It is an Infected Tick Bite

It's not herpes.

$495 worth of wound cultures and blood tests later, guess what....nope not it. It's not a social disease.

So....WHAT IS IT?

23 ticks. I pulled 23 ticks off of him a few months ago. He thinks this is no big deal. He lets the cats sleep with him. This is the problem with having a Jeremiah Johnson complex, eventually you contract rickettsiae.

But, I feel really relieved...sort of. Except, being a trauma nurse, my mind is teeming with all the things it could possibly be...and the consequences. Strep A, necrotizing fascitiis, fournier's gangrene. He's all happy. I'm like..."START AN IV" visions of debrided scrotums and penile shafts dancing through my mind.

I had a patient with fournier's gangrene. It was terrible. I had to give him ketamine for dressing changes. He almost died. His wife gave up on him and stopped visiting and redecorated the house. The gangrene spread from his genitals throughout his abdomen. We changed dressings on him every 4 hours. Throughout, I would talk to him--try to paint a picture of how good life was going to be. I try to do that with my unconscious patients--I try to talk about the world outside. I think a big thing that keeps you going through something horrible is hope, and the ability to visualize a better time. But I think in the ICU, with its endless fluorescent twilight and institutional scheduled pain, patients lose track of that--they forget about the living breathing growing fishing wal-mart shopping car horn honking steaming asphalt world out there--so during the dressing changes, I would talk about the pond, and a cooler of beer, and pastrami sandwiches. I feel insane when I do it, but I wonder if it helps. Maybe I was talking myself through the dressing changes.

I just hope it's over soon. We're doing a lot of cuddling, which is good. We're exploing a different side of our relationship--one that involves lots of wine and board games. We actually played a game of Risk. That's how bad things are. Actually, we didn't really finish the game. Tell me something, has anyone, ever, finished a game of Risk? Does that really happen? Does the game ever end?

It was Baggins' last day yesterday. I'm going to miss the oversexed little hobbit. We had a big carry-in for him and chipped in on an espresso pot (the whole unit has recently become addicted to cafe con leche's)

He told me that as he walked out of the hospital, he was thinking about mooning everyone.

"But then we'll see your tattoo." I said, just talking. I don't know anything about him, really.

"How did you know I had a tattoo?" he asked.

Score! "Please," I said, "I know lots of things you would never expect me to know." Then, a wild shot in the dark, I said, "I know all about the other one, too."

"How on earth do you know about that one?" he asked. "Who told you?"

Oh, god, now I was going to get someone in trouble. He had followed me into the room of my patient.

"Did Allison tell you?"

"Please, I didn't even know you were dating Allison. "

"Who?"

He was serious.

"Listen, Baggins, I was just playing you. I don't know anything about either tattoo. What they are...anything. just a lucky guess."

"Oh." He was silent a moment. Then: "It's a lightning bolt."

"What?"

"It's a lightning bolt."

It took me a second. "You have a lightning bolt tattooed on your ass?"

"I have a lightning bolt tattooed on my..."

"Oh my God! You do not."

"I do."

"Holy crap, Baggins. Didn't that hurt?"

"Like a mother."

"What on earth possessed you? And how did they do it? I mean, did you go into a tattoo parlor--what was that exchange like" my mind was just reeling. I mean, can you imagine?

"I was dating a tattoo artist."

I started laughing. "Talk about having you by the short hairs."

"Shut up."

"Hell no, you're the one with a lightning bolt tattooed on your hingus. Holy moley."

"Well now you know."

"Now I know."

We stood there looking at each other. What is there to say after that sort of revelation? I love you? Fortunately, someone across the way through a PE and Baggins had to run.

My patient, an elderly woman, woke up, motioned me over. Wrote something on her board.

"You should have asked him to show it to you."

Ahhhh....always remember. Just because your patient is intubated, doesn't mean they aren't deaf dumb and blind.

That's my 1/2 hour. Remember please, this is all fiction.