This story begins a few years ago, when I was still in high school. It was near the end of the school day, in study hall, when half of my face went completely numb. No fanfare, no pain, no nothing. Just suddenly, completely numb.
At A Glance Author supraastra Contact [email protected] When Two years ago
Being somewhat paranoid, I immediately assumed the worst. I called my mother and told her what had happened, babbling about having a stroke or something and drooling out of the now numb corner of my mouth. I was terrified.
She drives me to the hospital and after a wait, I'm taken to an examination room. The doctor looks in my ears, does reflex tests, takes my pulse, all the normal doctory stuff. He has no idea what is wrong with me, and states as much. Then he asks me to open my mouth.
"Are these two connected?" He asks. It takes me a second to realize that he is talking about the barbel in my tongue and my lip ring.
"Noo..." I say, wondering how exactly he'd expect me to talk with my tongue bolted to my lip. Then he gets this I'm onto you look on his face.
He asks me a series to questions about my oral piercings. He finds that they're both over a year old, I've had no trouble healing them, they've never been infected, and I've had no recent bumping-into-things type accidents with them. So he leaves me alone about them.
Then, however, he spots my ear.
"This cartilage piercing is infected," he says, matter of factly.
Now I'm very confused. "I don't have cartilage piercings," I tell him. My left lobe (on the numb side) is pierced three times. These three piercings are REALLY OBVIOUSLY on the soft fleshy part of my ear.
He points to the topmost one. "This is cartilage."
Now, it's been an hour since study hall, and I was frightened. I was still afraid that I'd had a stroke or something (I smoked then and was also on the Pill--I thought it was a pretty reasonable assumption) and this asshat was preparing to give me a very expensive stern talking to. My Small Town Bigot Alarm was going off like crazy. I could tell that 1) this man has mistaken my for an idiot, 2) he has no idea what is wrong with me and doesn't want to admit it, and 3) knows that I don't have any way of proving him wrong.
"I know the difference between lobe and cartilage, and I know when a piercing is infected! I have 12 of them!" I say, giving my mother the Help me! Stupid people are attacking! look. She shrugs.
My objections are to no avail, however, and he takes my piercing out. If my ear HAD been infected, he would have trapped the infection inside the piercing, but you know that. He didn't. He then swabbed my ear with rubbing alcohol (of the 99 cents at the drugstore variety) and told me that my face would then magically be healed. He gives me a speech about how body piercings might be a "cool trend" now, but I'll regret this all later, etc, then leaves.
As the nurse who was observing is filling out my paperwork, she says, conversationally, "You know, you can get Herpes from tongue piercings."
I barely contain the urge to scream at her. "If I give oral sex to someone with Herpes!" I say, only twitching a little.
"No," She says, smugly. "You can get Herpes."
"Yes." I say, very, very slooowllly. "I know that I have a higher chance of contracting STDs if my tongue comes in contact with someone's infected genitals. But it doesn't. And I thought I was supposed to not have unprotected sex regardless of how many piercings I have!"
"You should take it out." She says, "It's unhygenic."
This lecture+lost piercing+rubbing alcohol swab cost me several hundred dollars.
Later it was revealed that I have Bell's Palsy, a condition unrelated to my uninfected, healed lobe piercing. It was a terrible three months, and I didn't even bother to go to another doctor after the first fantastic visit. I contacted several organizations for people with Bell's Palsy with my symptoms and sort of diagnosed myself. There was nothing anyone could have done that first day in the hospital--I just had to wait. My face started to slowly return to normal after about three months. The good news is that the first episode of Bell's Palsy is usually the worst. If I ever have another episode, it will probably be considerably less intense. And hopefully will include less drooling.
If anything, the whole episode just taught me a valuable lesson about how being visibly modified (and Goth) in a small town hospital can be a serious liability.
After high school, I moved to Pittsburgh, which is one of the coolest cities ever. I haven't gone to the hospital since, but I can only assume (hope) that I'd get better treatment here then I did up in the wilds of Western PA.