Disease of the Day

I’m pretty sure I have shingles.  My father-in-law had shingles.  Then he died.  Not necessarily a cause and effect situation.  Especially since it was 3 years later.  But still.

You seem skeptical.  I understand.  I mean, we all know I have a history of hypochondriacal tendencies that are often exacerbated by Google and television commercials.  Like the time I became convinced that I had mesothelioma merely because I dreamed that I had it, and logically deduced that I could never dream a disease that I hadn’t even heard of.  So, in my estimation, I was a psychic with lung disease, probably contracted from working in the coal mines.  Wondering why my psychic powers waited until after I was dying to kick in.  And then I realized that a mesothelioma commercial plays on Robin & Friends on HLN every morning while I’m getting dressed.  So, I wasn’t psychic and, oh yeah, I never worked in a coal mine.  So, it was quite possible that I had not contracted mesothelioma and I could stop cuing my hacking cough every time my husband walked into the room so he would feel sorry for me.  Or walk out of the room in disgust.  (He being the disgusted one – not I.)

This time, I am well aware that shingles have been highly commercialized.  They are scaring the you-know-what out of me.  And when you have an inefficient colon, that’s a pretty big deal.

What makes me mad is that I thought I was safe.

You know, when you’re in your twenties, you hear about all of these adults who get chicken pox who never had it when they were kids, and it’s so much worse when you’re an adult?

And I thought, “Whew.  Dodged that bullet.  Missed a whole week of school and got to stay up late to watch The Wizard of Oz when my mom found a pock behind my ear. And she had totally forbidden me to stay up to watch it because I had school the next day.  And that was WAY before DVR’s.  No adult chicken pox for me, nosirree. I am immune.”  Never mind that I was scarred for life by the Wicked Witch of the West and her untimely death by water, quite possibly the reason I refused to enter the lake for an entire season of swimming lessons the following summer.

But now, the Shingles Soothsayers are telling me, “Haha!  You stupid fool!  You had chicken pox when you were a kid.  So now this deadly virus is just hiding out in your body waiting until your First Very Important Interview with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.  And then Herpes Zoster, AKA Shingles, will swoop in and give you ‘small sores that begin to dry and form crusts’.  But, don’t worry, the crusts ‘fall off in 2 to 3 weeks.’ And, ‘Scarring is rare.’

And it’s only possible, but not certain, that it will cause genital warts.”

And I just want to know how successfully triumphing over chicken pox when I am 8 throws me down the rocky path to contracting a venereal disease when I’m 60.

This is what I get for wishing a pox on myself just so I could watch two witches get exterminated by a girl with a dog in a basket.

Wish I could throw away my shingles. Also wouldn’t mind having this man working on my roof…
photo credit: beckstei via photo pin cc

 

Advertisement

The Code Word is “Wonderbutt”

I like patterns.  I think in analogies.  I enjoy logical reasoning.  It is comforting to me to have certain predictable norms.  Don’t misunderstand me – I love it when someone creative comes along and throws out delightfully zany ideas.  But they have to make some sort of sense.  Otherwise I waste valuable moments of rumination time trying to figure out what were they thinking.  And that takes away from my creation of my own carefully composed random thoughts.

I happened to be listening to the T.V. a few mornings ago while getting ready for work.  There was an ad for personalized Christmas stockings.  Nothing strange there. ‘Tis the Season, and all that.  When the commercial got to the end, however, and was touting the great deal it was offering, I thought I must have heard the “discount code” wrong.  You know, that word that you have to type in to the little box so they can prove to their accountants that they didn’t waste money on their advertising budget?

Like the pre-sale code we got recently in e-mail for the upcoming Kelly Clarkson concert – “independent.”  Logical.  (In case you are not a Kelly Clarkson fan – let’s face it, you just don’t want to admit it – one of her famous singles was “Miss Independent,” a song I sang on a regular basis to Dimples when she was a toddler, apparently sending the message that it was the least admirable quality a person could possibly have since Dimples now refuses to make any decisions on her own.)

Or the one for the Blue Man Group – “music.”  Again – logical.

Here’s the one to get $50 off at Ann Taylor Loft – “SHOP50”.

The one for personalized Christmas stockings was not logical.  And, moreover, it was somewhat disturbing.

But the next morning, I heard the commercial again.  I raced in front of the T.V. so I could hopefully read what they were saying on the screen.  Whew!  I was relieved to hear and read that the sale code was not what I thought I heard the previous morning – “incest”.

If you want to get a great deal on personalized stockings, go to that website address on your listed on your television screen, click on the star, and use the code word, “insect”.

Huh?

I mean I know you can choose any darn code you want, but why in the heck would you want people to associate a pest that disgusts them and they spend hundreds of dollars a year exterminating with a lovely Christmas gift?

“Insect” has thrown my whole logic out the window.  If people are just going to use random code words, willy nilly, then this world really is just one big ball of chaos.

What kind of PR Department do these people have?  Is it just one guy who sits in a room, closes his eyes, opens the dictionary, and picks the first word he drools on?  Surely this was not a team of people who were consulted and all agreed upon “insect” as a word to include in the company’s Christmas advertising spot. Right?

I guess the point of advertising is to catch your attention, but does that really help when you weird out your customers?

And now I’m gonna shut up because Cute Christmas Stocking Company’s PR Department may have some odd entomological obsession, but the company’s Legal Department might just decide to wrap its six legs around me and try to suck my blood.

myrmecos.wordpress.com