Headless, and yet weeping

seeing red by halo

These are the available choices:    

Either my head is going to explode or I am going to cry.

I am thinking that both will happen, as I've no control over one and the other will probably help me feel better.  If a burst head has any propensity for spawning hot fires -- you know, maybe in the corners of the room, where a stray bit of flaming cranium might land on our ancient brittle-dry silk tapestries -- then it could be that the wetness of my flailing tears might extinguish that dangerous spark.

Hmm?  Oh, well.  The doctor's office just called.  You know, the doctor and his team that I jovially designate as my MDVIP Go-To-Guy et al?  Remember the culture we arranged last Thursday from the fistula that developed near my left shoulder surgery sites, the same left shoulder now "suspected" of being reinfected, such that removal of the shoulder prosthesis looks probable before year's end?

The source of the constant pounding in my head, my daily fevers, the stabbing pain, once confined to deep within the ersatz joint, now traveling down the shaft of the humerus?

Yes, the fistula that delivered unto the nurse's culture swab a respectful quantity of yellowish pus... that in the days since has assumed the quality, in my mind, of thick molten gold, source of epidemiological enlightenment and an informed antibiotic choice.  I even thought, somewhat dramatically, that this opportunity might save my life.

I expected to hear a lot of things but not this as a conversational opening:

"It's all my fault."

The lab refused to run the cultures.  She sent the two swabs in for analysis using expired tubes.  She said she begged them to run it, but that they responded with some lame excuse.

Oh, what was it?  Oh, yeah:  "We could lose our accreditation as a lab..."

Fred informed me that the next time I called him "paranoid," he would remind me of today.

I think I was supposed to feel sympathy for the nurse.  Excuse me if I fail that expectation.  I would entertain the idea of seeing red were not the pressure inside my skull mounting at an alarming rate.

Is there some plot afoot in the universe that wants this infection to rage on, unabated?  That wants me to be left infected, headless -- and yet weeping?

I bet we don't even have any ice cream.