I've been diagnosed with ringworm. Now before the voeuyers disparage me with vitriolic barbs and hasty namecalling, I request they keep the following in mind. The woman who initiated the diagnosis isn't a doctor. In fact, she's my sister. I would say that this whole thing is just her imagination and hardly worth believing, except for the power of my new Blackberry. How, you might ask, does my new cell phone confirm the existence of a potentially deadly fungal infection on my left arm? Between the power of 3.2 megapixels and instant email, we were able to confirm her suspicion with an actual doctor, in this case our mother. Let the name calling begin.
While my two siblings and I were out at dinner on Pearl Street, Reilly shrieked in horror and pointed at my arm, immediately convinced that the dime sized lesion was tantamount to leprosy. She has other second hand experience with this insidious illness because of a sorority sister that is now a nurse. Her buddy constantly comes down with weird coughs or rashes. Besides that, Reilly has worked at Head Start and seen her share of lice, boogers, and general gnarliness. I guess that makes her an expert.
I handed over my cell phone with the camera feature ready for action. We snapped a shot of my arm and sent the image as an email attachment destined for doctor mom's inbox. Within a few minutes, she replied that, "yup, looks like ringworm," and after dinner I was headed to the pharmacy for some antifungal cream.
After my run to the store, I took off for the west slope. I'm headed out for some meetings with the BLM, and we all know what that means. Yup, I'm headed back to the Creek this weekend for another crack at winter cragging. The weather for the next few days looks even better than when I was out in early January. I think, knock on wood, that we'll have sun and temps in the low 50's; perfect for our ambitions. I don't think we'll face any precip on this trip, so I don't think I'll repeat my alarm clock from the last trip. On one of the mornings in January, I woke up to a blanket of snow on my sleeping bag (no tent, just the stars above my head).
Sadly, I don't think Ben Horton is coming along for this trip, so I won't have nearly the quality of photos from this one. I did, however, talk to my stepmom before I headed west and we hatched a plan for turning these winter trips into a story that I'm going to try to sell to one of the magazines. Joey is a freelance writer, and is way more versed in the process of submitting article queries. With her help, I'll start the process and work on the article. One of my goals for 2009 was to get a set of essays polished, so even if this one doesn't find a home in print, I'll chip away at that goal.
1 comment:
Ringworm? Must have caught it from your hair.
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