I can't recall if I've told this story. If I have, I apologize for the repeat and I'm too lazy to go through my archives. Anyway, it's embarrassing and entertaining, so should do for an excellent read.

I'm sixteen. I'm sick with the flu. I'm a clutz anyway, so throw in that wonderful combination of dizziness and nausea, and I'm falling all over the place. Down the stairs I'm falling. In school--falling. But I'm actually failing Alegebra II. I'd like to blame this failing on my parents' recent separation and unable to because I'm acing all of my other classes. I keep going to school, getting more and more ill, and falling more and more. Finally, the vomiting takes over and Mom says, "No school for you!" in a slightly menacing manner. Fine. I'm stayin' home. I hide in my bedroom for a week, desperately trying to understand why the hell balancing complex equations is essential to my development and citizenship. I'm doing so much of this, I forget to, well, you know, BATHE regularly. Whoopsie.

It's my third day home from school. I awake at ten p.m. with a sore backside. You know, the kind you get after FALLING numerous times. I shuffle to the bathroom and take four or nine ibuprofen. 2 a.m.: repeat procedure. This goes on for two more days. I am sixteen--I am not looking at my big fat ass in the mirror. I do not care to see if I am bruised. I simply want to stop hurting.

"Mom. My butt hurts from falling," I report through a haze of snot. Mom is at the end of her rope. Normally, there would be a brief exchange about 'being too melodramatic' and 'menstrual cramps are purely psychosomatic', but the situation with Dad has her worn down to a mere rind of her former self. She calls the doctor and schedules an appointment. We go.

"Doc. My butt hurts from falling," I report in a funky cloud of fever.
"You're sick," the doctor says. Of course, I'm immediately relieved to have such an astute physician attending me.
"Yeah. But the real problem is--my butt hurts from falling." Somewhere in all of this, I am still trying to figure out what the inverse of cosign is, and why it matters.
"I'll give you a pillow to sit on," says my doctor.
"I've got pillows at home," I say, "and what I would like is something to dull this pain."
"Have you had suicidal thoughts recently?" asks Doctor Observo.
"No. I've been too busy falling."
"Roll over and drop your pants," she orders. I am wanting to contact Maury or Geraldo at this point. The woman wants to molest me.

I do as she orders. Secretly, I've always been a bit submissive.

She looks. And then she looks away. And then she opens the door a crack and calls in my mother and another doctor.
"Do you see that?" she asks. Both parties nod in paralyzed fascination.
"Take her to the emergency room," she tells Mom. "I'll call ahead."
"Mom, what's going on?" I ask.
"Um, get going," says Mom.

I sit on my left hip on the ride to the hospital. It is now seven p.m. Mom is crying.
"Ma, I'm fine. I just keep falling!" Man, the fever is BAD.

I get to the hospital. A hundred kids are there, all suffering with the same flu I have, but I'm rushed right in, after this other girl who keeps vomiting and losing her water. (Turns out, she was born with only one kidney, and when that got sick, she kinda had problems...but lived. Anyway, this story is about me).

I still have no idea what's going on. I'm in the emergency room with those little curtains dividing me from the lobby. In fact, they put me in a gown which is nothing more than two curtains drawn together in the back. I'm beginning to think an ER is just an exaggerated stage. The intern walks in. He is Matt Damon. He says, "Hey! I wanna look at your butt!"
Through the fever, I thought he was flirting until he flipped up the curtain gown and gasped, too.

"Wow! Now THAT'S painful, ain't it? Let's get a temp," and then he proceeds to take my temperature through my mouth and up my bunghole. And then he puts one slightly lubed finger up my bunghole. And then he says in front of God and everyone, "Well, not only do you have a fever of 106 degrees, you also have a bowel movement up there!"

Sicko bastard. Thankfully, they wheel me into emergency surgery before I can strangle him and his testicles. Later, it would be divulged that he was so worried about my dying in the ER that he was doing everything he could to avoid that possibility.

Here's what it was: through a week of not bathing, a BUTTHAIR got INFECTED in my sacral cleft *read:crack*. It became a zit. Then, a boil. Finally, a three inch deep abscess filled with pus and bacteria. It nearly killed me. They drilled the sucker out of me and pumped me up with IV fluid and antibiotics. My mother had to pack and unpack that open wound for nearly six weeks. Gauze in, gauze out, otherwise, it would heal with a pocket of air, and that could cause another infestation.

End result? I lived. But a zit on my ass nearly killed me. For future reference to all aspiring hypochondriacs, it's called a pilonidal cyst, and it looks like this. (Note: image is graphic and disturbing. While viewing, please imagine a strong disgusting smell accompanying it, like dying cat poop in the sun).

Thank you. I believe I have embarrassed myself enough at this time.