Two days ago, I woke up with a boil on my hip. I've never had a boil before and at first I wasn’t even sure what it was. Let me just say, I now appreciate why boils were one of the ten plagues of Egypt; these things are extremely sensitive to the slightest touch, but also the pain radiates quite far from the source of infection. It came up surprisingly fast, too, at first appearing as a pimple-sized, sensitive, red spot, and blooming into a half-dollar over the course of a single day. “Crap,” I thought as I studied it in the mirror. “Soon I’ll have a third butt cheek!”
Last night the boil was getting bad; I couldn't sit properly
because of its location and the associated swelling. As I sat in my parents’
living room, my dad kept asking why I was lopsided. Something had to be done,
so I googled how to treat boils. (Whoever has access to my Google searches must
be highly amused, as in the last six months I’ve searched for how to cure boils,
why students don’t apply what they learn, and cat ejaculation. But that’s
another story.)
Of late, as I crawl on toward 30, I have begun to feel old.
I’m fine with being in bed by 10 PM on a Friday night. I now fall asleep
reading books. I wake up in the night to pee. But nothing has made me feel as
old as the most-highly recommended boil remedy I found online. Currently, I'm
spending spring break sitting in bed without pants, with a wet tea bag attached
to my rump, and a towel and heating pad under that.
To make matters worse, I have three cats who are trying to stealthily steal my heating pad.
