Fifth Element

As I previously reported before, I am a notorious hypochondriac. If I so much as hear about the hot new disease, I convince myself six ways from Sunday that I have it. Swine flu, shingles, echolocation (which is not actually a disease but it sounds like one, doesn't it?) -- if it exists, I've convinced myself that I have it. Having once worked for a doctor's office in a position that allowed me to read other peoples' diagnoses probably exacerbated this problem. And of course the Internet and "The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death." do not help.

After that adventure I had over the summer where I had that weird case of contact dermatitis that caused some kind of underlying secondary infection -- or, as I like to call it, the "Really Bad Hot Itchy Boob Poison" -- I am particularly wary of (and suggestible to) rashes and itching. Like, right now my face is SO ITCHY that I feel like I am going to have no choice in a few minutes but to SCRATCH ALL MY SKIN OFF WITH A BENT PAPERCLIP just to keep from slowly going insane.

Now, probably it's nothing -- just dry skin from the weather changing. But this has been going on for a couple of days and it doesn't feel like it's getting better, even though I've been using my fancy expensive moisturizers every day and my special exotic treatment gels every night and washing my face with Cetaphil and sacrificing virgin baby unicorns during a lunar eclipse with a blade made of fairy wings and titansteel. Nothing has worked, so I went to WebMD, and simply by filling in that my symptoms include itchy or burning skin on my face, with nothing else going on (no foreign travel, no eating fish, no dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight), I have helpfully been informed that I probably have lice, or poison (again!), or hives, or alopecia, or narcotic abuse.

NARCOTIC ABUSE. Son of a bitch, I knew those two Vicodin that I took when the dentist YANKED TWO WHOLE TEETH RIGHT THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD were going to come back and bite me in the ass eventually. I didn't think it would take two and a half months, but there you go -- those 10 mg of Vicodin have turned me into an ADDICT and soon I'll be living on the STREET doing GOD KNOWS WHAT for money so I can buy cigarettes and alcohol and more drugs and it will just all be a bad scene and this is ALL BECAUSE THE INTERNET TOLD ME I HAVE ITCHY SKIN ON MY FACE! Because it's almost winter. Those bastards.

Oh, my point? My point is that Shae is sick, and she ALSO has a weird rash:

Except when little kids get a head cold with weird rash on their face (now it's more on her cheeks than around her mouth -- the mouth and nose redness is because she has been blowing her nose for three straight days), they get to have something called "fifth disease" and not, you know, a DRUG PROBLEM.