The Transesophagial echocardiagram was today, and thankfully, they didn’t find any of those cute little adipose alien monsters on the back of my heart waving hello. So no pet adipose for me. Oh well. They also ruled out nasty things like congestive heart failure, which – needless to say – is kind of a good thing.
But even with that, the weirdo symptoms just aren’t getting much better. In fact, they keep cropping up.
Last week I got rather freaked out when I noticed a funny bump of swelling on my left foot, right around the stump where my left big toe was amputated. I touched it and I got this searing pain deep down to the bone. For some reason I have a knack for being able to very definitively differentiate between different pain sensations, and I’m sad to say, but I hadn’t felt that particular pain since the bone infection. That was a very, very distinct feeling, one that I’ll never forget. Feeling it again for real rather than just in a phantom pain, that was horrifying.
Naturally, since there was good cause for concern that the bone infection might be back, I went to see my podiatrist. He took X-rays – as you do – and we had a lovely time staring at them blankly in the exam room. In fact, when he held them up for the first time, he even took a little bit of a stumble backward in shock. You know your life sucks when that happens.
Why did that happen? Well. The doctor spotted something a bit strange in the X-ray. Sadly, it wasn’t adipose aliens, but I can’t exactly tell you what it is. I wanted to try and scan the X-rays, but alas it didn’t work, so I’ll have to describe it. Basically, it looked like long strands of… something in the soft tissue. X-rays are only supposed to pick up bone, so the fact that it picked up these weird things in my soft tissue that looked like pasta, it was scary as hell. The podiatrist said he’d never ever seen anything like it. And trust me, over the past 12 years I’ve had so many X-rays done I could be a certified X-ray technician by now, and I’ve never seen it either.
My Mom said the lines in the flesh looked kind of calcified, which of course just brought up more thoughts of Doctor Who, since apparently I’m a massive nerd. All I could think was, crap, it’s petrifold regression! (You may now commece nerd laughter.)
But that’s not even the weirdest part. This part… it’s seriously freaking me out.
I’ve been getting fevers quite a bit lately, which isn’t exactly odd for me. I get them all the time and have ever since the bone infection started. It’s just something I’m used to. But over the past three weeks, the fevers have been getting worse, getting hotter, happening more often. It’s unbearable.
A couple nights ago I was having one of those fevers, and just when it got to its worst, I got up to run to the restroom. When I looked in the bathroom mirror I almost screamed.
I swear on my sonic screwdriver that half of my face was its typical pale shade of white, and the other side was bright screaming red. It was as if someone had drawn a line down the center of my face, from my forehead to my chin, dividing my face between red and white. One side of my face was burning hot to the touch, the other side was downright chilly.
The burning side was hurting quite a bit and I had to calm it down, because by that point even my eye was starting to go red. So I splashed my face with cold water and went about getting ready for bed. Wouldn’t you know it, the burning side of my face was dry long before the other side. The water had dried right up, burned off my face by my scary red skin. I
That’s insane!! Who the hell has half their face go feverish and turn so bleeding bright red?! Who does that!?! That can’t be normal, I have never ever in my life seen or heard anything like that. But I swear, it is literally right down the middle of my face. My Mom was going to get a picture of it today but I just couldn’t bear to have the light on, as that seemed to be making it worse. But one of these days I’m going to get a picture, post it here, and prove what’s going on. Cause frankly, I didn’t believe it til I stood in front of the mirror for a while poking my face. And I’m not sure my Mom believed me either when I first told her. But who would? Cause really, whose face only turns half red?! That’s *insane*!!!
So bottom line is, they may not have found a little baby alien fat monster on the back of my heart. But I am starting to think that maybe I’m the alien! Cause this just isn’t human.