Being the mature adult that I am, I recently dared an eight-year-old buddy to bring my children's Elmo anthology into class for his next book report. Always one to counter-dare, he upped the ante by telling me to go to a college and read said book aloud to the students. Little did he know where I attended school.
I went to an art school. I had an acquaintance papier-mache herself from the waist down and sit in a courtyard giving shoulder massages while drinking juice, so a grown woman casually reading about Elmo going to the pool would have been nothing of note. Another thing about art school is, well, it's kind of the opposite of medical school. Or at least I'm kind of the opposite of a doctor.
The other day, after wrestling my one-year-old daughter into her car seat (it's a good thing car seats save young lives, because otherwise they are the bane of my existence), I began to feel a shooting pain through the left side of my neck. It quickly began to spread to my shoulder and down the left side of my upper back and arm. It came on very suddenly, and when I looked in the mirror I noticed my left, eh, let's say deltoid was swollen. I also noticed two suspicious bites on the other side of my neck.
Curse you, art school (not to mention WebMd and the Twilight series) for stoking my creativity and putting oh-so-many worst case scenarios in a brain already filled with too much knowledge about celebrity divorces and Saved by the Bell. As the pain began to spread down my left arm, I resigned myself to the fact that I was no doubt having a combination heart attack-stroke-poisonous spider allergic reaction-vampire conversion.
I called my doctor and they decided it was best if I came in, even though it was the close of the day. I quickly made arrangements and hopped in the car with my daughter during rush hour in the suburbs of DC. My husband and son were out of town, so while in traffic I entertained myself with stories of what the paramedics might say when they inevitably found me on the side of the road.
"Sir, your wife appears to be suffering from the bite of a brown recluse spider. If she had only paid attention in all those First Aid classes. The damage is done, I'm afraid."
"Sir, your wife is having a stroke that was brought on from an encounter with a vampire bat."
"Sir, your wife's last use of the internet was to look up directions to her own doctor. How has she even made it this far?"
Anyhow, imagine my surprise when the doctor didn't send for a gurney and yell "CLEAR!" but simply chuckled when she saw my robust daughter running around the office. Turns out this type of injury is quite common for a parent lifting and chasing their youngsters. Though I tried to repeat that my left arm was hurting (I think I learned something about the link between arm pain and spontaneous cardiac explosions on Grey's Anatomy), a couple shots in the neck later and I was sent home.
I guess, much like an adult reading an Elmo book on the campus of an art school, my case wasn't that special after all.
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