A real pain in the @ss

(Before we begin I'd like to say I have no idea why it is somehow okay for us to substitute a symbol (@) for a letter that looks exactly the same without the 3/4 circle around it, but...whatever. Okay. If you're less offended than if I had put a real "a" in that word I’m just fine that.)

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Over the past thirty years or so I've probably been to the doctor half a dozen times.

There was that time I fell off the roof in 1990 and needed five hours of reconstructive surgery, a week in critical care and three months in a wheelchair.

And now that I’m knocking on the door to Sundown City there are suddenly a million niggling things that send me running to the doctor's office every three or four days.

First it was an ear infection. I get those every year. Then it was an infected finger that started when I clipped a tiny piece of skin with nail clippers.

Then, another ear infection.

And now I have MRSA, something the Mayo Clinic describes ominously, thusly:

"MRSA stands for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. It's a strain of staph that's highly resistant to the broad-spectrum antibiotics commonly used to treat it. MRSA can be fatal."

Fatal? Oh, please.

I have a gigantic, red, painful infection on my ass.

Oops! Sorry. I mean, “@ss.”

So, I'm sitting on my left cheek as much as possible, swallowing antibiotics and taking sitz baths every forty-five minutes or so.

They tell me this should clear up eventually, or it won't.

If it doesn't, they tell me they'll have to cut into the infection and drain it. But considering what the Mayo Clinic said up there about this being "highly resistant to the broad spectrum antibiotics commonly used to treat it" I figure my doctor has no idea what to do at that point.

And, it will be neither fatal nor temporary.

Thirty years from now I expect my obituary will confirm that I died, quite literally, from a lifelong, chronic "pain in the @ss."

This getting old sh!t is not for the faint of heart.