Don't Pop That Pimple!

                 My phone rang at twenty after nine in the morning. When I saw on the caller ID that it was my oldest, beautifulest, much-adored sister, my heart sank. Who died, I wondered as I answered. It’s two hours earlier where she is and if she’s calling this early without me asking her to call, it wasn’t going to be good news.

          “Our sister is in the hospital,” Patti said.

          We have two sisters. “Which one?”

          “Phyllis.”

          “What happened?”

          “She’s got a very, very bad, life-threatening infection. She had surgery last night to remove gangrene tissue. She's on heavy duty antibiotics and is expected to be in the hospital for three or four days while they make sure they’ve killed off the infection."

          I wanted to call Phyllis. I wanted her to know that I was thinking about her and that I love her. But I didn’t. When people are in the hospital, they’re in there to rest and recover. I wouldn’t want to wake her if she’s sleeping or interrupt if one of the doctors or nurses was tending to her.

          Patti, the matriarch of our family, kept us updated on Phyllis’ progress.

Once Phyllis was home, I did call and talk to her a few times since this whole thing started. I don’t know if you’re gonna groan or laugh or ugh in disgust when I tell you what I asked her, but I’m gonna tell ya anyway. “Can I see it?”

          “You’re sick,” Phyllis said, but she showed it to me anyway.

Looking at the open wound made my knees hurt! It’s a very real physical response my body has whenever I see or think of someone else’s hurt or pain. A shooting, tingling pain that goes straight to my knees and lasts for a few seconds.

Then, this week, Phyllis called me. “I’m not telling you to write about it but if you would want to, it’s okay with me.”

          To say I was shocked is putting it mildly. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I managed a reply. “It’s so deeply personal, I would never’ve thought to ask to share the story.” I do have a modicum of discretion.

          “I was thinking that what happened to me is such a fluke that it might help someone else.”

          “Well, okay then!” I agreed.

          “There’s only one thing. You can’t use any pictures.”

          I laughed.

          “So, what happened to your sister?” you wanna know.

          First, before I tell you, I want to issue a word of caution. Like I already said, this is of a highly personal nature and involves wounds and lady parts. If you’re on the squeamish side, you might want to skip it.

          Does that scare you?

          It scares me!

          Saturday. It was a Saturday when Phyllis noticed she had a pimple on the outside of her lady parts. It hurts, let’s get rid of it, she thought and popped it without giving it any further thought. It continued to bother her and she thought the core might still be in there. “I ended up trying to pop it three more times on Saturday. Twice I got stuff out of it but the third time it was only fluid,” she told me.

          On Sunday, exhaustion set in. Phyllis and her long-time-best-friend-life-partner-significant-other, Jim, took their daughter Rachel back to college then she climbed in bed and slept fourteen hours straight.

          Monday, she went to work but her pimple wasn’t any better. Pain and pressure convinced her there was still something in there that needed to come out. Expressing it wasn’t working.

          “I decided to try Epsom salts. I made a compress of a heavy solution with a heat pack on top. Ucky stuff came out and stunk really bad, but I didn’t think anything of it. And I slept another eleven hours.

I still had pain and pressure on Tuesday along with a super banger of a headache but I went to work anyway. When I got home, I used more hot compresses then crawled back in bed and slept for another eleven hours. I got up Wednesday, went to work. More hot compresses when I got home and I’m still really exhausted. So now I’m starting to wonder if this might be COVID.

Thursday, I called my boss. ‘I was exposed to COVID and need to get a COVID test.’

She said, ‘You’re vaccinated, aren’t you?’  

‘Yeah, vaccinated and boosted.’

‘You can come in.’

I went to work and got there about nine o’clock and worked until three-thirty. After that I went to a clinic near my home for my COVID test. They’re an urgent care center also. They weren’t busy. So, as I was checking in, I said, ‘Hey, can I see a doctor please?’

Not ever in a million years would I actually think about seeing a doctor for a pimple down there, but a little part of me goes man, this bitch hurts! Maybe the doctor can get it popped for me. I had my COVID test, which ended up coming back negative, and the doctor was actually waiting for me.” Phyllis paused to collect her thoughts and in my mind’s eye, I can see her beautiful face. “Went in, undressed, she looks at it and says, ‘Oh my God, we can’t help you. Get your ass to an emergency room.’ Those weren’t her exact words.”

Our family has been living with this for weeks now and I’ve had a chance to mull it over and come up with a few questions. I interrupted her story and asked, “Did she say what it was?” Another question pops in my head. I wonder what it looks like at this point. Phyllis is answering, ‘No.’ to the first question while I’m asking, “What was she seeing?”

“I don’t know. But she said I had to go to the emergency room.”

“Okay. So, you go to the emergency room?”

“I went home, took care of the garbage, Jim came home and took me to the emergency room and dropped me off.”

To let her know I understood she’d have to undress and get up on the table, I asked, “And what did they say after you got undressed and got up on the table and spread dem little legs apart?”

“They said, ‘We need to do a CT scan.’”

“I’m not sure what a CT scan would tell them.”

“It told them there was a lot of gas building in that area, which is one of the signs of Necrotizing Fasciitis. I guess the gangrene was visible to the eye.”

“Gangrene?”

“Yep. I’m guessing Necrotizing Fasciitis and gangrene go hand in hand.”

That makes sense to me because I know necro means death and gangrene is flesh rot.

“They said, ‘We can’t do anything about this here. We don’t have anybody of that skill level.’ So, they checked around. There were four possible hospitals that had OBGYN oncologists. The first hospital didn’t have anybody available for the emergency surgery. The next choice was University of Minnesota Hospital. They had both a surgeon and beds available.”

“Did they transport you or did you transport yourself?” I asked thinking Jim would drive her.

“They took me by ambulance.”

“Did Jim get to go with you in the ambulance?” I asked.

“Peg! That’s a silly question!” you say. “If Jim goes in the ambulance with her, who would bring the car‽”

I know, right! All I could think about was my poor sister in the grips of needing emergency surgery and having to go to another hospital and I so wanted her not to be alone. To have support and comfort from somebody who loves her.

“No. He drove — actually he wasn’t there.”

I didn’t pick up on this earlier when she said Jim dropped her off. I thought he dropped her off and went to park the car. I was surprised. “Oh!”

“’Cause I had sent him home. You can spend hours in the emergency room and nothing’s going on.”

That’s just like my sister. Thinking about someone else before herself.

“Before they transported me, and while they were still thinking they were going to send me to the Methodist Hospital, I’d called and told him that’s where they were going to try and take me. He drove to Methodist Hospital and they said, ‘No, we don’t have her,’ so then he got back in touch with the emergency room here and they said, ‘Oh, yeah. We sent her to U of M East Bank. He drove the whole way out there and they wouldn’t let him in.”

“Oh my. COVID restrictions?” I wondered.

“Visiting hours were over. This was like midnight — one o’clock.”

When Mike had his surgery, they let me stay past visiting hours so I could see him. I’m thinking due to the nature of this situation that they should’ve let him in anyway—but they didn't ask me!

“They immediately prepped me for surgery,” Phyllis said.

“How long did it take?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I was out.” Phyllis continued, “They removed a patch of flesh from the left side of my lady parts that measured sixteen and a half centimeters, by five and a half centimeters, by five and a half centimeters.”

“Wowzaa!” That sounds like a lot!

Phyllis converted that to inches for me. “It’s six and a half inches long by a little over two inches wide and deep.”

It makes my knees hurt just thinking about it!

“They kept it packed and every time I peed it got wet and they’d have to repack it. OMG! That hurt so bad! They pumped me full of intravenous antibiotics and sent me home three and half days later with oral antibiotics. And they’re keeping a close eye on it to make sure no infection restarts.”

“So, why did you get this Necrotizing Fasciitis?” I asked.

“They’re guessing I got it because of my lower immunity levels due to my MS and diabetes. They said if I’d’ve waited even one more day, it would’ve been a lot worse. In fact, I could’ve died.”

This did not surprise me at all. With all that poison in your system, your organs’ll start shutting down. She was only a day or so away from that happening.

“And my blood sugar was so high I could’ve gone into diabetic shock.”

Phyllis has no appetite and has lost fourteen pounds.

“Not the way I want to lose weight!” I told her.

One thing I do want to do is lavish her with love and gifts. I’m so thankful that she’s still here, on this side of heaven, and getting better. I want to get a ginormous box and heap it full of love and hugs and kisses. Tape it shut and ship it off to her. Will the post office feed me along the way?

In closing, Phyllis has a word for you.

“Don’t pop that pimple!”