Just Nichols » Justin

An uncanny mystery of disease…

Justin — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 04:10:23 +0000

“Ugg, what are these bumps on my arm?” I slept solely on my left side, so immediately the assumption walked through my brain that somehow the blood had cluttered together and got stuck. A parallel section on the back of my hand was bright red, appearing rashly that morning. The crimson streak ran up my arm. Of all this, I made no relationship.
My parents counseled me as to what I should do. We arrived at the decision that I should drop by the college clinic and have them look at the bumps. Dad thought they were weak sections of my veins that had swollen with blood. Renae and I stopped by the clinic and found that it opened at ten. It was seven in the morning.
After music class, we went back and I tried to book an appointment. The lady at the front desk could not have me come in until next week. I asked her to feel my bumps. She did. Abviusly she was worried.
Something was wrong.
Soon the nurses whisked me into a room with a blue bed and a paper white pillow on it. Sitting awkwardly on the bed, I looked around the room. The cubicle was tiny. Across the room, a dresser stood holding bottles and tissues and all assortments of strange tools. They left me necessary paperwork, as I arrived a newbie to the clinic.
What could it be?
I was not scared. I told my parents jokingly what to do in case I died. In music class my head whirled in circles, and blood pulsated hard behind my eyes. My head was exploding. For a moment, reason impaired. Thinking was too hard.
Am I going to die?
A doctor walked in, pulling a demeanor of high spirits into the room. She asked questions, and examined my arm under a light. Tracing the waterfall of red down my arm, she arrived at my left middle finger.
“Can you flip your hand over?”
And there it was. Mystery solved. The connections were made: the bumps, the rash, the dizziness and the fever. The symptoms fell up my arm like a domino track. She informed me I had cat scratch fever. Basically what had happened is somehow I suffered to get a small cut, didn’t wash it, and had it licked by a cat. About half of all cats carry intracellular bacterium Bartonella around in their mouths. It effects them in no way, but it can prove fatal for humans. The poisoned blood creeps slowly to the heart, causing death on rare occasions. The mysterious bumps where actually lymph nodes; little filtering traps for foreign particles of bacteria. Lymph nodes inflame when they fight an infection- thus the bumps.
The symptoms of cat scratch fever that I felt where as fallows. Slight fever, headache, chills, backache and confusion. For some reason I felt every single one, but none very strong. The doctor prescribed me to get some very expensive antibiotic at BiMart, and then I came home on the bus. Few, what a long day. Renae still is not home, although it is 8:00 pm. We usually stay at Lane Community College all day long, finishing math homework and such. I know this post sounds kinda’ depressing, but don’t worry. I’m doing snazzy well!

Learning and Loving

Justin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:34:08 +0000

My family used to sit down and munch through books. Feeling like an envious outsider, I would watch every one else licking their lips with the delight of language as they gulped down sentences. “How come everybody else can read and I can’t read!?” Even everyone in my second grade class knew how to do it. The mysterious code of reading seemed impossible to crack! I cried my way through the struggle of learning.
My parents did not force me to read. Later I struggled to learn how to decipher the written language from my mother. It was my individual choice to pick up books. I eventually developed an almost unnatural taste for reading, like a glutton among anorexics.
A large, plastic gray crate comes to mind when the word ‘book’ is said. My siblings and I used to go to the library chattering and bickering in the car. We filled up a crate with books and came home in complete undefiled silence dumping the knowledge from the crate into our minds. Within a week we would be back again.
Reading always inspires me to write. I’m working on three novels, a journal and a website right now. My goal is to be an author before I slam eighteen. I think as a writer. I think as a creator, a describer, and a history-teller. I find myself describing gnarled roots, stray kittens, broken swings, up-side-down blurs on windshields that look like faces, or people’s conversations. Sometimes I can’t help but listen in to dialogs, studying how people talk, think and express themselves.
Yesterday I rushed through my first day of winter term College; meticulously taking notes on any word I didn’t know that respired through my teacher’s mouth. Unfortunately I forgot a pencil. Oh! The horrors! My notes for that day are written in bold blurred letters, for my sister’s pencil we shared was dulled down until its tiny slope of lead ground flat.
At times during my life I’ve loved learning but loathed school. Mostly I’ve enjoyed both. In public school, it was grades over learning. I never knew anyone who would admit they liked school. In second grade I had my father as a teacher, and I started to love pottery and art. In third I figured out I liked to write, even though my spelling was so horrific I couldn’t read my own writing. I’ve grown a lot since then, filling up my own books with art and writing. In fifth grade, while living in Spain, many people influenced me for the better. For example, I learned the very technical method of how to shoot rubber-bands at pesky flies. That year transformed my life in several distinct ways.
Every day we’re learning, right? Every hour, every minute, every second, every moment our brains are sucking knowledge through our heads, keeping some pieces, and slaughtering others. Learning is a part of life. What you learn about is your choice, a very important and life-changing choice.
Life isn’t about life. All the smug vanities add up to zip. True, thinking and ice skating and writing and marriage are all great things, but the Bible says this: ‘But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.’ (Mathew 6:33).
We all have a conscience. We all have some sort of standard behavior that we agree upon, and if someone breaks it we think he’s ‘wrong’. What or who gave it to us? Some sort of great being who made us? Well, if that’s true, then he must be ignoring earth, or letting us do all the evil we want for some odd reason, or maybe he tries to stop us but isn’t powerful enough to do anything about it.
This creator, known as ‘God’ is good, and must want us to be good because he gives us a conscience. Another clue to this creator is the creation. Just look up any night and see the searing-hot stars piercing through the curtain of our atmosphere, and then try to rethink the word ‘big’ from Gods perspective. (Warning: serious risk of brain overload.) We Christians have a pretty gigantic God out there, who somehow cares about every one of his children. He cares about everyone on earth so much that he gave his son to die on a cross, in our place.
The penalty of sin is death. He died so our sins would be forgiven. The awesome part is that God raised Jesus from the dead. The vast abyss of sin between God and man disappeared. All man has to do is believe that God’s son died for him, and his sins are forgiven. The book of Mathew is supernatural thriller.
When my father asks me to do something, I don’t always understand why he’s having me do it. Like singing at old people’s homes or simply obeying when I don’t see the logic. There are times in my life when I know my God has a bigger plan for me than I could fathom. He formed me into the human I am today using my past experiences, mistakes, and even my tardy reading to help me realize what a beautiful God we have. God has a way of twisting situations around for love’s benefit. I love my God, and try to obey him. Now that is the point of life.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.”
Mathew 13:45-46

My big Dad

Justin — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 04:45:53 +0000

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR DAAAAAAD HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!!!
You were three days late of a tax reduction. A man already grown in Marcias womb. Once, a person stopped your to-be mother on the street and told her that she was the biggest pregnant lady he had ever seen. Your Dad bounced you over rocky roads trying to get you to hurry up and hop on out. Marcia took caster oil. You must have been one big baby.
When you suddenly decided to be born, the OBGYN, or the doctor birthing dude, had to rush down the hall cause for some reason you really wanted out. As he walked briskly, one nurse handed him his surgical mask and doctor clothes while another nurse picked up his normal clothes he threw behind him. That baby put things off for a while, but when he decided to emerge, he hurried up and got right to it. My Dad might put things off a while, but when he sets his mind to it he gets things done.
You were one big baby, and you’re one big Dad. I’m glad you spanked me, happy you trained me, and joyful to have such a Dad as you. Thanks for everything. Now, lets see about that chocolate pie…

Halloween and a broken nose

Justin — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 21:58:42 +0000

Wind whistled through my shirt, making it flap against my skin. The exhilaration of the ground coming up at me made my heart beat faster. I panted and took in the air charging at my mouth. Standing on Grandmas swing, my whole body bobbed up and down, making the swing go higher.

Grandmas swing groaned and creaked as the chains above my head crushed against each other. The ropes suffered under my weight. The chains holding the ropes cried. The tree holding the chains felt like it was going to fall. All of them screamed.

Snap!

One link, just one, couldn’t take it any more. It had ground itself down to nothing more than a skinny piece of worthless metal, and now it gave out. I rammed into the ground. Such speed! Luckily my nose broke my fall. Ha! Actually my fall broke my nose. With a mouth full of dirt, I lifted myself up and sprinted inside. At first, not a thought passed through my head. My body relied solely on instinct for the next moment.

“Call dad!” I sobbed at my sister. Later she told me she thought I was pretending.

I shivered violently. By the time I lay in bed with ice on my hand, knee, and nose the shivering had stopped. The crying stopped too.

Later, after a five hour nap, my uncle (a professor who teaches anatomy) and aunt (a hygienist) came over to examine my nose. My uncle jokingly said that it was an improvement. My Aunt wondered what all the black stuff was on my teeth. After examining it and poking it a lot, they said it was OK. Later Dad told me I had broken most of the cartilage in my nose. It still hurts when I bop it.

Later that night I went to a “Harvest Party” and my uncles “Hell House”. I was sure lucky I already had a built in mask!