It looks like the version of Snake that God would play while waiting for His dentist appointment, but it's one of the deadliest bacteria in the world. Strepto-P is a flesh-eating bacterium, one of the most common causes of necrotizing fasciitis. That's a polite way of saying that it makes you rot to death.
Streptococcus entered my life unexpectedly, shortly after I returned from an overseas trip. My family was throwing a birthday brunch, which I begged off in the name of jet lag. My mom assured me that was fine, because Dad was fighting some sort of stomach bug, and next weekend would be better, anyway.
Three days later, he was in a coma.
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You don't know rescheduling guilt until "now they're in a coma" rescheduling guilt.
That "stomach bug" wasn't a stomach bug at all. My dad had been dealing with pain in his groin, and he'd lied about it because he was embarrassed. By the time it got bad enough that my mom forced him to show her what was wrong, his penis had retracted entirely into his body, and his testicles had swollen to the size of a grapefruit and turned black. The parts that weren't black were an angry, swollen red.
Even at the hospital, the doctors didn't know what was wrong. He went in late that evening and almost immediately had a team of doctors around him. Waiting for five hours at the ER isn't fun, but it turns out that getting treated immediately is a really bad sign. His heart started beating wildly, his kidneys started fucking up, and before long he was on oxygen -- then a ventilator. By the time they resorted to having a machine do the lunging for him, we knew he was dying. We didn't know why, though, and for a while, it didn't look like he'd live. The hospital assigned a nurse to my mom to keep her calm.
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This proved impossible, even with the ER's medicinal kittens.
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