A Chill Wind

I got this in the mail today--a scary thing to get.



It's a reminder of how close I came. There are a lot of people who get SCTs and it feels a bit weird to talk about how frightening it was. But it was frightening.

The surgeon said that he thought what I have was either sarcoidosis or histoplasmosis. Histoplasmosis is a fungal infection. People usually get it from bird or bat droppings. Last December Bob and I visited my sister in New Mexico and drove over to Karchner Cavern in Arizona. So of course, we have decided that bat guano is way cooler than bird droppings or even mouse droppings.

This has led us to our own scenario for the show House. House, the brilliant diagnostician always manages to make two wrong diagnosis before finally figuring out the obscure culprit. So we figure he assumes that there's drugs or something and sends Dr. Foreman to break into our house and check. (He always sends Foreman because Foreman is black and House likes to give him a hard time about his life of juvenile crime.) Foreman finds no drugs, just a brochure from our vacation. House sits in his office, thinking deep thoughts, twirling his cane, and then says, "Karchner Caverns!" He orders a serum antibody test for histoplasmosis and when it comes back positive, smugly tells the crew that it was bat guano.

Actually, something like 80-90% of people who live East of the Mississippi have been exposed to fungus. It's called Ohio River Valley. And people who often eat in fast food restaurants show higher levels of antibodies specific to the kinds of fungal infections transferred by mouse droppings. But fast food is way less cool than bats.