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Yes, I am now a fully-fledged citizen of the USA. Friday afternoon I stood up with 34 Mexican nationals and swore the oath of citizenship. We had to absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty. I had known in advance about state and sovereignty but giving up my potentates, that’s going to hurt. Sometime over the Christmas break I will put in my passport application. Until I get a US passport I am unable to travel back into the country, should I leave.

In other news, we came back from Sedona to find a letter from the hospital saying that the culture taken from my most recent abscess contained MRSA but that I had been given the proper prescription and that they hoped I was feeling better. I certainly am feeling better than when I went in for the lancing but I feel like this is not over yet by a long way. The first wound doesn’t look too bad, but the second is still healing and it just feels to me like it’s going to form another boil. Every tiny itch or sensation on my body screams to me “here we go again”, it is not a good feeling. And I swear that if I have to have any more lancings I am going to exercise my US constitutional right to own a gun, and put it to my head.

Woke up this morning covered ankle to neck in a rash, never have I seen such a thing. Doctor says I am allergic to one of the antibiotics I took, in particular the Septra, and, surprisingly, the allergic reaction usually starts after the meds are taken, not whilst. I have some steroids that may help relieve the redness (it doesn’t itch – yet?) but basically I’m stuck looking a little like I escaped a leper colony for up to 3 weeks.

Note to self: future doctor visits, let them know I am allergic to sulfa.

As I approach my 42nd birthday I am reminded of the wise sayings at the time of my 40th, that everything would go rapidly downhill from there, health wise. It certainly seems that way this year. It took 3 painful weeks to recover the vasectomy, and recently a week of pain from the boil, followed by a week of discomfort from the lancing. And now I have a real painful lower back (I’m guessing the kidneys are out of whack from the antibiotics). I bet my San Diego neighbours can’t remember a time they saw me able to walk without looking like an old man.

Well, I certainly feel like an old man these days.

Last weekend I developed a spot on my leg which turned into a boil/abscess of some kind. The position is such that its painful to sit, stand and you damn well better not touch it. Some hot compresses had failed to relieve the pressure but had turned it into a bloody mess so today Teri persuaded me to go to the ER. Now I hate doctors but I figured that I clearly needed antibiotics and best to start sooner rather than later.

A very nice blonde doctor (or physician of some kind) did her best to make the draining as painless as possible but I won’t pretend that it didn’t hurt like a sonofabitch. And the water she used for irrigating the wound was very cold and kept running down my bum which was actually kind of nice in a perverse way.

Afterwards I had to wait 20 minutes for my discharge papers, spent the time exchanging jokes some off-roaders who were there for a torn hand. Then some more came in, all laughing about their injuries as well: I hadn’t realised that the ER was such a fun place to hang out.

I have to go back tomorrow to get the result of the blood culture (MSRA anyone?) and have them inspect the pads they put in the abscess. It is not going to be fun – they taped gauze over the wound with a lot of tape. I have quite hairy legs, even the lady doctor said they “will have fun getting this off”.