (or rather, the nurse-practitioner who administered my sham of a physical) didn’t seem particularly fazed about any of that, and showed about as much medical expertise in filling out my Oxford paperwork as a chihuahua would have.

Later in the day, I noticed that my thumb had started to swell.  Turning to my usual source for advice, I called my sister (interrupting her last day of thesis-writing), who told me, in somewhat nicer terms, that I should take a Benadryl and quit complaining.

Three hours, a Zyrtec-D, and some sushi later, I had a rash all the fuck over my face and hands.

Saturday, June 27
When I went to sleep Friday night, I harbored the vain hope that my rash would restrict itself to only ruining my day off.  Needless to say, that wasn’t the case.  My rash now covered: my hands, wrists, arms, feet, ears, face, back, and hips.  Not wanting to needlessly scare Apple customers, I called in sick at work and was taken back to the very same doctor’s office that had signed off on my good health just one day before.  The conversation with the doctor went something like this:

Me: I have a rash!
The doctor: Did you eat something weird?
Me: No.
The doctor: Did you touch anything weird?
Me: No.
The doctor: Hm. Well, it seems you have a rash. Have some steroids.

When I finally woke up from a four hour nap looking more leper-esque than ever, I went to CVS to pick up my prescription.  Unfortunately, the hot mess in the maroon Ford Taurus in front of me had other plans.  By hot mess, what I really mean is: the type of person who tries to pay for prescriptions with pennies that she scrounges together out of her cup holders while amassing a line of seven other cars behind her in the CVS drive-thru.  (I was actually told by the pharmacist that she paid with pennies, just so you know I’m not making it up.)  Three credit cards, a handful of crumpled cash, some coins that I actually saw her throw at the window, and a full twenty minutes later, I’m convinced that CVS sent her on her way just so they could avoid a riot on the part of everyone else waiting in line.

My steroids — or, more specifically, methylprednisolone — are supposed to work wonders for a variety of ailments, including but not limited to weird fucking rashes.  According to the internet, they also can cause water retention, a reshaping or movement of fat deposits in my face, legs, arms, and stomach, problems focusing (mentally), bipolarity, extreme anger, sweating, immune issues (which is a fantastic thing to have when you’re already dealing with a sinus infection), and a whole litany of skin problems, including bruising, fragile skin, acne, and — oh! — a rash.

But you know, whatever the side effects, this shit worked.  I took six pills at once (as directed by my doctor and the packaging), and like four hours later, my rash was almost totally gone.  While the palms of my hand still look like they’re about to open into stigmata, everything else has gone back to normal.  At this point, all I can do is hope that over the next few days, I don’t suddenly become fat, osteoporotic, psychotic, bruised, sweaty, or misshapen.  And that the rash doesn’t come back.