I developed a boil in the middle of my back/right shoulder blade area early in October.

It was painful for most of the week, but I was doing some home remedies when I had the chance like warm washcloths over the area to help get it to hopefully rupture and drain. But it was in a location that every time I had to get in or out of my car, it would brush up against the seat and remind you “hey, I’m here!”

Friday, Oct. 11, it indicated that home remedies were no longer enough. The area was red, infected and was pushing towards a fever. When I tried to sleep Friday evening, every few hours I was getting up to use the restroom, and when I’d try to lay down and get comfortable my entire right side would erupt in fire.

I set out Saturday afternoon for an urgent care clinic to lance this boil. When I went into my appointment, the doctor took one look and said, yeah, no, you’ve got to go to the emergency room. Too inflamed for us.

So off I went to spend time in an emergency room and get this throbbing pain lanced.

Of course, there’s road construction in Cedar Rapids, so getting to the E.R. is no cakewalk, and some of the roads in that area need more improvement than the ones they’re working on…

After a four hour wait in triage in the E.R., the nurse in charge lanced the boil and drained what she could. To say instant relief is an understatement. That boil was almost non-existent on my back immediately after.

Except there was the other infection. When given the choice of getting just oral medications and going home or staying overnight for observation, I chose observation.

And they poured a lot of antibiotics in between Saturday evening through Sunday morning.

Of course, where they placed my initial I.V. was at the crook of my left elbow, so if I moved or held my left elbow in the wrong direction, the machine would beep that it was occluded on the patient side.

I also hadn’t planned on a hospital stay, so my laptop and C-PAP machine were still at home. Which meant Saturday was an even less restful night of sleep.

The doctor visited Sunday morning and told me he’d like me to stay one more night for observation and to make sure they did all they could to get the infection under control and avoid impacting my bloodstream.

Which meant it was impacting work I do on Sundays and work I do Monday mornings for the newspaper. By Monday afternoon, I was on my way home with oral medications for the next two weeks and exhaustion.

And one of the costliest skin blemishes I’ve ever had.