Tidbits VII

by Donna Schoenkopf

 

My Ringworm

First of all, I don’t have ringworm. I thought I did. I thought I did because Rosie the Cat had ringworm. I saw the apple green fluorescent specks on her fur after Dr. Bob, the vet, closed the blinds in the examination room and turned on his Woods Lamp, a fluorescent thingy, and she lit up like a Christmas tree. She had a bare spot on her neck and a nasty looking sore there.

I decided to buy a Woods Lamp of my own because I started getting the heebie-jeebies, thanks to the Internets, about there being ringworm spores all over my house. I also used the evil Clorox all over my house, something I had sworn NEVER to do, but the Internets said nothing else would work.

Ringworm is not a worm, as I told you last time, but maybe you forgot. It is a fungus. It’s the same thing as athletes foot and jock itch, it turns out.

But this is not the end of the story.

A couple of months after Rosie was cured by me smearing athlete’s foot cream on her neck, I came down with a weird round rash on my arm and thought, “Oh, God, I have ringworm!” and went to my doctor, who turned out to be the physician’s assistant. I told her I suspected ringworm and she looked at it and prescribed a shampoo for my arm, a pill for my innards, and a cream for my skin. The rash didn’t really go away. I took Rosie the Cat back to the vets and we saw no apple green flecks this time.

So I probably did not have ringworm.

But what the hell WAS it?

I went to my dermatologist and he took one look at my arm and pronounced that it was not ringworm. And gave me a steroid cream because, he said, I have “dermatitis,” which is another way of saying, “I don’t know what you have but this will cure it.” I am not happy about using this cream, but the rash is gone.

 

Doctors’ Opinions

I hate when doctors have different opinions. It makes me realize that they could be wrong. One of them has to be wrong or else they’d agree, right?

And I hate when they prescribe medication and it turns out to be the wrong medication. It’s kinda like, “Here, try this. It might work.”

An example:

I went to the emergency room because I had severe abdominal pain. Severe. And the ER doctor said I had a urinary tract infection. He told me to go back to my urologist, who had put in a device called a sling, to assuage the leaking of my aged bladder. The ER doctor said it was probably from the sling. (I tell you EVERYTHING in this column. I have no secrets. Or very few. And they are humdingers.) And he prescribed a very, very powerful antibiotic.

Which, of course, left me with all kinds of side effects. And we shall go into those.

I went to my urologist as the ER doctor told me to and the urologist said, “Absolutely NOT a urinary tract infection!!!” He said it was an intestinal infection and he was sick of the Shawnee hospital always diagnosing urinary tract infections as the cause of abdominal pain. (Hmmmmm. There’s a story there, but I let sleeping dogs lie.)

So I went to my gastroenterologist, who had taken out my gallstone-packed gall bladder two years ago, which STILL acts up, by the way, and he sent me through an MRI thing and said I had diverticulitis.

Oh.

 

Ticks

I have seventeen tick bites on my body today. I know they are tick bites because I have actually pulled three ticks off my body and the resulting red, raised welt that eventually produces a white pimple that oozes is exactly the same as the other fourteen welts.

Since Angela Davis the Dog now essentially lives here and Diego the Dog does, too, I have more ticks than ever in the house. I have never had so many bites before.

I treat them in the following way: a dab of triple antibiotic ointment and a dab of the leftover steroid cream from the dermatologist. It works.

I watch carefully for the bull’s eye that Lyme disease infected ticks produce. (And the Internets say that that isn’t always the case. Great. Can’t anybody agree on anything?) But at this point I cannot get an antibiotic shot every time I’m bitten as it totally disrupts my innards. We shan’t go into that. You’ve had enough.

Oddly, the cats don’t have any ticks. At least I’ve only seen one on Che the Cat. I can’t check Rosie the Cat because she has run away again. To Orval’s. But I’ve never seen one on her either.

 

Rosie the Cat

Yes. Again. She’s run away to Orval’s house. She’s been gone about a week and a half. I have been feeding her daily. She waits for me. But she does not let me near. I don’t think she even likes me any more. She’s hissed at me a couple of times and I’ve wondered if it was because she had rabies and didn’t know me. Nahhhh. She just does NOT want to go back to Dogland.

I am both pissed off at her and sad.

But I still am going to try to get her back.

Because that’s the kind of person I am.

 

The Lady at the Service Department

My beloved 2001 Prius with 143,000 miles on it, splashed exclamation points, the icon of a battery, and other scary red and yellow warnings on my dashboard screen a few days ago. When I looked them up in my Owner’s Manual, it said to NOT DRIVE it, and get immediate attention for it.

But the only Toyota service department is 50 miles away. So I drove it there.

It turns out that I SHOULD have gotten the fuel injection system cleaned last time I got my oil changed three weeks ago for $139. So now it was going to cost me $423.

Oh.

It was because I was not happy about my lack of funds and the service manager guy was a Type A personality that he and I got into a nose-to-nose spat. My fault. I just didn’t know HOW I was going to pay for it and I was tense and in my desperation I was hoping it was their fault that my car was sick.

About the funds. The service department got me a Car Care Credit Card and if I pay off my debt to them in six months, they won’t charge me interest.

So I was relieved.

ANYWAY, a pleasant woman, a little younger than me, looked up from her book when I returned to my seat after my heated exchange with the service manager. She was kind and I could tell she wanted to alleviate some of my anxiety.

So our conversation began.

She told me about her experience with tornadoes and I learned about “poppers,” which are baby tornadoes that don’t register on the fancy Dopplers but kick up a pretty good mess when they make their brief appearance.

We talked about gardening and both agreed we don’t like pesticides or fertilizers other than Nature’s own. Her mother told her that you should plant enough in your garden so that you have one third for the insects, one third for the animals, and one third for yourselves.

I liked that. A lot.

She told me about her daughter, who is 24, who has Down Syndrome, and how she is almost always happy. And she loves cartoons. And the only time she’s not happy is when, very occasionally, she can’t watch a cartoon and so she sulks a little.

She loves her daughter with all her heart.

She told me about her religious beliefs and her father’s religious beliefs. Christian, of course, but I didn’t get the actual denomination. She said she thought our social problems, like poverty, etc., could be solved by churches. When I asked about non-churched people, she replied that her father would say that they didn’t deserve any help then.

Later in the conversation I asked her about disabled people deserving their disability. She emphatically said no.

We talked about illegal immigration, as she called it, or undocumented workers, as I called it. She made some arguments about the economic system being drained and I eventually said that I thought it was all a racist argument because we didn’t want a fence across the Canadian border.

She changed the subject. I realized I had hurt her feelings with the “racist” remark. I felt sorry about hurting her feelings. But I didn’t retract it.

She was one of the nicest people I’ve met in Oklahoma. Genuinely concerned about people. If they are here legally.

She raises ponies to give to disabled children.

Nice.

 

Weather Report

It’s overcast. Coolish. Humid. A slight breeze.

 

Kite Building

Spent yesterday, from 9:30 am to 2:30 pm, at outside tables at the St. Gregory University campus, next to the museum, building kites with kids.

There was a high wind almost all day long.

We were next to the food stand where several Latino families were selling burritos and quesadillas. I loved seeing them there and the aroma of the food was delectable.

Their kids, who also danced on the campus road in their Mexican/Aztec costumes, came to our tables and we built kites together.

I cannot tell you how much I loved having them there. I have been retired for two and a half years from teaching in an 80 percent Latino school and talking to them and watching how they helped each other and how sweet and kind they were made me want to hug them and tell them I loved them. But I restrained myself.

I especially loved Carmen and Lily Rose.

Jo and Cathy and Bruce and Beth and Cody all came and helped and even though NONE of us chose to be there, we all ended up having a wonderful, wonderful time.

Most of the kites tore when flown in the high-force winds.

But it didn’t matter.

 

Trent’s Catcher’s Mitt

This morning I noticed something dark on the grass on the south lawn and upon closer inspection found a very good kid’s baseball mitt.

Diego. Had to be that dog.

Well, it was early in the morning and I got busy and as it is a Sunday, decided to put off calling the next door neighbors to let them know their son’s mitt was here.

Just now they pulled up into my driveway. It turns out they have a semifinal tournament game TODAY and have been looking all morning for it.

And Diego tore a little of the lining of the mitt.

I am flooded with guilt and shame. Poor little Trent. He’s a kindergartner and the loss of his glove must have been devastating.

Damn dog.

 

That’s How Much I Love Living Here in this House

I realize that my accounts of ringworm and ticks and tornadoes, etc., sound like I am in a living hell here, but please know that I love my house and my land so much that even those scary, uncomfortable, nasty things cannot change the happiness I feel just being here. It is magnificently beautiful. I have life with a capital L here, complete with lots and lots of bugs and varmits. I have weather like you couldn’t believe. Most folks don’t have the same philosophies as I do. I experience loss and heartache. I miss L.A. and my kids and my old and dear friends.

But I wouldn’t change my decision about moving here.

THAT’S how much I love living in this house on this land.

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