As nephew Brian correctly noted it shouldn’t take a scientist to figure out that people getting the same rash at the same time does not mean the rash is contagious, for certainly, and of course—as Carol also pointed out to me—the persons so affected may have been exposed simultaneously to some toxic element in the environment. Who knows but perhaps some noxious material was released from the walls when the plumbing people knocked holes in them to put in the new pipe. That’s a possibility.
And I was wrong too about the rash being pityriasis rosea. I went in for my yearly physical, and when my medical person looked at the rash she said it was dermatitis. As a diagnosis, this was not very helpful since dermatitis means “inflammation of the skin (rashes).” Well, yea, I knew that: that I had a rash I mean.
The medical person checked me out pretty thoroughly; and was happy to be reminded that I had recently received an anal probe from the urologist so she didn’t have to do it. I was relieved too actually. I don’t much enjoy that business. Or the yearly physical, for that matter. I still have to go in to have blood drawn for the blood panel work up. Damn! I don’t want to do that either.
Then after the physical, we had to split to go back to the title company that drew up the papers for the refinancing of the condo. We had gone there before the doctor and we had spent a good half an hour or more going through an endless stream of documents, initialing and signing them, and then Carol noticed that the address they had for us on all the documents said Santa Barbara. But we don’t live there; we live in Goleta. So the person we were talking to phoned the people who drew up the paper and they said—damn it!—that the paper would have to be redrawn and we would have to resign everything.
I just sat there. Resolved, I guess; because I have become used to casual incompetence from banks and money people. So then we went to the doctor and then we went back to sign the documents. By then it was dark and the placed was closed, and when we tried to get out of the building we found out we were locked in.
I just stood there. Resolved to incompetence.
But we got the papers signed and I learned that I don’t have pityriasis rosea. Just dermatitis. I have made an appointment with the dermatologist about that and to have him look at something that is growing behind my left ear—by which I mean the portion of my left ear nearest the skull.
