Infection...

In October of 2001 I was dying. I mean, okay, technically we are all always dying. But my death was a lot closer than I realized. I was actively dying.

I've written about it before. I was going in to the grocery store and put my hand directly on a bee that was on the handle of the grocery cart. The bee did the logical thing and stung me. I took the stinger out and cleaned the spot and went on my merry way.

What I didn't realize is that there was either dirt on his stinger or dirt on my hand that was forced stinger deep into the joint of my right thumb. For weeks that dirt sat in the joint and festered until one Sunday morning I woke up and couldn't bend the thumb, couldn't pull it in toward my hand, nothing. It was red, hot, swollen and stuck out like a...well like a sore thumb.

I debated a trip to Urgent Care. Thought about just soaking it and putting some antibiotic cream on it and calling it a day. But it was really hot to the touch so I decided better safe than sorry and went in to the Urgent Care. I got two big shots of antibiotics, some pills and told to call my primary care physician Monday for a follow up appointment. I went in on Monday and had it looked at again. Got an actual prescription to continue the antibiotics and a list of things to watch out for to see if I needed to head back into the hospital. And the casual mention that if I had waited until Monday the infection would have taken hold and I probably would have died.

I didn't. Clearly. But I didn't get off scot-free either. There was fairly significant nerve damage. Even now almost 25 years later there is still one spot that I cannot feel anything. I could take an ice pick and shove it in a specific spot in the fat pad of my right hand and not even flinch. But that's a world of improvement from not being able to feel my thumb and that entire third of the palm of my hand. The damage has mostly been repaired, but it was slow, multiple decades. And if I had waited any longer it would have been too late.

And I never realized what was happening. I thought nothing of the sting, but because I had only taken care of the surface infection the deeper infection just festered.

That's what we are seeing right now in the US. We have never taken care of the deeper rot in our country. Just papered over the infection as it periodically reaches the surface. We as a country have never dealt with racism and sexism. We just let white men continue to assume that they are inherently better than everyone else and we cover over the pus when it oozes to the surface. Civil War, Civil Rights Movement, First, Second, Third Wave feminism, Stonewall, the AIDS crisis and on and on and on. We paper over what the actual issue is and pretend like we solved something.

Meanwhile the rot keeps festering. And I'm afraid this time we didn't catch it in time.

I think when scholars in other countries write about the downfall of the United States they will all pick their favorite starting point. Movement Conservatism will get a spin. The rise of the technobros for sure will have their book series. But the Puritans landing in a new country and insisting that everyone worship their god in their way probably set us on our course. The arrival of the first slave ships and the justification for owning people and the creation of the "white race" is where I think we probably really started going wrong. And we for sure kept going wrong when we didn't dig out that racism root and stem after the Civil War. When making nice with enslavers and traitors seemed more important to the unity of the country than dealing with underlying poison that is an enslaver mentality.

And here we are. Our country has rotted deep in its core. We are moments away from death. This time, unlike with my thumb, I saw it happening (too late) and couldn't stop it. Because once that rot takes hold it's almost impossible to stop it.

Especially when a not insignificant portion of the population around you loves the filth.