INFECTED!

Well, its been a couple of months, and I'm proud to say I survived the infection of ringworm. Ringworm is a fungus skin infection and has nothing to do with a worm. Its name is often a description of the infection in that red patches are often redder around the outside with normal skin tone in the center, in that it starts healing from the inside out and looks like a ring. Ringworm can be itchy, red, raised, scaly patches that may blister and ooze. It can also make you loose your hair. Fortunately mine was in the inside of my arm.

Ringworm is supposed to be very contageous.... I have no idea where I got it or who I got it from. I didn't see it on any animals at work, school or any of mine at home, and no one I knew had it either. I also didn't pass it along to anyone else that I know of, but I was pretty careful in never touching/scratching it, and if I did so to wash my hands. For the first 2 weeks I had this small round path of really dry skin on my inner arm.... I didn't know exactly what it was, but just thought I had a random patch of very dry skin.... After 2 weeks of that, one day I noticed another ring around this patch of skin and I immediately thought of ringworm. Great thing about being in animal medicine is that a lot of it just goes hand in hand with humans as well. So at school I asked my teacher. He decided to do a test. He took me into a dark room with a black light and placed it over the area... and shore enough, I was diagnosed with ringworm. When ringworm is placed under a black light it lets off a nice flouresecent green glow, and thats exactly what mine did. A couple days later I did the test again and it was glowing even more.... and it eventually got bigger and redder, and the middle started healing but the outter ring was spreading. My teacher at school made me a bandage to wrap it for when I was handling with the dogs... He placed it around my arm and in big black letters said: "Do Not Touch. I'm Infected"

Well... everyone kept telling me to go to the doctor... And I hate doctors, and I couldn't see any reason to go. I diagnosed myself, and I knew what I needed to get rid of it... an antifungal cream. So I went to Wal-Mart and found 2... One for athletes foot, and one for jock itch.... I couldn't decide between the two, since they were pretty much the same, but the jock itch said extra strength, so I went with that... I applied that on it a lot... and it slowly got better. However another student gave me teatry oil cause she swore that works, so I applied some of that. Yet, pretty sure I found the real cure...

Its a fact that if you pee in the shower, it prevents athletes foot. Athletes foot is a fungal infection as well as ringworm, and antifungal creams treat both atheletes foot and ringworm, therfore urine prevents and treats ringworm.... That was the fastest cure.

 This was a couple day after the outer ring began appear (after the first 2 weeks of the center patch of dry skin). The infection then got a litte wider, redder and more raised as the center dry patch healed. It did look pretty bad. For the most part the whole thing is gone, except a faint ring mark.... So I am keeping up with my cure aids to help finish getting rid of it. My classmates named it Hank, and that it was going to turn into the Hulk because it was exposed to radiation from taking radiographs. I did have a dream, however, that I did have a big patch of ringworm right on my forehead. . .  That would have been awful. Hank wasn't too much of a bother to me.... In fact, I'm starting to miss him. He was always there for me and we did do everything together. We showered together, slept together, we even went shopping together and he never did complain about anything.