A time I didn’t listen to a doctor was, I had been in the Dominican Republic and I’d gotten home. And a couple days later I was wearing jeans and I just remember my legs were so itchy. And for some reason, in my mind, it made sense ‘cause it was kind of hot, and I thought that because I was wearing jeans — I don’t know, I just didn’t really track that it was an issue. And then I went to change my pants and was horrified, because my legs were all blue. And I realized later it’s because I was like itching the dye like into my legs. I was itching them so — and probably it was kind of hot and I was sweaty. But, then I also noticed there was like a rash.
So I went to the doctor, said, “I was just in the Dominican Republic, you know, I’ve got this rash. I’m little bit worried about it.” And they said, “Oh, it’s folliculitis. It’ll go away.” And folliculitis is just a very general term for inflammation of the follicles. Like it’s – I’m trying to think of an equivalent diagnosis. I don’t know. It’s kind of like when people just – um, maybe this is actually not a good analogy. I was gonna say when people say, like, oh they have IBS or they — for just like anything kind of related to gastrointestinal, but there’s probably a much better analogy. I am not a doctor, as it turns out.
But anyway, I just was feeling really nervous. Um, we’d had some other like, weird health things on that trip. Somebody I’m pretty sure got bit by a tarantula. Their foot like swelled up to the size of way, way bigger than it should have been. Somebody got an amoeba. So I just like — and we were in an area, I was doing like mobile medical stuff. Like, I was just like very exposed to lots of things so I was feeling not confident. But I really had no recourse. Like, I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t have any, as far as I know, bites or like, open wounds that could have gotten infected. So I didn’t know why it would have happened.
And I was at the time in college and I was a microbiology teaching assistant. I was telling my professor about this, like, “Oh, I’m little bit, like, sketched out by it, but I don’t really know what to do.” And she was like, “Oh, well you could plate the whatever it is. Like, you can grow it and see what it is.” And I had these, like, little pustulates, these little zits, all on my legs. And so, in that class, I like turned away from the students and popped one, and then plated it on auger and came back and looked at it under a microscope. And it must have been like the next class session. And it was staphylococcus. It was a staph infection. And so, I went to my professor and I was like, “Hey, like can you double check that? Like I’m, you know, concerned that that’s what it is.” And she was like, “Yep, that’s what it looks like to me.”
So, I had to go back and be like, “I think I have a staph infection like, you know, covering my entire legs.” And to be honest, I don’t know much about staph infections other than like you don’t want to have one. So I don’t really know what would have happened. ‘Cause I wasn’t being treated, when they said it was folliculitis — that was the other thing. Like, if they had given me a generalized antibiotic, I wouldn’t have pushed any further, because I would have assumed like it was taken care of, whatever. But they gave me nothing and just kind of said “Let it ride,” which I was not feeling really comfortable with. Um, and yes. So then I went back and said, “I actually cultured this and it’s a staph infection. Can you give me antibiotics immediately?” Which they did do, to their credit. But yeah, that was a time I just wasn’t feeling comfortable with the verdict that the doctor came up with.