Episode 9
True Horror: TOXIC
I’ve always had a bit of medical anxiety. Maybe it was because my early childhood was plagued with asthma and chronic severe medication-resistant ear infections. I still have a foggy memory as a small child clutching the sides of my head, scream-crying, the pain in my head so sharp and inescapable. I remember the frequent hospital visits. In fact, I loved the hospital. There was a little play area in the waiting room with books, and building blocks, and all sorts of random battered toys. The pediatricians were so nice and usually were able to find me some relief before a new infection came back with a vengeance.
With medication unable to stop the onslaught, and the risk of a too-severe infection permanently injuring me, the next step was going to be surgery. And then, my mother tells me, one day at around the age of 5 or 6…it all stopped. The ear infections just packed up and left and never came back. There was no clear reason why, other than I simply outgrew them. Same with the asthma. Though that faded away slower, I actually became a pretty robust, athletic kid.
Perhaps because of that, I knew instinctively how random illness could be, and I knew as abruptly as the ones I had came and went, a new one could do the same.
There was a time, when I was around 11, that flesh-eating bacteria seemed to be all the rage in the news. I had for a period of time convinced myself that every cut was going to lead the inevitable loss of limb or life. I watched every scrape with existential dread, thinking this was definitely going to be the one that would redden and swell. I would wake up to find a gaping, necrotic hole forming, forcing doctors to cut out a chunk of flesh to save me, deforming me in the process.
I know I probably sound like I was an intense kid, but I shared these fears with no one. On the outside, I was just your average 11-year-old riding her bike with friends, chatting on the phone, watching Saved By The Bell. But deep down inside, I knew the flesh eating bacteria would get me. It was just a matter of time.
I have grown out of that…mostly. I don’t need WedMD to convince me of the worst case scenario every time there is a minor odd bump or rash. It’s always my involuntary gut reaction. But I’ve been around the block long enough to rationalize with myself before fear consumes me. Frankly, I’m way too busy now to obsess over it.
I guess that’s why I have always been intrigued by medical mysteries. It hits one of my greatest fears: that one day my body will turn on me or be unable to protect me. Or even worse, the nice doctors won’t be able to fix me. I’ll once again be just like that child clasping her head between her hands screaming to make the pain go away.
Gloria Ramirez’s story has always stuck with me. It’s terrifying and tragic on so many levels: her initial diagnosis at such a young age; how her economic situation made an already terrifying ordeal even more fraught. But ultimately, how in her greatest moment of need, when she turned to professionals to help her, she could only lie there helpless as all hell broke loose around her. And for her treatment staff, how they too had no idea what was happening to their own bodies. It should have been so easy to figure out what went wrong: send some blood and urine to a lab so we can make sure it never happens again. Yet, the cause seemed to vanish as quickly as the mysterious event came and went. It all seemed so random; some sort of freak occurrence no one could have possibly seen coming…Or was it?
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