HighFive

First of all, to the three of you who read this brog, I would ask you to kindly get off my case about not writing recently. And before you get all bitchy and upset, allow me to interrupt because I have the ultimate excuse: Someone with a PhD after their name told me I probs have HIV.

Let me back up here. I'm going to magicallllly whisk you away to beautiful Hartford, Connecticut circa winter 2004. Imagine a younger version of my current self waking up, stretching, and as the blue birds pull back my white silk comforter, noticing a large, red circle on my arm. And then realizing I'm seeing it through one eye. Because the other one is sealed shut.

Yes. One morning I woke up with ring worm and pink eye.

"Where is the relevancy here?" you may wonder as you secretly make a note to never let me borrow your clothes or wrestling mat. Well my unfortunate one-two punch of conjunctivitis and whatever ring worm's medical nomenclature is inspired my floormates to start calling me High Five. As in, HI 5. Or...HI V.

Well the joke was on THEM last week as I stumbled into the Patient First in Glen Burnie, flanked by a 100-something fever and useless but delicious Luden's cough drops.

I sat in my little cubicle as a nurse came in and gave me a strep test (gag), a flu test (is it fucking legal to shove a q-tip that far into my brain?), drew blood (lucky me, I got the new nurse...always be weary when two people come to take your blood) and finally an x-ray (I'm super siked to see how much that useless test will cost me.) After a 20 minute wait, the doctor finally came in and said, "Well, all your tests came back negative, although your white blood cell count is pretty low. We like to see the count around 4.0 and yours is 2.9. I'll go run an HIV test you can go ahead and get dressed."

BOOM just like that. I tried not to panic, especially because last year a doctor told me I probably have a brain tumor because I checked "Occasionally" under the "Do you ever get headaches" question. (Uh, back off bitch I get hangovers like everrrryone else.)

After two days of freaking out and trying to recall if the last person I shot heroin with happened to mention a certain auto-immune disorder, I finally called back and was told my results were negative.

The morals of this story are simple. Don't go to Patient First in Glen Burnie; don't share needles, and leave me the hell alone if I haven't brogged in a few days.