Do yours? If so, I might have a cure!

The trade winds are howling, a mixed blessing if there ever was one. The ocean is ripped to shreds, no diving, kind of okay storm surf, albeit bumpy and swirly and a whole lot of effort compared to the reward.

But the temp has dropped what feels like thirty degrees, a blessed relief after months of no wind, absurd humidity, and record high temperatures.

Which was torture, I spent the majority of our heat wave on the injury list, a gross as hell catheter running from the crook of my elbow into my heart, dumping in lifesaving meds but preventing me from ever cooling down. Even a cold shower doesn’t do much when you’re wearing a shoulder length plastic glove that looks like it was stolen from the set of some terrible horse vet themed porno flick. When the doc finally yanked my catheter it looked like a magic trick, he kept pulling and pulling, it kept on coming.

“That’s the longest thing that’s ever been inside me,” I said.

“That’s probably a good thing,” was my doc’s reply.

I guess it really depends which way you swing, huh?

It turns out that a common side effect of Vancomycin, the goop I was twice daily pumping into my bloodstream via a clever spring loaded medical device, is a weakened immune system. Towards the end of treatment my white blood cell count was hovering in the end stage chemotherapy range, forcing me to limit my already infrequent contact with fellow humans, so as to avoid picking up a terrible bug from some typhoid Mary hacking his guts out while he makes a sandwich because he doesn’t get sick days without a doctor’s note.

I once sneaked into my manager’s office while being forced to work with the flu and spit on her phone, door knob, and into an open can of soda. She was out sick for three days while I robbed the place blind. Ha! Showed her.

 

How fucked is that, by the way?  I’ve had numerous employers (and I mean numerous, I’ve been fired from dozens of jobs) refuse sick leave without paying a doctor to write me a note. Which I couldn’t afford, so I’d head to work and wring a little joy from spreading my disease.

I once sneaked into my manager’s office while being forced to work with the flu and spit on her phone, door knob, and into an open can of soda. She was out sick for three days while I robbed the place blind. Ha! Showed her.

The upshot of my sickly status, combined with weeks of sweating like a tweaker at a rave while never being able to get truly clean, was that I picked up a nasty case of jock itch, something I’d never experienced.

And, inshallah, never will again. One minute I was pouring sweat from my pores into my filthy couch, the next my balls and taint were itchy burning like I’d tea-bagged an anthill. Fucking miserable.

Over the counter remedies didn’t work, a trip to the doctor led to a humiliating conversation.

“Have you been showering? Jock itch is usually caused by poor hygiene.”

“Dude, my dick is the cleanest part of my body. I’ve been spit polishing the thing a couple times a day since I was eleven years old.”

Pissing on your own testicles is more difficult than you’d think. Twisting your dick around, cupping your taint to make sure urine gets spread everywhere, your wife joining you in the shower and asking why it smells.

A little internet digging turned up the fact that jock itch is basically athlete’s foot, something with which I’m familiar. I spent my younger years playing waterpolo and swimming competitively, your feet never truly dry, athlete’s foot is a constant problem. Unless you pee on your feet every morning, that does a great job of preventing it.

Pissing on your own testicles is more difficult than you’d think. Twisting your dick around, cupping your taint to make sure urine gets spread everywhere, your wife joining you in the shower and asking why it smells.

“Because I just peed all over my balls, dear.”

In a few days my own home spun treatment achieved what weeks of powders and sprays could not, and I was good to go. Free to start banging my wife again too, since jock itch is mildly contagious and it wasn’t fair to share the wealth.

But now the trades are back, everything is cool, and, I’ll hopefully never again experience that awful chafing itching burning hell that was my life.

Unfortunately, the return of the trades has also caused the cancellation of the Na Wahine O Ke Kai, the all female Molokai to Oahu outrigger canoe race in which my awesome waterwoman stepmother had planned to once again compete.

Real bummer, tons of ladies from around the world are on Molokai, now forced to find alternate routes to Oahu, being extorted by Hawaiian Airlines for last-minute, inter-island flights.

And now, to add insult to injury, on top of wasted money and huge logistical hassles and the emotional dump which comes with prepping hard for a challenge only to have the rugged yanked out from you last minute, they’ve gotta deal with me segueing into the news of the cancellation via a story about my itchy balls.

If Pangloss is right, and this is the best of all possible worlds, well, that’s pretty well fucked, isn’t it?