Arrrgghh, Matey - Yer Makin' Me Skin Crawl!

Everyone involved with the medical community in any way - even if you're just hooked on one of those medical shows where the endotracheal tube is never secured right and the dying person's eyes always flutter open after two seconds of CPR - has at some dinner party or another been asked one awful question:  What does this look like to you?

The answer depends largely on your choice of beverage at said dinner party.  If that beverage is lemonade, you confess that you have no earthly idea what oozing elbow barnacles could possibly mean.

But if you have made a decent dent in a keg of beer, you tell the truth:  Scurvy.  Specifically?  Elbow Scurvy Barnicus.  You recommend fresh lime juice for eye drops and inhalation therapy.  You leave the party before they try it.

Sometimes these smart-alecky medical people get a dose of their own medicine.  Say, for example, one of them is a nurse who takes care of full-grown adults with chronic problems that brew for years before exploding.  (Coincidentally, often at dinner parties.)

Let's say that nurse has a baby.

But everyone in Labor & Delivery knows this obnoxious, wailing patient is a nurse who works somewhere else in their hospital, so they refuse to enter her room after the baby arrives.  After all, what could she possibly need?

Just, um, an example.

And let's suppose that our nurse and her tiny baby have the misfortune to meet before the birth of the Internet, which leaves the new mother to crawl to the nurse's station and beg for help.

What does this look like to you? she wails at her colleagues.

The most virginal among them glances up from a trashy novel.  Why, that's a hungry newborn, she says.  She hands over a 12-pound 5-ounce book called "The Yellow Pages" so the new mom can root out the LeLeche League for her more pressing problem - Nipple Scurvy Increduloso.

I took this class today - Lyme Disease Mystery - even though the Internet would have yielded two million symptoms from people who don't attend nearly enough dinner parties with doctors and nurses.  I wanted to keep it local.  I mean, what happens when Missouri ticks bite?

Wyoming ticks were no biggie when I was growing up.  There were exactly four weeks each year when they weren't frozen solid, so as long as we moved through the sagebrush with legs like pogo sticks, we only had a few dozen helping us take a bath that night.

But I imagined Missouri ticks would cause special, Midwestern complications - like a feverish sweat that commanded, Sit right down here on this riverbank and get yourself a big ol' fishin' stick!

That may be Mississippi ticks.

No need to Google!  The Lyme teacher had two million symptoms of her own, most of which I had always attributed to PMS.  (Bonus Nurse Tip:  The next time you feel bitchy, can't do the top button of your Levi's, or sob uncontrollably when the Army guy sneaks home on leave and wakes his parents with the smell of Folger's - go directly to the emergency room for a tick check.)

My mom Pearl enrolled, too, even though she was just visiting the Missouri ticks and was always smart enough to stay out of the sagebrush for four weeks each year in Wyoming.  She's one of those awesome octogenarians who is always up for anything.  Ice cream with friends?  Sure!  Disease discussion with total strangers?  Why not!

What I learned in class:  My post-retirement hobby won't include diagnosing certain diseases based on mysterious symptoms.  But it may very well include arguing with people who think they have certain diseases based on mysterious symptoms.

At some point, I turned Full Helper Bee and started correcting every answer the teacher offered.

Classmate One:  "Lately, I find I'm thirsty all the time and have to use the bathroom every ten minutes."

Teacher:  "That's Lyme.  You need antibiotics."

Me:  That's Sugar Scurvy Diabeticus!  Start substituting limes for candy bars!

Classmate Two:  "When I run on cement the front part of my lower legs ache."

Teacher:  "Oh, that's definitely Lyme.  You definitely need antibiotics."

Me:  That's Concrete Scurvy Shin Splintius!  Stop at Sonic for a lime slushy on your way home to elevate your feet!

And so on.

Mom nodded encouragingly during the teacher's impromptu speech about showing respect for instructors.  (Mom devotes total focus to flight attendants so they won't feel bad.  After the whole fasten-your-seatbelt-we-may-need-oxygen-if-we-find-a-body-of-water routine, she applauds.)

I was not worried about Mom being brainwashed until a classmate leaned over and asked her the dreaded question.

"What does this look like to you?"  The woman flopped her hands on Mom's desk.

Mom tilted her head, employing her signature super-concentraty eyebrow stance, before answering the lady with the flawless skin.  "Why, that is some kind of Lyme something, I think."

Mom! I said.  Snap out of it!

But the teacher was already passing out antibiotics.

My instincts faltered.  I studied my hands - and then my arms - and there on the carpet of weirdly shaped brown spots I saw all those ticks I'd found years ago during bath time.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

I have Lyme Scurvy Mysteriosis, I finally admitted to myself.

But before I could raise one diseased appendage to request some pills, Mom slid her hands onto my desk.

"What does this look like to you?"  She whispered so as not to disrespect the teacher.

Our hands and arms had the same patterns.

My voice broke with emotion.  I see a map to my future ... a way through life's twists and turns ... the promise of sunnier times, no matter what the fates shower upon-

"Nope," she said, tapping her watch.  "It looks like lunchtime."

ALREADY?  WOO HOO!

Lunchtime is easily diagnosed as one of my three most favorite times of the day, and I know where to get the best Key Lime pie.

I should also mention Mom's signature way of not letting me derail all the way into Drama Scurvy Queenius.

(Lots of extra junk in the trunk?  I mean the kind they'll not arrest you for when it's placed on the Fed Ex counter?  Goody!  Next Friday we'll learn how to sell it on eBay!)