WHOLLY FUCK!!!

Almost two months ago I awoke with an itchy foot, so half awake I scratched it for comfort per se.

Then I looked at the source of the irritation and found a redness from my scratching around two pierce holes on the bridge of my right foot which I immediately recognised as a spider bite, didn’t find a spider but presumed it was a whitetail as I found a crew of them in my garden…didn’t really know.

So I thought, hmmm, should I go to the hospital? Nah, I thought I’d wait to see if there was any immediate reaction to poison and then think of hassling an overburdened health system.

To my glee, at the time, I didn’t die or have any obvious ongoing issues so I thought, cool.

Three of my kids and a partner joined me for Festivus celebrations on the 28th of December and I was fine as I prepared a sumptuous meal.

It was a wonderful day and I slept peacefully to wake up to find my toes and feet peeling like a glove and my hands covered in polyps, urgent calls to my doctor followed but the holiday period disallowed that option, went to local surgery to be told I could get a doctor to look at it in a weeks time, went to the chemist and the pharmacist asked to look, and suggested I go straight to The Alfred emergency, which I did.

It was amazingly swift getting through the emergency fifteen minutes, then an hour having observation and a blood test, a kindly male nurse asked me very quietly if I thought it could be syphilis…my reaction was, like, “How did I get syph from a spider bite?” quite louder than he…he walked away…and then I thought THAT is going to be a difficult conversation with a someone…hmmm.

Not long later he came back and took some scrapings, (yeah yuk) from my feet.

OBVIOUSLY, when I got home I looked up Doctor Google pics to see what a syphilis infection looks like and OMG second stage looks identical on hands and feet and I spent 5 days in despair.

5 days later I got an appointment at my clinic to get the results of the blood test, no syph…yay…but no other diagnosis and I’m looking like a leper, then two days I got a call from The Alfred with a result on the scrapings.

I have had Golden Staphylococcus in the form of Staphylococcus Scalded Skin Syndrome, as my doctors were closed he was able to send a script to my chemist and started me on hardcore antibiotics, which I have had to step up for another month.

Golden Staphylococcus is what is considered a super virus, very hard to beat, I am blessed it hasn’t gotten into my bloodstream in a more aggressive manner, but this SSSS as it is known is just awful, and very rare in adults, if you are the queezy type do not look at Google pics of this syndrome.

The things I take out of this are:

• Use crawling pest control
• DO NOT get sick over the Festivus period
• Nurses should not preempt the diagnosis
• You never know what the fuck is going to happen next