the "un-wealth" of health

So, apparently I am pretty dumb. I ended up getting a pretty considerable infection from injecting testosterone earlier this week. I am feeling somewhat sick right now. Minor flu like symptoms, that could be from a million other things. But I just feel dumb. I got through over a year of injections, a surgery, a spinal tap during my youth, on and on, and I got an infection from being sloppy.

(The short of it is~I was running low on T, and when I filled the syringe full of the little t I had left, I moved the syringe in a way that accidentally brushed the side of the needle against the back of my hand. Knowing this could be dangerous, yet not having enough t to just dump the entire syringe, I swiped the compromised needle with an alcohol swab in hopes that it could sterilize the surface. Um, a-no...)

I think the reason that I am beating myself up (well, beyond the obvious reasons of risking my own health in these foolish ways) is that my uncle was a heroin addict. My dad's younger brother was (yes, "was" ~ insert foreshadowing here _____) one of the earliest cases of HIV/AIDS that we personally knew. We didn't find out that he was infected until his health bottomed out. He caught tuberculosis.

It scares the shit out of me that he died from either using dirty needles, or from sex. Needles and sex~two things that have been elements of my life. (wow~my life just seemed more exotic for a split second.) Scary to think that my life has been affected by a bad decision I made in the matter of seconds.

Supposedly~I "should" be fine after ten days of these antibiotics. (Coincidentally, my dog decided to tear open a tiny corner of his dog bed on Wednesday evening--one day after the infectious needle prick--and got down feathers all over my bedroom while I was out for the evening. Despite having vacuumed up all of the feathers that filled my entire bedroom--akin to the Brady Bunch episode of overfilling the washing machine with detergent--my allergies are on overdrive. My eyes are practically sealed shut, which I am hoping is the reaction to the feather residue and not the freaky rare staph strain migrating through out my body.) Awe-some.

At the clinic where I had my examination, the Doctor drew a circle around the red, blotchy, raised area (now the size of my hand~it has grown exponentially every 24 hrs). She explained that she didn't think it was the rare, nearly impossible to kill staph infection that has been working is way around town. The Doctor said that the kind of meds to treat the rare staph strain won't work on the general infections, and vice versa. So she gave me the general antibiotic, for the general infection, and cross yer fingers~hope it works. "If the swelling goes down you will be fine. If the swelling increases beyond the draw circle go to the ER immediately." Su-weet!

(While I was writing this "Jackass: Number Two" came on. Amazing that I somehow got more hurt than these dumbasses who get trampled by bulls, bitten by venomous snakes, flipped off of rocket powered mini-vehicles, and flattened by plus sized naked women. Just my luck.)

All of this to say, that other than bad allergies to the room in which I sleep, and the infection I caused myself~I have been doing well. Cheeky even. I had been getting outside a lot more, and playing the fleeting snow storms, getting some exercise, catching drinks with good friends every night. It has broken up the monotony of my daily routines.

Maybe I will miss the little red flap jack sized swollen circle above my right knee. This has been the best week in a while, and perhaps it is all because of this little addition to my life. Sigh~