A few days ago, a series of mysterious red bumps suddenly appeared on Eileen’s right leg. We had just been swimming, and my initial guess was that the bumps were some sort of reaction to the chlorine. Oliver had experienced something similar a few weeks earlier, and his bumps were gone nearly as quickly as they had arrived. So we put her in the bath, hoping that the bumps would vanish by morning. However, when morning arrived, the bumps remained. Was it some sort of allergic reaction? Or chicken pox? Eileen is up to date on her vaccines, but you can still get a mild case of chicken pox even if you’ve been vaccinated, and it sure looked like like the pictures that turned up when I googled “what do chicken pox look like?” Uncertain of what how to define them, Eileen opted to call them “my dots.”
After it became clear that the “dots” were not going to clear up on their own, I took Eileen to the local urgent care center. We sat down in the semi-crowded waiting room, a couple of seats away from an upper-middle-aged woman wearing a blue face mask. The woman seemed intensely interested in learning why, exactly, everyone around her was visiting urgent care. As people walked up to the front desk to explain their assorted issues, she leaned forward to listen. Then, as each person would come sit down, she would begin quizzing them on their various ailments.
“So you hurt your back, huh? How’d you do that?”
“How long have you had a fever? Do you think it’s a flu or something, or you just don’t know?”
“So you’re having some tummy troubles? What’s going on, didja eat something that didn’t sit right?”
People would either respond with a brief, embarrassed reply, attempting to indicate that they did not wish to have a whole conversation about this, or welcome her curiosity as a good excuse to tell someone about their woes. Eventually, the woman turned her attention to Eileen and me.
“So what’s wrong with her? Or is there something going on with you? Neither of y’all seem sick.”
I explained that Eileen had some bumps on her legs, and that we wanted to figure out what was going on.
“Oh. Probably chicken pox,” said the lady. “Yeah. I can see it now. That looks like chicken pox.”
“My dots are probably chicken pox,” Eileen responded solemnly.
“We’ll see,” I said.
It took a while for our turn to arrive, and Eileen grew increasingly antsy and rambunctious as the morning went on. After an hour or so, she was pretty wound up, roaring in silly voices (“DAAAAAD! I’M A MONSTEEEEEEER!”), repeatedly running over to the hand sanitizer machine and giggling when it squirted a dollop of the stuff in her hand, occasionally indulging bursts of sulkiness about how long it was all taking (“Daaaaaad…. I want to go hoooommmmeee…. ugh… when will this be overrrrr?”).
Eventually, we were called back, and a nurse — an older Indian woman — took Eileen’s temperature and blood pressure and so on. When we went back, Eileen’s demeanor changed. She was quiet and polite, and responded to every request the nurse made with cooperative cheer.
“Would you let me put this on your finger?”
“Yes!”
“Thank you. Now just try to be still, okay?”
“Okay!”
The nurse took a look at Eileen’s leg. “That looks like chicken pox to me,” she said.
“My dots are chicken pox?” Eileen said, her eyes widening, awaiting official confirmation.
“Your what?”
“My dots. Are they chicken pox?”
“I think so. But not for me to say. The nurse practitioner will tell you.”
The nurse turned her head aside for a moment and coughed. Eileen got up out of her chair and walked over to her. “Oh… are you okay?” Eileen said.
To my surprise, the nurse’s eyes began to fill with tears, and she reached out and gave Eileen a hug.
“You have made my day,” the nurse said. “I ask people how they are feeling all day long, nobody ever asks how I am feeling. So you have made my day. Thank you. I’m okay. I’m not sick. I was sick, but I’m better. I just have this cough still.”
The nurse escorted us to the room. “You have a very sweet child,” she told me. “She has a kind heart.”
When the nurse left, the mischievous sparkle suddenly returned to Eileen’s eyes.
“DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD! I’M A MONSTEEEEEEEEER!”
Soon after, we met the nurse practitioner, an exuberant young woman with a strong southern accent, who examined Eileen’s “dots” for a moment.
“It’s chicken pox!” Eileen said confidently.
“Well, it ain’t chicken pox, I’ll tell you that much,” the nurse practitioner said, grinning at Eileen. “Not because she has her shots, you can still get chicken pox even if you’ve had yer shots. But chicken pox, see, that starts from the stomach and spreads outward from there. But this is almost entirely on her leg. And it ain’t an allergic reaction either, as far as I can tell. No, I’m pretty sure what we’re dealing with here is bug bites. Were you outside before it happened?”
“We were. We were swimming. But she wasn’t outside very long outside of that, so I’m not sure what could have gotten her. Do you have any idea what kind of bugs?”
“That’s the question, ain’t it? I mean… you know, it’s… are you from Georgia, originally? Y’lived here long?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, well you know, then. I mean, we got every kinda lil’ creepy-crawly there is here. And a lot of ‘em will bite you. I mean, you got all kinds of ants, but I don’t think this is ants. You got bedbugs. You got chiggers. Might be chiggers, if I had to guess. You got… I mean, there’s so many bugs, and a lot of ‘em have bites that kinda look the same, and some of ‘em look different, but… well, it don’t really matter, because whatever it is, we’re gonna treat it the same way. We’re gonna give her a topical cream, and since they’re looking a little rough, we’re gonna give her an oral steroid, those’ll join forces and knock these things out from the inside and the outside, and in a few days those bumps are gonna be all cleared up.”
Eileen had been sitting there quietly, processing all of the information.
“My dots are BUG BITES?!” she said in bewilderment.
“Mmmhmm, I think so,” said the nurse practitioner.
“Oh yes, they are bug bites,” she said confidently.
“Do you remember what kind of bugs?” I asked, just in case she happened to recall anything.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes widening. “They were little pink bugs, with sharp teeth. They were TINY MONSTERS.” She nodded grimly, as if affirming the validity of her own story.
“Okay. Well, pink bugs, purple bugs, whatever, same prescription should clear it up,” the nurse practitioner said with a chuckle. “But hey, one thing on that steroid… be sure to give it to her early in the day, because it’ll keep her awake if you give it to her at night.”
We went to the Wal-Mart pharmacy to pick up her prescription, where the pharmacist echoed the advice: “Try to give her the steroid in the morning, it’ll keep her up at night.”
So we went home. It was about lunchtime, so I went ahead and gave her the steroid. About fifteen minutes later, Eileen fell asleep, and proceeded to take a two and a half hour nap.
Is there a point to this story? Sometimes things aren’t exactly what they seem, or something like that? Sometimes the bumps you think are chicken pox are actually bug bites, and sometimes the nurse needs some encouragement more than the patient, and sometimes the steroid puts you to sleep? I don’t think all stories need a clear-cut lesson, but if you want one, that one should do.
Anyway, there is no definitive proof that it wasn’t little pink bugs with sharp teeth, so I guess I’ll go with that for now.
Back at ya later