Cellulitis

 

 

Cellulitis is a skin infection, usually caused by Streptococcus or Staphylococcus bacteria. Cellulitis usually develops after a break in the skin from a scrape, cut, bite, or puncture, or after a rash.

A health professional should evaluate symptoms that can occur with cellulitis, which may include:

 

• Painful, red, hot, swollen skin that may crack, split, or weep fluid.
• Red streaks extending from the red area toward the body (lymphangitis).
• Fever and chills.
• Drainage of pus.
• Swollen glands.
• General feeling of illness (malaise).

Facial cellulitis in children requires immediate medical attention to prevent potentially dangerous eye or brain infection. Cellulitis usually is treated with antibiotics, rest and elevation of the affected area, and warm compresses. Cellulitis may be more severe and require hospitalization in people who have decreased blood flow (venous stasis), long-term swelling, diabetes, or an impaired immune system.

 

 

Unfortunately for me my cellulitis is very severe. I have an extremely low immune system that revolves around weighing 96 lb., having anemia, and chronic fatigue from narcolepsy. Also living with a lot of animals who bring in dirt and bacteria off the street doesn’

t help. 

Because of the severity of the bacteria in my system I have been missing quite a bit of school the past 3 weeks. The symptoms of the cellulitis have been horribly intense for me.

 

It’

s not fun.

But you don’

t have to worry if you came in contact with me.

 

Is cellulitis contagious?

Cellulitis is not contagious because it is an infection of the skin’s deeper layers (the dermis and subcutaneous tissue), and the skin’s top layer (the epidermis) provides a cover over the infection. 

How is cellulitis treated?

Antibiotics, such as derivatives of penicillin or other types of antibiotics that are effective against the responsible bacteria, are used to treat cellulitis. If the bacteria turn out to be resistant to the chosen antibiotics or in patients who are allergic to penicillin, other appropriate antibiotics can be substituted. In many cases, treatment requires the administration of intravenous antibiotics in a hospital setting, since oral antibiotics may not always provide sufficient penetration of the injury to be effective. In certain cases, intravenous antibiotics can be administered at home.

In all cases, physicians choose a treatment based upon many factors, including the location and extent of the infection, the type of bacteria causing the infection, and the overall health status of the patient.

 

I had been taking CEPHALEXIN which is a generic for KEFLEX. Unfortunately there hasn’t been a great deal of improvement in the infection. I had been on the KEFLEX a few times last year for the same exact thing, often when your body is over exposed to a drug multiple times the effect of it can wear off. Your internal system adjusts to accept the drug as a normal element. The over exposure to antibiotics can also help to lower your immune system. Since your body is constantly requiring help from an outside source to fight off bacteria the white blood cells deplete and assume they don’t have to work as hard. This isn’

t very good for me.

Since the medicine has been having no effect this is the next step:

INTRAVENOUS: One may need hospitalization if the infection is well developed, extensive, or in an important area, like the face. In most of these cases, IV (intravenous) antibiotics need to be given until the infection is under good control (two to three days) and then you can be switched to oral medications to be taken at home.

My infection is on my face. This is very bad and upsetting. The blisters are going to cause deep scars and giant craters. I will have to get extensive scar therapy after the infection has cleared up.

This will be the end of my career being photographed most likely, a horrible but lucrative source of income. I will be sick for at least another few days, and I’

m not sure how long it will take the infected areas to heal. Hopefully by the weekend all will be well if the intravenous antibiotics work.

Please don’

t ever get cellulitis.

Prevention

• It is very important to keep your skin clean by practicing good personal hygiene.

• If you notice pain or discomfort from an area of the skin, check to see what it looks like. If it appears inflamed and progresses from one day to the next, you will most likely need treatment.

• Avoid situations that may injure your skin, especially if you have swelling from circulatory problems.
• Wear sturdy, well–fitting shoes or slippers with loose–fitting cotton socks. Avoid walking barefoot in areas where you do not have a good idea about what you are walking on, for example, in garages, on a littered beach, or in the woods.
• If you do injure your skin, wash the area with soap and water and check to make sure that the injury is getting better over the next several days.
• Certain injuries may be at greater risk for infection than others. You may need to take antibiotics to prevent infection or have other preventive care. Be sure to contact your doctor if you have injuries such as these:
  • Animal or human bites
  • Puncture injuries deeper than a half–inch, such as stepping on a nail
  • Crushed tissue that bleeds, burns that blister, frostbite, or deep injuries with dirt in them
  • Injuries in contact with sea water
• Find out if you have diabetes or other significant medical conditions, such as liver or kidney disease. These conditions may be present without symptoms. Follow your doctor’s instructions for management of these conditions.
• Talk to your doctor if you have swelling in your limbs that does not go away.

 

poem thing from class

bed time for one

 

I can never stop shaking. I can never, I can never, Never. I can never stopshaking. I shake when I read. I shake. I do not like reading aloud. I do not like reading aloud in front of people. People frighten me. I do not like social gatherings. I do not like events. GLASSLANDS. I wrote one of the stories I read while I was sitting on a couch waiting to read. 

 

After I read people started to come up to me so they could tell me how much they liked my reading. I hate when people say this. I don’t think they like it. They like this line “Gloria was the first girl he had had anal sex with. Gloria had had anal sex with a lot of people.” One person told me he really liked the stories and they reminded him of a book he had just read by Charles Bukowski. I hate Charles Bukowski. I hate when people compare any piece of work created by one person to a piece of work created by another person. I hate people. Another person told me they really liked the stories and felt very connected to them, like they, like knew what the characters were doing, like it seemed so real. Well fuck this is a real story. I, me, I this happened. The he told me I could probably get published because the writing had a lot of pop to it, I mean it was pop. I mean I didn’t understand what the fuck he was trying to say.

 

Tiffany and Ellen came with me. Robby was there when we got there. Tiffany was talking to people. Tiffany is good at talking to people. She can talk to anyone, boys love her, She can flirt and talk. Ellen was talking. They had drinks. I can’t have drinks on my medication because I could die. I wasn’t drunk. I can’t talk to people because I could die. I felt weird. I felt stupid. No boys talked to me. No boys said “you are so incredibly drop dead gorgeous. I found a staircase and walked up it. GLASSLANDS had a small balcony area with a little couch. I sat on the couch. I lay down on the couch. I stared at the glasslands ceiling. I pointed out shapes I saw in the rust. A fat man, the letter C on it’s side, a lobster. Two people walked up the stairs and past the little couch I was sitting on. They began to make out. I sat 5 feet away from them. They made out and put their hands on each others asses. The girl slid her hands in the boys pants. He took her boobs out of her shirt and touched them. I sat 5 feet away from them. I stared at them. It was fun to watch. I watched them. I watched them for 10 minutes. Then they moved backwards closer to the wall. I couldn’t see them as well. I stood up and moved to watch them. The boy had his pants unzipped. The girl had her skirt pulled up. The boy was fucking the girl against the wall. I watched them fuck. I tried to take a picture with my cell phone. It was to dark to take a picture. I walked downstairs.

 

Tommy was there. Tommy is Tiffany’s boyfriend. I walked home. It was snowing. I thought about the last time I had sex. I thought about the last time I made out. They are the same time. The same time over a month ago. I thought about having sex. A dick going inside you is a strange thing to think about. I pictured the boy I had sex with. I thought he really liked me. I only have sex with people I really like. They are people I think I will be with forever. We will date and get married. He didn’t really like me. I decided it was true that I will never have sex again. I hate having sex.

 

I got home. At 4 am a text message woke me up. It was Tiffany. Ellen and Robby had taken her car to the store to get beer. They had been gone over 40 minutes. They were not answering their phones. I thought they died. I usually think people have died when they don’t pick up their phones. I called the EMT hotline. I thought they got in a car accident. It was snowing they must be in a car accident. They told me to call the local hospitals. I called the local hospitals. No one had any ER patients under those names. Tiffany messaged me again an hour later. They were in central park. Ellen text messaged me the next day. They were in central park making out in Tiffany’s car. They were in central park making out in the snow.

I wondered if they had sex. 

O’Hara…. oh Hara

I’m not sure what to think of this man. This man O’Hara. It seems to me these are not poems so to speak. Poetic journal entries maybe. But then we can argue who’s to say what is and what is not a poem. Who is to judge what is and what is not art. Well someone must judge it, because there are paintings we hang in museums and paintings we hang on the refrigerator. The classic saying “my 4 year old could have painted that” , anyone could have painted that. But they didn’t paint it, the person who painted it painted it. I could have written poems like O’Hara. Anyone could write poems like O’Hara. I guess he wrote them first. Or maybe he was only recognized for them first.
The problem I have with them is such simple poetry seems forced. O’Hara’s poems seem forced. The appears to be so much effort put into what affects to be casual. His attempts a nonchalant poetry, for the sake of being nonchalant but still notable, fall short for me.
In the poem entitled “POEM” on page 19 O’Hara starts out by saying
“Instant coffee with slightly sour cream
in it,” fl This line is observational and interesting. It carries the feeling I assume O’Hara had wanted to communicate. The detached and observant, the Parisian walking through life. Unfortunately though I think he ruins most of these beautiful lines by following them with insightful rhetoric I find destructive to the rest of the stanza.
“and a phone call to the beyond which doesn’t seem to be coming any nearer.”
Now this line immediately ruins the poem for me because I have absolutely no idea what he is talking about. And the line which comes after this gives no clue or explanation. When O’Hara offers lines like these it appears to me he has only thrown them in as in effort in sounding poetic, while the simple observations he starts with are for me much more poetic than the poetic attempts that follow. Read the whole poem:

Instant coffee with slightly sour cream
in it, and a phone call to the beyond
which doesn’t seem to be coming any nearer.
“Ah daddy, I wanna stay drunk many days”
on the poetry of a new friend
my life held precariously in the seeing
hands of others, their and my impossibilities.
Is this love, now that the first love
has finally died, where there were no impossibilities?

So this poem is all over the place. I find it confusing and every other lines comes off as a filler. Comes off as “shit let me throw in something that sounds intellectual and thoughtful, but also romantic and bohemian”. Every other line comes off as crap.
Here is the poem with my edits (yeah I took the liberty):

Instant coffee with slightly sour cream
in it.
“Ah daddy, I wanna stay drunk many days”
Is this love, now that the first love
has finally died?

Written this way the poem has a much strong affect on me than before. To me this version is much more insightful as well. By leaving out the pointless lines of poetic explanation I think the reader is able to come to the conclusion of the poem by his/her self. What O’Hara states so obviously should be left to the discertion of the reader.

midnighght cowboy

The problem with this movie is that New York City is in no way a central part of it. This is not a movie about New York, it’s a movie about friendship. Any major city would have been a suitable setting for the main characters. Because of this reason I had no idea why we watched the movie in class. Many big cities have prostitution. The fact is many small towns do as well. If this was the main character’s reason for moving to New York you would have thought he could make more money as a cowboy prostitute in Texas, where it’s still cool to be cowboy.
Friendship can exist anywhere. Maybe that is the point of the movie. After all unlikely friends going to florida. Even in death friends sit next to each-other on the bus.

poetry response

To The Brooklyn Bridge.
This poem has some meaning to me. My grandparents have this framed version of it in the foyer of their apartment. The poem is laid out of some gaudy tracing modernist looking 70’s art print of the bridge it’s self. The bridge is a black outline in the print and the background is this awkward orange sunset color. The poem it’s self is written in this weird chicken scratch kind of “I don’t give a damn” all capitals handwriting. It was how I always pictured all new york beat poetry should be drawn as a child. I’m not sure this is beat classified though. After my parent’s got divorced my father asked me if it was possible that I could request to inherit the painting of the poem and then give it to him (they were my mom’s parents), because it had always been his favorite work of art in their apartment.
I sometimes wonder who did the painting and if it was the poet himself. I mean HArt Crane is somewhat famous, and my grandparents are art collectors. Anyways I never assumed I’d read the poem for school but as soon as I saw that Hart Crane at the top I said to myself “shit I know this poem”. My grandparents aren’t even jewish.
I would say I find the poem somewhat enjoyable. I often wonder about peoples constant relation of New York City to god and religion. Something with all this filth must be so holy. OH holy holy holy hell. I hate that poem though. I guess the image of gates will always reflect an entrance into a greater realm. The gates to heaven, the gates to the city, even the gates to a pasture. A bridge after all is simply a gateway that passes over water. And in a greater realm anything is possible, so if you believe. Believe anything is possible. Believe in god.

I’ll take a picture of it the next time I’m there.

a place i visited

I was going to write about the upper east end of the east end, of Manhattan. But Monday night at 2 am I was awoken by a man hurling a 2×4 consistently against the door of the apartment complex across the street from me. He was yelling “you mother fuckers, this is a mother fucking emergency, let me the fuck in. Yah thats right pull the blankets over your ears sleep in your god damn cozy beds while people are dying”. The cops were called. He reappeared again at about 4 am.
The Astral apartments. Home to many old people, affordable to students, an overall trash heap. Bedbug problems are rampant, you must remember to never approach any furniture left for trash pick up. In fact cross the street on trash pick up days because no consequence is worth it. There have also been claims of serious toxic molds and fungi infesting many units. Some tenants say they have found small mushrooms growing from their ceilings.
On top of this a new Astral episode of debauchery has also occurred. It seems the superintendent who would be responsible for exterminating these little mushrooms has been occupying his time by filming amateur porn instead. Not only but shooting boudoir photography! It can be viewed on such websites as “Model Mayham.com”.
The Astral it’s self has a nice little history though. It commissioned by… CHARLES PRATT!! in 1867. Charles Pratt was the once owner of Astral Oil Works, with the slogan “thee holy lamps of Tibet are primed with Astral Oil”. LAter of course Pratt built thee now famous Pratt INstitute one of New York’s finest art schools. The apartments themselves were built in 1885-1886 as housing facilities for the refinery workers. The Astral was designed after the Peabody Apartments in Southwark, London.
Pratt became a multimillionaire by the way of Astral Oil until he of course sold the company to an even bigger company, John Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.
Oh my.

photos of the past

I thought it was interesting once again that most of the images shared were these depressing depressing pictorials. I guess I have to reevaluate my viewpoint of most of the photography to correspond with the genre of journalism. Though I wonder the same thing now, why it is that newspapers and magazines focus on the horror filled instead of the uplifting. I had been looking forward to a photo of a dog watching hot dogs spin. There was no photo of a dog watching hot dogs spin. There was a lot of murder and child labor. There was no dog. I must assume pulitzer prizes are not won by dogs watching hot dogs. There is no shattering truth to be revealed by the hot dog dog. Maybe my favorite picture is the newsies smoking. Kid’s these days don’t know what it’s like to work a real job. to be out there slaving away for minimum wage, which is now $7.50 an hour. Kids go to high-school then right into collage, but when this photo was taken collage didn’t exist. People didn’t have time for collage because then there would be no one to deliver newspapers. If the newspapers didn’t get delivered then no one would ever see these daring photographs. it’s the circle of life. Maybe.

whitehead

Colson Whitehead made me fall asleep on the subway. I had heard of things like this happening in New York. I was going to be raped on the subway while sleeping. I was going to have my wallet stolen on the subway while sleeping. Everyone who falls asleep on the New York subway, must endure these two experiences. But I got lucky, and was woken up by a homeless man. He was puking liquor all over my lap. Unfortunately my book was ruined. I’m scared.

william christenberry

Hale County Alabama.

(born November 5, 1936)
a photographer, painter and sculptor
Began painting large abstract-expressionist canvasses, then switched to a new medium which evoked the place of his childhood summers in Hale County.
Bachelor’s (1958) and Master’s (1959) degrees in fine arts from the University of Alabama.
Now teaches at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C..
After starting his professorship, there began annual visits to Hale County during summer months resulting in photographs. Originally shot with a Kodak Brownie camera, subsequently shot with a large format view camera.
The result of one visit, a series of photographs documenting the decay of individual structures as nearly isolated objects.
1974, manipulation of photographed buildings into sculptures that accurately reproduce their state of decay and patina. properly proportioned, base foundation in actual soil from these places. Another series of works was provoked by a terrifying incident , out of curiosity, tried to attend a Ku Klux Klan meeting, he fled.
the Klan Room filled with paintings, found objects, drawings, sculptures, dioramas, and a series of fabric klansmen dolls.