I am country! And I’m here to prove it!
In 2001, I was out on the town enjoying a few cold ones with a male friend. It was late and time for me to make the trip home which was 20 miles away. My male friend decided to walk me to my car. Prior to him deciding to walk me to the car, I had come to the conclusion that I could make it home without making one last pit stop to the dreaded public restroom. He walks me to the car and decides he needs to talk with me a little longer. As he’s talking, my bladder is filling but then he finally decides that all the convincing in the world wasn’t going to make me bring him home with me. I get on the road and I’m half way home when I realize there is no way in hell I’m going to make it home without relieving myself somewhere. It’s late at night and there’s no public place I feel safe enough to make a pit stop. I’m driving, with my legs squeezed as tightly together as you can while having one foot on the accelerator. I’m wiggling in my seat trying like the dickens to make it but at this point my teeth are floating and concentration is becoming a big problem. I’m right outside a little village called Maurice when I decided I can’t wait any longer. I do what any lady would do, I pull off to the side of the road, scope out the traffic, open the door, find a nice grassy spot and proceed to pull my jeans to my knees and squat. Relief is instant and no one is the wiser!
The following day I make a trip to the nursing home to visit my elderly grandmother. Had the same need to urinate and made use of the nursing home facilities. No problem, shouldn’t have been a big thing, right? Wrong! Stay with me here. I do have a point.
A week later, which was the week before Thanksgiving, I’m walking in New Orleans, with the same young gent who caused my bladder spasms, and I feel my left butt cheek irritated. The more I walk, the more my ass is chapped. My jeans rub against my left butt cheek and it’s very uncomfortable but I think that obviously something bit my ass while I squatted the week before. I think nothing of it and continue walking and drinking my Buffet Margaritas in New Orleans. Come Monday, I thought it would be all right, but it was a swelling like no body’s bidness! I thought I had a big rear before. Now it was a bit lopsided. Lumpy so to speak! I thought, okay, it’s a spider bite and will go away. Nadda, it was only getting worse. I’m what, we call in French, "tete du" hardheaded. Finally on Thanksgiving day, my jeans were no longer fitting and my shapeliness was getting shapeless. My family decides they are taking matters into their own hands and make me go to the hospital. I go to the emergency room thinking it’s a wasted trip and they will tell me to keep my happy ass off the side of the road from now on. (I did have to tell my story to the physician so he could make his best educated guess as to what was wrong) The physician decides that something had bit me but he does a culture just in case. He gives me some happy pills and antibiotics and sends my rear home.
Saturday morning arrives and I get a call from the hospital. I need to get my swollen, lopsided, unhappy ass there as soon as possible. Now I knew that it was bad because my body was producing things that should not have ever come out of any body but especially mine! I had never in my life seen anything close to what I was seeing butt I wasn’t really worried until they told me I had STAPH. I arrive at the hospital to be hooked up to IV’s and placed in a room that was sealed off and everything that left the room would leave in Orange Contaminated bags. I have never felt so ostracized in my whole life.
Would I ever squat on the side of the road again? You bet your happy ass I would....but I will NEVER pee in a nursing home again! It was the spider bite that left an open wound which allowed the Staph from the nursing home toilet to enter my body. It was the grossest thing that I’ve ever seen and public restrooms to this day cause flashbacks of something I never want to endure again!
