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By Alicia Martinez

Let's rewind a couple years: envision me cutting through the woods
behind my house to go to my doctor. It was sunny, and I was running in
fear of the people that lived in the apartment complex on the other
side of the woods (and partially to dodge ticks falling from tree
branches). Field hockey season was about to begin and I was going to
play left wing... but first I needed a physical. I had blood work done,
a tetanus shot, the legendary pee-test, and then an echocardiagram was
issued. My doctor was a homeopathic/acupuncture specialist and she
noticed that I had a heart murmur. For those that don't know, when you
have a heart murmur, back washing occurs due to an extra flutter of the
valves in each chamber. You're prone to infection in the heart, and
it's especially risky if you have infection in your bloodstream
already. Keep this in mind.

About a week ago, I was awakened by my alarm clock on full volume- time
for work. I got undressed and was preparing to take a shower and
noticed a little pimple-like red welt on my stomach. There was a deep
rooted sting, and being obsessive compulsive about my skin, I tried to
squeeze it off. That was a bad idea, it came back larger, and had a
greenish tint in the middle.. but was impossible to be squeezed again.
When I touched it, I felt pain all over my stomach.. and as the days
went by it began streaking red. I was getting some strange pleasure out
of picking it open and pressing on it to see the greenish/red infection
ooze out. Friends would ask to see and get an unpleasant surprise as
soon as I would lift my shirt for viewing. It turned into golf ball
proportions and I remembered my heart murmur, then thought 'Gee, maybe
it's time to get it checked out.'

I tried checking myself in at Mercy Hospital in the middle of the
night. I couldn't be seen immediately because the Emergency Room
because it was filled with about thirty sniffling crying
handicapped/dying/sick city people and the hospital was under Code
Yellow. So that means 'go sit in that chair for 5 hours, okay?' I
couldn't go for that so instead I did something ridiculous and danced
at The Talking Head until 2 AM (you're thinking.. some emergency) and
sought a companion to go back with me later, but no one was down. I
went to sleep, and got up for work this next morning... but later left
work about three hours into the shift. It ruptured on it's own and I
had to go. There's no way I could be performing autopsies until 4 in
the afternoon with this chaos going on under my scrubs. I left and
drove over to Johns Hopkins E.R. and they put me in urgent care right
away, I was only behind a woman that had a boil under her armpit, and
three ladies that just got into a car accident. Boil-armpit woman was
named Sylvia and she had me call her work on my cellphone and pretend
that I was as JH employee and that she was having minor surgery.
Contributing to the delinquency of an elder, no?

I got called back and sat on the bed waiting for something to happen.
The doctor entered, took a look at it, winced, then stated that it was
definitely a spider bite, Dr. said they would drain it but they wanted
to load me up on 2,000 MG of Cephalexin per day first. Great. She then
informed me that I came in just in time; that if I waited any longer I
would've had to have surgery, and that I would've had blood poisoning
and that's not exactly a good match with my heart murmur. She also
scolded me for forcing it into my system more by picking and prodding
so much. She smiled, turned on her heel then left. A medical student
came in and asked me to take an STDS survey in exchange for a $10.00
gift card to the subway in the food court.

In the end I've gained a foot-long ham sub, a hospital bracelet, and an
ugly purple still forming-scar on my belly. The End.