

Batsh#t Crazy

A True Tale of Love, Lust, Loss, the Apocalypse, the CDC,

and a Common Air-borne Fungus That Can Cause

Insanity and Illness

## (Warning: Contains Profanity and Sexual References,

## but it just wouldn't be the same without them....)

Alternate Title:

Love in the Time of Ebola

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers. ~

Oscar Wilde

#

Chapter 1 - Backstory 6

 Chapter 2 - Some Doctors Graduated at the Bottom of Their Classes 33

 Chapter 3 - There Are Bad Mechanics, Bad Contractors, and Bad Doctors 36

 Chapter 4 - A Diagnosis! Call the Men in the White Hats (and Hazmat Suits) 41

 Chapter 5 - I Saw the Sign, And It Opened Up My Eyes 43

Chapter 6 - The Lion of Judah 46

Chapter 7 - The Happening 50

Chapter 8 - Into the Woods 52

Chapter 9 - Walking in the Wilderness 62

 Chapter 10 - Welcome to the Hotel California 64

 Chapter 11 - You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave 70

 Chapter 12 – Tonight I'm Walking on Air 72

Chapter 13 - Take the Long Way Home 74

Chapter 14 - Room Service 78

 Chapter 15 - How Long Must You Wait For It? 86

Chapter 16 - Strolling So Casually 88

Chapter 17 - Bipolar DJ 93

 Chapter 18 - The 2nd Horseman of the Apocalypse -Pestilence 98

Chapter 19 - Holiday...Celebrate 102

Chapter 20 - Coming and Going 106

 Chapter 21 - Our Love is Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma Madness 110

 Chapter 22 - Just the Facts, Ma'am 112

 Chapter 23 – Have a Little Sympathy 124

Chapter 24 - Got a Strange Magic 126

 Chapter 25 - I've Got That Summertime Sadness 130

Chapter 26 - Boom Clap 132

Chapter 27 \- The Good Samaritan 134

 Chapter 28 - Getting All the Way to the F...B...I 136

Chapter 29 \- What a Mind F#@k! 140

 Chapter 30 – This is a Land of Confusion 143

 Chapter 31 - The Waiting Is the Hardest Part 146

 Chapter 32 - And the Story Goes On and On and On 153

Chapter 33 - No More Tears 156

Chapter 34 \- Under the Influence 158

Chapter 35 - Crazy Stupid Love 161

 Chapter 36 - Then You Really Might Know What It's Like 164

 Chapter 37- I Will Be With You Again...On New Year's Day 169

 Chapter 38 - I Don't Care If the World Knows What My Secrets Are. So-o-o-o-o What! 176

 Chapter 39 - "The Histoplasmosis Poems" 182

 Chapter 40 – Someone to Watch Over Me 191

 Chapter 41 – I Wonder If I'll Ever See You Again 196

 Chapter 42 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For 198

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#  Chapter 1 \- Backstory

(aka: "The Answer is Blowing in the Wind")

Did you ever wonder where the term "Batsh#t Crazy" comes from? Well, I found out.

It turns out, batsh#t really CAN make you go crazy. At least a fungus that's in batsh#t can make you crazy. And extremely sick, too. It's called Histoplasmosis, the fungus that many bats carry that makes them photophobic (so they only come out at night) and causes their ears to buzz (so that they hunt by echolocation, similar to sonar). They shed the fungus in their feces.

Bats are everywhere. "Mine" were Mexican Free-Tailed Bats. Google bats and see where the different species of bats are located in the United States. There are a LOT more than you'd think. They're the most numerous non-human mammal in the U.S.

A large majority of the American public, up to 80-90% or more in some areas, has been infected with Histoplasmosis, and most of those people are said to be asymptomatic. In fact, I'll bet YOU have been infected with the fungus at some point in your life. Almost everyone has.

Normally, Histoplasmosis causes flu-like symptoms, and the fungus is quickly killed by your immune system (or is it? more about that later). If suspected, a lung X-ray sometimes will allow a diagnosis for the pulmonary Histoplasmosis doctors are familiar with. But some people will get the less familiar and potentially fatal Disseminated Histoplasmosis (with only a 10% chance of survival if left untreated) meaning that the fungus invades, attacks, and inflames various organs, including the brain.

Disseminated Histoplasmosis is difficult to diagnose unless suspected (and apparently it's rarely suspected), but even then it's often difficult to get positive lab results. There are many false-negatives, and many people seem to be correctly diagnosed only during an autopsy.

When a victim complains of buzzing ears doctors will look and see nothing. Most routine tests for complaints of abdominal and chest pains will show nothing. Liver enzymes will probably be elevated, indicating inflammation. There might be strange rashes and vision problems.

"Oh well, just some allergy," people will think. Or stress. Or aging. Eventually victims may awaken at night with everything they see sliding to the right (nystagmus?) or flashes of light (photopsia?). They will be dizzy and may become temporarily blind, like I did. Cortical blindness due to damage of the brain's occipital lobe or meningitis? But by the time the ambulance arrives the episode is over and people will be told they're overreacting or even that they are a hypochondriac and should admit themselves to a mental hospital, like I was, even though my sister and coworkers knew I (and other workers) had various symptoms up to 2 ½ years earlier, before I even knew what Disseminated Histoplasmosis was.

Victims seeing flashing lights, unable to open one eye, sky-high blood pressure, and fearing a stroke may be kicked out of an emergency room at 3 am, like I was, with no transportation 18 miles from home since an ambulance had brought them, because the young doctor had never heard of the disease.

The unlucky will be misdiagnosed and given corticosteroids or antibacterial, like Cipro. They may believe the photophobia, buzzing ears, and loopy behavior are side-effects of the drug.

The very unlucky will be given something like Prednisone, like I was, and then sent home to die.

Fortunately for me, I'm stubborn and have a B.S. in Biology with a Chemistry minor. After numerous misdiagnoses and false-negative lab results, like many victims obtain, I persisted and finally got a positive Histoplasmosis antibody test result from the Mayo Clinic. I knew I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis after Googling the extremely odd symptoms, seeing/hearing bats feeding at night around my workplace, and remembering bats were seen at work, heard in the ceiling, and that bat feces were seen in my lab and along the walls of the warehouse. If it wasn't for the Internet, I'd be dead.

Note to self: Write a thank you note to Bill Gates.

For approximately three years, starting in 2011, I worked as a chemist in a lab at Ultrapure Solutions, located in Carrollton, Texas (basically Dallas/Fort Worth...DFW) adjacent to a small lake near I-35 and George Bush Tollway. While there I noticed other employees and I suffered various symptoms concurrently and clustered around the months of May/June and late Fall-December. These symptoms included weird rashes (including erythema multiforme/granuloma annulare? and erythema nodosum -symptoms of cutaneous histoplasmosis; and a prurient rash - histoplasmosis lesions), gastrointestinal disorders, seasonal IBS, chest pain, vision problems, buzzing ears/tinnitus, migraines, not being able to lift my arms at my shoulders (a known symptom of Disseminated Histoplasmosis AND ALS), lumps showing up on my face, swollen lymph nodes in my neck/chin, fecal incontinence, plantar fasciitis, migraines that started when I worked there but I haven't had since, inability to lower chin/pain in the neck when looking down (meningitis?), the odd feeling of cold water dripping on my legs (arachnoiditis?), etc.

One coworker and I were suspected of sleeping together due to a concurrent identical chronic rash lasting 6+ weeks. We both wondered if we had West Nile Virus, but Dallas County said no if we had no fever. I never had a fever with my illness.

My last day at work was April 10th, 2014. I walked out with sudden and erratic dangerously high blood pressure, bloody diarrhea, apparent gallstones, and extreme hoarseness and thirst. (Lab results indicated no bacterial infection.)

I knew something was wrong in the building, and it was killing me and apparently others. As I walked out of work for the last time with my belongings, and my manager asking if I wanted to talk about it, something just told me to 'keep walking, keep walking, just leave, just leave.'

It's a good thing I listened.

I emailed Dallas County and the City of Carrollton, thinking it was all the mold in the ceilings making everyone sick. They were very responsive. At one point I mentioned Disseminated Histoplasmosis, and the emails stopped.

To be fair, I did request no replies to my emails at one point, since my blood pressure was high and erratic and I was trying to keep the stress in this rapidly escalating drama to a minimum. But I'm pretty sure that request came later, and I noticed the emails stopped before that, immediately after the email that I thought I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis.

I also had emailed the CDC about suspected mold, and received a reply they didn't deal with mold issues. But then I realized it appeared to be disseminated histoplasmosis, a disease they DID deal with, and I emailed them. Just like Phil Collins, I received no reply at all.

Later I couldn't get ANYONE to reply to emails or phone calls. All of my emails were suddenly "UNDELIVERABLE." I'd start out begging and then ended up threatening out of frustration. People should have responded...it was their JOB!

I had NEVER experienced having NO ONE reply to any of my communication attempts like that. Having NO ONE interested in trying to help was new to me, I thought, until later I remembered this all felt vaguely familiar. It seemed I had the same problem after I got sick in 2008 and saw a coworker who looked like a leper in Arlington, Texas, which is also in DFW.

Having read online the CDC is supposed to spray antifungal in the fields with a diagnosis of Disseminated Histoplasmosis and that the CDC should be the most-feared government agency, since they have the authority to take over an area and control communications in cases of infectious disease outbreaks, I presumed the CDC was responsible for my blocked emails, texts, and phone calls.

Also, when I started getting no replies to emails, I suspected it was the CDC and emailed myself, "I assume you're the CDC and blocking my emails. I understand...no one wants to panic millions of people...but could you please send me an Undeliverable notice when people don't get my emails just so I'll know they didn't get it? It makes me upset and stressed thinking people are just ignoring me."

And that was when my emails started coming back as "Undeliverable"....

So I'm pretty sure any normal person would suspect the CDC was in DFW controlling communications, especially after what happened soon after.

After emailing the CDC I thought I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis, I was on my cell phone telling my sister I thought Brittany Murphy and Simon Monjack had it and that when they thought the government was spying on them they were right. I said, "The government WAS spying on them. It was the CDC." The connection was immediately cut off. That's the only time my cell phone EVER had a dropped call...right after I said "CDC," and my car wasn't even moving at the time. Weird coincidence number one...one of thousands over the ensuing months.

Lymph and blood oozed from my face and eyes, I woke up in pools of diarrhea, I slept 0-1 hour a night for months (the fungus acidifies the blood, releasing adrenaline), every organ ached, I could barely walk sometimes, I had seizures and lost the use of one arm and both legs at times, and it literally felt like battery acid was coursing through my veins. It felt like I'd been poisoned. For some reason, all the doctors refused to give me antifungal, even when I begged for some.

Living alone with no family or close friends nearby, so that there was no one to protect or stop me, I drove around for weeks with blurry eyes, apparently delusional and hallucinating. I stayed busy "fulfilling prophecies" and running from Satan, having "conversations" with musak/music by texting myself and talking to my car, apparently going on unplanned mushroom trips against my will and/or having my brain possibly short-circuited by fungal hyphae (which carry an electrical charge), and sending the CDC insane emails. I asked my family to come and get me. They refused. No one seemed to care.

At one point I wrote to Ms. Burwell of the agency that oversees the CDC asking why no one sprayed the fields around work or dealt with the bats (who I was told are protected by the EPA? but are vermin, like flying rats) and provided my phone number. No one called, but immediately after I noticed a section added to the CDC website where people could ask the VP of Operations about CDC protocol. I emailed that bats CARRY the Histoplasmosis, didn't they KNOW that?! Why wasn't it mentioned on their website? I had learned that in elementary school. I asked why there were no longer any outbreaks of Disseminated Histoplasmosis reported like in the 1960s-1990s, when outbreaks of up to 100,000 victims occurred in cities in Ohio, Indiana, and South Carolina. I informed them that everyone at work was being misdiagnosed or the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with them.

And guess what happened...did they help? Nope...it appeared they removed the place I emailed. It seemed the CDC was going to hide and hope that I either disappeared or died. I was going to do neither.

While ill I emailed and mailed information to the CDC that when gravely ill with Disseminated Histoplasmosis I noticed I suddenly had symptoms of fibromyalgia, sarcoidosis, lupus, ALS, multiple sclerosis, arthritis, bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia, temporal lobe epilepsy, erotomania, etc. etc. etc. All "cause unknown." I asked them if it was more likely that I had suddenly developed 20 or so physical and mental illnesses or if it was more likely I had only ONE illness that could CAUSE all those symptoms. It's called Occam's razor. Surely they had heard of that, right?

Or maybe not.... What did the CDC do, anyway? Besides release anthrax and Ebola in their own labs, let a nurse with Ebola and a fever fly on a plane, and tweet for us to wash our hands, that is. Oh, and tell us smoking is bad for us. Thank you for that $6.6 BILLION worth of information. I never knew breathing smoke into my lungs was bad for me.

Weren't they the ones who did that groundbreaking study linking suicide and depression? I wonder how much money was spent to prove people who kill themselves probably feel bad.

I sent the CDC info that the fungus not only morphs into yeast, but also mycelia, that mycelia can sometimes form sclerotia, and under certain conditions fungal sclerotia can release an LSD-like substance (psilocybin, an hallucinogen). Fungi can also emit Dimethyltryptamine, the most powerful hallucinogen, similar to psilocybin, which can make people see "fairies," like I did, and has been reported by users to cause telepathy. What about Bufotenin, associated with schizophrenia and violent crimes?

I mentioned some fungi are known to form sclerotia in the brain and that Histoplasmosis conidia invade macrophages, lysing them, and if they thought it could disrupt the Mononuclear Phagocyte System and cause diseases like lymphoma, leukemia, and glioma (brain tumors).

Much later I would find a paper stating that it actually DOES affect the Mononuclear Phagocyte System and can cause hematological malignancies and activation of the coagulation cascade. And possibly cytokine storms. What about Myelodysplastic syndrome?

Information I sent also included that fungal hyphae can carry an electrical charge and align when in the presence of a current, that the fungus can cause RNA/DNA damage, and that the fungus causes a rise in phosphate and didn't that interfere with meiosis? So what about chromosomal birth defects? How can only one of a pair of identical twins have Down syndrome? That means it occurs post-fertilization.

I found that the fungus can mimic various malignancies and give false-positives for malignancies on PET scans. Could some people get unnecessary chemo or surgery?

What about mediastinitis...can't it be misdiagnosed as aortic dissection? "Granulomatous mediastinitis may result from enlargement of multiple nodes that undergo necrosis. Fibrosing mediastinitis is an uncommon complication associated with excessive fibrosis that invades the structures of the mediastinum. It is caused by Histoplasma antigen release.... Associated complications of this condition include pulmonary hypertension" (what about idiopathic pulmonary hypertension?), "superior vena cava syndrome" (can that be misdiagnosed as cancer?), "airway constriction, and pericarditis....";)

Does that mean Histoplasmosis can cause fibroids/fibrosis and necrosis elsewhere, too?

Histoplasmsosis is known to cause aortic aneurysms, and fungal endarteritis resulting from progressive disseminated histoplasmosis may cause arterial aneurysms. It's been linked to atherosclerotic vascular lesions, so why is the cause of atherosclerosis, initiated by inflammatory processes, "not fully understood"? So can histoplasmosis cause heart disease?

The fungus causes inflammation in various organs throughout the body, so anything that ended in "–itis" (inflammation) and/or an autoimmune disease and/or a rheumatological disease was suspect, since the immune system would attack the fungus in various organs and joints.

For example, I read that 'interstitial cystitis (IC) is a chronic inflammatory condition of the submucosal and muscular layers of the bladder, and the cause is currently unknown. Some people with IC have been diagnosed with other conditions such as  irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), fibromyalgia,  chronic fatigue syndrome, allergies, Sjogren's syndrome, which raises the possibility that interstitial cystitis may be caused by mechanisms that cause these other conditions. In addition, men with IC are frequently diagnosed as having  chronic nonbacterial prostatitis, and there is an extensive overlap of symptoms and treatment between the two conditions, leading researchers to posit that the conditions may share the same etiology and pathology.' Doesn't that sound like it could be caused by disseminated histoplasmosis?

During 1938–2013, a total of 105 outbreaks were reported in 26 states and the territory of Puerto Rico. From 1978 to 1979, during a large urban outbreak of the disease in Indianapolis, victims had pericarditis, rheumatological syndromes, esophageal and vocal cord ulcers, parotitis, adrenal insufficiency, uveitis, fibrosing mediastinitis, interstitial nephritis, intestinal lymphangiectasia, and epididymitis.esophageal and vocal cord ulcers, parotitis, adrenal insufficiency, uveitis,Twenty-four patients had pericarditis, and 26 had rheumatologic syndromes. Unusual manifestations that occurred in 18 patients included esophageal and vocal cord ulcers, parotitis, adrenal insufficiency, uveitis,Twenty-four patients had pericarditis, and 26 had rheumatologic syndromes. Unusual manifestations that occurred in 18 patients included esophageal and vocal cord ulcers, parotitis, adrenal insufficiency, uveitis,

What about acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, a rare autoimmune disease marked by widespread attack of inflammation in the brain and spinal cord? Seborrheic dermatitis? Cerebral palsy?

What about anything on the long list of autoimmune/inflammatory/rheumatic (affecting the joints and/or connective tissue) diseases/syndromes/disorders, including:

 Autoimmune aplastic anemia,  Autoimmune dysautonomia,  Autoimmune hepatitis,  Autoimmune hyperlipidemia,  Autoimmune immunodeficiency,  Autoimmune inner ear disease (AIED)),  Autoimmune myocarditis,  Autoimmune oophoritis,  Autoimmune pancreatitis,  Autoimmune retinopathy,  Autoimmune thrombocytopenic purpura (ATP)),  Autoimmune thyroid disease,  Autoimmune urticaria?

And/or other rheumatic diseases which are caused by autoimmunity including:

 Relapsing polychondritis,  systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile arthritis, Sjögren syndrome, scleroderma, Polymyositis, Dermatomyositis,  Behçet's disease, Reactive arthritis, Psoriatic arthritis?

What about Pernicious Anemia, which may be considered as an end stage of immune gastritis, the autoimmune destruction of gastric parietal cells? Or Primary biliary cirrhosis, an "autoimmune" disease of the liver? Or Diabetes type 1, cause unknown, from the autoimmune destruction of islet cells?

Disseminated histoplasmosis is known to cause anemia, leukopenia, pancytopenia, and thrombocytopenia. Can't it cause gastroparesis?

What about Polyangiitis/vasculitis or Cholecystitis...why did so many successive U.S. Presidents have gall bladder problems? Doesn't that seem odd? Many seemed like they had bats in their attic....

What about studies linking chronic inflammation to some cancers? Histoplasmosis has been known to present as dysplasia and hyperplasia, precancerous conditions. Benign prostatic hyperplasia, Endometrial Hyperplasia, epithelial hyperplasia, Sebaceous hyperplasia, etc.?

Doesn't histoplasmosis belong to a group of fungi called Oxygenales? Don't they consume collagen, and therefore fascia? What about collagen/connective tissue diseases and/or organ prolapse?

Doesn't histoplasmosis, a pathogenic fungus, deplete zinc and cause hypercalcaemia? What are the signs of zinc deficiency and excess calcium? Do you see the signs like I do? Zinc deficiency may manifest as acne, eczema, xerosis, seborrheic dermatitis, alopecia, oral ulceration, stomatitis, angular cheilitis, burning mouth syndrome, night blindness, impaired immune function leading to the development of respiratory, gastrointestinal, or other infections, chronic inflammation, diarrhea, anorexia and anorexia nervosa, impaired learning and hedonic tone, anhedonia, behavioral abnormalities, such as irritability, lethargy, and depression, ADHD, etc., etc., etc. Hypercalcaemia can cause renal or biliary stones, bone pain, abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, polyuria/dehydration, depression, anxiety, insomnia, constipation, fatigue), anorexia), pancreatitis, increased heart rate, and an increase in contractility, drowsiness, confusion, hallucinations, stupor, and coma.

What about idiopathic infantile hypercalcaemia, idiopathic infantile arterial calcification, idiopathic infantile nystagmus, or idiopathic infantile scoliosis?

If disseminated histoplasmosis MIMICS sarcoidosis, Felty's syndrome, brain tumors, autoimmune diseases, cancer, etc., could it actually BE those diseases? Or at least be misdiagnosed as such in some people? Yes, it's been known to be. What about macular degeneration?

And Histoplasmosis can lay dormant in the lungs or adrenals for up to 40 years. It releases proteinases, lactase, and enzymes that break down proteins and carbohydrates in the body to get the sugar and nitrogen it needs. It damages RNA/DNA, so what about amino acids? Also, it can be passed on through donated organs. Can it be passed through blood and plasma?

Don't neurotransmitters comprise amino acids? If histoplasmosis consumes nitrogen will it interfere with neurotransmitter systems? If that happened, it could possibly cause all kinds of physical/mental/emotional/behavioral problems.

I had migraines only when I worked around bats, and aren't migraines associated with **depression, anxiety, stroke, irritable bowel syndrome, epilepsy, and hypertension? Doesn't that sound like disseminated histoplasmosis?**

Also, why was it documented that histoplasmosis causes erythema multiforme (a rash I and another coworker had), but when I Googled erythema multiforme it said it was of unknown cause?! In fact, an outbreak of Disseminated Histoplasmosis occurred in South Carolina in the 1960s and had been underway for some time before a doctor got the rash and finally put it all together. Outbreaks were hard to spot, since people went to different doctors.

And skin rashes, cankers sores, inflammation, etc. like I and my coworkers had sounds a lot like Behçet's disease, also known as Old Silk Road disease...silk=moths=bats. Maybe all the songs that played about magic meant MAGIC syndrome.

Why is disseminated histoplasmosis shown to cause panniculitis and myositis, but diseases associated with those conditions are also listed as unknown cause, like abdominal panniculitis, Weber–Christian disease (also known as "Idiopathic Relapsing febrile non-suppurative panniculitis"), and inclusion body myositis or dermatomyositis?

Pulmonary fibrosis is known to be caused by histoplasmosis, so why is the cause "unknown"? Idiopathic Endomyocardial fibrosis? What about Myalgia encephalomyelitis, "cause unknown"?

Why do some doctors claim that when they give their leukemia patients antifungal medicine for "opportunistic infections" the leukemia goes into remission?

Johns Hopkins linked autism to an immune response in the womb, so what if a pregnant woman was infected? And also the fungus can sometimes cross the placenta. Vaccines have been contaminated with fungus in the past. Maybe autism and developmental/structural birth defects can sometimes be caused by histoplasmosis.

It was documented as causing OCD in one patient and delusions in at least two. It's known to cause religious delusions, mood swings, and hallucinations. A chemical released by fungal yeast is twice as high in schizophrenics as in "normal" people. If in the brainstem could it cause schizophrenia/dopamine overabundance? Would that cause paranoia, suspicion, and impulsive behavior?

Can histoplasmosis create mycotoxins, which are toxic, poisonous substances?

Why is ulcerative colitis (which I think might be GI histoplasmosis, at least in some people, along with Crohn's disease and IBS/IBD) comorbid with schizophrenia? And why do ulcerative colitis skin rashes look like histoplasmosis lesions?

Why is tinnitus (like what's caused by Disseminated Histoplasmosis) comorbid with schizophrenia psychoses? And isn't it comorbid with anxiety/depression?

Why is inflammatory bowel disease comorbid with Primary sclerosing cholangitis (cause unknown), episcleritis (no identifiable cause), etc. etc. etc. All the things I think are caused by histoplasmosis seem to be comorbid with other things I think are caused by it.

I can't even list everything I found that could be linked with disseminated histoplasmosis...there's just too much. The idea is just too big and wonderful. It would be like a miracle.

Histoplasmosis is known to cause polyps, stenosis, and perforations. So why are things like vaginal polyps and nasal polyps listed as "unknown cause"? What about things like pyloric stenosis, cause unknown? What about perforations in various organs, like colon perforations in ulcerative colitis (cause unknown)?

Other idiopathic (unknown cause) diseases might be caused by it. As Coldplay sang "and they were all yellow," a man told me about a friend who suddenly had acute jaundice. Disseminated histoplasmosis is known to cause jaundice, so how about idiopathic jaundice? Idiopathic hepatitis? What about anything on the long list of idiopathic diseases? Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis/fibrosing alveolitis,  chronic idiopathic myelofibrosis, idiopathic facial aseptic granuloma, idiopathic palmoplantar hidradenitis, idiopathic guttate hypomelanosis,  idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, idiopathic leukoplakia, diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis, idiopathic giant-cell myocarditis, idiopathic interstitial pneumonia, systemic-onset juvenile idiopathic arthritis,  acute idiopathic polyneuritis,  idiopathic scoliosis, etc., etc., etc.?

I had never realized, in this day and age, that there were so many diseases of unknown cause or how many diseases shared symptoms and were comorbid with other conditions. For diseases to appear together all over the body like that, they'd have to be caused by something that infiltrated the blood and/or lymph...like Histoplasmosis does.

Disseminated Histoplasmosis was linked to retroperitoneal fibrosis, so what about idiopathic retroperitoneal fibrosis? What about fibrosis elsewhere? And it was linked to median arcuate ligament syndrome. The list went on and on and on.

What about fibroids? Aren't uterine fibroids cause unknown and occur in approximately 75% of women of childbearing age? Doesn't that seem like a lot? Can't histoplasmosis cause fibrosis?

The fungus is known to cause hepatosplenomegaly (enlarged liver and spleen) and glomerulonephritis (renal/kidney disease). What about pancreatitis, enlarged prostate, etc.?

Why do lithium salts help treat people with bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, cyclic major depression, and possibly cluster headaches? I don't know, but I do know lithium acetate affects Histoplasmosis and yeast.

Of course, maybe EVERYTHING can't be caused by it, but at least consider that some of these things could be. At least consider it instead of immediately dismissing it.

I sent the CDC a copy of Elvis's autopsy report and health history (fecal incontinence) and told them the results of his autopsy looked suspiciously like Disseminated Histoplasmosis.

Histoplasmosis mimics the flu and pneumonia, so some people diagnosed with flu and pneumonia might have it. And was it true one time the CDC stopped counting flu cases because they realized less than 20% of those people were actually infected with the flu virus?

At Care Now I suddenly developed a ring-like rash (erythema marginatum, a rash sometimes associated with carditis, polyarthritis, Sydenham's Chorea, subcutaneous nodules, and glomerulonephritis), so could Histoplasmosis cause granuloma annulare, a skin condition that most commonly consists of raised, reddish or skin-colored bumps (lesions) that form ring patterns, cause unknown?

What about Pyogenic granuloma (lobular capillary hemangioma), a relatively common benign vascular lesion of the skin and mucosa whose exact cause is unknown. It's associated with Peripheral giant-cell granuloma...unknown cause.

Maybe histoplasmosis causes Geschwind syndrome? Or Pityriasis rubra pilaris, cause unknown? What about asthma? Or chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy?

One of the many sick people I encountered while ill, as if walking through a dream, was a hairless woman at the Rockwall Hilton pool. She appeared to have Alopecia universalis, currently believed to be an autoimmune disorder, and her mother had degenerative brain disorder. The hairless woman still lived on the same land where her late mother had lived and spoke about the bat houses erected on the land. She liked to watch them at night.

Histoplasmosis is known to cause transient ischemic attack and cerebellar ataxia. Cerebellar histoplasmosis causes focal neurologic deficits and associated problems. A focal neurologic problem can affect any of these functions:

Movement changes, including paralysis,  weakness, loss of muscle control, increased muscle tone,  loss of muscle tone, or movements a person cannot control (involuntary movements, such as tremor)

Sensation changes, including  paresthesia (abnormal sensations), numbness, or decreases in sensation

Other examples of focal loss of function include:

 Horner syndrome: small pupil on one side, one-sided  eyelid drooping, lack of sweating on one side of the face, and sinking of one eye into its socket

Not paying attention to a person's surroundings or a part of the body (neglect)

 Loss of coordination or loss of  fine motor control (inability to perform complex movements)

Poor gag reflex (I suspect Dr. Frieden, the Director of the CDC, has this problem, which is how I believe he keeps his job), swallowing difficulty (like some women with postpartum psychosis have), and frequent choking

Speech or language difficulties, such as aphasia (a problem understanding or producing words) or dysarthria (a problem making the sounds of words), poor enunciation, poor understanding of speech, difficulty writing, lack of ability to read or understand writing, inability to name objects (anomia)

Vision changes, such as reduced vision, decreased  visual field, sudden  vision loss, double vision (diplopia)

I know for a fact it causes blepharospasms...aren't most "cause unknown"?

Bronchiectasis can stem from various allergic responses to inhaled fungal spores. So why is no cause identified in up to 50% of non-cystic fibrosis related bronchiectasis? And why is bronchiectasis associated with inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, and rheumatoid arthritis, which I suspected could possibly be caused by disseminated histoplasmosis?

From my symptoms I knew it caused nerve tingling and pain. (Why did Timothy McVeigh think the government put a tracking device in his buttocks? Did his tingle like mine did?) I felt like I had bugs crawling under my skin and a certain part of my body tingled so that it felt like I had worms (I didn't). What about chronic pain and Morgellons...what if they weren't psychosomatic? Maybe intransigent doctors might consider that it's actually arrogant doctors who are ignorant and not their patients.

What causes complex regional pain syndrome? Oh, it's cause unknown....

What about so-called "conversion disorders," which cause patients to suffer from neurological symptoms, such as numbness, blindness, paralysis, or fits without a definable organic cause? Maybe it's not just "all in their head'? What about the abovementioned Complex regional pain syndrome and/or Neurogenic inflammation?

Couldn't it cause involuntary muscle contractions? Impaired coordination or balance? Weakness/paralysis of a limb or the entire body (hysterical paralysis or motor conversion disorders)? Impairment or loss of speech (hysterical aphonia)? A sensation of a lump in the throat? Urinary retention?  Psychogenic non-epileptic seizures or convulsions? Persistent dystonia? Tremor, myoclonus or other movement disorders? Gait problems (astasia-abasia)? Loss of consciousness (fainting)?

Why is it that just because a doctor can't figure out what's wrong with you they might call it psychosomatic or stress-related? I had worked with lots of people who, if they didn't know something, would just say something even if it was wrong. It was impossible for those people to say, "I don't know." I guess it's easier for a doctor to blame the patient or just guess at a disease than to just say, "I don't know." I wondered how many infected people might be in mental hospitals or in therapy, taking those all-important and expensive prescriptions which drive the huge, powerful pharmaceutical industry.

What about outbreaks of "mass psychogenic illness", like the Tanganyika laughter epidemic of 1962? The symptoms of which can also be caused by disseminated histoplasmosis?

When histoplasmosis goes to the CNS, couldn't it affect the brainstem and other areas of the brain? This would affect orgasms, feelings pertaining to love, emotions/depression/anxiety, addiction, heart rate and blood pressure, cause Parkinson's/dementia/Lewy bodies, affect nerves, movement, sight, sound, etc. etc. etc.

Looking back, I definitely think it can cause obsessive love. Then later you wonder, "WTF was I thinking!?"

I tweeted the Director of the CDC and also emailed CDC-INFO: if Disseminated Histoplasmosis acidifies the blood, consumes sugars, denatures proteins and releases/denatures enzymes/consumes nitrogen, etc., could it cause other diseases? I linked and found compelling evidence that it might cause other diseases...so many diseases. I asked the CDC Infectious Disease Department to call me and let me know if any of my hypotheses were valid, so that I could stop emailing them if I was way off base. No one called. No one EVER called.

So many diseases could possibly be linked to the fungus, the fungus that up to 80-90% or more of people have been infected with at some point in their lives. What if they were exposed to small amounts over their lifetime? Over and over and over. Not enough to cause immediate and visibly suspect symptoms in people with normal immune systems, but insidiously damaging a body and accumulating over decades, causing subtle, gradually worsening, and widely varying symptoms. It could not only cause central nervous system problems, but also autonomic nervous system problems, perhaps disrupt the hormonal cascade/clotting cascade, cause DNA damage and birth defects, cause autism, any disease ending in "-itis", gastrointestinal problems, behavioral/emotional problems, strokes, miscarriage, etc. etc. etc.

I asked the CDC to check it out, because even if I was wrong about most I just knew I was right about a couple. After all, I told them, if you shoot a shotgun at a target at least one or two will hit the bull's-eye. I just wanted to help people...I had prayed to God to let me do something important to help people...and if just one person's suffering ended due to something I told the CDC it would be worth it.

Writing to them asking if they could please talk to me, I added "Haha...I know you won't reply. You never do."

I also questioned why I read that people refuse to release Adam Lanza's autopsy report. I had read he got better when his mother took him on vacation. What little I could find about his kidneys was possibly consistent with Disseminated Histoplasmosis. He was startled a lot when people walked by him, which happened to me. Psilocybin causes deficits in indices of sensorimotor gating, such as prepulse inhibition of the startle reflex. Doesn't that mean someone would startle more easily, like Adam and I (and my coworker) did? Even Adam's unusual gait and Satanic website could be explained by Disseminated Histoplasmosis. I communicated with Dr. Frieden, the Director of the CDC, thinking he would let me know if there was anything to this idea. Dr. Frieden never contacted me, even after I spent months begging him.

But I knew that he knew where I was, and you'll know that he did, too, by the end of this chapter.

Everywhere I went, doctors (including the same ones who misdiagnosed me) and professors repeated the same refrain. Other people couldn't have what I had (and even I couldn't have what I had) because Disseminated Histoplasmosis is so "rare." And almost everyone had been infected at some point.

"Why, Histoplasmosis spores are EVERYWHERE in the air and almost EVERYONE has been infected with it," they'd say as they gestured around to all the people. All the depressed-looking people limping and in wheelchairs with hearing aids on their ears and band-aids on their faces. No one would listen to me that I thought at least some people had it and were undiagnosed/misdiagnosed. In fact, that was the ONLY argument the doctors were able to present: Disseminated Histoplasmosis is "rare," NOT Disseminated Histoplasmosis can't cause this because....

And I remembered the Agatha Christie books I read as a child. Agatha Christie with her suspected dementia. In many of her stories, all the investigator had to do was realize one person was lying and throw out all that information. Then the puzzling mystery made sense.

All a person had to do was reject the statement "Disseminated Histoplasmosis is rare." Then almost everything else made sense.

Is it really that rare? A paper from China claimed that it wasn't nearly as rare in immunocompetent people as previously believed. And other doctors/researchers were making the same claims I was. I was not alone in my beliefs. Other EXPERTS with credentials much more impressive than mine were coming to the same conclusion.

The fungus itself had been discovered fairly recently, and many people died before doctors figured out they had Disseminated Histoplasmosis. Maybe other people died from it and the doctors NEVER figured it out.

Maybe the disease wasn't rare...maybe just the DIAGNOSIS was rare, since doctors knew so little about it.

And then I remembered the yearly treasure hunts in Shreveport, with daily clues in the newspaper. One year I arrived at the correct location around the same time the winner did. The odd thing was, in the previous days when I was at the wrong location, lots of other people were there, too. We all had followed the same clues, and we all had ended up at the same incorrect location. Maybe doctors and researchers sometimes did the same thing.

I literally BEGGED the CDC to have someone...ANYONE...take two minutes to contact me. I figured that the taxes I paid of their $6.6 BILLION budget warranted ten seconds of their valuable time. Could they tell me if the CDC was ever in DFW and dealing with the bats/helping my coworkers? Either the CDC was in DFW and a man from the CDC, possibly the director, saved me in the woods and kissed me in a hotel room, or a strange series of coincidences/dreams/hallucinations made me believe that he did. Looking back, thinking there was "a man" is what kept me going. Maybe it was just my guardian angel, but why he chose to pose as the Director of the CDC is beyond me.

I BEGGED the CDC to tell me if they were there in DFW so I could know what happened when I nearly died the summer of 2014. Couldn't they understand that I just needed answers and to know the truth so I could get past it? I had been sick for months. I also let them know that the refusal of everyone in the government and hospitals to respond to me was literally driving me to a nervous breakdown.

It was as if I didn't even exist. Or like I didn't matter. Other people mattered, CDC photo-ops and Dr. Frieden's videos and statements showed, but I didn't.

Calling the CDC, I reached an operator. "Can the CDC please tell me who to contact about Disseminated Histoplasmosis? I read the fields need to be sprayed, but no one at the city, county, or state health offices, or OSHA, knows what to do." I was assured he would send up a ticket and someone would call me within 1-2 days.

No one called.

I emailed the CDC when I was in Smyrna, GA, (I hadn't known Smyrna was mentioned in Revelations) that I was delusional at times because I appeared to have "signs" on the radio and TV about more diseases that suspiciously looked like Disseminated Histoplasmosis, that everywhere I went I was surrounded by people whose diseases could be Disseminated Histoplasmosis, and I had dreams about people/diseases that could potentially be linked to my disease and emailed links to the CDC. Why couldn't they have Emory Hospital admit me and give me antifungal?

I saw that ISIS was going to release bubonic plague in hand grenades, and I emailed the CDC that years ago I had seen a documentary about a woman in olden times apparently cured of bubonic plague when she mistakenly drank a pitcher of animal fat. The show stated no one knew how drinking the animal fat cured her.

I told the CDC I thought triglycerides in animal fat cause the body's organs to release lipoprotein lipase. Wouldn't that break down lipoproteins? I emailed I thought lipoproteins gave bubonic plague its virulence, so consuming animal fat WOULD cure bubonic plague, wouldn't it?

Then I sent a link where Isis Pharmaceuticals had come out with a drug for people who couldn't break down triglycerides...another "sign."

I emailed the CDC that this bubonic plague "cure" was much too simple...it couldn't possibly be right...that the CDC would have figured that out themselves with all their "brilliant" scientists and $6.6 Billion budget. This was much too simple and it only took less than an hour to figure out. Was it right? Because it was just too simple to be correct. They must have already known, right? It must be common knowledge, right?

No one replied.

I saw a commercial about Hepatitis C and it said, "The cure is closer than it appears." This made me think of Jurassic Park and the T-Rex in the mirror. I noticed humans and chimpanzees are all that can get Hep C. Coincidentally, they're the only mammals with no liver uricase (except maybe Dalmatians?). Was there a connection? Idk, but when I did a Bing search for "human chimpanzee uricase" guess what popped up on my computer screen. A photo of a toy T-Rex. What a coincidence.

Could the electron-dense structure of uricase surrounding what they think is Cu++ interfere with the Zn++ that I think Hep C needs? Or interfere with the life cycle of Hepatitis C in some other way? I don't know, I was just throwing out ideas. At least I was TRYING.

While in Smyrna, one of the numerous "coincidences" that happened was that I cried in my car and asked, "Does the man even exist? Is he real?" I immediately went into a convenience store/McDonald's for a minute and the words in the musak as I was walking out were, "I'm real."

SOMEONE or SOMETHING was seriously messing with my head. I later wondered, if Brittany Murphy had this disease did she experience the same problem with the radio/musak that I did? Was that why she thought she was being stalked by a powerful music producer? I thought I was being stalked. Luckily, my fungal-addled brain thought it was someone at the CDC or another government agency or I would have checked into a mental hospital and probably been on Haldol at this point, which was possibly contraindicated for my condition. (idk, Dr. Frieden's the doctor, ask him...but don't expect an answer) Also, my MS symptoms would be blamed on the Haldol if I took it, like other patients' MS was.

Oh yeah, I had wondered if some side-effects to drugs like Haldol (leukopenia and MS symptoms) and Cipro (photophobia, tinnitus, and psychosis) and other various prescriptions, especially for autoimmune/inflammation disorders, weren't really side-effects but symptoms of Disseminated Histoplasmosis. What about hypersexuality, leukemia, etc. "caused" by Abilify?

Maybe the unknown reason beta receptor blockers cause tardive dyskinesia in some patients taking them for gastrointestinal problems and mental illness is because the cause of the gastrointestinal problems, mental illness, AND tardive dyskinesia is really Disseminated Histoplasmosis.

Maybe people taking the antifungal Sporanox (Itraconazole, used against fungal infections like Histoplasmosis) complaining the drug caused febrile neutropenia is because the fungus caused the neutropenia (an immune system granulocyte disorder), not the drug.

Disseminated histoplasmosis is known to cause enteropathy, so could some people who are thought to have  nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug enteropathy have it?

Why do people on MS, lupus, fibromyalgia, and other disease chat boards have many of the same symptoms I had, and also had other disorders/diseases I thought could be caused by Disseminated Histoplasmosis? (Isn't anxiety/depression often comorbid with tinnitus?)

If the lactose-loving fungus is most potent in lactating female bats, what about lactating female humans? Maybe sometimes people with post-partum psychosis had it...and why did women with post-partum psychosis have trouble swallowing? Was that the vagus nerve, or maybe CNS Histoplasmosis and the fungus attacking the brainstem?

Why did maps of mental distress, heart disease, and other health issues appear to almost perfectly overlay maps of histoplasmosis? (And, btw, why did maps of measles outbreaks appear to inversely overlay maps of smokers? Could it be the positive-sense tobacco mosaic virus or some other positive-sense virus latching onto the negative-sense measles virus and deactivating it? Probably not...that one was kind of a stupid idea. Maybe polyphenols in cigarette smoke killed measles, like the polyphenols emitted from desiccating worms worn on a necklace used in old wives' cures?)

Didn't I read disseminated histoplasmosis can cause hypervascularization and calcifications? Doesn't hypervascularization cause sclerosis? Can it cause necrosis?

(Btw, does Avian flu only affect animals with wattles? And why did lavender appear to prevent cholera in French Renaissance glove-makers? Is it terpenes binding to receptors?)

Disseminated histoplasmosis gave me almost constant low-level tingling, that was noticeable only when it stopped (fibromyalgia?), and a couple of times letters and figures appeared to flip-flop as I looked at them (dyslexia?).

At a new job I saw online that the cure for Alzheimer's is "within reach." So I looked around me. What was within reach? A bottle of Smartwater. And some ion chromatographs (IC). Alzheimer's/dementia are due to hyperphosphorylated tau proteins. What if you thought of the tau proteins as IC columns/ion exchange resin with active sites and the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) as mobile phase in IC? What could you do to cause an ion exchange of the phosphorous with something in the CSF...maybe the bicarbonate? MEIX resin is regenerated with bicarbonate, "pulling" phosphorous off. And the ion selectivity for phosphate is between carbonate and bicarbonate. Maybe adjust the pH of the CSF? Idk, maybe that's a dumb idea. But at least I HAD ideas.

And I know at least one idea I had was right...I did have Disseminated Histoplasmosis.

The CDC made me feel worthless and stupid. The entire federal government made me feel like no one cared if I died. I couldn't understand why I was treated like a pariah and with such contempt, since refusing to communicate with someone shows contempt. What did I ever do that made them not care if I died? I didn't even litter! I wrote to the CDC Director that the silent treatment is considered emotional abuse. It's bullying. But I was used to being bullied. Luckily, I had been trained to tolerate abuse well.

Later I would read about "shunning," which has been established to cause psychological damage and has been categorized as torture or punishment. So I guess the fact that the CDC's complete and utter rejection felt like torture to me isn't that strange.

The CDC mentioned on their website that all they could do was provide information. That people needed to go to their doctor. But I DID that, over and over again, and the doctors in DFW were literally killing me. Couldn't the CDC do ANYTHING?

What good were they?! They appeared to be a big behemoth of a useless agency that spent $6.6 Billion per year doing nothing but tweeting important info like "Wash your hands" and "The Ebola outbreak is out of control." DUH! Thanks, but I already knew that from numerous news sources.

What the heck did Dr. Frieden and all those other directors at the CDC DO all day, anyway!? Practice how not to answer a simple yes or no question in front of Congress? Memorize and practice with the media relations and legal departments the correct redundant, evasive, and basically meaningless PC phrases to robotically, insincerely, and oh-so-carefully state while being grilled by fed-up Congressmen?

At least the CDC Director was as stubbornly difficult to communicate with to other people as he was with me...in other words, it wasn't me. It was him.

I asked aloud if I should just give up. The song "Don't Give Up" immediately played. With continued silence from the CDC (one man said they were probably afraid of me or that I made them look bad) I wondered if I should just stop and be quiet. Signs, songs, and radio continuously said don't stop, don't keep quiet, speak out, and be brave and tell your story, etc. So, even though I knew I was a nuisance and wanted to shut up and slink away, I continued.

I just knew I was right about fibromyalgia and sarcoidosis from my symptoms, and I suspected I was right about ALS due to symptoms/sclerosis in the brain. I thought the bubonic plague stuff was correct. It was also possible that a LOT of other diseases/conditions are caused by histoplasmosis (or maybe even another unknown/known fungus), or at least SOME people had it and were misdiagnosed, and I had compelling arguments that it should at least be investigated. I just KNEW that at least some people had Disseminated Histoplasmosis and were being misdiagnosed/undiagnosed, just like I was.

When I emailed, "I'm probably wrong about everything" a song immediately played that said, "No, you're not wrong." I said the CDC probably hated me by now/were mad at me after all my antics and that some people called me ugly/plain and the announcer said something about Katy Perry and either "No, we don't hate you" or "No, we're not mad at you" and Christina Aguilera's song "Beautiful" played: "You are beautiful no matter what they say. Words can't bring you down."

I looked in the mirror and said I looked terrible, old, and ugly and immediately a song played with the words, "I'm attracted to what's on the inside." Other songs reflected exactly what I was doing at the time and answered questions I asked aloud. It was uncanny how accurate the songs were, especially in Smyrna. I would even get in my car and say, "I'm bored, let's have some fun." I'd then drive around while "arguing" with the songs, purposely changing my tack to test the responses.

It would go something like this: "I hate you," I'd say, and the song said he hated me, too. "No, I'm sorry, I love you", and the song would say "I'm sorry, I love you." "No I change my mind, I'm going to destroy your career" and the song would say he was going to kill me. "Sorry, I'm just moody, I love you," and the song would say, "You're a handful, but I love you." "I want you," I'd say, and the song replied, "We'll be together some day." "Now!" I'd demand..."Not now, but soon."..."Then what?"..."Then you'll see what it's like to really be loved by a man." He assured me that he was going to give it to me good. I couldn't wait!

It seemed no matter what I said, the songs would reply. I would just shake my head and laugh. "Thanks, that was...interesting," I'd say as I got out of my car.

And when I'd ask aloud, "What the HECK is going on!?" the radio would reply with "This is it, the Apocalypse" by Imagine Dragons.

Songs would answer and comment on emails and letters I sent to the CDC and Dr. Frieden. I wrote him that if I found "the man" I wanted to take it slow, because I was a flawed human being and "the man" was probably flawed, we were just human, and I was sick and confused/moody and making a LOT of mistakes. Avoiding the radio, I walked into Emory Hospital's gift shop and the song on the musak that I'd never heard before sang, "I'm flawed, you're flawed, let's take it slow."

Each song taken alone wouldn't even have made me think twice, but it seemed suddenly EVERY song I heard commented on emails/letters I sent and things I said and did. Even captions when the President spoke were verbatim what I wrote in a letter or email.

It seemed someone or something was playing an elaborate practical joke on me, but I couldn't figure out why. Was the federal government so bored they had nothing better to do than try to drive me crazy? Maybe someone at the NSA was bored....

Most of the time I just laughed about how funny what was happening and the things I did were (can the fungus create nitrous oxide?). Other times I cried spontaneously while talking about something neutral, and I wasn't sad at the moment. Many times I sobbed over "the man." But then wild mood swings are a symptom of Disseminated Histoplasmosis. Just like pseudobulbar affect. Hmmm....

But it was important that I not take any medication, because then people could argue that the symptoms caused by my Disseminated Histoplasmosis were just side-effects of the medication. And I didn't want to mask any symptoms. Why were doctors so adamant about ignoring Disseminated Histoplasmosis? It was almost pathological how they refused to listen. Maybe they had it, too.

Sometimes I sobbed uncontrollably for 50-80% of the day, barely able to bathe or brush my teeth, and begged the director of the CDC to let someone just talk to me and/or tell me which hospital to go to. I BEGGED the CDC to tell me who to contact to help my coworkers. No one contacted me. For months I languished alone in cheap motel rooms, too sick to search for a job and quietly going insane, not only because I was sick, but because the entire U.S. government treated me as if I was worthless with a "conspiracy of silence," apparently in CYA mode.

I was literally stunned and shocked into almost complete inactivity that NO ONE anywhere would respond to me when I initially would politely ask them or BEG them to. It shook my sense of self-worth to the core. I felt like I was doing something profoundly wrong in asking for help from federal medical agencies regarding my, and apparently others', infectious disease that doctors seemed to be misdiagnosing and knew nothing about.

Why was I made to feel like I was doing something awful by the entire federal government? I was so certain that I was trying to do something right that it caused me to doubt EVERYTHING I knew to be true. It caused cognitive dissonance. It almost felt like the government was gaslighting me, a form of psychological abuse, with their silence, and allowing me to suffer without bothering to lift a finger, even though it was their JOB to help. I felt so unimportant, so degraded. That is until I realized, "It's not me, it's them" and noticed they seemed to treat everyone like that during the Ebola scare, too.

I'd had enough and finally told Dr. Frieden and the CDC to f#@k off!

There was nothing wrong with me. There was something wrong with the CDC.

The perpetually grinning CDC director, with his carefully staged photo-ops showing how much he cared about others, didn't care if I suffered or died, and he refused to tell me if "the man" I thought came to my hotel room existed or not. Honestly, all I really wanted from him was to just say, "The CDC wasn't in DFW and no one came to you in the woods or your hotel room." Was that too much to ask? I was SO sick, couldn't someone just have some compassion and answer that? If the tables were turned and I was asked, I would tell someone. If some poor, sick person whose disease caused vivid dreams and hallucinations contacted you just to ask if you were in bed making out with them in a hotel room, wouldn't you have someone contact them to just say no? Why not? What was the big deal?

"Why does he hate me so much?" I wondered, and this was before I sent threats and insults.

Then I read about psychological warfare, and how it's intended "to destroy by psychological means so that the opponent begins to doubt the validity of his beliefs and actions." And I wondered if the federal government was purposely doing this to me, which I could at least respect in some perverted way, since it would indicate intelligence, or if they were just mindlessly ignoring me because they really were that gosh-darn stupid.

Maybe the reason they couldn't tell me what to do is because THEY didn't even know what to do. There was no protocol.

I emailed the CDC that I was lucky I knew what I had, because if not there was no telling how many prescriptions I'd be taking at this point. I tried to drive to hospitals in Atlanta, but people continually gave me wrong directions, sending me the opposite way from where I needed to go, and I drove in circles for hours. I would literally scream and cry in frustration trying to get to an ER while sickest in Atlanta. Finally, I just gave up trying to get to one myself. It appeared someone or something didn't want me to get well yet.

I emailed and tweeted the CDC that there were 25-30 apparent bats flying around a building in Atlanta next to my hotel (yes, other people saw them, too) and that, following a hunch I had that the moths the bats eat liked pyramidal/domed lit buildings (the moths are drawn to blue or white city lights) I saw 4-5 apparent bats flying around the Georgia State Capitol. To my knowledge, the CDC did nothing. They consistently appeared to ignore me.

"How does it feel to know it's in your own backyard," I emailed them. But they HAD to already know that, right?

Bat colonies seemed to be everywhere I went...I couldn't get away from them. It seemed as if the bats were hell-bent on killing me. (Pun intended, which you'll understand by the end of this book.)

I begged, I cajoled, I joked, I threatened to go to the press, I threatened to sue, I told them I would write a book and tell the whole story. I did anything and everything I could think of just to see if ANYONE from this $6.6 Billion agency whose JOB it is to know about disease and give information to the public would deign to contact me. I had given up expecting help for me or my coworkers, I just wanted one short phone call. They refused.

Frustrated and angry, I emailed the CDC that they and in particular their director, Dr. Frieden, were incompetent. I tweeted viciously cruel insults to Dr. Frieden, calling him ugly and whatever else I could think of to hurt him as much as his silence was hurting me. I felt guilty until someone said if it had been them they would have thrown bricks through their windows at this point. I sent an admission that I was "Intentionally Inflicting Emotional Distress" and suggested Dr. Frieden sue me. I suggested that since I had traveled through eight states it was therefore a federal issue and to have the FBI arrest me.

Sure, I could have called 911 (actually, I tried from my room and got a busy signal...I ALWAYS got busy signals...for some reason, the fungus made me unable to operate phones), but I was shocked and astonished at the CDC's apparent resistance to address a health problem involving American citizens. Wasn't that their JOB?! But then I didn't attract as much attention in the national news as the Ebola patients and couldn't garner them as much good press. (Why does a medical agency need a media relations department anyway?)

Maybe I wouldn't be as good of a photo-op to put on my Twitter page as Dr. Frieden's arms around a rainbow of children was.

It became clear that no matter what happened to me, the CDC and Dr. Frieden would NEVER acknowledge my existence, even if I died. In fact, people told me it sounded like they were hoping I'd die. Understandably, this shocked and hurt me. Of course, by now I hated him and them. That's kind of normal, right? I mean, I'm not a hateful person who just hates everyone for no reason. I'm loving and usually remarkably normal, at least that's what I'm told, especially for all I've been through...and smart, most people would say. Investigators/lawyers from the TCEQ and EPA would testify that when I say something it turns out to be true. They investigated and closed a lab in Texas for fraud and told me everything I said turned out to be true. I didn't just go around making things up.

To think the CDC and federal agencies I had put so much trust in apparently wanted me dead. Or at least to shut up. Why? This was a supposedly "rare" infectious disease that I, an immunocompetent American, had contracted from bats, which CARRY it. Bats are everywhere. I had compelling evidence my coworkers might also have it. And it also appeared a person I knew who lived next to a bat colony and died from an "autoimmune" disease might have had it, too.

Which seemed more likely? That so many people had bodies that suddenly and inexplicably started attacking itself? Or that some unsuspected pathogen carried by bats, the most numerous non-human mammal in the U.S., was in some of these people and being attacked by the immune system. Was it more likely nature was doing exactly as intended? Or that nature had designed a being that mysteriously self-destructed?

Blackballed by the U.S. Government, it became an odd "game" to see just what I had to do to get anyone in the federal government to even address the fact that I and my disease existed. Were they even GETTING my emails and letters?

But finally, on September 18, 2014, a man from the FBI spoke with me about a "threatening" letter I sent to Dr. Frieden...a letter for him to give to "the man" if he existed. I had written to Dr. Frieden BEGGING him to tell me if any man existed and/or if the CDC had been in DFW...no response.

I smirked and explained it was a love letter for Dr. Frieden to give to the man who I thought came to the woods and kissed me in Room #528 of the Rockwall Hilton. I even sent several tweets/letters/emails to Dr. Frieden that the letter was in code, to "read between the lines," and that the code was ababababababa....

See if you're smarter than the Director of the CDC...can you crack the code to my filthy love letter?

(Filthy Love Letter to "The Man" In the Woods and Room #528)

Dear Doctor, here's a free-form non-rhyming poem for you:

I'm out of money and leaving town Sept. 1st.

The farther away I get from the CDC, the better.

I'm afraid that the bitter truth is that I'm not

able to forgive your being a jerk so, being

pregnant, I've decided to head

out of town to LA or NYC, definitely NOT

to NC, and you can probably figure out

why. I don't want to be reminded of you, the CDC, Emory, or

Samaritan's Purse.

I really know nothing about you and

I hope you're not married, because

I would hate for your innocent wife to suffer, but

your life will never be the same after

I ruin you professionally and financially and when

I'm finished f#cking with you.

I can't believe that I ever thought that

I love you.

I hate you so very, very much.

I've never felt this passionately about anyone.

So, rest assured that no matter how long it takes,

I hope one day I will get to screw you

over the way you did to me...

in every possible way

I will hand out letters about you wherever you go

and every place I can think of.

As far as financially, I will destroy you...

I want to suck you dry.

As I think about it,

I imagine that, being a doctor, you

think you're better than "average" people like me and

know all the right places

to be and be seen. You probably shake hands with the rich and powerful, but you are never

to touch me.

Additionally,

I'm sure anyone who puts themselves in your hands

will be disappointed, and if I destroy your life I

will be satisfied.

Furthermore, while I have your attention,

it is one of my most fervent wishes that you

are alone forever...how could I ever have thought I'd let you

tie me down.

Furthermore,

I want to kneel down

in church and pray for your demise, and stand

in front of you and have you

tremble at my power and know that you can't

do the same to me.

Forgive how long my hateful letter is, but

I want to scream

from the rooftops that you're a sleaze-ball and smile

with pleasure as I come

down and see people shun you.

I think I'd enjoy if you

committed suicide. I hope that people

say dirty things

about you behind your back. Those words will be like gold

to me.

I will triumph over you.

I want to be on top of

the world...a world without you...happy without

you, and also

hopefully your world will come crashing down

under you.

I'll enjoy your fall from power.

I want you to put me

forever out of your mind. I'm too good for you

in every possible way and

you should be ashamed of the way you treated me...a man in your

position.

Don't think you can just

put your hand over my mouth

to shut me up, and never think you're better

and have your way

ignoring and messing

with me. Take me

at my word...I will surprise you with my attack

from behind.

I have another wish...

I hope that one day you'll come

to the horrible end you deserve. I feel this

deep inside me...and all over

the world people's bad opinion of you will delight

me. That is my most intense desire.

I hate you, so you'll understand why it's a lie that

I hope it was you in the woods.

I can't believe you're such a jerk or that

I fell in love with you.

But I hate you now and

I hope that you

Never, ever, ever

find me.

If you couldn't crack the code, start with "I'm out of money and leaving town Sept. 1st" as line #1 and cross out lines #2, 4, 6, 8,.... Yes, I know it's disgusting. Normally I would have NEVER sent it to a man I wasn't exclusively dating for a while. Normally I would never even CALL a man I hardly knew...I was a "Rules" girl...let alone send a pornographic letter to the Director of the CDC. If you had told me January 2014 that by the end of the year I'd be sending this note along with emails to the CDC for the director to ravish me, and to bring some edible massage oil and handcuffs with him when he did it, I would have laughed in your face.

But I was sick, horny...more about why later-such an oddly unexpected but welcome symptom of my disease...songs kept saying to hit on him, and I desperately wanted to find the faceless man in the woods/Room #528. Dr. Frieden was the only person who knew if "the man" even existed, but he steadfastly and cruelly refused to even tell me that the man was a delusion/hallucination, even when I begged. He wouldn't give me even 30 seconds of his valuable tweeting time. I began to hate Dr. Frieden.

But funny how a letter with a note for Dr. Frieden to give the letter to "the man" if he existed suddenly was given to the FBI as a letter to Dr. Frieden himself. Couldn't Dr. Frieden read!? He couldn't possibly be THAT stupid...could he?

I'd have to stop asking aloud just how dumb the CDC could be, so they'd stop trying to show me.

And Dr. Frieden couldn't be "the man" in the woods and my hotel room, because to the best of my knowledge Dr. Frieden was married. He wore a wedding band as proof of that. I hadn't realized that until AFTER I sent the note. (Funny how about the time when he would have read the letter was the first time I heard Todd Rundgren sing on the radio, "I don't want to tie you down.")

Anyway, if it had been DR. FRIEDEN who was infected and thought it was ME who had come into HIS hotel room and gotten into bed with HIM, the FBI would investigate me for answers. And I'm just as good as Dr. Frieden. This is AMERICA! EVERYONE'S as good as he is.

The FBI man didn't bother me too much, because at least Dr. Frieden had FINALLY acknowledged my existence. In fact, the only thing that bothered me was the photo on my license. I would have fixed my hair and makeup that day if I had known that photo would end up in a "Classified" FBI file.

Oooooo, I was important...I now had a "Classified" FBI file...for threatening to f#@k the Director of the CDC to death.

I had a lot of laughs for days remembering the very serious FBI man confronting me reading "after I'm finished f#@king with you" and "I want to suck you dry." The laughing was interspersed with long bouts of heartbroken/confused sobbing. Was I in love with a ghost? Trying to find "the man" was even more painful than the worst symptoms of my disease.

How do you get over someone if you're not sure they're real, but maybe they're out there somewhere and can't tell you because it's supposed to be secret? Do I wait? Do I get over him and move on? Does he love me? Does he hate me now? Do I hate or love him? Does he even exist!? I waffled so much I was a one-woman breakfast house. (What the heck was that song on the radio with the words, "Stop waffling" that played right after I wrote this?)

And why wouldn't ANYONE just say, "No, dear, it was just a vivid dream or hallucination. After all, those ARE symptoms of your disease." Someone who KNEW. How hard was that?

My sister said the CDC had more important things to do, like think about Ebola. But I'm just as important as the Ebola victims. And I had an even lower chance of recovery. My chance of survival was 10%, while theirs was 50%. I'm a tax-paying, hard-working American, and my health is important, too! I'M important. EVERYONE is important.

Anyone who doesn't think so doesn't believe in the Declaration of Independence.

Looking back, I chuckled as I thought of how I WISHED I had answered the FBI man...

Question: Do you have any weapons?

Answer: Just these two sidearms (pointing at my chest) and a secret weapon hidden in my pants.

Question: Do you want to hurt Dr. Frieden?

Answer: Only if he asks me to.

Question: Do you want to harm yourself?

Answer: No, but I wouldn't mind if it hurts a little to walk the next morning.

I was told if I ever communicated with the CDC or Dr. Frieden again the FBI man would arrest me and I'd go to trial. I thought it was funny, imagining the decoded version of my filthy poem being read to the jury.

Since I was forever banned from contacting the CDC, I again contacted Ms. Burwell, telling her about the man I thought was in the woods and the Hilton Hotel room. I told her that, as another woman, I thought she might understand why I would want to know if a man really was kissing me in my hotel room. Then I asked if the CIA trumped the FBI, because I had contacted the CIA. Who "won" that round?

Included was a message for Dr. Frieden, "Do you think I'm afraid of the FBI, Tom? Do you think they intimidate me? Because they don't!"

I was like herpes...you couldn't get rid of me. And, like the Blues Brothers, I was on a mission from God.

A few days before I stopped tweeting Dr. Frieden I sat in my car and prayed saying, "I'm sick, bats are everywhere, and no one will help me or anyone else. I don't know what more I can do. What do I do now?" I turned on the radio and the song lyrics were, "Go ahead and write your story, write your story..."

So this is my story.
Decoded Filthy Love Letter to Give to "The Man" in the Woods and Room 528

(the pregnant part is explained later in the book)

Dear Doctor, here's a free-form non-rhyming poem for you:

I'm out of money and leaving town Sept. 1st.

I'm afraid that the bitter truth is that I'm not

pregnant. I've decided to head

to NC, and you can probably figure out

Samaritan's Purse.

I hope you're not married, because

your life will never be the same after

I'm finished f#cking with you.

I love you.

I've never felt this passionately about anyone.

I hope one day I will get to screw you

in every possible way

and every place I can think of.

I want to suck you dry.

I imagine that, being a doctor, you

know all the right places

to touch me.

I'm sure anyone who puts themselves in your hands

will be satisfied.

it is one of my most fervent wishes that you

tie me down.

I want to kneel down

in front of you and have you

do the same to me.

I want to scream

with pleasure as I come

I think I'd enjoy if you

say dirty things

to me.

I want to be on top of

you, and also

under you.

I want you to put me

in every possible way and

position.

put your hand over my mouth

and have your way

with me. Take me

from behind.

I hope that one day you'll come

deep inside me...and all over

me. That is my most intense desire.

I hope it was you in the woods.

I fell in love with you.

I hope that you

find me.

#  Chapter 2 - Some Doctors Graduated at the Bottom of Their Classes

(aka: "I Can Feel It All Around Me, Thickening the Air I'm Breathing")

Becoming increasingly ill after walking out of work April 10, 2014 and certain my coworkers' symptoms and mine were related, I went to Care Now. No one could find what was wrong with me. My liver enzymes were elevated, my chest and stomach hurt, my blood pressure was dangerously and erratically high, I had bloody diarrhea, my eyes were dry, and my mouth incredibly dry even after drinking bottle after bottle of water. Tests for bacteria came back negative.

Finally, after a couple of Care Now visits and Googling all the odd symptoms, I came up with "Disseminated Histoplasmosis," which I'd never heard of before. Telling this to Dr. Trombley at Care Now in Dallas, I received a chest X-ray (which was clear) and was told only farmers got this disease and it was related to roosting birds, so it was unlikely I had it. Mistakes #1 and #2 by a doctor.

Approximately 40-70% of the time a chest X-ray will NOT show Disseminated Histoplasmosis. And Histoplasmosis is CARRIED by bats.

After reading about the feeding habits of bats, I went up to my former workplace around 11:00 pm after a rain. Bats won't feed during a rain or at temperatures less than 56 degrees Fahrenheit. So I checked the temperature...in the 60s...and headed out after the rain stopped. Expecting to see tons of black bats shaped like the Batman symbol swarming in the sky, I drove to the property that adjoined the workplace to the north.

Getting out of my car I heard strange sounds coming from strange-looking gray "birds" swooping in the area. They let out sounds like rusty wheels turning and swooped around, landing in a field adjacent to a Dallas DART station.

Trying to get near enough to see what they were in the dark, I noticed the creepy birds flew in an odd way and that they were BATS! I later learned city lights will disorient the moths the bats feed on, causing the moths to fall to the ground. The bats were flying, landing, and fluttering in a creepy way in the fields. I keep saying "creepy" because I can't think of any other word to describe their spastic flapping.

I rushed to Wal-Mart to buy a tape recorder to tape the squeaking sound the bats were making, which I later learned was the sound male Mexican Free-Tailed bats make to keep other males away from their territory.

Back at the area around my former workplace I spent two hours taping the bats, knowing from past bitter experience that if you don't have proof then it didn't happen.

The bats were on all properties surrounding/adjoining the workplace, including a water station that serviced thousands of people in Carrollton. I couldn't tell how many bats there were in the dark...maybe three to five or more male bats, but the same ones might have been flying around different properties. And for every one male I heard I knew there were several more silent females. I'd guesstimate they were stretched out feeding and defecating over maybe eight square blocks or more. (The next evening I would see what appeared to be one to three male bats exit from the roof of my former workplace.)

But when I got home to listen to the tape I realized that in the almost pitch-black dark I had not only pressed "Record" but "Pause." Yes, I know, I can be an idiot. I wanted to cry!

So instead of mailing a tape to Dallas County I emailed them I had seen the bats.

Then I remembered...the sound the bats made sounded like the same squeaking sound my supervisor, coworker, and I had heard in the ceiling above my lab...the same lab where I had seen feces that the pest control man said looked like bat feces.

All of a sudden, disjointed conversations/observations I'd had with my coworkers came together: the bat that had been seen in the warehouse, the hawk and owl (which feed on baby bats and hang out near bat colonies) seen in the building, the feces we thought had been rat feces in the lab and all along the walls of the warehouse. The pest control man had said, "This isn't a rat turd, it looks like a bat turd. Do you have bats?" "I don't know, we're not here at night," I'd answered.

When bats were mentioned I had complained to my supervisor about rabies, never knowing about Histoplasmosis. Everything fit, all the strange illnesses people had and all my weird symptoms that started when I began working at the company. (I didn't have a primary care doctor because, at the ripe old age of 49 when I started working there, I had hardly ever been sick. And when I was I quickly recovered. I was proud of my good health and how "strong" I was. I didn't try to get attention or anything else by being sick. I was a little embarrassed and felt a little "weak" being sick and having to ask others for help. In fact, I'm more the type of person to collapse from pushing myself too hard and ignoring when I was sick. I tended to take care of others...not myself.)

I texted my supervisor about the bats I saw, but realized later I texted to his work landline and not his cell phone. Then I waited for one of the supervisors to arrive at work. He said they checked and it wasn't toxic mold. "It's bats!" I replied. He gave me a disbelieving look and I said, "Fine, don't believe me. I'm going to go get some antifungal and you can just stay here and die." I didn't really mean that, but I was upset, worried, and trying to get him to take me seriously.

Back at Care Now I told another doctor I thought I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis from bats at work. This doctor, as opposed to Dr. Trombley, took me seriously and within 10 minutes three samples of blood were being sent to a lab for cultures.

Unfortunately, I didn't learn until later that Histoplasmosis cultures will sometimes come back positive only when a patient has been sick for 4 weeks and also can take up to 6 or more weeks of incubation to show growth. But some labs were reporting negative cultures after only 2 weeks of incubation (I emailed this to the CDC). Another paper states that, at best, blood cultures are positive in only a staggeringly low 15% of acute cases and can take 12 weeks for the fungus to grow enough to be identified, and blood cultures range as low as 50% positive in progressive disseminated cases.

Detection rates in cases of acute progressive disseminated histoplasmosis are only 68% with serum assay and 65% with urine assay. Urine antigen can be detected in only a very low 30% of people with subacute histoplasmosis. Negative results do not exclude histoplasmosis, and repeated testing is advised with progressive illness if the initial test results are negative. It's recommended that treatment start before test results come back, but no one would treat me.

Often proof will be found that a patient had Disseminated Histoplasmosis only during an autopsy, if ever, after having different lab tests come back negative. It's an elusive pathogen.

And, if you think about it, negative results are only determined to be false-negatives after subsequent additional tests come back positive. So that means there could be a LOT more false-negatives in people who never were correctly diagnosed.

During the time I was struggling to get Dr. Trombley to listen to me, I found an old prescription I never filled from Dr. Herrscher, an allergist. I also later found an almost full bottle of 10 mg Prednisone. My symptoms appeared to go away before taking the pills, so I only took three and didn't bother with the rest. I didn't know what Prednisone was, but I didn't appear to need it. Apparently, the pills were useless, so I never took the rest.

I had gone to Dr. Herrscher the previous year for my rash, when I also requested additional testing because I had never had any allergies. And it was highly unlikely my coworkers and I would simultaneously develop a weird allergy. The lab results, a positive ANA titer, indicated a possible autoimmune or rheumatic disorder. But it also indicates infection, which the doctor didn't mention.

But how could my coworkers and I suddenly develop an autoimmune disorder at the same time?

The odds against several of my coworkers and I, ranging in age from 20s to 60s, male and female, African-American and Caucasian, all developing an autoimmune disease concurrently were astronomical.

The previous year Dr. Herrscher had given me the 10 mg Prednisone prescription, but I think I never filled the one from spring 2013, or at least never took any, and I only took three in the fall of 2013. My weird rashes had cleared up on their own. Dr. Herrscher suggested I go to other doctors specializing in autoimmune diseases, but I Googled autoimmune disorders and none of them fit my symptoms at the time. Also, again, it was highly unlikely my coworkers and I developed an autoimmune disorder at the same time.

On this last visit in April 2014, I told him I had tinnitus and a nodule in my upper palate (which a dentist said was nothing), both that showed up only when I was sick throughout the years. Later I would suspect the nodule was palatal edema caused by the fungus dissolving my palatine bone through my sinuses, since fungi were known to do that.

I mentioned the bats to Dr. Herrscher and that I thought I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis. He said, "Ahah, ahah," obviously ignoring me while typing into his computer. He just wouldn't listen. He said, "Well, the Prednisone worked last time" and I replied, "I never took it the last time, I don't think I ever took any of it." Appearing dazed and confused, continually blinking his dry, reddened eyes, he gave me another prescription for an even higher dosage of Prednisone...40 mg per day. Not knowing what Prednisone was, I filled the prescription and started taking it.

Looking back, I should have Googled it.

#  Chapter 3 - There Are Bad Mechanics, Bad Contractors, and Bad Doctors

(aka: "I Need a Doctor, Call Me a Doctor")

It was early morning and I called my sister, leaving a message for her to return my call. When she called back she couldn't understand me as I was sobbing and blubbering into the phone. (I'm really not that much of a weenie...usually I hardly ever cry, and when I do it's out of anger and frustration.)

"No one will help me!" I cried out. "I'm sick and I know what it is, no one will listen, no one will believe me, and no one will help me!!!" She managed to calm me down after a few minutes. "I'm not stupid, and I know what I have."

"No, you're not stupid," she encouraged me, and after a few minutes she inspired me to keep on fighting.

I couldn't figure out exactly what it was about the words "Disseminated Histoplasmosis" that triggered such resistance. Later doctors, nurses, and the FBI man would use terms like "believes she has" and "is under the impression she has" Disseminated Histoplasmosis. What was the big deal about this particular fungal infection? One ER doctor told me I had an uphill battle to prove I had it. I couldn't understand...I wouldn't be meeting such resistance if I said I had the flu...what was up?

In fact, I could get a flu diagnosis even if it wasn't the flu, like when I read the CDC once started counting flu cases but then stopped when they realized only less than 20% of people diagnosed with "flu" were actually infected with the flu virus, meaning 80% or more of people diagnosed with the "flu" really had something else. At least that's what the article said.

So, with my liver inflamed, my stomach and hip (transient synovitis, cause unknown?) aching so bad I could hardly walk, my chest hurting in the center and to the left, uncontrollable diarrhea unexpectedly staining the legs of my white jeans, and flashes of light and floaters in my reddened, blurry eyes, I (a 52 year-old 5'2" female) trudged around from doctor to hospital ER and back to doctor in the hot Texas sun.

I HAD to get that OFFICIAL diagnosis so that the CDC could come in and spray the fields with antifungal and make sure my coworkers were tested to see if they had it. If the CDC didn't, the fungus could possibly make workers in adjoining buildings and families in nearby houses ill, and my coworkers would just become more and more ill.

One coworker had a lymph node removed. He was tested for sarcoidosis, but no granulomas were found. His doctor couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. An MRI this coworker showed me indicated "something white" was missing in his sinuses, and his doctor didn't know why. Also, when he blew his nose black chunks came out. He may have been given corticosteroids, I don't remember. After some Googling of scientific papers, I found that it was possible his lamina papyracea was completely eroded and he may have allergic fungal sinusitis. I read if he did and he wasn't treated it could dissolve his facial bones and eat away his eyes.

A second coworker with the concurrent six-week rash matching mine was missing a LOT of work, and he seemed to have gotten sicker than I was. He also appeared to have had it in his lungs when we had the rashes. He was only in his 20s. The last I heard he had been missing from work for a week and no one knew why. I couldn't find him to talk to him. I worried he might be dying, in a mental hospital, or dead.

A manager had an enlarged liver of undetermined origin and another developed plantar fasciitis, which I'd had for about the last year I worked at the workplace but haven't had since I left. Another worker had another weird rash (erythema nodosum?) on his lower legs around Christmas 1 ½ or 2 ½ years before...the same time I had a prurient rash all over my chest that I later matched to a photo of a histoplasmosis rash. Still more workers had a bad hip, pancreatitis, liver problems, heart problems, etc. Almost everyone I spoke to had gastrointestinal problems. We were definitely a sickly bunch.

The previous year I tried to correlate everyone's symptoms on a timeline with solvents being processed in the warehouse (I worked in the lab and was exposed to minor amounts of chemicals, well below any exposure limits). None of the chemicals being processed matched when we were sick, and the MSDS and known symptoms of exposure for each chemical were inconsistent with our symptoms.

All of our symptoms were consistent with Disseminated Histoplasmosis.

I also noticed when collecting my medical records that I was always sick around April/May/June of each year (when female bats are lactating and the fungus is most potent) and around Fall/Christmas (presumably when the bats are migrating back down south to Mexico/South America, or maybe because the baby bats are big enough to start flying/feeding mid-September to mid-October, or perhaps when the bats are mating, or when winter clothes and/or Christmas decorations are pulled out of attics where bats may have roosted. Or maybe all the candy sweets during Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas.)

(By the way, why do suicide rates spike in late spring and early summer?)

I checked online, and Brittany Murphy died in December, her husband the following May, and the Sandy Hook shootings took place in December. I had prayed to figure out what happened to Brittany Murphy and Adam Lanza. 'Be careful what you wish for, 'cuz you just might get it.'

Brittany Murphy had always been one of my favorite celebrities. Her death was one of few that actually shocked me. There was a sweetness about her that seemed to come through in her characters, and I liked her. Brittany, and other actresses like Anna Farris, reminded me of myself...flaky...flawed. When she died I was upset about all the nasty rumors about her. People said blind items about "Jordache Junkie" were about her, even though Ted Casablanca said they weren't, and Perez Hilton seemed cruel about her. I emailed Perez after her death, defending her and saying she looked like she'd died from an adrenal crisis and that her health problems would have caused her strange behavior at times. I told him to have some compassion and leave her and other celebrities alone.

After the Sandy Hook shootings, I seemed to be the only person who also felt bad for Adam Lanza, thinking he must have been very sick and not necessarily an evil, cold-blooded killer. The photos of him before the shooting...he just looked so ILL. Couldn't anyone else see that? And the photos of him a few years before, where he's smiling and waving at the camera...he reminded me so much of my son, and my maternal instinct kicked in for some reason. Why, he could be ANYBODY'S son, I thought. Anyone's son could get sick and become unhinged mentally. I just didn't know why.

I kept praying the same thing when I thought of those two people, and only those two people: "Please, God, let me figure out what they had," not knowing they both might have had the same thing. I didn't ask for my sake. I asked for theirs.

"God answers sharp and sudden on some prayers and thrust the thing we have prayed for in our face, like a gauntlet with a gift in it," wrote Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who at age 15 became ill, suffering from intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life. I wonder what Elizabeth had.

I should have added in my prayers to God, "without getting what they had myself." "C'mon, God, why do you have to take things so literally?"

God seemed to me like the devil character in "Bedazzled," always throwing in a little twist to the wish. You had to be very, VERY specific with your wishes.

"Gee, God, I would have thought you'd KNOW I didn't mean to get it myself, Mr. Omniscient. (Just joking, God. Please don't smite me!)"

And I had also prayed for an idea so I could write a book.

All Brittany Murphy's and her husband's symptoms were consistent with Histoplasmosis/Disseminated Histoplasmosis, and the cause of death was consistent, also. And the rat poison they used was probably because they thought bat feces were rat feces and the insecticide was for the insects the guano would draw.

And am I the only person who looked at those last photos of Adam Lanza and immediately thought "adrenal problem"?

Of course, all of this about Brittany Murphy, Simon Monjack, and Adam Lanza was pure speculation on my part with some circumstantial evidence, but it was plausible. In fact, if there was this much circumstantial evidence in court I could get a conviction...unless Clark and Darden were handling the case.

After waking up in pools of diarrhea with my ears buzzing so loudly I couldn't sleep, my chest hurting so much I was afraid I'd have a heart attack, and feeling like I had been poisoned, I went back to Care Now and Dr. Trombley. I had also left her a note about everything in my vision sliding to the right when I woke up and other symptoms.

I remembered waking up in the middle of the night a few months before, looking at my digital alarm clock and seeing the numbers slide to the right. Everything was swirling to the right so much it felt like my eyes had become unattached in my head. Trying to get to the bathroom, I dizzily fell to the floor of my bedroom, crying out in fear, "What's happening to me!?"

The only other living creature in my apartment was my cat, who looked at me with what appeared to be concern and said, "Meow?" That was when I started putting HUGE bowls of water and big open bags of cat food out in my kitchen so that if I died my cat would have enough to eat and drink until someone finally checked on the terrible smell that was coming from my apartment.

It seemed I cared more about my cat's life than the CDC and federal government cared about mine.

At Care Now, Dr. Trombley told me condescendingly that there was a condition called hypochondriasis and suggested I check myself into a mental hospital. She spoke very slooowly. Why did doctors and EMTs talk to me like I was a 2-year old child?

"I know what hypochondriasis is, you stupid b#tch," I thought.

Furious, I answered, "In case you don't know this, I'm a chemist/biologist who graduated from college before you could even say the word 'disseminated.'" She seemed taken aback...why do people react differently when they hear this? Clerks, secretaries, waitresses, maids, etc. can be smart...it doesn't take a B.S., PhD, or M.D. to make someone smart...OBVIOUSLY.

"And I'm not a hypochondriac."

I'm the kind of person who thinks they DON'T have something...and I always had symptoms BEFORE I knew they were symptoms of a disease. Also, what kind of hypochondriac burns apparent keratoses off their own face with Compound W when coworkers suggest going to a dermatologist?

"My coworkers and I had these symptoms for years before I even knew what the symptoms of histoplasmosis were. And also, if I'm crazy why did the other doctor order cultures!?" I demanded.

She looked back through my records and saw the ordered cultures.

"Well, you know if it IS Disseminated Histoplasmosis we have to contact the CDC", she mumbled, finally taking me seriously.

"I know that! And I've already contacted the city, county, and state and now I'm trying to get a diagnosis to call the CDC," I replied, livid that if I had been a weaker person who thought all doctors know what they're talking about that I would have taken her advice and gone to a mental hospital...and died there.

I couldn't even find two doctors who told me the same thing...they all contradicted each other.

Trying to back-pedal, she looked at my bottle of Prednisone and said it should be okay to take (Mistake #3- Prednisone is a death sentence for someone with Disseminated Histoplasmosis) and I told her I had an appointment with a pulmonologist the next day.

"My liver's enlarged and I can tell where the fungus goes by what I eat. I think it likes sugar and follows sugar, and where is sugar stored?" I asked.

She looked down at her hands in her lap. She didn't know. She was a DOCTOR and didn't know the liver stores sugar and sends it to different body parts depending on the body's needs.

When asked what I should eat she replied, "Eat whatever you feel like." Mistake #4. The fungus likes sugar, and I craved sugar and lots of white bread. The correct answer was no sugar and lots of garlic.

I was offered a shot, I believe a corticosteroid, to suppress my symptoms, but I declined because I didn't WANT to suppress my symptoms. I was using myself as a lab rat to figure out what was making me and my coworkers ill. (Later I refused medication for symptoms, aside from begging for antifungal, because I knew that intransigent doctors would insist my symptoms were side-effects of the medications.)

I was willing to suffer to help the CDC...the same CDC who refused to speak with me.

As I left and stopped to pay, Dr. Trombley told the receptionist not to charge me for that visit and wrote "Walk out" in my file.

In my car I stopped and called my sister as I again started crying. I don't think I had cried once in the last five years, except when I had migraines that started when I worked at Ultrapure and I've never had since leaving, but now I cried all the time.

"Didn't I tell you last year about my rash and lumps on my face?" I asked, doubting my own memory. I needed a reality check!

"Yes," my sister replied, "and you called while you were going to the ER at the hospital, but it was so crowded you left."

"Thank you, I just needed to make sure." It was like the whole world was going crazy...nothing made any sense anymore, ever since I walked out of work. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone...or a bad dream and couldn't wake up. Little did I know that this bad dream would soon become a horrendous nightmare.

Thank God I had called my sister. And it wasn't the last time I thanked God over the next few months.

#  Chapter 4 - A Diagnosis! Call the Men in the White Hats (and Hazmat Suits)

(aka: "I'm On My Knees Beggin' Please Come and Save Me")

I needed a diagnosis from a doctor, because from what I read online the CDC could then come in, remove the bats, and spray the fields with antifungal. I was "lucky" enough to get a rush appointment with Dr. Loftin, a pulmonologist at Baylor in Carrollton. I told him I thought I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis from bats at work.

He didn't believe me, saying Histoplasmosis is "everywhere" in the air, and almost everyone had been infected with it. He insisted it must be something else, because I didn't have any other disease, like AIDS, that would suppress my immune system. I handed over all the bottles of medicine I was taking...Aspirin, Benadryl, Prednisone, Ibuprofen, and Omeprazole.

I said I thought the fungus liked sugar and followed sugar. He said "Yes, fungus feeds on sugar, but only in a beaker."

I thought, "What are people except organs in a container (skin "beaker")?"

I told him my liver was enlarged/inflamed and asked him where sugar is stored. For the second time in two days a doctor...I'll say it again, a DOCTOR...did not know the liver stores sugar. Heck, I knew that from doing Atkins!

After much poking and prodding in areas like my back and looking at the nodule in the roof of my mouth Dr. Loftin told me, "You have Disseminated Histoplasmosis!"

"I know...that's what I've been telling people for weeks, but no one would listen." I made him say it again just so I knew I hadn't misheard. He seemed irritated I was right.

He searched for another disease to explain why my immune system wasn't fighting the fungus. Finding nothing, he looked at my medicine bottles, took one, and walked out of the room.

Coming back in he said the doctors who gave me Prednisone were killing me, and I believe he called Dr. Herrscher and berated him. Dr. Herrscher told him I said it worked the last time and I said, "I told him THREE times I didn't take it last time! He wouldn't listen to me!"

The doctors seemed to be hearing, and diagnosing, only what they wanted to.

Doctor Loftin reduced my prescription of Prednisone to wean me off it, and when I asked if he was going to give me any antifungal he told me that it could cause liver damage.

I mentioned my coworkers and this doctor, who had made an oath to 'prevent disease whenever I can' and to 'remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm' said something like, "Why should you care about them? Just think about getting yourself better." I guess for some doctors it's more the Hypocritical Oath than the Hippocratic Oath.

Looking back, I should have gotten a copy of my diagnosis from him at that moment, but I didn't want to be pushy. I persisted about receiving antifungal, since I'd read cases of Disseminated Histoplasmosis HAD to be treated or I'd only have a 10% chance of survival.

But he shooed me away (after I'd paid $250 for an office visit) and abruptly said, "Well, you LOOK okay."

And he sent me home to die.

#  Chapter 5 - I Saw the Sign, And It Opened Up My Eyes

(aka: "I Can See Inside You the Sickness is Rising")

Alone in my home, within only about five miles of my former workplace and the bats, my ears buzzed loudly and I kept having uncontrollable diarrhea. My sister and I thought that was good, thinking the fungus was working its way out of my body. Little did we know that by then I was possibly fatally ill.

I prayed to God to send a stray kitten to rescue, since I needed something to fill my time and take my mind off all my aches and pains. "But only one, not four like last year," I made sure to add.

The next day, when I normally would have been at work, I walked outside and heard a stray kitten crying. He was so cute and tiny. Initially frightened by me, he soon became cuddly and slept on top of me. I ended up giving him to a woman who fostered kittens. Normally agnostic, I felt this was a sign.

At some point, popping NSAIDs and aching almost everywhere, I was driving near Fort Worth and emailed the county from my cell phone my full name, social security number, that Dr. Loftin at Baylor had given me a diagnosis, and that if someone didn't call me back to tell me the CDC had been contacted I was going to call the local news.

I noticed a billboard with a man police were desperately searching for. He had the same look on his face that Adam Lanza did in his last photos.

A few minutes later my phone had an incoming call from area code 972. Driving 50 mph, I couldn't answer it, and then the cell phone battery died. But I assumed it was a call to verify the CDC was on its way. Yes, I really CAN be that stupid. But I was becoming more and more ill and assumed all these professional men had everything under control.

Stopping to get gas and use the restroom, I overheard conversations like, "I'm a diabetic and I always get IBS this time of year."

"So do I," I thought and wondered if she had Histoplasmosis in her.

I also remembered that a woman with my same name had gone to Care Now for flu-like symptoms the same time, maybe the same day, in April that I went in. The nurses had accidentally pulled her file instead of mine when I went back, and I had to argue with them when they said I had flu-like symptoms. I wondered if that woman had Histoplasmosis in her, too.

This was the start of noticing people all around me with symptoms that could be caused by the same disease I knew I had.

All the cities in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex are connected, so it's difficult to tell which city you're in at any time. Driving through countless cities on a daily basis, I think I was in Dallas when I was talking to my sister on my cell phone.

I had been ill and lying in bed with my ears buzzing and it hit me...THIS is what Brittany Murphy and Adam Lanza had. Information online seemed to support my theory. I was certain that there was a reason I had this disease...like I was meant to figure it out. I also remembered that bats CARRY a fungus. "Isn't it Histoplasmosis?" I emailed the CDC. I had learned in elementary school that it was a fungus that made bats fly at night and hunt by echolocation.

("What's done in the dark will be brought to the light.")

The CDC didn't reply, of course. Why should they? My life and possibly those of my coworkers appeared to be insignificant to them.

Anyway, I was talking to my sister about how I had seen what looked like large crop-dusting planes, maybe like military planes, dumping what looked like a black powder from the sky. I remembered seeing a movie about a woman saying they were spraying something at night in California...that it was different from the spray for mosquitoes and it made the dog sick.

I had also seen a clump of 6-8 white cars driving toward the Enterprise Rental Car office and also people looking up under bridges. I assumed it was the CDC spraying and taking care of things. But you know what they say about the word "assume"...it makes an ass out of you and me. And I certainly turned out to be quite an ass.

While parked in a Dallas drug store parking lot, I told my sister I thought Brittany Murphy and her husband died from this. I said, "People thought they were crazy because they thought the government was spying on them. But they were right. The government WAS spying on them...it was the CDC." As soon as I said "CDC" my phone cut off. It had never cut off before and never did after that.

I looked at my phone and chuckled. I guessed the CDC was controlling my communications to keep me from telling people they were in DFW and people had Disseminated Histoplasmosis. No one wants to panic all those people...was it 7 million in DFW? Maybe the government thought Histoplasmosis was just naturally in the air and can cause insanity, so they kept it quiet while they THOUGHT they were taking care of it.

Everywhere I went cell phone and landline calls, texts, emails, Internet, and letters appeared blocked and unanswered. I had never had so many blocked emails/Internet or people not answering my letters or emails.

It didn't bother me much, but I was careful after that about what I said on the phone and in texts with my sister. I thought back about all my other phone calls and texts and became embarrassed, although I figured they had probably heard much worse than anything I could say.

But then I thought, "If someone IS listening, then they know all my secrets and private things about me." Like the porn I watched and personal things I wrote in anonymous chat rooms or told my sister in confidence. It felt like being raped, I either texted or emailed at some point.

I also realized that if the CDC went around spraying fungicide only after they were notified about a Disseminated Histoplasmosis case, then they didn't realize bats CARRY it. I wondered if they thought it was naturally in the air, maybe even falling from space, and that there was only a problem if it happened to accumulate in an area.

But how could they NOT know!? They'd have to be blithering idiots not to know....

Maybe the government knew the bats carry it and it can cause illness/insanity, but they thought disseminated histoplasmosis was so rare that a few shootings were worth keeping bats around to eat moths. (Bats only eat about 1% of mosquitoes, so they're useless there. They prefer big, juicy moths.)

At some point I sent a furious email and text for the CDC to see. Does Prednisone cause rage? Because I seemed full of it.

The email I sent to Dallas County and thought the CDC could see went something like, "Are you morons finished yet?" I mentioned that for years honest hard workers had been literally sh#t upon in the prurient pestilence that was Dallas County. I then added something like, "I don't ask for much, just for all of you to do your f#@king jobs!"

During the previous months, for some reason I kept waking up while searching for the perfect adjective to put before the word "torture" in an email...the email I was now composing for the CDC about Adam, when I described his illness and what he went through as "exquisite torture."

The text I sent my sister and thought the CDC could see said something about how angry I was...at something evil but I couldn't figure out who to be angriest at and sue first. The text went on and on, and it was the first time I looked at Dr. Frieden's photo on the CDC home page.

"My eyes feel like I'll be blind by morning," I wrote, "but on the plus side that means I won't have to see Tom's stupid face ever again."

I added something about Tom's dumb face and how it would look on posters in between the "leper" of Arlington and Adam Lanza's bug-eyed stare.

"Poor SICK vilified Adam," I texted, ostensibly for Dr. Frieden to see. "I'll be thinking of Adam during the metaphorical reaming."

This text was the first time I referred to Dr. Frieden as "The Twittering Tw@t."

#  Chapter 6 - The Lion of Judah

(aka: "Madness is the Gift That Has Been Given to Me")

I don't recall the exact sequence of events, but at some point I rented a car at Enterprise. It seemed odd that the only cars available were 6-8 white cars and one light gray car with the GPS ripped out of it. I wondered why someone had ripped out the GPS.

Having an aversion to and never renting white cars, I rented the light gray car. I decided to feed homeless people, so I went to a drug store to buy 24 waters. While in the drug store I noticed that people startled me when they walked past and made me flinch. Not sure why people walking by made me flinch, I was grateful I knew what I had or I would have worried. Then I remembered how Adam would flinch when people walked by.

With 24 waters I went to the McDonald's in downtown Dallas to buy 24 $10 gift cards. As I dispensed them to homeless people, I noticed with a start the cards looked awfully familiar. Then I remembered...a few weeks earlier I told my supervisor and coworker about a weird dream I had where I was handing out McDonald's gift cards with snowmen on them...odd, because it was around March and warm at the time of my dream. These gift cards looked exactly like the ones in my dream!

I also remembered in the dream that I was opening a letter with a wax seal on it, like the ones kings used during the Renaissance. And I was also planning a four-day party. I remembered as I was sitting in my work chair I mentioned how strange the dream was...the four-day party I was planning and the gift cards.

After handing out the gift cards I got a little lost in my car, ending up at a hotel on Lake Ray Hubbard and later realizing I might have driven in the shape of a giant cross. So odd, I thought. Later there would be other cross shapes I would accidentally drive in.

Checking into the hotel for a nice break on Lake Ray Hubbard, I went to the gas station next door to buy sundries. I also needed something to sleep in, but all they had were large T-shirts. I chose the least offensive one...a hideous golden-brown shirt with a huge picture of a mountain lion's face on the front.

The next morning, I woke up after sleeping face-down and there was a large stain on my white pillow where my forehead had been. It looked almost like light-colored maybe pinkish tea or something, and I remembered how the same stains, but smaller, had been on my pillowcases for the last year or so. I thought I kept spilling things on my pillows, but couldn't figure out what. Was it lymph or plasma!?

I wondered if it was hair dye, but I had washed my hair many times since it was dyed, and for that much dye to come off on my pillow it would have been streaming down my face in the hot Texas sun. And it wasn't even the right color. And the stain was far too large to be just sweat.

Normally I would have taken the pillowcase as evidence, but instead I emailed someone (the county maybe?) for the CDC to come and pick up the pillowcase. I even left a note in my room that read, "Hello CDC ." I figured if they didn't come it wouldn't be a big deal, but if they did come they'd see it. It seemed I had a love/hate relationship with the CDC, alternately liking and hating them.

I decided to drive to my sister's house in Mississippi for a visit, but I was so sick I could only make it to Kilgore in East Texas, where I checked into a motel with my ears buzzing away and my eyes red and blurry.

The next morning, I woke up and could hardly see. I pressed a white washcloth with cool water on my eyes, and when I pulled it away there were pink stains all over it. "What is that?" I wondered as I kept rinsing and pressing the washcloth to my eyes and pulling it away and still seeing pink. "Is that blood or lymph?"

Suddenly I developed the idea that the 24 gift cards symbolized Brittany Murphy, Simon Monjack, Adam Lanza, Adam's mother, and the 20 dead schoolchildren. (Later, after Googling some things in Revelations, I speculated it might refer to the 24 elders.) I don't know why I thought that, but I also had a strange compulsion to put on the hideous lion T-shirt and go to Lake Ray Hubbard. I emailed the county and state that bloody lymph was oozing from my eyes and for some reason I felt compelled to put on a stupid lion T-shirt and go to Lake Ray Hubbard.

So I put on the ugly lion T-shirt, but for some reason I was afraid to go to Lake Ray Hubbard, even though I wanted to. For some reason I thought people were waiting there to stop or kill me.

As I was typing the email to the county and state I mentioned a man and pregnant woman I saw walking under a bridge late one night in Carrollton. They had reminded me of Jesus and Mary as he gently guided her. They were both African-American.

And then I remembered the African-American man I had asked directions from at Walmart 2-3 days before who had joyfully called out to me, "Merry Christmas!" Odd, I had thought, since it was April or May. Then I also remembered how my coworker told me the next messiah would be black. I startled him when I asked, "How do you know it will be a boy? Why not a girl? After all, every King needs a Queen."

So, I quickly decided the new messiah had been born, it made such perfect sense! Since the couple was near where Dallas met Carrollton, and since they appeared homeless or at least very poor, I knew that if the woman gave birth the ambulance would have taken her to Baylor-Carrollton or Parkland in Dallas. But I had told a doctor in the ER my biggest fear was going blind from retinal separation caused by the fungus. Nevertheless, I started driving, hardly able to see, toward Carrollton/Dallas and the bats/fungus.

I think I was driving west on Highway 31 or some other road that was too far south. At a gas station my kitten debit card was declined, but I knew I had thousands of dollars on it. "It must be the CDC or the evil people who want to stop me blocking it," I thought. It made such perfect sense!

Then I headed north and had to go back toward the east to get to Carrollton/Dallas.

There were no new black babies at Baylor-Carrollton, so I started to head to Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Not knowing where to get any frankincense or myrrh (I thought of the Monty Python movie...'myrrh, what am I supposed to do with myrrh!?' and chuckled) before leaving Baylor I stopped by the gift shop. I needed something gold, so I bought a gold cross for the baby. Maybe there would be other people there. Maybe they'd be in different animal shirts, signifying the animals around the "manger." They could bring the frankincense and myrrh.

Remembering a dream I'd had years ago, I felt certain I was supposed to be in a hospital room with other puzzled people wearing animal shirts, and that I'd see God and my deceased father. The other people were holding gifts and standing around a baby.

Fearing I was being followed by the CDC or evil people trying to kill me or the baby, I parked at a nearby hotel and collapsed in the lobby. I knew the ambulance was forced by law to take me to the nearest hospital, Parkland, since I was unresponsive and left my id locked in my car and my keys hidden in the bushes.

The EMTs put me into the ambulance under the awning with my shirt covered up, my arm covering my face. It was the perfect way to get into Parkland while anyone following me or watching me from a satellite would think I was still in the hotel. I didn't want anyone to know the new messiah should be released that day from Parkland. It made such perfect sense.

Inside Parkland, I left the ER and searched for the nursery. There were no windows to a nursery, so I waited in the lobby where I thought I may have seen the same tall black man who I'd seen under the bridge. I waited about three or more hours in Parkland that day, but nothing happened. I went to the chapel and cried, asking why God had sent me there...what was going on?...I didn't understand.

I walked around the lobby for a while thinking maybe I was supposed to protect the baby when the family came out, so I kept an eye out for anyone dangerous while walking around the lobby in my ugly lion shirt. If I saw anyone with a gun, I'd planned to throw myself in front of the baby.

I left Parkland around 3:10-3:30pm, walked back to my car in the heat, and drove home. My eyes felt better, and I realized the HEPA filters in the hospital were what probably cleared them up. Later I would notice that East Texas made me more ill than Dallas, and I might have gone blind if I had stayed the day in East Texas like I had planned. Going to Parkland might have saved my sight.

Afterwards, after looking in Revelations, I decided I was the Lion of Judah (hence the lion shirt), which I had never heard of before, and I had broken the first seal and read the papyrus (the lamina papyracea on my coworker's MRI). It was my role to get Dr. Frieden of the CDC to "Come!" to DFW if he hadn't already. He would have come from the east in a white Delta jet and/or maybe driven a white car. And he would be the First Horseman of the Apocalypse-Disease.

It made such perfect sense.

I was convinced the Apocalypse was starting. And this was to be a peaceful Apocalypse that ENDED disease, pestilence, famine, and war, not brought it.

For a long time, I thought Twitter Tw@t was maybe already in DFW, but I wasn't sure. I kept sending letters and emails trying to get him to "Come!" When it appeared he didn't I thought, "Great, he's probably just sitting in his office jerking off every time I said, 'Come!'"

"That's not what I mean!" I sarcastically thought.

At one point I thought of sending a note that read, "What will it take to get you here, an engraved invitation?" with an engraved invitation that read, "Come!" to him.

Wondering why nothing had happened at Parkland hospital, I dreamed that God was happy that, even though my biggest fear was going blind from Histoplasmosis, I still drove back toward Carrollton and the bats.

He must have forgiven me for saying He didn't exist, and I dreamed He was happy that I loved Him so much.

#  Chapter 7 - The Happening

(aka: "I've Been Waiting for this Moment All My Life")

For some reason, after sending my angry text about "Twitter Tw@t," aka T.T., I started hanging out in the Rockwall Hilton lobby emailing Dallas County and who I thought was Dr. Tw@t, the Director of the CDC, information about my symptoms and what I could tell it did in the body.

I could tell it followed sugar and, depending on what you ate, it affected different organs. The worst thing to do was to not eat and to drink sugary sodas...then it seemed to go right to your head.

In an effort to back-pedal from my raging text, I wrote it was a joke and meant for the Christian Defense Coalition (CDC). I hated lying, and it obviously wasn't true, but I regretted my angry text. It seemed I could go from liking the CDC and Dr. Frieden to hating them at the drop of a hat.

Based on symptoms, I was certain Disseminated Histoplasmosis is what sarcoidosis is, and they had been linked before. I correlated the countries and races with the highest amount of sarcoidosis to diet, socio-economic factors, and topography and linked them to Disseminated Histoplasmosis. I mentioned that I thought the reason I felt better in hospitals and expensive hotels was because of HEPA filters, which might filter the Histoplasmosis from the air.

I mentioned that the cause of death during autopsies was incorrect in some cases, because some symptoms of Disseminated Histoplasmosis mimicked other conditions. I wrote that these misdiagnoses of cause of death, as well as misdiagnosed Disseminated Histoplasmosis (which mimicked other diseases, like some forms of tuberculosis, autoimmune diseases, and cancer) would skew his control charts and graphs. For example, death from pericarditis, mediastinitis, and pancreatitis would be misdiagnosed as various forms of myocardial infarction.

My emails mentioned that the skin on my fingertips split open when I went into the marshes of Rowlett, like a paper-cut, and I seemed to have suddenly developed symptoms of arthritis, maybe rheumatoid arthritis(?), and various autoimmune diseases. At some point I realized that Disseminated Histoplasmosis might actually BE some or all autoimmune diseases, since the fungus is being attacked by the immune system.

Red blotches appeared on my palms, and later I read this was probably Janeway lesions, a sign of fungal endocarditis. I'm lucky I didn't have a heart attack. Janeway lesions are known to hemorrhage. Maybe stigmata is caused by disseminated histoplasmosis? With victims oozing blood/lymph from their foreheads (like I did) and their palms.

On and on I wrote to who I thought was the Director of the CDC, and I imagined his reading my emails. I imagined I was telling him things the CDC didn't already know. I was so pleased to help, and I imagined he approved of my emails. In one of the last emails I sent I joked, "Do I work for the CDC now? Can I have a raise? Will you be my boss? Can I still call you T.T.?"

Oh my God, I thought. I'm flirting with the Director of the CDC!

Whatever, I was happy.

I reeked of garlic, because the Indian pharmacists said to eat garlic and not eat any sugar or carbs. This made sense, because I knew that garlic is a natural antifungal and nematodes avoided garlic. This was why gardeners planted garlic or other plants that repel nematodes. Maybe it repelled fungi, too. Rubbing garlic juice around my eyes had also helped clear them up one night when they were very red and I thought they would ooze again.

I kept my lips covered with honey, another natural antifungal, because they would feel raw as if they would be covered in sores the next day. One morning I actually had a raw spot appear on my nose, but it was gone later the same day. A weird growth on my chin would appear in the same spot only when I was sick, and later when I mailed my golden cross necklace to Dr. Frieden there was a cluster of large skin tags that appeared where the chain had been and that disappeared I think only one day later...maybe two. The skin tags had been covered with a large Band-Aid, but I have no idea where they went, even if they fell off. Could they have been resorbed? Idk...ask Dr. Frieden, he's the doctor, but don't expect a reply.

At some point I emailed that I wanted a female member of the CDC to monitor Cathy Enloe's email for me to send more personal information regarding the disease. I didn't want any males to be able to see my email to Cathy Enloe of the City of Carrollton, because it concerned my private parts. It seemed that while sickest I was...how do I say this...incredibly and uncharacteristically "dry."

You would have thought I was the only person in the world who ever had Disseminated Histoplasmosis the way I was acting. But then the CDC claimed it was "rare," and I gave a unique perspective...I KNEW what I had, knew what felt "normal," and I had a basic knowledge of science and good internet research skills.

Plus, it kept me busy trying to be helpful. In fact, aside from barely being able to see and being in pain it was one of the happiest times of my life.

I also sent a strange email about a four-day party starting the Friday before Memorial Day and ending on Memorial Day. Coldplay and Katy Perry were supposed to give concerts, and I thought it was a very tasteful, well-planned party with great dramatic touches.

The party was to be called "The Happening" and it included cosplay. It had to do with segueing into the new age and linking religion and mysticism with science...that religion and science were not mutually exclusive.

I had forgotten I dreamed about planning a four-day party.

At the end of the party description I wrote, "Let's see what you can do." I thought I was challenging the Director of the CDC, but maybe the challenge was meant for someone even more powerful...someone that I soon learned enjoys when people ask Him to do the seemingly impossible. It flatters Him.

Afterwards, as I drove away from the Hilton Hotel parking lot toward my apartment in Carrollton, an old song I hadn't heard in several decades played on the radio.

The song was "The Happening."

#  Chapter 8 - Into the Woods

(aka: "The Meet-Cute")

After emailing the CDC (or so I thought) about wanting a female doctor for more personal symptoms I went home, stopping at Target to buy an air purifier to clean fungal spores from my bedroom air. While I was in the parking lot a woman in a large white truck appeared. She asked for money for gas, showed me her empty gas tank gauge, and said she had no money to get back to Garland. I told her I couldn't really spare any money, being out of work. I said she was pretty and should ask a man for some money. She told me men only want one thing...sex. She saw the cross I had put on a chain and was wearing, and she whined she thought a good Christian woman might help.

I told the woman in the white truck I would buy her $10 worth of gas, so she followed me to the gas station. As the gas was being dispensed (it really irritated me she didn't pump it herself) she told me men can't be trusted, and one time she told a man personal things about her "private parts" and he told all his male friends so they could get off on it.

Quite a coincidence...I mean, what are the odds she would say that almost immediately after I sent my email, and what are the odds she would share that with a stranger? So weird, but STILL not the weirdest thing that happened that day.

I said, "Yeah, men are dumb," but immediately felt bad about saying that after I walked away. I didn't really think much more about it after that.

At home that night I felt I was acting strangely, so I started emailing pastors in Dallas churches that I didn't feel delusional but I must be. I wrote that I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis and that I felt compelled to go places expecting something wonderful to be there when I arrived. (Psilocybin creates an "anticipatory" feeling.) But instead, I was always disappointed and felt like I was always a day early or late. I explained in detail I was under the impression that the Apocalypse had started in Dallas and that I felt I was supposed to be a part of it. The email mentioned it appeared I was fulfilling prophecies, some of them from Revelations before I even KNEW they were prophecies. My email asked for their guidance, if they thought I should go to a mental hospital, and could they help me.

As I was typing the email and it was almost ready to send, it disappeared from my screen. I didn't even get a prompt in Outlook asking if I really wanted to delete it before sending. The email just disappeared from the screen as I was typing it.

I had been careful not to delete the email myself. Very upset, I wondered why the CDC wanted to keep me from emailing pastors for help. Were they isolating me so that I'd die alone in my apartment? As a test I then emailed someone, "The CDC is driving me crazy and I'm going to slit my wrists." I sat back and waited for someone from the CDC to come and stop me. No one came.

"Assholes," I thought and went to sleep.

At some point I woke up and cried thinking about how Adam Lanza's father said he wished Adam had never been born, and I hoped Adam knew deep down that, no matter how it seemed, his mother loved him unconditionally, no matter what.

I fell back to sleep and within an hour woke up from a flash in my head. The strongest sense of having heard "He knew" filled my senses.

Bolting upright in bed, I had no idea why I thought "He knew," but I had been dreaming about the CDC and somehow immediately decided it meant the Director of the CDC knew that Adam Lanza, Brittany Murphy, and Simon Monjack died from Disseminated Histoplasmosis and the director was hiding the fact. For what reason I didn't know, but suspected it had something to do with kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies and/or the American Medical Association to keep the fact quiet so that people would keep paying for prescriptions, wouldn't be afraid of their vaccinations, and to not alarm people about bats since they were needed to keep insects in check and protect crops. I also remembered what the girl in the white truck said, and it didn't seem to make Dr. Frieden look too good.

So, filled with adrenaline and fungus, paranoid and panicking, I sent an email accusing Dr. Frieden of watching Cathy Enloe's emails himself.

I tried to email other people, but my emails to various places appeared to be blocked. I decided the CDC had control of Dallas County, along with Los Angeles, New York City, and other areas, including Santa Barbara, based on blocked emails. So I hopped into my rental car to find a computer outside Dallas County. Before doing this I made sure to remove my phone (it had GPS) from my purse.

So I fled from the evil CDC, driving to Rockwall and going into the lobby of the Hilton Hotel located adjacent to Lake Ray Hubbard. I walked in saying, "I'm not crazy" (I was) but that "the Director of the CDC had taken over all communications in Dallas County and was blocking my emails, cutting off my phone calls, and preventing me from calling and texting people on my cell phone."

Then I got onto a computer in the Hilton lobby in Rockwall and started emailing Dallas County and the City of Carrollton (actually Dr. Frieden, remember?) horrible emails about his being a pervert and that I was ready to stop him.

I then sent test emails to see who was blocked and who wasn't. The owner of my ex-company was blocked, so evil Dr. Frieden apparently had control of the area around Santa Barbara. (Of course, it had nothing to do with the fact I was a former employee saying I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis from bats at work.)

I emailed people in other areas around the country...they were blocked...but then my sister in Mississippi wasn't blocked, so the CDC still didn't have control of the entire U.S. yet...and wouldn't if I could stop them!!!

I had been waiting for this moment all my life. Something to believe in. Something to fight for. The little girl who had daydreamed about being a WWII French Resistance fighter and hiding Jews from Nazis while other little girls practiced ballet had finally found her calling. This was it.

Then I created a new email account and emailed someone I was fleeing from the CDC and furiously started to write an email to the Daily Mail in England (they couldn't possibly be under the CDC's control) that the Director of the CDC, aka "Twitter Tw@t", was pursuing me and was responsible for the deaths of 20 schoolchildren. As I was writing the email the two guest computers in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel shut down. For some reason they, and nothing else, lost power.

"Oh my God!" I thought as I stared at the blank computer screen. "He found me! He must have control of Rockwall County, too. Just think, all he needs is one diagnosed Disseminated Histoplasmosis case in each county/parish in each state and he can control the entire U.S.!!!"

I envisioned the evil Dr. Frieden overseeing a large control room at Atlanta Headquarters filled with CDC employees all sitting at computers and controlling communications throughout the U.S. (Yes, I know, I watch too many movies.)

I asked two girls at the front desk, "Do the computers usually reboot this time of night?" and they said no. I told them, "I know you'll think I'm crazy, but I'm not" (I was) and ran out of the Hilton Hotel lobby before the CDC could arrive and give me a lobotomy to shut me up.

I headed out of the Hilton parking lot, keeping off the highway and driving through neighborhoods to avoid the police the CDC would surely have looking for me with an APB that I was an escaped mental patient...they had probably done it before.

Panicked, I thought how this felt like a John Grisham novel. (Yeah, I read too many suspense novels, too.)

The car light indicating no gas lit up, and I had no money. The only credit card I had on me was maxed out, and I had no cash. So I hid the rental car behind a Target store, since I would remember Target (I didn't). I then set out on foot, being sure to leave my purse, keys, id, and anything else that could identify or track me in the car. Since I was leaving the keys (could the CDC track me with those?) I left the car door unlocked.

I then set out on foot into the stores/neighborhood to find either a church or a house with someone awake who was anti-federal government (not too hard to do in Texas) to protect me from the APB and police I expected to arrive saying that I was an escaped mental patient and who would give me a lobotomy...the lobotomy that would prevent me from ever telling the world the truth about Dr. Frieden. I made sure to stay under trees and in shadows as much as possible, so the satellites the government (Department of Homeland Security) had and that the CDC could access couldn't see me. I knew it would be dawn in a couple of hours, so I needed to find shelter before then.

Eventually I found a suburban area with trees that weren't overly dense to hide in. To get to them I had to walk through a parking lot that had tar on it that looked like two long black serpents. I was inordinately frightened by the "snakes" as I hesitantly walked past, even though I knew they were only tar...more truth that I was associated with the Bible and Eve, but which I later decided represented the AMA and their emblem with two snakes. I certainly had reason to fear doctors and hospitals, didn't I?

As I was walking I calmed down and for some reason realized Dr. Frieden didn't want to hurt me, and the reason I was always missing the events I was seeking was because I wasn't Southern Baptist but Episcopalian (the Church of England) and so my internal clock was set eight (in reality six) hours too early. This meant I was arriving eight (six) hours before everyone else who was meant to meet me at these wonderful events. It made such perfect sense!

Eventually I found a small park-like wooded area in the suburb. As I was walking along the path, I was enjoying the area and the next thing I knew I was facing some strangers. They were expecting me to be a monkey (Chinese calendar 1956 or 1968).

At some point they were massaging my arms and asking me to tell them everything I was ashamed of and telling each other it would be easy to hide the info. When I told them my views on religion (people take different roads to God, or no road at all if they choose), war (ridiculous how we can't all work together/help each other), animals (deserve to not live in fear/pain), homeless people (see animals), homosexuals (if two people are lucky enough to find each other and want to marry, it's none of my business if they're the same sex), etc. they remarked "she's perfect"...that I would appeal to women, Southern whites, African-Americans (for saving my black coworkers at my latest job), Hispanics (for saving my Hispanic coworkers at the old job where I saw the man who looked like a leper), and many other large special interest groups. I told them I wasn't the monkey they were looking for.

A man and woman offered to let me lie around all day like a queen bee having beautiful women massaging me and catering to my every whim...they would do whatever I wanted, *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*. I turned down the offer, explaining hanging out all day being served by a bunch of female servants didn't appeal to me, although I supposed having several young attractive male "drones" who looked like Ryan Gosling and Jared Leto around to "service" me would be ok. But the appeal of their offer quickly faded when they explained there would be no men.

"Thank you for the offer and don't take it personally, but I want one special man that I love who loves me, not lying around being massaged all day by a bevy of female maids."

The man looked me up and down and said, "You're not meant for me."

Some other man behind me said, "No, she's meant for me."

"Besides," I continued, "I think I have some kind of weird crush on the Director of the CDC. I think I kind of love him for some strange reason. I know that sounds weird, since I've never met or spoken to him, so I must be crazy." (I was)

The woman said, "Oooohhh, she LOVES him", and looked slyly at someone behind me, I guessed the man who said I was meant for him. Looking back at me she confided, "And he loves you, too."

"Reeaaallly?" I asked like a schoolgirl. She smiled and said he loved me "so much it hurts," and gave me a knowing look, referring to the lyrics in a Coldplay song I had been listening to. I hadn't even noticed those words. "Yes," she said, "he even had Coldplay and Katy Perry write those songs to find you."

"Gee, he must really love me a lot!" I said and marveled that anyone so smart and not the usual loser I attracted could love me. Obviously he had listened to my phone calls to my sister and had fallen in love with me. And obviously he couldn't tell me because his surveillance had to be secret.

And he knew rock stars, too. How cool was that?!

Suddenly I noticed what appeared to be teenaged girls, either nymphs or life-size fairies, around me. They were the cutest/sweetest girls I've ever been around. I really liked the fairies.

One fairy said, "He loves you so much" (presumably from listening to my personal phone calls and from reading my emails) "that he came into the woods to find you and watched over you all night to make sure you were ok." I imagined some man from the CDC frantically searching the woods to save me. How romantic!

"Wow!" I said, thrilled that someone could love me so much after only listening to my phone calls. He knew everything about me and loved me unconditionally...talk about a wet dream for someone who grew up with Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Meg Ryan movies where the good girl always got the guy in the end. Of course, there had to be the obligatory misunderstandings to keep them apart before they ended up together.

"Yes," she nodded, "and he sent two men to the apartment under yours to get the witch who was there making you sick. And then he went to hotel rooms and found witches in rooms above and below yours, and ooooohhh..." she shook her fairy head because her prophecies were getting her (and me) a little confused.

All of this might have been a dream, since I might have gone to sleep on a bench in the path. Or I've read that sleep deprivation can make you have "dreams" while awake. Or I've read there's a chemical, Dimethyltryptamine, that makes most people see fairies/elves/dwarves, and believe they have telepathy, and scientists debate whether it can occur naturally in the human body, especially when dying.

It's possible I made a flower "crown" with the fairies' help. I don't quite remember, but I recall taking flowers and splitting the stems with my thumbnail to join them together, like a daisy chain, not sure how to join the ends. I may have worn the flower "crown." I think I was going to wear it as a necklace but the fairies told me to put it on my head. When I asked how it looked I think they said, "Ooooh, you look so pretty...like a princess!"

The flowers might have been Angel's Trumpet, a flowering weed that grows in dry streambeds and contains scopolamine. Scopolamine is used medicinally for "twilight sleep" and reduces the ability to remember, and it also can cause hallucinations. It can also cause brachycardia or tachycardia. I do remember there was something about a flower there in the wooded area.

Later I would laugh and wonder if, ironically, it was seven Angel's Trumpet flowers. Apparently I was still stuck in Revelations. The entire time I was most ill my scientific mind tried to make sense of everything that was happening. With mycelium mushrooms sprouting out of my ears (figuratively, not literally) I had decided the Apocalypse had come and I was part of it. That was the only thing that made sense to my fungus-filled brain.

I started walking around a little circular path with glowing people walking past me me...kind of like the glowing people in "Poltergeist." I was walking and smiling at them, and they were smiling and nodding at me. They were all very pleasant.

As I came around the north side of the circular path I saw a dark-haired man that wasn't glowing and so must have been human. I remember the man was possibly dark-eyed, and the only thing I recognized was that broad, toothy grin.

He was shorter than 6 feet, 5'10" or shorter, maybe 5'7" or even less...not very much taller than I am, and a little older (50-ish), with dark hair...odd, because I had been thinking the Director of the CDC was very tall, about 35, with dirty-blonde hair and blue eyes. And I also thought the Director of the CDC was in Georgia at CDC headquarters.

"Susan?" he asked.

"Yes?" I replied.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked.

I squinted and looked at him closely, trying to make out his face with my blurry eyes.

"Twitter Tw@t!?!?" I asked (the name I had called Dr. Frieden in the text message I thought the CDC could see). He laughed.

"You can't tell anyone about this," he said, and I wasn't sure if he meant the fairies or that he was there. I decided it was because he was there, since it must be against CDC rules to interact with the natives, like on Star Trek.

"Ok, I'll try, but it'll be hard since I kinda have a big mouth." He laughed when I said that. Apparently there wasn't anything I could say that he didn't find utterly charming.

He looked at me and asked, "What's going on?" and I said, "Well, as you know I've been very sick." Suddenly one of the fairies (grouped together to my left) asked, "What made you sick?" and I turned to them and blurted out, "BATS!"

"Witches, Witches, Witches, Witches, Witches," they all murmured in their sweet fairy voices, looking at each other with fear.

Later I would wonder if there had been Black Witch moths in the wooded area, since they feed on scopolamine-containing plants. Big, juicy moths that bats liked to eat.

The man looked over to where I was looking on my left and then looked back at me oddly. "Did you take anything?" he asked.

"No, just 10 mg of Prednisone and 1 mg of Xanax Dr. Rai prescribed for me so that I could sleep. That's all, I swear." Actually, I think I said 10 mg of Xanax and he had to correct me, saying that sounded like a lot, by asking what color the pills were.

He MIGHT have chuckled and asked me what I was wearing on my head, referring to the flowers splayed all over it. Preening, I may have said, "Oh that's my crown. Do you like it? I made it myself...can you tell?" I might have snickered, pointing at the messy blob. I think he and I laughed and he helped take the flowers off my head. I think he even asked, "May I?" and gently removed them, but I'm not sure.

I remember I was giddy...I couldn't remember feeling so happy in a long time.

I was so glad he was there!

Then Twitter Tw@t (T. T.) or whoever my savior was who must have been from the CDC said, "You don't trust me, do you?"

"Noooooooooo", I said, looking away to avoid his eyes. "I did this morning, but this afternoon I didn't. There was a girl in a truck and she said something...I can't remember what."

"Witch!" a fairy called out from the left. "Satan lies!" a male voice called out farther back to the left. "Satan whispers lies in your ear," another male voice said, even farther back to the left. Odd, because I was agnostic and would have NEVER thought Satan...or witches.

I thought for a moment, and turning my head forward again to look back at T. T. said, "I'm sorry."

"It's ok," he assured me.

"No, it's not. "

After that I talked about getting my teeth fixed by the dentist who said my palate nodule was nothing, because I thought he owed it to me for being wrong (the nodule appeared only when I was sick, along with the tinnitus, and a similar nodule...palatal edema from fungus dissolving the palatine bone?... was linked to sarcoidosis, which I suspected was really Disseminated Histoplasmosis and had been linked before). T.T. asked what I'd have done and I said fix my chipped tooth, get new crowns in front, and get my teeth whitened. "But not too white, since I don't want Chiclet teeth." He laughed and asked what that was, and I told him, "teeth that are so white and straight they look like Chiclets."

"Chris Fitzjohn (my former boss) has Chiclet teeth, but shhhhhh don't tell anyone I said that." We both laughed. I giggled a lot, like a child.

I covered my mouth with my fingers saying, "I got so sick I stopped brushing my teeth." I was embarrassed and wanted him to like me.

"Did you get my emails about the fungus?" I asked, and he nodded. He was impressed with my ideas, and that thrilled me.

"I smell bad," I told him and he said, "I don't care about that." This guy just kept getting better and better. I impulsively threw my arms around his neck and hugged him. He was the perfect height for me in my wedge sandals...my head rested perfectly on his shoulder and my face fit into his neck...like we were perfectly fitting pieces of a puzzle.

Surprised, I think he just gingerly touched my back with his hand.

"I'm not hitting on you," I realized this wasn't completely true, "but I haven't touched anyone in more than 10 years. I get massages, but it's not the same thing." I thought of all the interesting conversations we could have...after all, he was a scientist. These wouldn't be the usual stupid conversations I'd had with men in the past, like how they could pump up their muscle in 45 seconds.

The conversation continued, and I told him I was dizzy and could only sleep one hour or less a night, and (after looking to one side) he told me he had something that would help me sleep. Turning to follow him to his vehicle, I told him the CDC shouldn't go around spying on and scaring people...that they should be open about what they were doing and people might surprise him by how they pitched in and helped. He just shook his head with a somewhat patronizing smile on his face.

He led me to his vehicle, I think a large SUV or truck, where I laid down in the back. As I was lying down I showed him the brown spots on my arm and told him he could make a fortune if he could figure out how to get rid of them.

I asked if he saw my text about wanting to find the cute taxi driver. After looking to the side again, he said he did and I asked if it made him jealous. He hesitantly admitted yes, it did (after looking to the side a third time), and I said, "Good, it worked." I was so happy he was jealous. It meant he "liked" me. It had been years since I'd had such a good time, even if I WAS dying....

I was lying on my back, and noticed he looked me up and down, and he looked at my sandals. Maybe he had a foot fetish. I hoped not...I have ugly feet.

At some point, he looked at my finger where the skin had split like a paper-cut, and he asked about two things on the back of my hand. "Those are just warts," I said, "I keep putting Compound W on them, but they keep coming back."

He showed me the label on the bottle he would use to put me to sleep, described what it was, and asked, "Do you trust me?"

"Yes," I said, "but if you're going to kill me at least make it quick and painless." Of course, he thought that was funny.

Lying there, I asked if he was going to molest me when I was asleep. "No," he laughed.

"Darn it," I thought.

I said, "At least if you do I have on a pretty bra," and he smiled at me.

There was a little more conversation, and I said, "So, after this is all over you're going away?" He said yes, and I said I wasn't ok with that...that I would have to get West Nile Virus to make him come back. Again he thought that was amusing. I think he said he would find a way to let me know he was always there. Then I think he put some drops of liquid from the bottle on a mask over my mouth and nose and told me to count backwards from 100. I got to about 96 and fell asleep.

While asleep I dreamed that someone (a boss?) was yelling at someone else, "She's a tiger (birth year 1962) and you're trying to make her act like a monkey. No wonder she's going nuts!" And someone else got yelled at for not realizing my correct religion and the time difference. Also, the boss demanded to know why the "He knew" idea was triggered at the wrong time and something about a "He knows" message. The lower-level worker who had made that mistake was in big trouble for that one. He was trying to explain to his angry boss that the seizure and lights in my head had triggered it at the wrong time and it wasn't his fault. The boss was grumbling at the incompetence of his staff and was fixing all the glitches.

Then someone (was it Dr. Tw@t or the boss? Who knew? I sure didn't...I didn't know what the heck was going on) took a flower (I'm assuming Angel's Trumpet) that he had in his hand and possibly caused my visions. He showed it to someone on his computer to find out what it was.

I realize just how pathetic this sounds, but it was the best "date" I'd ever had.

Later I seemed to remember that it was actually this man, apparently a doctor, who was "massaging"...palpating...my hands and arms, maybe checking my back, I suppose examining me as I was lying in the back seat. At some point I think he said he'd need all my medical records and I said no simply because I couldn't remember any doctor's names, since I went so rarely. I guess he thought I said it because I was hiding something, and he asked me what I was ashamed of. I'm fairly certain I was facing backwards in the back seat of the vehicle as he pressed in on my back like the other doctor had...I guess feeling lymph nodes.

When he asked me what I was ashamed of I didn't want to tell him everything I was ashamed of. I looked back over my shoulder at the dark-haired man and didn't want him to know. But two of the "fairies" were in the vehicle and assured me, "He knows."

"He knows? How could he know?" I asked, and they insisted, "He knows." But they'd have to have been listening to my phone calls for years to know....

So, I blurted out everything I'd ever done or that had ever happened to me that I was ashamed of. Scopolamine is like a truth serum, and I said I was a terrible person and cried. I think he reassured me, saying that I was a "Girl Scout." Funny if this was a dream or hallucination, since I never used that term.

I think I started talking about Girl Scout cookies, saying the Thin Mints were my favorite. Then I asked what his favorite were and he said Samoas. "Would you like some more Samoas?" I lamely joked.

I seem to remember waking up, demanding to know what he was doing, and stumbling backwards out of his vehicle, but I'm not sure.

For all I know, I could have been flirting with and hugging a tree in the woods, and then ended up in a stranger's truck in the cul-de-sac. Or I could have just dreamed it later, because I couldn't remember what happened in the wooded area until days later.

All I know is...I walked into the wooded area not thinking of witches, but walked out of the wooded area avoiding witches. And I thought the CDC Director and I had started some sort of weird "relationship."

For some reason I thought it had happened..."he" had FINALLY shown up, after all these years. The man I had been waiting for.

I had never wanted a big house, fancy clothes, expensive jewelry, or a new car. Those things are nice, but they weren't important to me. What was important to me was a wonderful man I loved who loved me back. I could be happy living in a trailer and riding a bus, eating beanie weenies every night, as long as I could fall asleep wrapped in his arms.

Maybe you can imagine my excitement. "The man" in the woods fit all my criteria. I assumed he was smart, witty, and good with high ideals. Not a womanizer, drug addict/dealer, or practicing alcoholic. A man, a real man, worldly and savvy, not an overgrown little boy. Someone I could admire and respect instead of just pretending. Someone who excited me without having to fake it. I assumed he wasn't abusive and was straight and single...and I was attracted to him and he was attracted to me.

We were going to have so much fun!

And, most importantly, he had been there for me when I needed him. At least I thought he had been, but I guess I was mistaken.

Months later I would email the CDC to tell Dr. Frieden I was changing the flowers in my book from Angel's Trumpet to Viola tricolor, because those are the flowers in A Midsummer Night's Dream that made Titania wake up and fall in love with a jackass.

#  Chapter 9 - Walking in the Wilderness

(aka: "You Smiled and Then the Spell Was Cast")

The next thing I knew it was still dark and a few hours before dawn. I was wandering through restaurant parking lots adjacent to a Rowlett park that had made me ill earlier and which I steered clear of due to bats, fungus, and...possible witches! I placed the gold cross and the gold chain I put it on under my shirt to make it less obvious who I was, since they'd have their eyes out for me.

Ever-watchful, I walked on and on, crossing I-30 and arriving at a hotel which made my ears buzz and my eyes sting more when I entered. "There must be a witch convention here," I thought. I tried to use the computer to email Dallas County (the CDC). I made a new email account and had trouble with both keyboards. Obviously the witches were messing with me, and I had to act fast before they sensed I was there.

First I emailed the joke, "This place is driving me batty" and I emailed my new love, "If you can tell me why I'm late to everything I'll stop running." I got no reply, I think it had been blocked, but this was certainly due to the fact the man from the CDC didn't want to clue the witches in to the fact I was there. I realized that this, of course, was where the, "He knew" idea should have triggered...that he knew the answer but couldn't tell me to protect me since he knew witches were in the building. He wanted me to keep running. It made such perfect sense!

All my e-mails seemed to be delayed or blocked in several different email accounts and obviously Mr. Perfect (aka Dr. Tw@t) was blocking the emails to protect me so the witches wouldn't know where I was.

I ate a free breakfast at the hotel, because I realized as long as you look presentable and act like you belong there you can get free breakfasts at less expensive hotels. After I ate it was time to continue on before the witches came downstairs for breakfast and found me.

I walked on, back and forth near the intersection of I-30 and South Goliad Street, trying to figure out how to get to a hotel/church on FM 551. I walked outside wondering why the CDC didn't come and get me. I saw that I was at Exit 67 and remembered the hotel/church was at Exit 77.

The hotel/church I found at Exit 77, and later called "Hotel California" because it was almost impossible for me to leave, was a place that I found while searching for somewhere to have "The Happening." This place looked perfect, and I found it on FM 551 at exactly 5:51 am. It seemed to me the time 5:51 am lasted longer than one minute on the digital clock in the car. So I slowly counted. I stopped counting at 300 when the time STILL did not change. I looked away for a bit and then when I looked again it was finally 5:52 am. I knew this was the place.

Back inside the wrong hotel ten exits from "Hotel California" (where I thought I was supposed to be for some reason) I emailed the CDC, "I'm not walking 10 miles." I heard someone at CDC headquarters, in front of the bank of computers they were obviously using to track people, ask "What does she mean, 10 miles?" It was amazing I could hear them. "It must be telepathy," I thought...it made such perfect sense!

They wondered why I thought I had so far to go. Only later would I realize I was compelled to walk AWAY from the hotel, and at one point was only about 1,000 feet from Lake Ray Hubbard.

Being unfamiliar with Rockwall, I didn't realize I was also relatively close to my rental car behind Target. But by then I had completely forgotten there was a car behind Target.

Back and forth I walked, trying to figure out where I was. At some point I thought Dr. Tw@t was in trouble because I was missing and wandered around trying to find him. Also, I tried to get to a dome-shaped building and was strangely drawn to a large pyramid-shaped tent structure. And then there was the point where, tired with no money and assuming I was supposed to act like a "tiger," I crawled into a "den" under some trees to sleep for about three minutes.

In total, I walked about 20-30 miles that night/day. About 15-20 miles of it were barefoot across fields, gravel, and pavement, since my new sandals hurt so bad I couldn't wear them. My feet were torn up for months because of it. I had no money, no water, hadn't slept (for more than a few hours total in the last couple of weeks), and it was a hot and sunny late-May day in Texas.

Wandering around and certain the CDC control room could now hear whatever I said aloud (telepathy, remember?) I yelled for one of them to come and get me. When no one arrived I looked up into the sky and jokingly shouted, "I have the worst boyfriend!!!"

#  Chapter 10 - Welcome to the Hotel California

(aka: "I'm So Sick, Infected with Where I Live")

I ended up at Belk in Rockwall and the police were called. They had found my car and were towing it, my sister was worried and crying, and the concerned policewoman asked what had happened.

Not wanting to rat out Twitter Tw@t, who had asked me not to tell anyone, I didn't mention the man or the fairies/angels in the woods or that I might be the Lion of Judah and maybe was subbing for the First Horseman of the Apocalypse who had failed to "Come!" (Some of the cast that should have shown up were obviously missing. I was double-booked and soon to be triple-booked. Where the heck was the rest of the cast for this Apocalypse production!? SAG was certainly going to be hearing from me about this!)

Holding it together, more or less, I convinced the policewoman I had run out of gas and gotten lost.

She took me to the car being towed and the tow truck took me to Enterprise. They had put a hold on the car and I got a ride from them and ended up at the Holiday Inn Express and Fellowship Church in FM 551 that I had found at 5:51 am...a 5:51 am that lasted more than my slow-counting to 300.

I checked in and fell asleep, but late that afternoon I was awakened, after dreaming about being in a room and looking out a window with a man, by what looked like fireworks going off in my head. Photopsia? Waking up I realized I was blind!!!

Fumbling for the phone beside the bed, I picked up the handset. The phone was dead.

Not realizing my blindness might be temporary, and having never heard of cortical blindness, I was understandably panicked. Things seemed to keep going from bad to worse. But, looking back, considering what I was going through I handled it fairly well, especially for someone with a mildewed brain.

Somehow I managed to grab some underwear, a top, and pants from the suitcase beside my bed as my vision returned. Stumbling into the hall I tried to get the maids to call 911, but they spoke no English. Even though I could now see, it was as if what I saw didn't "register," if you know what I mean. I literally bounced off the walls to the elevator.

Down in the lobby I asked for an ambulance. When the EMTs arrived they took me to Lake Pointe in Rowlett, where I was given a CT scan and asked if I could be pregnant. "Only if it's the Second Coming of Christ," I joked. I hadn't had sex or a period in years (another thing that could be caused by fungus affecting the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis and the follicle-stimulating hormone? Or premature ovarian failure due to an "autoimmune" attack on the ovaries? I didn't think I was truly menopausal because I was still...pardon my saying..."pink and wet").

I suddenly demanded to be released, because I had to be at "The Happening" party. The CDC, my estranged son, and my sister would all be there, and we would see my deceased father. And Katy Perry and Chris Martin would give concerts. It was gonna be great!

The hospital had to release me, but when I went outside to try to find a cab I saw some men watching me and decided they were Satanists trying to kill me. They were kind of rough–looking and seemed to be following me. Actually, they looked kind of like undercover cops, and I wondered if they were working with the CDC. Oh yeah, and all of a sudden I thought I might be pregnant with the Second Coming of Christ! That must be why they were staring at me.

I didn't actually believe I was pregnant or the men were after me. It was more like I felt something important was happening, and I was trying to be super-careful. I felt like if I made any mistakes this wonderful thing wouldn't happen. I felt like perhaps someone or something was trying to cause me to make a mistake...to make me fail. So I was trying to think of any possible problem that could happen and attempting to proactively circumvent it. It's exhausting to live your life that way.

I kept trying to figure out what role I was supposed to be playing in this Apocalypse show. As I had emailed the CDC, I needed a playbill to keep up with the constantly changing cast of characters, and I appeared to be having an identity crisis and wasn't sure who I was.

But I suspected the rough-looking men might be trying to kill me to stop the Apocalypse. And no matter how hard I tried, I could NOT get a landline to work to call a cab.

At an ATM in the hospital waiting room I withdrew $20 over and over with my kitten debit card, hoping the CDC would notice it was an SOS. I then started walking SOS patterns in the hospital lobby hoping they had some sort of tracking device on me.

I went to the window of the behavioral unit and asked to be admitted. I tried to think of some reason to give that was bad enough to be committed for the night but not bad enough to be given Haldol...I'm afraid of Haldol's side-effects. I didn't want to leave the hospital, because none of the landlines would work and everyone was too busy to check the phones...they just kept pointing at the phones and none of them worked! I tried for 1-2 hours to call out. A woman walked by with a cell phone, but she looked suspiciously like the girl who had been in the white truck. I didn't want to leave the hospital unless it was with someone I trusted.

A nurse noticed I had spilled blood on my shirt from a previous ER visit. When I went to the restroom I noticed I had on three pairs of underwear. How did that happen?!

Eventually, I was admitted and given a lumbar puncture (which never got analyzed) and an antifungal IV. The only reason I got the IV was because I told them about Dr. Loftin's diagnosis. The IV probably saved my life. I insisted on a pregnancy test, though, and they almost had to force me to get the IV and lumbar puncture because I didn't want to do anything to kill the baby I thought I might be carrying. But the doctor said I'd be dead by morning without the IV and that he could legally FORCE me to have it since I was delirious.

What if it was "the man's" child? There was part of the night I couldn't remember. But it was a silly idea, since I had "checked" the next morning and could tell I didn't have sex.

Of course, the pregnancy test was negative.

The doctor told my sister that people with Disseminated Histoplasmosis either went super-religious or super-Satanic. (Funny, I didn't see that before anywhere...it would have been nice to know. Why didn't the doctor tell ME?!)

Luckily, I had gone super-religious.

He also didn't tell me what he told her...that I would sob one minute and then laugh maniacally the next. That was also something I should have been told.

While I was in a hospital bed getting the IV, a nurse came in wearing Chanel perfume. The perfume, with its aldehyde top notes, made me feel ill. I told her this, but she just stood there cluelessly asking questions. I felt queasy, and she should have been able to tell by my face her perfume was making me sick.

She asked what I was allergic to, and I said bats and witches as a joke. I also told her I was allergic to Cipro, only because I was afraid of it from reading about psychosis caused by it. (Later I would ask the CDC if the side-effects caused by prescriptions like those given for fibromyalgia and other diseases, and also things like Haldol, Cipro and Accutane, might not really be side-effects, but symptoms of Disseminated Histoplasmosis.)

Someone called the nurse on the phone in my room and told her to stand in the hall to ask questions. Apparently someone must have been able to see me and that her perfume was making me ill. I hoped it was "the man." He also asked her to have a doctor check my ovaries, but she never did.

Nurses kept coming in with Cipro pills and prescriptions, but I refused to take them and even told them I was allergic (a ruse). But they persisted...SO many people tried to give it to me. They said "someone" said I should have it, but no one knew who that "someone" was.

And I didn't "feel" like I had a UTI, although ERs would claim I had one, then not the next week, then say I did again the next week...but I'm pretty sure I didn't. My urine was clear and there was no stinging or pain when I urinated.

One wild-eyed nurse told me the Cipro would help me remember the night before. I couldn't find anything like that on the Internet. Are nurses allowed to lie to patients like that?

Isn't Cipro contraindicated for Prednisone and NSAIDs (which they knew I was taking)? Also, isn't Cipro one of the LAST things a person with a systemic fungal infection should take, since it can actually CAUSE fungal infections? Idk, ask Twitter Tw@t...he's the doctor...but don't sit around waiting for a reply.

The nurse told me I would be given several antifungal IVs, but I was given only one and released in the morning without explanation. I didn't know where my shoes had gone, and so I took a cab wearing my red hospital socks back to "Hotel California."

Later I decided the spilled blood on my shirt and the red and yellow ambulance that looked like flames that took me to the hospital made me the 3rd Horseman of the Apocalypse-Famine. I wasn't really right for the role...I was just a stand-in. But I guess the real one was a no-show and the show must go on. Eventually, the only thing I could do famine-wise was ask the CDC, "If you gave people cellulase, could they eat wood?" Lactase is put in milk to break down lactose, and Beano contains galactosidase, so why not? I had wondered that for years, but I guess it's a stupid idea. And I also suggested tilling fields deep enough to kill locust and grasshopper eggs, which I read online was not being done in recent years.

I spent my days trying to sleep and get emails and phones to work. I had no shoes, only a pair of red socks from the hospital, and no one seemed to want to help me. For days I waited for cabs to show up to get me after the front desk called, but none ever did. "They're on their way," the front desk would keep endlessly saying, "just ten more minutes."

Believing the CDC was keeping an eye on me I tried to sleep the days away, but felt my lips and face burn before going numb and my chest hurt in my room. So I slept in the lobby before switching rooms and renting the one below me, because I read witches killed people with some weed I found while I was Googling "Angel's Trumpet." The witches would burn the weed near the victim's room, and the burning weed made the lips and face of the victim burn and then go numb before killing the victim by cardiac arrest.

Noticing the temperature of my room cycling between hellishly hot (pun intended) to icy cold I felt like a guinea pig and tried to email the CDC to stop, because I felt like they were trying to manipulate me toward windows and doors. I emailed a joke that if they continued I'd think they were trying to shoot me, and I would start weaving in the halls and be sent back to the mental hospital where I had gotten the antifungal IV. (Later I would speculate that someone from the government was cycling the temperature to see if I had a brain tumor. Since I could feel the temperature change it meant I didn't have a brain tumor, so that wasn't why my body wasn't fighting the fungus. Oh well, it made sense at the time.)

At one point I felt manipulated like a lab rat and glared at the Jared Leto look-alike behind the front desk when he greeted me. Running up two flights of stairs to my room, I saw him standing down the hall on the third floor looking at me and talking on the phone. I imagined he was talking to Dr. Tw@t and couldn't figure out if he was with or against me. Terrified they were carrying out some kind of human testing on me, and thinking they might just keep me there until they were through and my body disposed after the evil Director of the CDC performed his autopsy, I decided to flee once again into the woods.

Sneaking out the side door so I wouldn't be seen, wearing only the red socks on my feet and carrying my ever-present peacock-blue Michael Kors purse, I once again fled to the woods. My feet already torn up with open sores after the 20- to 30-mile barefoot walk in the hot summer Texas sun a few days before, I ran through woods and ankle-high mud, losing my socks at one point.

I sat in the woods under trees getting heckled by teenagers and telling them I wasn't crazy (I was) but the CDC had been holding me captive. I waited for darkness to flee further, sitting under some other trees beside I-30. Suddenly, a white truck (much like the one the strange woman had been in) drove by and I could hear children SCREAMING. They were screams of terror.

"What the heck," I thought, and wondered if maybe someone had kidnapped some children. Was that the same truck the "witch" had been in before? Maybe they were going to use them in some weird ritual. Maybe it had to do with me. (Of course EVERYTHING had to do with me, little Miss Center of the Universe.) I had read witches use dead children in some sort of potion and used plants and other things that gave them hallucinations and the sensation that they were flying.

I had to get in touch with Twitter Tw@t to have him save the children! This was what the fairy must have meant when she told me he would send people to the hotel room below mine and find the witches. So I ran on my aching, bleeding, muddy feet across grass, pavement, and gravel back to the dreaded "Hotel California."

There was a large white truck in the parking lot similar to the one that just passed. Of course, you couldn't find a parking lot in Texas that didn't have at least one big white truck in it, but 'Oh well, it had to be the witches'. I called 911 from the pool phone to see if an Amber Alert had been issued. They said no. I rinsed my feet off in the pool and went inside, seeing "Jared Leto" again and telling him about the screaming children.

"Maybe they were just goofing around," he said, but I wondered, and I was still suspicious of him...was he with the CDC? Maybe he was with the witches. He asked what room I had moved to and I told him, later wishing I hadn't.

The phone in my room wouldn't allow me to call out. None of the landlines would call out from any of the phones I tried in the hotel. Desperate to save the children before midnight, the hour at which I assumed the witches would kill the children as part of their diabolical plot to kill me with one of their spells (not understanding why they didn't just kill me with a knife or gun...it must be against Revelation Rules) I went to get on the computer in the business center. Outlook wouldn't work...AGAIN. Darn that Dr. Tw@t and the CDC!!!

What could I do?! Think, think, before the children get hurt! So I ran across the street to the gas station/store. I couldn't find a phone and asked one of the workers if I could use his cell phone. I babbled something about the CDC and witches thinking I was involved in the second coming of Christ because of my birth date, telling him I wasn't crazy (I was). The funny thing about small-town people in northeast Texas...you can apparently tell them practically anything about the government and witches and they'll believe you...it's that crazy there. (No offense)

Then I had a brilliant idea! I texted my own cell phone from his cell phone that witches were in hotel room 204 below my former one (possibly), the room below where they thought I was still staying, and that they were killing children (maybe?). Twitter Tw@t would surely see this, since he or someone from the CDC read all my texts. Brilliant thinking, right?! At least I thought so. And it made such perfect sense!

The musak was playing songs about time running out and hurry and things like that. I frantically went to the ATM and again tried the SOS by withdrawing $20 over and over again with the kitten debit card so the CDC would see it. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result each time, and I certainly was insane at this point.

Then I had ANOTHER brilliant idea. The Director of the CDC had control of the Dallas Morning News, I thought (he had control of all communications, remember?), so if I could call them he would certainly intercept the message. I couldn't imagine how he could possibly be getting any sleep constantly keeping tabs on me, but then I wasn't getting any sleep either. Who had time for sleeping when there was an Apocalypse to start and a world to save?!

I was frantic to contact the CDC and save the children! After much searching and calling I finally got a voicemail at the Dallas Morning News. The next morning someone somewhere at the Dallas Morning News would hear the following angry message, "This message is for the Director of the CDC, Mr. Twitter Tw@t F#ck-Face! Tell him Satanists are killing children at the hotel and no one can call for help because he blocked all the f#cking phone lines!!!"

On the musak, INXS sang, "Message received loud and clear...."

"Thank goodness," I thought, "Twitter Tw@t got the message."

Then I anxiously waited. Browsing for food, I turned and saw the "Jared Leto" doppelganger watching me from the next aisle. After I saw him he quickly spun around and, seeing I had spotted him, he squatted down and pretended to be intently deciding which item on the shelf to get. Later I went to the shelf and saw he was browsing through Tampax. Thinking the CDC couldn't get decent spies, I snickered wondering if he had decided to get the large or extra-large tampons.

Of course, the Jared Leto look-alike was probably just keeping tabs on the crazy lady who had checked into the hotel. Later I decided the tampons were a hint about cardiac tamponade, caused by pericarditis, which is caused by Disseminated Histoplasmosis.

After approximately 10-15 minutes of songs assuring me T.T had gotten the message and was responding, like Little River Band's "Hang On, Help Is On Its Way, I'll be there as fast as I can" the musak became louder and played a song about how much Twitter Tw@t (I assumed) loved me. He must have sent someone to the hotel and found the witches and the children.

"Gee, that was fast," I thought. "I didn't think they would get here THAT soon." But I was glad they did, because time was running out.

I thought that Twitter Tw@t must have an enormous amount of power to get the message and send someone to help so quickly.

What a turn-on!

#  Chapter 11 - You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave

(aka: "I Can't Get It Out of My Head")

Since my secret lover, Dr. Tw@t, had taken care of the witches, it was safe to go back to "Hotel California" to get some sleep at about 3 am. Later I learned that a truck had exploded on the highway that ran near the hotel's property just after I returned to the hotel. I wondered if maybe the CDC did that so that policemen would be monitoring traffic along the highway by where I was sleeping. Of course, everything had to be all about me!

The sequence of events is a little cloudy, but at one point I noticed that the musak at the hotel was playing a lot of songs about getting married and things like "Hurry up, time is running out." I didn't know who I was supposed to marry...after all I had just met Twitter Tw@t. Wasn't he rushing things a bit?

I remembered my childhood friend telling me when we were in our teens, around the mid-1970s, that there had been a prophecy going around that the Second Coming or Apocalypse or something would happen around Dallas, in the South, and that the person or people involved would be from our area (Shreveport, LA or maybe the Ark-La-Tex).

If I remember correctly, he said it had something to do with an entire town of people singing Christmas carols...Carrollton.

Just like it was yesterday, I recalled his saying something about a city with a wall of rocks and people thought it meant Rockwall. The prophecy included walking on a man-made body of water in Rockwall and that the Trinity would fly back and forth across the Trinity River. He said people thought the man-made body of water was the engineered Lake Ray Hubbard reservoir and that flying across the Trinity River would be someone taking a train because there were plans made to build a track, the Trinity Express, over the river. He said something else, but I couldn't remember what.

We laughed about it at the time.

It was now the same or next night around 4 am at "Hotel California." The musak was kind of freaking me out, but the farther I walked away from the hotel the louder the musak outside became. I couldn't get away from it. The songs started to become rather insistent that time was running out and something about before dawn.

For some reason I thought I should go to Lake Ray Hubbard again. I ran back to the hotel and was frantic because the phones wouldn't work and I couldn't call a cab. The one the front desk called earlier in the day had never shown up. Around 4:30-5:00 am, it was now probably too late, anyway, to wait for a cab to arrive to drive to Lake Ray Hubbard and get there before dawn.

"Sorry," I told the music, "I tried, but there's nothing I can do to get there."

Suddenly the elevator doors opened, and off walked a woman and two small children in wet swimsuits. One of the little girls just stared at me.... I had forgotten there was a swimming pool. What an odd time for children to be swimming.

The musak was quite insistent now that I hurry!

What was this? Some sort of Apocalypse scavenger hunt/beat the clock game!?

So I rushed to the swimming pool. The hotel, now in Royse City, might be located in Rockwall County (idk), but the address had formerly been included in the city of Rockwall and was now variously listed as being in both Royse City AND Rockwall.

Walking around on the top step of the swimming pool, I had fulfilled the first part of the prophecy by "walking on a man-made body of water in Rockwall."

#  Chapter 12 – Tonight I'm Walking on Air

(aka: "I Wasn't Crazy, I Was Divine")

Leaving Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan to argue whether the swimming pool fit the criteria, I ran away from "Hotel California" for good. The musak played, "Going to the Chapel and We're Gonna Get Married" after playing other songs all night like the one with Sting singing 'turn into a shining band of gold.' Who the heck did they think I was going to marry?

I had noticed there was a young African-American man in the lobby wearing a colorful shirt with a huge sword on it (Famine?). Was the cast being assembled and he was the third horseman?

I ran barefoot to the gas station/convenience store across the street, pulling my matching Liz Claiborne luggage behind me. Running from the hotel, I turned and flipped it the bird. Borrowing a cell phone, I sarcastically texted my own cell phone for the CDC to see, "I'm off to buy a wedding dress."

At the gas station I paid someone $100 cash to drive me to Dallas. He said he had just been in a bad car wreck and it was a miracle he had survived unscathed. He said he thought he was meant to do something. So did I...of course he was meant to help me.

Me, me, me.

Back in Dallas, I bought some shoes and stayed in different hotels that had HEPA filters. It was the end of May and at some point I had a compulsion to go to my sister's house. At Love Field airport I couldn't get a flight there or anywhere I wanted to go and they told me to try Delta.

Standing at the Delta counter, I noticed the only flights on the board were to Atlanta, where CDC headquarters is located. For some reason, I paid about $700 for a one-way ticket leaving in an hour that night.

On the plane, I listened to Katy Perry's newest cd and the song "Tonight I'm Walking On Air." I realized as I went to the bathroom I was "walking on air."

"Was that part of the prophecy?" I wondered.

At the Atlanta airport I was disappointed that no one from the CDC was there to greet me. Surely Dr. Tw@t knew what was going on, so why wasn't he there? I couldn't get a rental car with only a debit card and no return ticket, so I spent the night in a hotel for about $200 (my socks disappeared from beside the sink while I was out of my room...items would disappear, things would show up, and a/c settings would be changed in my rooms and I wondered if "the man" in the woods was "letting me know he was there" like he promised).

I tweeted to Dr. Tw@t, arguing with the musak.

"After everything I've done for you" and "count the ways I love you" the musak sang.

"Yes. Let's count everything you've done for me," I replied via Twitter.

"One, you let me go blind. Two, you're driving me nuts. Three, you made me tear up my feet that are now scabbed and sore. Four, you won't talk to me. Five, you make me cry. Six, you won't help my coworkers. Seven...."

Then I returned to Dallas from Atlanta on a Delta flight the next morning for another $700.

On the return flight from Atlanta to Dallas I sat next to a tall man from Samaritan's Purse who told me there was an outbreak of Ebola from fruit bats and also that he had to remove bats from his attic when he either bought or sold his house.

I emailed the CDC about this Ebola outbreak around the end of May, and I also had emailed earlier (probably late April or early to mid-May) that they were not prepared for either a biological attack or U.S. Ebola outbreak before I had even heard about either ISIS or the African Ebola outbreak.

I don't even know why I emailed that.

I then remembered what my friend said between walking on water in Rockwall and going across the Trinity River was, "He..." (I had asked why not a she?) "...would float up into the sky and fly back and forth in the air."

#  Chapter 13 - Take the Long Way Home

(aka: "I Got It Bad, You Don't Know How Bad I Got It")

For the next week or so I fled to different hotels, hiding from witches and fungus and trying to get better in rooms with HEPA filters. And searching for Dr. Tw@t.

At a hotel in Irving I was in the business center when the songs changed from love songs to some song that said, "I'm gonna shoot you in the head!"

JESUS! Who was THAT from!? It must be the witches/warlocks.

I quickly went upstairs to pack and as I was leaving the phone rang. It might be the warlocks, but it might be T.T. Should I answer? I let it ring a few more times and finally picked up the receiver as the other person hung up. "OMG, they're calling to see if I'm here. They must be on their way up!" I grabbed my things and rushed out the side door and down the stairs, being sure to run through bushes as much as possible so the warlocks couldn't get a good aim. I lost my $50 that I should have received back from the hotel, but who cared when my life was on the line?

I rushed to the hotel next door and took a shuttle to Walmart, where I bought a black hat, a T-shirt, and a backpack. I tucked my long blonde hair up into the cap and put on the T-shirt, sticking my ever-present and easily identifiable peacock blue Michael Kors purse into the backpack. I thought to myself, "When they make statues of me they'll have to include the MK purse on my arm."

While standing in line to pay at Wal-Mart, I was behind a young man with red eyes, wearing a Batman t-shirt and buying a lot of black-out curtains. I suspected he had histoplasmosis.

I stayed at the Omni, which was nice, but on the second day I suddenly developed vertigo as I looked out the window. I also had a dream I was a bat. Someone in my dream said something about my flying out the window and then, "You're a Mexican Free-Tailed Bat," to which I angrily replied, "No, I'm an AMERICAN bat!" Then I woke up and had to walk around in the lobby for about 10-15 minutes telling myself "I'm not a bat! Why do I think I'm a bat!?" I knew I wasn't but...it was just...weird!

Where was Dr. Tw@t? "Why isn't he helping me?" I constantly wondered.

The musak in the OMNI played:

There must be some misunderstanding. There must be some kind of mistake.  
I was waiting in the rain for hours  
And you were late

Since then I've been running around trying to find you  
I went to the places that we always go  
I rang your home but got no answer (obviously the phone call at the Irving hotel)  
Jumped in my car, I went round there  
Still don't believe it  
You were just leaving

"What?" I either texted or emailed, "I didn't know I was supposed to meet you anywhere." So what if it wasn't raining...it was close enough. I grabbed a cab that happened to be black/dark charcoal and headed back to "Hotel California" to the east, expecting the Director of the CDC to be there waiting. It cost about $75 each way. We pulled up to the hotel. I saw no one waiting, and I got back in to return back west from the east. So much for the 4th Horseman of the Apocalypse. But I didn't have any scales. I really didn't want another role in this production, anyway. I was already spread too thin.

And it looked like I was supposed to soon become "The Bride" and also would be "The Helper." Talk about multi-tasking. I'd have to add that skill to my resume.

At least by taking part in The Apocalypse I wouldn't have an embarrassing gap in my employment history.

Then I moved to the Hyatt and had an argument with the musak. By this time, I had a brilliant idea to communicate with the CDC, who were apparently using musak to communicate secretly with me. Instead of texting my sister I would text myself. That way if no one was listening it wouldn't matter, but if they were listening they'd be sure to see it and my sister wouldn't think I was crazy, even though I was. But I didn't need Haldol ... I needed antifungal. Why wouldn't anyone give me antifungal!?

In the Hyatt I heard "You're the joke of the neighborhood...you took the long way home." Well, I certainly WAS taking the long way home...from Royse City to Rockwall to Downtown Dallas to Irving, BACK to Downtown Dallas, all on the way home to Carrollton. "Hmmm...'joke of the neighborhood?'" T. T. really hurt my feelings with that one, but maybe he didn't realize. The next song: "I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you...." Now that REALLY hurt my feelings. I texted my secret CDC boyfriend the following: "What does THAT mean, 'you don't care what they say'!? What are 'they' saying!? I can't imagine how anyone you know can say anything about ME, since I've never even MET anyone you know. I bet THEY'RE real winners...." The next few songs had lyrics about why did some woman hurt some man and so forth, and I felt guilty for my tirade. And then the lyrics said something about making a grown man cry.

"Hmmmm," I thought, "Dr. Tw@t is turning out to be kind of a wimp."

I went up Reunion Tower and the song said, "I wish you would step back from that ledge my friend...."

"Stop being so melodramatic," I texted, "I'm not going to jump."

"...if you do not want to see me again, I would understa-a-a-and." Third Eye Blind continued.

Gee, T. T. was being clingy and annoying! He's so NEEDY!

But then I decided that nobody's perfect, we all have our faults, so I overlooked the fact that the Director of the CDC was turning out to be kind of a pu$$y.

I don't even know why I started thinking he was communicating with musak. I guess our relationship had to be kept secret.

To assuage my guilt about making T. T. cry, I went upstairs to the bar and had unsweetened tea with extra lemon and Sweet 'n' Low. Angrily, I complained to the bartender, "Someone dedicated a song to me and it said, 'I don't care what they say...' That hurts my feelings."

"I wouldn't worry about it," the bartender said. "Just probably someone who's jealous. You know how people are...like high school." That made sense. Obviously someone at the CDC...some other scientist jealous that T. T. had found true love or maybe wanted me for himself. I mean, what guy WOULDN'T want the female Second Coming of Christ...talk about a trophy wife. Or maybe it was some other woman who wanted him for herself. (Since I wanted him, of course I thought every other woman did, too.) Hopefully it wasn't some wife or girlfriend, since I'm not the type to steal a man. I could never cause another woman that much pain.

Finally, I managed to make it back to Carrollton, walked to get my car at Enterprise, and checked into a motel room in Addison to hide from witches, warlocks, and bats. I thought about "the man" in the woods and missed him. I emailed the county for "the man" to see and begged him, "Please come to me."

At some point, to fulfill more of the prophecy, I also took the Trinity Express over the Trinity River from Dallas to Fort Worth and back again. As I passed over the Trinity River I heard the sound of crystal smashing near the right-rear of my head. (I would later hear the same sound in Shreveport as I broke a seal on a bottle.)

During this time, I picked up all my medical records. Dr. Loftin lied after he knew I was in a Rowlett Mental Hospital getting an antifungal IV. He said that I said I was getting better and I ASKED him to start weaning me off the Prednisone, which was a blatant lie! I didn't even know what Prednisone did or what it was. And I was getting WORSE, not better. He also wrote, "She has no PROOF she has Disseminated Histoplasmosis." That's a very odd thing for him to write, don't you think? So strange to put in a medical record...very suspicious if you ask me.

And my antigen tests from Lake Pointe were negative, but later I read a paper stating the odds of their being positive were fairly low, especially if the samples were not ultrafiltrated. In fact, according to the NIH, "patients with histoplasmosis may test falsely negative for _Histoplasma capsulatum_ antigenuria. In some cases, antigen is present at levels below the assay's detection limit, and ultrafiltration is needed to improve sensitivity."

At first I thought the CDC was changing my lab results for some reason, maybe hoping I'd die. As devastating as these negative results were at first, they ended up being a blessing in disguise. Because this is where I first saw "mycelium" and, reading about it, learned about "sclerotia."

Excited, I sent the CDC Infectious Disease Department a FedEx letter that read, "could multiple sclerosis really be Disseminated Histoplasmosis?" I also sent a copy of my normal CT scan showing that someone with this disease could be out of their mind and an autopsy would show nothing wrong with their brain. Later I would send a letter or email to Dr. Tw@t that fungal sclerotia can emit an LSD-like substance. Much later I would speculate electrical charges that fungal hyphae carry might short-circuit the brain somehow. Could it interfere with heart signals, too?

I spent a small fortune on FedEx letters to various CDC people and Ms. Burwell, usually including my phone number. No one would ever call, which would drive me nuts...even more than I was. (All in all, the government was much worse than the worst symptoms of my disease.)

The government infuriated me. I was a tax-paying American citizen with a "rare" disease being misdiagnosed/undiagnosed by numerous doctors, and American federal employees of agencies responsible for the control and prevention of disease should deign to speak with me!

Feeling like I was improving, holed up with two air purifiers but still with no lab results to prove what I knew I had, I ate a meal one night with a lot of sugar to stay sick. The meal was a waffle with LOTS of syrup and a cup of coffee with so much sugar I was like the bug man in Men in Black.

Then I drove to my former workplace, lowered my windows, and drove slowly around and around the breezy fields where I knew the bats had defecated, just so I could get worse and get a diagnosis before getting better. That all-important diagnosis to bring the CDC to DFW.

I felt so brave, so noble, so...sickeningly self-righteous.

I imagined the Director of the CDC could see me from his sleek, dark, computer-filled room. He'd be pacing back and forth, worried and praying for me to drive away to safety.

The reality was that he was probably home in his big, comfortable bed, snoring and drooling into his soft pillows and 1500 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.

Then I went home until I felt worse and drove to Baylor in Carrollton for $2500 worth of testing to prove I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis. The doctor in the ER was one that refilled my Prednisone during a recent trip to the hospital when I told him I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis, and I was paranoid while in the ER. But I kept my cool. Still, I was a walking/talking lawsuit and I was suspicious of him.

Afterwards, I went to Golden Corral to eat more sugar. I ordered a (regular) Coke and looked for sugar, but the only rolls they had were wheat, the only syrup they had was sugar-free, and when I drank my Coke it was DIET Coke. How did THAT happen?

It seemed as if someone or something was trying to guide me in some strange way, and apparently that someone was trying to tell me I could stop eating sugar.

#  Chapter 14 - Room Service

(aka: "Hello, I've Waited Here for You...Everlong")

For days and days I lay in bed in my room in Addison ACHING for "the man" to come to me. I knew I wouldn't kill myself, but it would have been a relief from the constant aching and yearning I felt. If you've ever thought someone was a coward for committing suicide you're wrong. It takes a lot of courage to actually do it, and you can't imagine the never-ending PAIN, physically, mentally, emotionally, and psychologically, they're feeling.

Wanting to keep my promise to the man in the woods, I didn't say anything to anyone. It was awful! Imagine how hard it is to get over someone, but it was much worse because I wasn't even certain he existed. Feeling I couldn't go on any longer, and feeling as if I might go insane (even more than I was) I finally called my sister and told her about what happened in the woods. She convinced me it was a delusion...that it was highly unlikely the director of the CDC came to the woods to help me. I agreed with her, but I emailed her what happened and hinted I liked him, with the hope that if some man at the CDC HAD been in the woods he would see it. I realize how crazy this sounds, but if a man from the CDC did help me and did like me I didn't want to pass it up. I hadn't wanted an age-appropriate man in 10-12 years, and the older I got the fewer attractive men were unattached. I should have become a virgin again because of so many years since I had even TOUCHED a man.

I have no idea why I liked "the man" so much after only one supposed meeting, but later I speculated that if the fungus enters the central nervous system and the brainstem, then it could affect the ventral tegmental area, which is responsible for intense emotions relating to love.

In the email to my sister I mentioned how the "angels" said someone loved me. "My luck he'll be a piece of wood," I wrote. "Hopefully sanded smooth so I won't get splinters."

I had mailed Dr. Frieden my gold cross necklace, apologizing for dragging him into my delusions. It must be some sort of erotomania, where people imagine strangers are in love with them, but I was trying to fight it. I had no idea how it happened and I was sorry I had some weird idea he "liked" me since the "angels had said it, haha." I told him I didn't know how anyone could have known where I was in the wooded area. I also wrote, "Do you have any idea how it feels to lie in bed and ACHE for someone to come to you?"

When I placed the necklace in the envelope I had to run out to my car and drive to a remote area to break down screaming and sobbing with the realization "the man" must have been a delusion. I have no idea how I could have become so obsessed with someone so quickly, especially without ever having sex. But again, if the fungus enters the ventral tegmental area, one of my possible symptoms might be obsessive love.

Of course, the ever-present buzzing and aches and pains continued. And I was so sick, alone, and vulnerable.

At times it was almost impossible to walk or see. I even fell to the floor once, my legs and one arm useless. As I lay there, I looked up at the ceiling and wondered, "Does he know that I love him?" followed by "Does he know what's happening to me?" Staring at the glowing little light on the smoke detector, I seemed to hear the words, "He knows."

"Well THAT'S confusing." I thought. "Which one is it? Does he know that I love him or does he know what's happening to me? He better not know what's happening and doing nothing! If he is I'm going to give him a piece of my mind...if there's any left after all this."

But even though it was painful to walk I kept on trying to do the things I felt compelled to do...that I felt I was SUPPOSED to do...and trying to make sense out of everything that was going on. It just felt like something important was happening, or going to happen. And it all depended on my doing the right thing.

It felt like I had to do certain things, like metaphorically touching all the bases, and then something wonderful and miraculous would happen. Almost like a test. I was always good at taking tests.

Most of my getting good grades was being good at tests and not necessarily being some sort of "genius." And years after leaving college, which took me only 13 or 14 years to complete, I ran into a woman I went to high school with. She told me she had always been jealous of me, because I made good grades without even trying.

How could SHE be jealous of ME!? She was Homecoming Queen and Head Cheerleader, with lots of friends and cute boyfriends, a car, cute clothes...everything any girl could have wanted. And she was jealous of me.

Go figure.

But I digress...back to the fungus. Funny, though, how weird things only happened when I was alone. When I was around other people I never heard or saw anything they didn't and nothing EVER seemed wavy/warped or incredibly odd, like someone ripping off their face to reveal a monster face or anything.

In fact, aside from the "angels" in the woods, "the man," and delusions that the Director of the CDC was using musak and the radio to communicate with me, I never saw anything odd or heard or saw anything everyone else couldn't see/hear. Everyone even heard the same music, only it didn't mean anything to them.

Stubbornly keeping up hope "the man" from the CDC wasn't a delusion, I desperately wanted him to come to me again. At one point, half-asleep, it felt as if someone was "spooning me" in an effort to comfort me (and later cuddled me). It was so odd and I wondered if it could be a symptom, because I couldn't imagine how "the man" could pull that off.

Finally, after numerous songs about someone wanting to see me again and he was leaving soon/tomorrow, I texted myself, "I'm going to Rockwall to the wooded area. Meet me there." Knowing it was a long-shot but willing to take the chance, I put on a striped tank dress and tried to look nice.

I texted, "No hanky panky...just kissing."

Driving into Rockwall around ten at night, I went to the same wooded area I'd been in before. I texted myself, "Where are you? It's scary out here...I can't stay long." After a few minutes I left and went to the Hilton Hotel to get a room. I emailed the CDC I was at the hotel and then went into the lobby bathroom and came back out. I noticed the musak singing words like, "I saw you leave the room and then walk back in." Odd, I thought.

Then the musak started describing what I was doing, with some songs about how he couldn't wait to see me or similar. "Is the CDC doing that!?" I wondered, although the music reflected what I was doing too quickly for a human to do, even someone in the federal government. If they were, they must have a dj like Samantha Ronson hidden in the back, with lightning fast responses to anything I might say or do at her fingertips. Or she had "two turntables and a microphone."

Gee, I sure do listen to a lot of music.

A song played about "Sorry I can't get the key to your city", which I interpreted as he couldn't get clearance to spray the fields around my former workplace with antifungal.

Going up to the front desk I was told the system was down...all computers were down, but for some reason they were able to give me Room #528. How they could check me into a room if their system was down puzzled me, but I paid cash from the ATM and they gave me a key card.

As I was getting my key card a song played that said, "I'm here, where are you? Did I miss you already? Oh why did I wait so long to come?"

How strange...was that "the man" from the woods saying he actually WAS in the wooded area? I thought about driving BACK to the woods, but decided we'd keep missing each other. So I waited at the hotel after texting myself (him) "I'm in room #528."

After an hour or so on the Hilton's patio I tried to text myself ("the man") that if he didn't show up it was ok. I'm sure I'd get over him and find someone new. Actually I only said that to save face and protect my pride, since it definitely would NOT be ok the next day if he didn't show up.

But for some strange reason instead of texting myself (the man) I texted my former supervisor. Somehow my former supervisor's name just popped up to the top of my text list when I pressed "Send," even though he had been three to four spaces down. It was weird...I just saw it pop up there, almost as if I was MEANT to contact him. And I would have sworn his wasn't the number I had composed the message on. It seemed like, for a split second, someone else was in control of my phone...like when some IT person in another city remotely accesses your pc at work.

I apologized for texting my former supervisor and explained I was under the impression I was supposed to meet someone at the hotel, someone from the CDC...maybe the Director.? I said the woods episode was probably a hallucination since it was a symptom and no one would probably show up. I then asked about the bats and told him I thought that at least one of the employees was so sick he had to be diagnosed or die.

Once I was in Room #528 for the night I crawled into bed, still in my tank dress. My cell phone, which had been placed on the bedside table, alerted me to an incoming text, but I was too discouraged to read it.

After falling asleep I was apparently awakened by a man coming up to me along the side of my bed. Before I could see his face clearly, he was kissing me. But for a split second before that, when I opened my eyes I thought I saw Dr. Frieden's grinning face. At first he kind of missed and ended up kissing the left side of my mouth.

I tried to pull back my head against the thick Hilton pillows to see who it was, but he wouldn't let me and continued kissing me. Realizing it must be "the man," I centered my lips and started kissing him back, putting my arms around him and slowly attempting to wrap my right leg over him in an embrace. The man slowly pushed my leg back down. (What a gentleman, honoring my wish to only kiss).

As he kissed me I had the impression that somewhere he must have heard when you kiss a woman to make her think what your tongue would feel like "elsewhere," because his tongue was a little too stiff and moved a little too fast.

Still, it was "him," so I enjoyed it.

I noticed I was still wearing my tank dress. Odd, because in my dreams I would be wearing something different, look much thinner/prettier, the man would be Ryan Gosling, and he would NOT push my leg down.

And I could never feel anything in my usual dreams. This "dream" was so realistic it was scary.

I can't remember the man's face, I guess because it was dark, but I thought it was the director or someone else from the CDC with dark hair. (Odd, because I was still under the impression the director was dirty-blonde because of the lighting in his photo on the CDC website.)

I could never get a good look at this guy's face, if he existed, because of my blurry vision. Why couldn't I ever remember his face?! Prosopagnosia?

Purposely avoiding looking at anything about him online for fear of feeding this weird obsession, it wasn't like I WANTED or CHOSE to be obsessed. Actually, I only seemed to be obsessed with him when he wasn't around. I'm pretty sure I was more calm when he was there, or when I thought he was there. Probably because I wasn't so scared, alone, and confused then.

Maybe that's why I liked him so much...because he made me feel safe. And happy, for some reason. I assumed he was in control of and knew/understood everything. I thought he was like God.

Sitting on the side of my bed, with my cell phone buzzing the incoming text, he picked up my phone and read the texts. With his broad mouth shut, lips pressed together, and "sighing" through his nose at what he read he asked, "Did you see this?"

"No," I said. "I'm afraid it will say there were no bats."

He held the phone up to my face and with blurry eyes I thought I could make out something about a male bat. He told me it said they found only one dead male bat in the ceiling above my lab. He asked me if I knew what that meant.

I said no and I'm pretty sure he told me it meant they removed the bats without telling anyone and sealed the roof so bats couldn't get in or out. Then I watched him delete the text from my former supervisor. I asked if my phone calls/emails/texts had been blocked and he said yes. I told him it hurt my feelings that no one ever answered me and it made me feel worthless. He said I could have one phone call the next day. (Coincidentally, I did receive one, and only one, phone call the next day).

He said he could get into my room if I left the deadbolt unlocked.

"Will my latest lab tests turn out positive for Histoplasmosis?" I asked.

"They should," he replied.

On the opposite side of the bed he now stood, and I asked him (hoping against hope it was true) if there was anything to the autoimmune diseases being caused by misdiagnosed Disseminated Histoplasmosis.

He said, "Yes, it looks like it."

Asking why I hadn't heard anything about it, he replied, "It takes time."

"Some people don't have time," I answered, and I think he said 'that's just the way it's done.'

"How did no one know?" I asked. "I'm not that brilliant. Why didn't anyone else figure it out? You're smart, you're a doctor, why didn't you notice?"

He replied no one had ever "connected the dots" before. Odd if this was a dream or hallucination, because I would never think the term "connected the dots." I never used it.

I told him I wrote myself an email about it to make sure I got credit. He asked to see the email, and I pulled out my purse hidden under the bed and showed him the email. He might have been upset I didn't trust him. I might have mentioned how could I trust him without even knowing him?

And I recall saying, "I feel like you're going to screw me over." That was prophetic.

It's possible I noticed an accent and told him to say, "I pahked the cah in Hahvahd yahd."

I seem to recall his asking, "Why do you like me so much?" and I replied, "I don't know. Does it matter?"

I'm pretty sure he was to my right lying on his back on the bed, and I was on my side talking to him, looking at him from his left. I might have asked why he didn't look like his Wikipedia photo (which I must have viewed at some point), and he might have said he got (Restylane?) injections.

I think I told him not to get the bags under his eyes removed or he'd look weird. I think he said he hated his nose and, looking at his left profile and his hawk-like nose I said, "I like men with big noses...and hands...and feet." I went to stroke my finger down his nose, and he grabbed my hand. I think he was wearing a toupee

I think his feet weren't overly large, I don't remember, but I think I mentioned my feet were big for my height. Then I asked to see his hand. He held his left hand up to compare to mine and I saw a wedding band.

"Is that a wedding band!?" I demanded to know, shocked he was wearing one. "You're MARRIED!?" I had assumed he wasn't. Odd, because I always check men's left hand.

I'm pretty sure he told me he was divorced, that he wore it to appear more reliable. He said, "It's just a ring." And I said, "It's more than just a ring...it means you belong to someone else. Well, not that they own you, but that you're 'off-limits.'"

He said it didn't seem to bother most other women, but he asked if I wanted him to remove it, and I said yes.

"I'm not like most women," I told him. "And I don't really want to hear about other women you've been with. Do you want to hear about other men I've been with?"

He said, "No."

He MIGHT have told me again I had to keep all this a secret, and I vaguely remember telling him I had his back and laughing about a former coworker who would tell people that before stabbing them in the back. Later I felt guilty if I had said this, since I had ratted him out, but I had first BEGGED Dr. Frieden with a confidential letter to tell me if it was possible a man was there. (If there WAS a "man" from the CDC, he ultimately abandoned and betrayed me.)

And I was SO sick, even though I didn't LOOK very sick. And I had started hearing a new song on the radio saying, "And you can tell everybody, yes you can tell everybody, go ahead and tell everybody, I'm the man, I'm the man, I'm the man" and at that point I was under the impression this "man" from the CDC was controlling the music I heard on my radio and that it was ok to tell.

Plus, if there was a disease outbreak in DFW (or anywhere else) and the CDC was there, why should it be a secret? What gave the CDC the right to play God and hide information from the public?

This might be a false memory also, but at one point I may have told him I had a fantasy about him. He might have asked what and I said it was stupid and I was too embarrassed to tell him. He insisted and I said, "We're at a party, and you say something nice about me. So I whisper in your ear..." at this point I might have whispered in his ear, "You're so sweet I could eat you up. I can't wait to get you home." I might have giggled and asked him, "Do you get it?" and he said yes, he did.

He might have asked, "You'd do that?" and I said, "Sure, why not? If I liked you. I mean, I don't just go around doing it to anyone. The idea of doing it to strangers or someone you don't like is really gross, but for some reason if you really like a man it's not gross. It's kind of nice to give someone you care about that much pleasure."

There's a SLIM possibility I offered to "check" to see if, since he was so short, his equipment was "ok." I might have noticed a mole and thought or said something about how I had a small mole and someone had thought it was lint or something and tried to pull off, and it hurt. If I did check I THINK I told him he had "nothing to worry about."

"Really?" he timidly asked.

"Really...you're fine."

He MIGHT have asked then if I wanted to have sex, and I said no...it was too soon.

As he was standing again on the left side of the bed, I think I looked up and asked him, like a little girl, if he thought I was pretty. He said, "No." I didn't appreciate his overly honest answer, and then he asked, "Well, do you think I'm handsome?" I looked up at his face and said, "No." (facepalm)

We were both being incredibly honest. In other words, we were both being kind of cruel.

Note to men: If you're in a hotel room with a woman and she looks up at you and asks, "Do you think I'm pretty?" just say, "Yes"!

On second thought say, "No, I don't think you're pretty. I think you're beautiful."

Not for the first time in my life, I regretted I wasn't a lesbian.

I might have said, "We're perfect for each other...two ugly people bumping uglies."

Or maybe, "Handsome men, when you look at them for a while, just end up being two eyes, a nose, and a mouth...if they're lucky If you don't like them they seem to get uglier over time. And some guys who aren't as good-looking...well, if you really like them they seem better-looking over time."

The man abruptly said he had to go, and I asked, "Did I say something wrong? Are you mad at me? I'm sorry!"

I think he said he wasn't mad, and I asked if I would ever see him again. I have no idea what he said, but he MAY have said after everything was over. That it might be one or two years.

If he did I would have balked about waiting so long. "TWO YEARS!?"...What if I meet someone else?"

"Well, you can date other people," he might have said.

"You don't care if I sleep with other men!?" I might have asked, staring up at him.

Looking back, if I had been my "normal" self the night would have ended much differently. When told my communications were blocked I would have said, "You'll ALLOW me one phone call!? How DARE you!? This is America. We have Freedom of Speech. And that freedom was hard-won by the blood of our best and brightest and the tears of their wives and mothers."

When told no, he didn't think I was pretty, I sure as heck wouldn't have appreciated his honesty. I would have resisted the urge to smack him across his stupid face and ordered him to leave and never come back. Seriously...what kind of guy who expects to get laid says that to a woman?

Probably the same kind of guy who says things like, 'You can't get Ebola from someone on a bus,' but 'Don't get on a bus if you have Ebola, because you could give it to someone.'

The man in my hotel room might have told me to quit smoking, and I said I only started smoking menthol cigarettes to tear up my lungs and get Histoplasmosis in them to get a diagnosis, and he said, "It doesn't work that way."

He may have told me to clean my car, and I said, "I need a maid. I'll bet you have a maid," and he said, "Yes," and I said "Do you think you're smarter than I am? And he said, "That's not the point." Yeah, I knew it was a lame argument, but I really hate cleaning.

Just because I have Barr bodies and a vagina instead of y-chromosomes and a penis doesn't mean I automatically enjoy cleaning.

He brushed my bangs aside, kissing me good-bye on the forehead, and I said, "Great...a kiss on the forehead."

He asked what was wrong with a kiss on the forehead, and I think I said it wasn't very romantic. And then he tucked me back into bed. I might have asked him to stay until I fell asleep.

If this was a dream, it was the most realistic dream I've ever had. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced, and I would have SWORN it really happened.

If other people had this, they might also swear something happened when it didn't, sincerely believing it did. And it wouldn't be their fault, because they'd have a disease caused by unknowingly breathing in invisible fungal spores.

The next thing I remember it was morning and my cell phone, with no incoming texts visible, had somehow moved across the room and ended up on the TV table opposite the bed.

#  Chapter 15 - How Long Must You Wait For It?

(aka: "I Found a Dream That I Can Speak To")

After I woke up in the Hilton Hotel, I felt a little shell-shocked. Everything from the night before seemed so real, but it wasn't like I could ask around to verify it.

The hotel staff would definitely send me to the loony bin if I went around asking if the Director of the CDC had been in my room. In fact, I couldn't ask anyone anywhere if they had seen the Director of the CDC. It just sounded insane, even though it wasn't completely implausible. And I promised him I wouldn't tell anyone.

That was the absolutely worst part of all of this. There was no way for me to verify if he really showed up or not. The worst part was the not knowing.

I wanted to wait for "the man", since the night before I asked, "Will I ever see you again," and to this day can't remember what he said.

But I knew hallucinations and vivid dreams were symptoms of my disease, PLUS both times I thought I spoke with him I had been to the same wooded area. So I understood that my perceptions might not be real.

How was I supposed to find out if "he" was real without "telling anyone" like he asked me not to?

And what if I thought I had been talking to the Director of the CDC in my hotel room (and later in my car), but I really wasn't? What if something I thought was correct and could save someone else, but I mistakenly thought the Director of the CDC heard it but he really didn't? What if I suddenly died and something valid that I thought was lost forever?

So, I contacted the CDC and Dr. Frieden, but no one EVER replied. It was so frustrating! I felt utterly alone. I felt like I was being punished, but I couldn't figure out what I had done that was so awful. I would drive to empty parking lots late at night to scream in my car, so I wouldn't disturb the neighbors. I was always so considerate and thinking of other people's feelings.

Betrayed by the government, which seemed to surprise no one but me (people would say, "What did you expect? It's the government.") I started thinking about all the times I felt betrayed by fate and God...all the "rules" I followed with trust that I would have a decent life and at least one or two things I really wanted because I did, and didn't do, all the things I was "supposed" to do and not do. All the betrayal by people who should have protected me.

Then I started looking at all the cr@p I had endured in my cr@ppy cr@pped cr@p nightmare of a life and looked at it a different way...maybe I wasn't being punished by God. Maybe he was toughening me up...for the day the biggest pile of bat$het would hit the fan. Maybe God knew what was in store, and he wanted me to be able to handle it. Like a mother forced to send her son to school to be bullied.

They say God never gives you more than you can handle, and I had no idea yet of what I was going to have to endure...almost all of the time utterly alone. There would have to be hidden reserves of strength for me to rely on. Strength built up by years of abuse and disappointment.

But, like they say, there is no shame in failure...only in not getting back up. And I had always managed to get back up. My sister and I would say that if what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, then I should be able to pick up and carry an automobile by now.

I needed to know if there really was a man. I wanted to wait for "the man." But what if there was no man, and I waited in vain forever? Like that crazy old aunt in "The Man Who Came to Dinner" who keeps running to answer the door thinking it's her long-awaited gentleman caller.

To this day I still think it was cruel for NO ONE in the federal government to respond to my imploring letters.

And I wondered...how long could I patiently wait for someone who might never show up?

#  Chapter 16 - Strolling So Casually

(aka: "For a Little While I Was Falling in Love")

Apparently not very long, because within days I was once again trying to meet "the man" while having no earthly idea where he was or how to contact him.

I saw your eyes  
And you made me smile  
For a little while  
I was falling in love

I saw your eyes  
And you touched my mind  
Although it took a while  
I was falling in love

I was falling in love

I saw your eyes  
And you made me cry  
And for a little while  
I was falling in love...

At some point I ended up at the Embassy Suites in Grapevine, which was also adjacent to an Outdoor World. I'm not sure how I got a room and ended up strolling around listening to hours and hours of love songs and texting "the man." Later I would realize these expensive hotels with HEPA filters were the best places for me to be...walking around getting exercise to boost my immune system and breathing clean air.

My car keys had disappeared at the hotel, and none of the staff knew where they were. I texted "the man" I'd like them back to go shopping for something nice to wear that night. But the keys were still missing and had been for hours.

The only time a love song wasn't playing on the hotel musak was once when I went to the restroom feeling ill. Then the song sang something like, "I know it hurts. I'm sorry I can't help you. But nothing lasts forever."

It was odd no "regular" songs or country music played in this Texas hotel. And odd how the songs seemed to reflect my movements and answer my texts.

Somehow I had arranged to meet "the man" in my room that night. It seemed like he was communicating with me. The songs kept singing how he couldn't wait to be with me that night. They assured me he would be there later and we'd have a wonderful night together.

But then, while headed to my room to rest, I walked off the silent elevator into the hall and heard the musak sing "but nothing lasts forever."

I fell to the floor outside my room, feeling as if I'd been kicked in the stomach. Angrily, I pulled my cell phone out of my purse and texted, "I want my f#@king keys back within five minutes!!!"

Then I got up and went into my room.

Within 1-2 minutes the front desk called with my keys, the keys that had been missing for hours and I had demanded back within five minutes. It had taken less than five minutes to get them.

Grabbing my keys from the front desk, I walked out of the hotel with the musak singing, "I couldn't believe the look on your face," I assumed from the hurt look on my face.

I couldn't understand how or why the musak was so accurate and how I got my keys back. If it was the Director of the CDC, that would mean he had a bunch of CDC employees in all of these hotels. CDC employees who obviously had nothing better to do than try to get their boss laid. It didn't make any sense. Unless...

Unless maybe I really was doing something important...and they were helping me.

In my car I angrily texted that it was all or nothing with me, bud, and if he wanted to hook up and leave he was SOOL. I hated those songs like Bob Seger, "We've got tonight, who needs tomorrow." Then I insulted his kissing.

At some point I said I couldn't figure out where Irving ended and Grapevine started, thinking that the loving music only played in areas where the CDC had control. The music said something like, "Oh, she was confused. I knew she didn't mean what she said" about the kissing.

I was so hurt and angry. I'm not sure what happened next, but I was driving around Dallas and stopping to text, with the radio answering. At one point I confronted "him" that I knew "the man" in Room #528 was real and wasn't a dream, because in my dreams the man wouldn't have pushed my leg down...we would have had wild sex. The radio then played something like INX saying "I'll give you what you need" and something like he was going to give me "what I wanted."

This made me more upset. NO! You DON'T know what I "need." I don't NEED sex. Stop trying to pigeonhole me. I'm a woman who sometimes wants you to be sweet and tender and sometimes hot and rough...I'm a flesh and blood woman with many different moods and facets, like most women. I was like that Garbage song, "I'm a whore, I'm a saint, etc." and texted that I had many sides, thoughts, and emotions. But I was not in it just for sex, and if that's all he wanted I didn't even want to see him. I typed that the songs kept saying he was leaving tomorrow, so just go ahead and leave!

We argued for a little while.

At some point I texted that I had a rape fantasy, but that didn't mean I wanted to be raped (probably the genesis of thinking "the man" would be falsely accused of raping me, since I did worry that someone would accuse him of something). I explained that it was "sex without guilt" and that many women my age grew up with those silly romance novels...nerdy teenaged girls getting all hot and bothered reading about some man's "pulsating manhood" and raping a woman's "moist purse" or similar. (Until age 20 or so I actually thought men's "manhood" pulsated...it seemed scary.)

The heroine in the book really wanted him, but he had to "rape" her. And of course she enjoyed her first time immensely, instead of it being a painful, bloody mess like in my experience. Actually, that "rape" message was an awful and confusing message, coupled with the fact that Luke and Laura on General Hospital began their famous affair by Luke RAPING Laura. But all the "romance" (actually, looking back, they were probably more like "soft porn") novels seemed to follow the same basic plot...hunky man meets beautiful headstrong virgin who really wants him but he has to rape her. Then he saves her, maybe rapes her again (even though she claims to hate him the reader knows she's really in love with him) and then they end up together in love...confusing messages!

They're called "bodice rippers." historical romances "where the heroine has lots of non-consensual sex, which becomes consensual."

In one romance novel, the "hero" actually BRANDS the woman's upper inner thigh with a small fleur-de-lis after the rape. But it's somehow written to be very sensual and erotic, when in real life it would be sick and twisted.

Another confusing message...did you ever notice in the 1970s horror movies (like "Halloween") the only survivor was the girl who was a virgin? All the girls (and guys) who had sex were murdered. As if because a girl had sex she deserved to die.

In my day, there was an awful lot of importance placed on an intact hymen. Just look how far it got Diana Spencer.

Anyway, back to my story.

I insulted "the man" some more, texting something about how clueless men were...no wonder the world was so screwed up. It was time for a female President, I wrote, because "men always seem to destroy the things they claim to love."

Then I changed stations, accidentally passing by Lorde singing "We're on Each Other's Team" and landing on a station playing something like, "Now I Know We're On the Same Side."

Suspecting Dr. Tw@t was a Democrat I furiously texted, "So you're saying that if I was a Republican you'd let me die!? You are SO screwed up. I'm an Independent, by the way, but you are nuts!" Of course, I thought I wasn't.

Then I said I was going back to my nice room at Embassy Suites, but that I was deadbolting the door and he was NOT to try to come in. Being a gentleman, he again honored my wishes.

Much later that night I texted that maybe I had overreacted and taken the lyrics out of context, but it was not normal for people to communicate with musak and he had made some unfortunate choices with the music.

This might have been Monday or so, and I texted that I had a dream we were together watching fireworks. The musak outside the hotel was faint, and all I could make out was, "I understand...Friday night."

I texted back, "I heard 'I understand...Friday night.'" Which was odd, because I had been thinking July 4th was on a Thursday.

So I reserved a room for Friday night, July 4th. They told me there would be fireworks and people could watch from the parking lot or from the roof on the 12th floor.

I went to bed and the next day as I was leaving texted, "I don't understand why you just can't come and get me now." The music replied, "I'm busy putting out fires."

I guess his days were too hectic.

In the parking lot I said I needed a diagnosis so I could get antifungal, and I thought at this point Satan, and not the government, was responsible for my false-negatives. I texted for "the man" to ignore my next text...it was a trick.

For some reason, I thought only the CDC could see my texts in areas where they had "control," and that Satan could see them everywhere else. Yeah, now I know that doesn't make any sense, but it seemed to make more sense when fungal spores and filaments were twisted throughout my nervous system.

I also texted for "the man" to be careful, because I had dreamed I or someone else falsely accused him of raping me and that I was going to write a note and leave it in my Addison room and one in the Grapevine hotel room that read if I accused Dr. Frieden of anything I had Disseminated Histoplasmosis and I was delusional and it wasn't true. I then heard a song lyric, "God is in the little kindnesses."

I drove to Carrollton and my old workplace to "trick" Satan. By this time there had been a lot of "Satanic" things going on that included 666 and other things like songs playing constantly about my being evil and going to hell. At one point the words on my cd's were wrong. The Katy Perry song "Legendary Lovers" came out as "Imaginary Lover", and I felt like maybe the Army or another government agency was messing with me. Perhaps they were testing to see how suggestible I was to music and if they could "turn" me evil.

Maybe they were studying me with the idea of using Histoplasmosis as a biological weapon. Victims would be tested for toxins and viruses...maybe bacteria...and all the results would come back negative. Would anyone ever suspect a fungus?

My guess is no. No one would suspect a fungus, since I looked numerous doctors in the face, telling them I had disseminated histoplasmosis. And they STILL misdiagnosed me!

Anyway, my idea to trick Satan was to text I couldn't wait for Friday...that I needed a positive diagnosis and antifungal so that I would be well enough for our "date" on Friday. And then there was something about if I woke up alone Saturday (knowing full well that "the man" could never stay the entire night...his visits had to be secret) that I would throw myself off the roof of the 12-story hotel. I thought this would get me a diagnosis...that Satan couldn't pass up the thought of my throwing myself off the roof and would let me get a diagnosis so that I could be at the hotel Friday night and wake up Saturday alone.

I thought I was being so clever.

In a parking lot one block away from my former workplace, where I thought the CDC had not yet been, I started texting my "trick" for Satan to see. As I typed in my own phone number starting with 214-551-, the numbers 214-666- came up instead.

#  Chapter 17 - Bipolar DJ

(aka: "I Can Feel It Coming in the Air Tonight")

Desperate for antifungal, I decided to go to my high school friend, who was now a doctor, in Shreveport. I emailed her sister, a medical malpractice attorney, that I needed to talk to her sister and get some antifungal...that the doctors in DFW were killing me.

I drove toward Shreveport at night, but accidentally took I-30 instead of I-20, ending up in Texarkana or nearby. While driving, my right arm went limp, and I remembered my right arm gave me trouble before. The right side of my face felt like it was beginning to droop for a few moments. Muscular dystrophy? Maybe it was just Bell's Palsy...I'm no doctor. I pulled over to Google it and then texted myself for "the man" to see "Muscular dystrophy?" and the music said something about joyous news for my sister's son. Did Twitter Tw@t have a nephew with muscular dystrophy? I was thrilled if I was right to help him. (Later, something by my scapula would tickle before my arm went limp...something about a form of muscular dystrophy that included the scapula.? I don't know, I was just throwing out suggestions. Twitter Tw@t was the doctor. Let him figure it out.)

As I drove and switched stations a religious program immediately had a woman who called in about a relative with fibromyalgia. I'd never heard of it and pulled over to Google it. Who was feeding me hints? The CDC? But if they already knew, why use me?

I texted myself, "Fibromyalgia. Next Alzheimer's" thinking of my friend's dad, a very smart man who had suffered from Alzheimer's.

The music replied, "You're moving too fast." But I texted, "No, I'm going to see Karen in Shreveport."

I "felt" like the CDC "had" the area I was in, since all the music was positive. Then I turned south onto 71. I was on radio station FM 93.3. The music was all positive and loving. The commercials kept telling me over and over and over to stop smoking and mentioned Viagra...over and over and over. I wondered if the fungus could cause premature ejaculation or erectile dysfunction. Could it acidify the seminal fluid and result in slow or dead sperm?

At some point I felt like I was out of the CDC's area and things felt "evil." Mosquitoes swarmed around me and no one else as I got gas. Luckily, I had been drinking a lot of tea with lemon, and citronella is a natural mosquito repellant. The commercial at the pump encouraged me to get a burger at the filthy gas station, so I was sure not to get one since I felt like it was a trap to get food poisoning.

Driving down 71 and listening to FM 93.3, I noticed the music changed and appeared to alternate between "evil" songs and positive loving ones. I thought the director of the CDC was sending the "nice" music. One evil song, then one loving song, over and over.

As I drove and my ears buzzed louder, I noticed I could feel no pain. I tried to burn, scratch, and slap myself. Although I could feel the sensation there was no pain, and I texted myself I knew Adam Lanza had Disseminated Histoplasmosis, because children were told not to hurt him when playing because he couldn't feel pain.

Could this have been CNS histoplasmosis affecting his brainstem? In the nucleus raphe magnus, preventing pain sensation and transmission?

I texted myself, "What if I never get a positive Histoplasmosis lab test? Maybe I was meant to only manifest symptoms? To figure it out? No one would believe me." Over the months I exhibited almost every symptom of Disseminated Histoplasmosis. I seemed to go through symptoms lasting only a few moments or hours, except for my aching hip, neck, stomach, and chest.

"Will you believe me if I can't prove it?" I asked. The music played "I'm forever yours, faithfully."

I texted that Adam was brilliant and would have figured it out and "they" killed him. That "it" hated love...and children, with all their purity and love. That "it" had Adam kill children purposely.

The music played on, the "evil" music seeming to offer me things, bribe me with sex and possessions, and threaten me...songs I'd heard before, but now seemed warped and "evil." It seemed like I was offered to switch sides and be the new Antichrist, something about being a new leader and "...a new religion that will bring them to their knees...black velvet if you please." (I had always HATED the feel of velvet...it gave me the heebie-jeebies...although I liked black...it was so slimming. And wasn't that supposed to be "bring YOU to YOUR knees"?) It was as if someone had gone into the music studio and altered the words and music of the "evil" songs to make them sound creepy.

(Btw, I'm going to throw in sensory processing disorder as caused by disseminated Histoplasmosis. That would account for why I hated the feel of velvet and suede, my sister's thumb-sucking until adulthood, people in my family who were picky eaters and didn't like to be hugged, etc.)

The evil music offered me cigarettes, liquor, and pot. What was Satan? Pentecostal?! It sounded like a normal night for my brother. Then the music offered meaningless sex, money, and power. It told me "the man" I loved was married, thought I was crazy, he was glad to be rid of me, and he and his friends hated me. Finally, it appeared to threaten me, including sending mosquitoes and disease to me. But the "evil" music didn't know me very well..."it" didn't know what I wanted most.

The "good" music offered me nothing but love. We wouldn't have much money, but we'd be together and he'd love me forever. I imagined it came from "the man."

On and on I drove, but I wasn't overly frightened. The entire time I kept thinking, "This would make a GREAT movie scene!"

Suddenly, my ears abuzz and feeling no pain, I saw dark "blobs" moving in the periphery of my vision to the right and left, covering approximately one-third to one-half of my vision in each eye. They looked like shadows of people with heads, arms, and legs that appeared to move, coming toward me from each side. I suppose some people might think they looked like demons.

Later I would realize it was probably some sort of hemorrhage inside my eyes, the blobs moving as my heart beat. Was it called "Vitreous hemorrhage"? It lasted about 15-30 seconds and disappeared. (I wonder now if I was close to going blind then, my biggest fear.)

I was speeding and tripping...I suppose on adrenaline and the LSD-like substance fungal sclerotia can emit, but also due to the surreal situation. Plus, I hadn't slept more than one hour or less a night for about one or two months, and apparently my brain was all moldy.

In Shreveport the music became static, and two stations appeared to "battle." I would drive back and forth over a few feet to get the "good" song and text.

The "evil" music told me "the man" was on his way to California and hot women, but the good music said he was already there (Shreveport?) waiting for me. I was confused.

First I went to Willis Knighton hospital in Shreveport for an hour or two, waiting for the man to show up, trying to figure out where he'd be. Walking out around 3:30 am (why did everything happen around 3:00 to 3:30 pm or am?) I ended up at a hotel, expecting "the man" to be there. Back and forth I drove a few feet in the parking lot to catch the correct song to text which room I'd be in to "the man." Finally, I caught a song that said something about "We" and "Fame." I chose it to text "the man" my room number, because of the word "We." But I guess I was tricked with greed and pride, because it also said "Fame." I texted my room number and went to bed.

Expecting "the man" to show up, I went to sleep for a couple of hours. In the morning I was disappointed to wake up alone. I texted myself, "Are you just going to leave me here alone to wait and starve?" apparently forgetting the hotel served a free breakfast downstairs. "I'm offended you had any doubt which side I'd choose!" I also texted, "I have the worst boyfriend...he never takes me anywhere and won't talk to me, am I right girls?" I started insulting "the man," texting things like "I knew 'it' was a man because he's so stupid." But "it" had fooled me.

My name on my cell phone suddenly changed to "????" and my Internet was blocked. I started being afraid of Dr. Tw@t, so I called Embassy Suites to cancel my room for the 4th of July. But they kept putting me on hold for a very long time before disconnecting.

The stations on my car stereo were all stuck on six country music stations somehow...I couldn't change them when I pressed the "Seek" button. (I won't listen to country music...was someone trying to keep me from listening to the radio?)

I remembered my sister told me how, when she was going to kill herself after her divorce, she took some pills, but then heard a religious radio program in her car telling her not to give in or to be strong and the bad times would pass or similar. She said she stuck her finger down her throat and regurgitated the pills. Later, repeating the story to friends, she was told there was no station that far up on the dial...that the station didn't exist.

The funny thing is, she said when she tried to switch stations away from the religious program the stations wouldn't change when she pressed the "Seek" button, just like mine wouldn't change.

Weird.

Anyway, back to me....

Not playing the radio to avoid listening to country music, I walked into a gas station and heard Talking Heads sing, "Take me to the river...drop me in the water."

Frightened of whoever was messing with my cell phone, I made sure the GPS on my phone was on and threw it from a bridge into the Red River so I could escape, hoping whoever was messing with my phone would think I had jumped off the bridge.

Later I would seem to remember that walking underwater in the river was part of the prophecy. Why did that sound so familiar? Something about walking for 3 minutes on the bottom of the Red River.

I wondered how long my waterproof phone with GPS could stay on underwater.

I started driving toward Dallas, getting out to get some aspirin, and the musak was loving at a supermarket. But I started to feel suspicious of Dr. Tw@t and went to the bathroom. The music stopped. I came out of the bathroom, full of paranoia. WHY did Twitter Tw@t apparently want to lure me back to the wooded area? Why would he allow me to go back there in the first place? If there were scopolamine-containing flowers there that could cause a heart attack, and histoplasmosis was already causing heart inflammation, wouldn't it kill me to go back there?

I drove back to Shreveport, driving around and around unsure where to go, because I became increasingly frightened of Dr. Tw@t, thinking he might kill me if he was the only one who knew about some diseases being misdiagnosed Disseminated Histoplasmosis (maybe I was right?) and wanted all the credit for himself. Why would he want to share it with me? Chubby, middle-aged, stubby-legged me?

He probably had his choice of long-legged beauties to choose from. Women who made me look like a dog. Like "the short fat squat ugly little yellow dog" that the Grateful Dead sang about on the musak one day at the Rockwall Hilton. The day that I, with my brassy bleached hair, looked around at the guests...all the 20-ish, tall, slender, perfect-skinned, long-legged, beauties...and worried that I could never keep "the man," even if I found him.

Wanting to tell someone about Dr. Frieden, I knew back in my room in Addison was a note saying that if I said Dr. Frieden did anything to me that I was delusional due to Histoplasmosis (because I had a dream I falsely accused him of rape and wrote the note to protect him).

He could do anything he wanted to me, even murder me, I thought, but if I claimed he did it or left a note he did it, then he would have my signed proof that he didn't.

Trying to protect Dr. Tw@t, I had given him carte blanche to kill me.

Had he somehow manipulated me into that? "My God," I thought, "the man must be BRILLIANT!"

Only later would I realize that, no...the Director of the CDC was not "brilliant."

And why would he tell me to stop smoking if he wanted to kill me? This was all so confusing...if only someone would speak to me I wouldn't have to be trying to figure out just what the HECK was going on!

And every time I asked, "What the HECK is going on?!" Imagine Dragons would sing from the radio, "This is it, the Apocalypse, whoa-oa."

Maybe no one even KNEW I had contacted the CDC. Maybe he had controlled ALL my emails, phone calls, and letters. If I died I was just a sick, mentally ill, paranoid, middle-aged woman. No one would even question my death, let alone question the Director of the CDC.

It was my word against his.

I was terrified...I couldn't go anywhere to be safe from him, because he'd have the note. No one would believe what I said, because of the note. I thought of hiding again in the woods, but didn't want to worry my sister. I thought of getting a gun or knife in case he showed up and tried to hurt me, but didn't because, like I would be on July 4th, I was afraid I would kill him mistakenly believing it was self-defense and that that was "its" plan...to get me to self-destruct...and hopefully take down others with me.

So I ended up going back to the hotel, and if Twitter Tw@t showed up to kill me I would offer my neck to him to just do it...I was going to trust him to the bitter end.

It may have been July 2nd. I lay down to get some rest and woke up an hour or so later and checked out to head back to Dallas. As I drove back to Texas I took Hwy 80 and passed over the only fork of the Trinity River I hadn't crossed over yet. (I had driven to Palestine, Texas just because it sounded Biblical.) It seemed like I heard a "thunk" beside my head as I went over it. Was crossing over all forks of the Trinity River a prophecy? It sounded familiar, and when people would encourage me to eat at the Three Forks restaurant it always seemed to ring a bell.

Whatever...I was more concerned about getting home and meeting "the man" for my eagerly anticipated 4th of July date.

#  Chapter 18 - The 2nd Horseman of the Apocalypse -Pestilence

(aka: "I Know Who I Am Now")

Yet again I decided to try to meet "the man," and this time we'd do a little more than kiss, since this was our third "date."

After the extremely odd night/morning in Arkansas/Shreveport with Satan and God seeming to battle for my soul, I decided "the man" was the 1st Horseman of the Apocalypse after all, coming from the east (from the CDC in Atlanta) in a white Delta plane or white car. Did the 1st Horseman wear a crown? Oh well, if he had a dental crown or carried a bottle of Crown Royal it fit the criteria.

I decided to make "the man" the 2nd Horseman of the Apocalypse, too. Already having a bottle of Crown Royal I bought leaving Shreveport to get a "crown" and fool Satan into thinking I was evil and drinking now, I went to Outdoor World adjacent to Lake Ray Hubbard and across the reservoir from the Rockwall Hilton to buy a bow.

I knew buying the Crown Royal was the right thing to do, since I had seen the "sign"...the woman in front of me buying a carton of Dark Horse (what the heck was that?) and Katy Perry had been singing "Dark Horse."

My debit card was now missing, and all I had was a maxed out credit card. I decided to try it to purchase a large bow and arrows from Outdoor World for the man and also trick Satan into thinking I bought it as a weapon. I believed I had to get to Rockwall where the CDC had control. It was one of the only areas in DFW that was "safe."

When I tried to pay for the bow and arrows with the maxed out card the store clerk said it rang up as a $27 gift card.? Not wanting to carry a less expensive toy bow and risk looking crazy (which I was) I decided to buy some hair bows at a grocery store.

As I drove back through Dallas, a Jo-Ann's sign stood out as if it glowed (not lit). I thought, "They should have bows." Searching the store, I finally found some small black bows.

I went back home to Addison, stopping at Waffle House to eat. One of the signs on the wall stood out, as if lit from within..."You had a choice and you chose us...Thank you!"

Was that the angels?

"You're very welcome!" I thought.

Later that night I went back again to the Rockwall Hilton, hoping to find the man after emailing him I was on my way. I was wearing my blue "magic" tank dress. It was magic because it was incredibly flattering, making my figure look like an hourglass.

Just as I was driving up in the Hilton parking lot, a song I'd never heard before said something like, 'look up at the happy pictures on the wall/shelf' and something about finding love/happiness.

Once inside the Hilton lobby, I emailed the CDC if I wasn't in the lobby I'd be by the pool or in the bathroom. In the bathroom I put one bow in my bra cup and the crown off the Crown Royal label in the other bra cup. Now I was "carrying a bow and wearing a crown." Hey, it fit the criteria.

I don't know what I was thinking. Maybe I was going to let "the man" find them himself, if you catch my drift.

That sounds like something I would have done.

Twisting the Crown Royal cap as hard as I could to "break a seal"...Revelation, remember?...I found that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't break the seal. Again, the musak appeared to reflect what I was doing. A song about a man putting a woman into his passenger seat and taking her with him played twice within about 10 minutes. Odd, I thought again, but I was excited thinking "the man" was coming to get me.

Later I would wonder if something was luring me inside the hotel...the hotel with HEPA filters.

I went back and forth between the pool and lobby, emailing the CDC to tell "the man" I was there but that I had no money for a room. My phone was at the bottom of the Red River, so I couldn't text myself for him to see.

While at the pool, I decided to go into a cabana and wait for "the man" to come. But another creepy man was watching me and I was scared he'd show up instead.

At one point two men looked down at me from a balcony for a long time, and I thought one might be "the man." Why else would they be staring at me?

Later I would realize sometimes when men stared at and followed me it was just because I was a lone female at night, and not because they knew "who" I was and wanted to hurt me.

I imagine it must be difficult for really beautiful women...all those men leering at and stalking you, sometimes just wanting to "use" or "possess" you, and a lot of women looking at you with such distaste and jealousy, tearing apart your every "flaw." Or hating you just because their boyfriend or husband would look at you.

Going back into the Hilton lobby because bugs were outside, I noticed that either music about love played, or Bob Seger songs/out-of-tune off-key country songs about loose women and bars played. Remember, I dislike Bob Seger and country music.

It appeared the music I liked only played when I was in a certain area, and I realized the music had manipulated me into a section of the lobby by some shelves. Sitting down, I looked up at the wall/shelves where beautiful wedding photos and albums were. One album had a wonderful quote about love, and I thought it must be nice to fall in love and get married like that. Funny how that song about happy pics on the wall/shelf had played as I drove into the parking lot....

Then something strange happened, but STILL not the strangest thing that happened that night. I looked up and what looked like two columns of falling powder or opalescent white or off-white glitter appeared to flitter in the air. I suppose some people might think it looked like an angel's wings.

Later I read that seeing vertical lines is a symptom of MS.

Getting bored, I left the Hilton around midnight or 1:00 am, telling the front desk to tell anyone who was looking for me that I was going to Embassy Suites in Grapevine. (Funny how all three hotels I felt drawn to were adjacent to Outdoor Worlds....)

It was now the wee hours of July 4th, and I had a "date" prearranged with "the man" at Embassy Suites for the night of July 4th.

First, I drove east to Royse City and the infamous "Hotel California." Looking in and seeing the same Jared Leto look-alike from before, I headed to Grapevine, driving west in my light silver Saturn. Driving through Dallas and getting on I-30, I got lost on all the highways in DFW, driving in various directions.

While driving through Rockwall and Dallas, I smelled a horrible feces-like odor, not quite like a waste treatment plant.

The same awful smell was all over DFW, especially near the river, except in some places like Arlington and White Settlement. At first I thought it was coming from my cat in her carrier, but I could only smell it when the air conditioner was on or the windows rolled down, and it appeared to come from outside the car.

I know at some point I was on 820 going around Fort Worth, and then I had been going toward Denton.

Ears buzzing away and lost driving around DFW smelling the disgusting feces-like odor, I suddenly felt what I can only call an intensely strong "orgasm" that was so powerful I almost had a wreck. It literally threw me back into and a little off my car seat. It happened a second time not long afterwards. Later I read that fungal sclerotia had been used in the past to give women spontaneous abortions, but stopped being used due to hypercontractions. But these "orgasms" didn't hurt like my labor contractions had. In fact, it was quite pleasurable, to be honest. I wondered if "the man" was able to do this to me remotely somehow. Maybe he had gotten tired of waiting and started without me.

Maybe the "orgasms" were some type of clonus, or stimulation of the vagus nerve? Or the fungus affecting the ventral tegmental area of my brainstem, which is associated with orgasms.

The "orgasms" were similar to convulsions or seizures, but wonderfully orgasmic convulsions/seizures. (Persistent genital arousal disorder, cause unknown?)

Later I would realize I could tell what areas had Histoplasmosis/bats because my ears would buzz more loudly, my nodule became more prominent, and I'd become more ill. The more Histoplasmosis, the more "orgasms" and the stronger they'd be. When I was almost well there would be no "orgasms." I realized that the horrible odor was probably batsh#t and/or Histoplasmosis.

No one else seemed able to smell it.

I suppose it's possible the smell was phantosmia, phantom odors due to the fungus in my brain, but why did I only smell it when the a/c was on or the windows rolled down?

Maybe it was hyperosmia, a heightened sense of smell. Some people with Parkinson's have that.

During the at least 4 hours I was lost and driving 50-60 mph all over DFW smelling the horrible feces-like odor, I noticed that my gas gauge never dropped. The needle stayed at the same spot a little over half full the entire time. I thought that was odd.

Finally arriving back in Carrollton around 5:30 am and going into a Walgreens I frequented, I told a clerk I knew that I was sick and could die, no one would give me antifungal, and that I was having religious delusions, giggling uncontrollably like a lunatic the entire time.

Then I went home to my room in Addison and decided to try to sleep for my July 4th "date" that night. As I was getting undressed for bed I took off my bra in the bathroom and realized I was still "carrying a bow and wearing a crown," which I had forgotten about.

It was then I decided that I, and not "the man," must be the 2nd Horseman of the Apocalypse-Pestilence.

#  Chapter 19 - Holiday...Celebrate

(aka: "I'm Not Crazy, I'm Just a Little Unwell")

Happy that I had apparently passed my auditions and gotten the part, I was a little let down that I was "Pestilence." It seemed like such a minor part, listed fourth in the credits below "Famine."

I wanted top billing, which in my mind was shared by "Disease" and "War."

Actually, I remember reading about the four horsemen when younger and thinking pestilence was the lamest one. What was that? Bugs and rats? Not very glamorous.

I felt like Shelley Winters in "A Place in the Sun." Poor, dumpy Shelley.

Little did I know about bats. Bats were kind of cool. Luckily, I was still sane enough not to run around in a Batgirl costume. Although all the Batman merchandise I saw was off-putting...maybe a tiny bit of PTSD?

Now, I didn't just all of a sudden think, "I'm a horseman of the Apocalypse" or anything else like that out of the blue. It just seemed like something important was going to happen (remember, Psilocybin gives an anticipatory feeling) and well...it did seem like I was fulfilling the criteria, even without trying.

I mean, it does all seem to fit, doesn't it?

Of course, I'm no theologian, but if their explanations are the best, then why is Atheism such a fast-growing belief system?

Just like if doctors are all so brilliant and already doing everything the best way possible, then why are so many people still getting sick and dying?

Oh, and now that I'm thinking about my childhood I'm going to confess a couple of things so you won't think that I believe I'm oh-so smart.

I used to think Mount Rushmore was a natural formation. "Wow, amazing how the wind and rain eroded that mountain to happen to look like four U.S Presidents!" I thought "money laundering" meant literally washing money. And I used to think there was a letter in the middle of the alphabet called "elimino" between K and P. In my defense, I was very young at the time.

I'm no genius. Oh yeah, one time at work I was complaining that there were no more right-tabbed manila folders in the box, only left-tabbed, and I needed a new box. Then a coworker just looked at me and turned some of the folders inside-out. Yes, I DO think my hair was blonde at the time.

Now, for those who don't already know, Apocalypse doesn't mean the end of the world. It means 'a disclosure of knowledge or revelation. ... a disclosure of something hidden,' "a vision of heavenly secrets that can make sense of earthly realities". ... the revelation which John receives is that of the ultimate victory of good over evil and the end of the present age....'

Anyway, after the midnight ride of the 2nd horseman, I fell asleep for only a few minutes, even though I was exhausted. Just before I awoke the morning of July 4th I saw the word "Antichrist" inside my head, like white letters floating behind my closed eyelids.

Maybe it was just my neighbor watching "Horrible Bosses," but it terrified me.

People in the building happened to call out things like "Suicide" and "Girl, ain't nobody ever gonna call you" through the doors as I walked down the hall. I didn't hallucinate that, they were just random parts of people's conversation. But the CDC not calling me part was apropos.

I think I had dreamed that when I was in room 528 of the Rockwall Hilton there had been other men from the CDC in the room and they had given me scopolamine and maybe drawn blood. I furiously wrote an email to the CDC accusing Dr. Frieden and other CDC men of raping me and other women after giving us scopolamine.

The suspense was over...I had just falsely accused Dr. Frieden of rape.

This made me think of Karen Mulder, the Dutch 1990s supermodel who went crazy and accused a bunch of men of raping her. I wondered if she'd had Disseminated Histoplasmosis.

It seemed I was having almost all possible physical symptoms from Disseminated Histoplasmosis, and all mental problems, too. Later I would write Dr. Frieden that every stupid thing I said and did was just another piece of the puzzle.

I also accused the CDC of using me as a human litmus test, because, looking back, almost every single place I had ever worked and lived had bats...I could tell from everyone's illnesses.

Not long afterwards I emailed that vivid dreams, wild mood swings, and hallucinations were symptoms of my disease and I wasn't raped.

Every area of my body, including my central nervous system, appeared invaded by this fungus...every organ except my lungs, where it could be most easily diagnosed.

The radio started playing songs about "worth dying for" and flying and all sorts of things that made me feel like Dr. Frieden would be tripping July 4th night the way I had been tripping the night before. So many songs about "I want to die in your arms" and "Die in your arms tonight" played over and over and over. "Don't Fear the Reaper" kept playing over and over, and I had never noticed before the words "come on baby, take my hand, we'll be able to fly." I thought "the man" would grab my hand and pull me off the roof, or do something and I might accidentally kill him somehow.

Confused, I remembered my "trick" texted for Satan to see...that I would throw myself off the roof of the 12-story hotel. Terrified, I wondered if I was being set up...to maybe be thrown off the roof, with my text proving it was suicide.

I could NOT meet "the man" that night! I had to protect him, and myself, because I felt like we had to be together and self-destruct, or I had to commit suicide...for some reason I thought that's what Satan wanted. I don't know why I thought that, except for the fact that there were so many coincidences I started thinking maybe they weren't coincidences after all.

And I emailed if Dr. Frieden acted weird (since I thought he was or had been in DFW) or was sick that he was NOT to be given Haldol or Cipro. There I was again, desperately trying to protect a man who ended up refusing to speak to me.

I was so self-sacrificial that, looking back, it made me want to vomit.

For some reason I thought TERRORISTS!!! Not ever having heard of ISIS I drove around emailing the county and CDC about al-Qaeda. Not understanding what the feces smell was, I thought it was E. Coli put into the water by terrorists.

Then I drove to Grapevine to warn "the man" who I thought was sleeping in Embassy Suites. My id and debit card were missing, and I had no money and little gas. My eyes were red with broken capillaries, and I was delirious from lack of sleep and whatever else that darned fungus was doing to me, but I had to warn everyone.

As I went to a computer at the Embassy Suites an off-key, out of tune country song eerily sang, "Whatcha Gonna Do When the Well Runs Dry." Well, my "well" had run dry...I was broke. Did Satan want me to become a prostitute? "Screw you, Satan," I thought, "I'll just dig another well."

I tried to calm down and get my room, but couldn't without my id and debit card. And of course the poor guy at the front desk looked Middle Eastern, which didn't help.

I sensed that Grapevine was now evil. I couldn't get any computers to work for me in any of the hotels in Grapevine. I drove to several cities to email the county, city, and the CDC, because I felt that any cities not controlled by the CDC would have blocked emails.

I went into a hotel in Irving and furiously typed a warning about al-Qaeda, then I went to Dallas and sent another, then to other various connected cities to email again.

Like a wildcat...wait, make that a tiger... I drove through red lights and barricades and over huge grassy medians, tearing up my car, because it seemed no matter which direction I drove in, the road would try to lead me back to Embassy Suites.

There were hardly any other cars around, and I knew all the police had been out the night before when all the crowds were gathered for July 3rd fireworks...just like I knew I could drive down the shoulder on 75 the night before heading to Rockwall, because there was so much traffic the police could never get to me, even if they saw me.

If I ever made a movie from my book, I was quite certain there would be enough car action to satisfy the husbands and boyfriends.

I emailed both the county and the CDC that I had driven around DFW the night before smelling sh#t, and that if no one gave me antifungal I was going to eat antifungal vaginal suppositories.

Feeling very ill and overheated, I drove to Baylor-Carrollton ER. The Katy Perry song had someone saying, "Come back...You're Dreaming." Funny how I'd never noticed that before.

But I couldn't go back...I was out of money and almost out of gas, and I was very sick. After waiting for a doctor (I always felt better after spending a few hours in a hospital) I saw the same doctor who did my last tests and he looked at my first set of results.

At first he read the Mayo Clinic results incorrectly as negative...their report was very confusing to read...very misleading the way it was formatted. Then he said, "No, wait, it's positive" for the Histoplasmosis antibody test.

Finally! Incontrovertible proof of what I already knew I had for over two months.

Wearily, thinking this whole terrible nightmare was ending and the CDC would come and rescue us, I told the doctor he had to contact the CDC, but he said no and called Dr. Rai instead. They were going to wait for more tests before they called the CDC or gave me antifungal. I wanted to grab the doctor by the lapels and shake him for antifungal. Why was it so hard to have someone contact the CDC and/or get antifungal?!?! What the heck was it about this particular disease?!

Even though I may not have looked that bad, it felt like I had battery acid in my veins, my ears buzzed loudly, everything ached, and my eyes and the way I thought felt "off." And I couldn't sleep more than 10 minutes at a time.

Oh yeah...and the radio and musak were communicating with me.

Even if I could have, I was afraid to sleep, worrying that I might wake up permanently blind, paralyzed, or worse. Or maybe I'd wake up so deranged that I hurt myself or someone else instead of just trying to save the world by fulfilling prophecies.

No, I had to try to stay awake and watchful for any trick Satan might try to pull and in case "the man" showed up again, so I'd know it wasn't a dream. At least until I could get some antifungal and become normal again.

But no one would give me more antifungal, even though I had numerous symptoms of Disseminated Histoplasmosis and worked at ground zero under bats, which carry it, no one seemed to want to believe I actually had this fungal infection.

I emailed Dallas County and the CDC I had gotten a positive lab test from the Mayo Clinic. "The MAYO CLINIC," I wrote. "Is that good enough for ya!?"

Can you imagine how you would feel if you KNEW you were sick, but doctors and others just blew you off? Or told you there was nothing wrong. And no one believed you when you kept saying that there was something wrong in your body? If health "professionals" told you that it was "all in your head" or psychosomatic? What if you insisted you were physically ill, but you were ignored and going to be committed?

I wondered if Adam felt that way.

#  Chapter 20 - Coming and Going

(aka: "The Second Coming")

After spending a few days in Addison with all kinds of "Satanic" things going on and burning through my almost $10,000 of savings on lab tests, doctor/ER visits, and hotel rooms, I had nowhere to live and only enough money to drive to my mother's in Shreveport, LA.

It's hard to explain, but songs about going to Hell would start on jukeboxes as I walked by. No one had played the jukeboxes. The jukeboxes would just spontaneously begin placing the music in place as I walked past them...you know how it sounds when it starts moving from a standstill?

It was eerie.

Later I would wonder if, since the fungus made my body so acidic and screwed up the ions, maybe my EMV had been altered/increased, and perhaps this caused all my problems with cell phones, computers, digital clocks, "Seek" buttons on radios, etc. Maybe I was kind of like a walking magnet.

People would constantly say "Three sixes," like when playing dominoes at a table next to mine in a restaurant or playing Yahtzee, and prices started ringing up as $6.66. So many things like that happened over the course of only one day. I wondered if it was the CDC doing it.

A barrage of 666's and music about Hell over and over and over. It felt like either I was being tested or someone was trying to scare me away from DFW.

A man in Waffle House had turned to me and yelled the restaurant was filthy after he argued with the waitress about using a dirty pitcher to make iced tea. The waitress made fun of him after he left.

Another woman who spoke to me at Waffle House had been a concert pianist, but her fingers were now twisted with rheumatoid arthritis. (EVERYONE I came across had an autoimmune disease or a family member had one.) When the woman went to her car she just sat there staring at me with her mouth open for a long time. Maybe her radio was "talking" to her, too?

I wondered how many people in DFW were going batsh#t crazy.

Then I thought, wouldn't it be funny if half were going super-Satanic and half super-religious, and a bunch of "Satanists" were running around trying to prevent the Apocalypse that the other half of the people were trying to start.

There might be covert meetings with a Master, warlocks, and witches. And when the coven asked, "Who shall we kill tonight, Master? Who is the Chosen One?" the Master, who had also been getting messages from the radio, would reply, "We have to go to a club and kill a woman there. Her name is Lola...and she's a showgirl."

"Yesssssss," someone else would hiss, "I heard the same thing, too. And she walks like a woman but talks like a man."

Maybe a witch would complain, rolling her eyes, "I hate that b#tch! Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets."

(Note to self: Check to see if Bob Fosse's epilepsy could have been CNS histoplasmosis. What about Roy Scheider's Multiple myeloma?)

One night in Addison I had a dream that a man in a dark suit was telling me not to eat at the Waffle House anymore, saying it was filthy. He also told me NOT to eat antifungal vaginal suppositories like I told the CDC I was going to do. Then I think he asked if it was ok with me if I was used as a guinea pig to show what the disease could do, and I agreed after I was promised I would be ok and wouldn't die, go blind, or get Alzheimer's. I forgot to add "not go insane."

This man in a suit wasn't romantic, and he said he was either my brother or his brother.? Or maybe he was mentioning that I sent a letter telling him I felt of him like a brother (I guess to hide my feelings, which embarrassed me.) Then he told me to look either in or under a box in my car for a debit card, which is where I found a long-forgotten TXU debit card with just enough left on it to buy about half a tank of gas. (Months later I would find my debit card in a different box, but it had been in my trunk.?)

He told me to put my most treasured items in my car and then put an ad on craigslist to give away all my belongings, including my expensive clothes/shoes, perfumes, and Chanel makeup, since I was too sick to move them out of my apartment. There was no money left to store them, anyway.

When I woke up I checked my door and the deadbolt was still locked, so I knew it was a dream.

I finally decided to drive to Shreveport, because music played saying things like "GET OUT!" of DFW and "Heaven has a plan." It was a strangely convoluted and confusing plan, but Heaven had to be fluid to deal with any last minute changes and whatever stupid thing I decided to do.

Confused about what was going on and not realizing the fungus can invade the central nervous system and cause mood swings, religious delusions, and possibly LSD-like trips, I figured I must be part of God's plan.

Driving through East Texas on a sweltering July summer day, I noticed my ears started buzzing more loudly and I started smelling the horrible smell again. Only this time it not only smelled like feces, but also reeked of a musk-like/old semen-like scent. It reminded me of "Anchorman" when the woman says, "It smells like Bigfoot's d$ck." Not that I'd know what that smells like....

It was coming from outside, not the cat carrier.

Then the intensely strong "orgasms" started again, over and over and over. They felt just like orgasms, but without the "spent" feeling. A description of "clonus" describes it well, rhythmic waves. Wave upon wave of pleasure. Convulsive orgasmic seizures.

Sorry to be crude, but it felt like a man was having sex with me, and I came with each and every thrust, approximately once per one to three seconds...twenty to sixty intensely strong orgasmic convulsions per minute.

It was WONDERFUL!

At one point the smell and heat made my cat ill, she looked like she was covered in sweat, and it appeared she had a large wound on her chest, as if her heart was visibly sticking out of her chest. It looked like a piece of raw chicken liver was stuck on her. (When I let her out at my mother's house she was fine.) Later when I saw "signs" about "Recall" and "CAT" I wondered if the fungus could cause babies to be born with their hearts outside their chest.

Or maybe I was supposed to recall that after I moved to Texas my cat's fur would fall out every May and grow back every fall. Could the fungus cause alopecia? Or when I walked in the fields around work and my cat rubbed her face on my shoes and almost died from anorexia/possible feline histoplasmosis. I had to force-feed her with a dosing syringe.

I screamed in my car for whoever was doing this to stop...it stank and it was making me and my cat ill. The smell was so sickening I became nauseous.

When I stopped for gas I realized no one else could smell it.

For miles and miles I drove, with the intensely strong "orgasms" continuing, wave after wave, over and over non-stop. At least for an hour, maybe two, at one every one to three seconds, with small pauses...at least 800, maybe up to 3000 or so, convulsive "orgasms." It was exhausting.

Still, it was pleasurable, except for the heat and smell. I was getting tired, but I had no control over it...it just kept happening over and over, with small breaks when I couldn't smell the horrible odor. I had quickly decided it must somehow be "the man," as irrational as I now know that sounds. With the air-conditioning off and windows rolled up to keep the smell out, I drove in the hot July Texas sun through East Texas as it appeared someone or something was giving me a good pounding. It didn't hurt...in fact it felt good, but it began to really tire me out. And I was still sick.

But to be honest, I didn't want it to stop, because I felt like I was "bonding" with "the man." I sat there driving and "taking it", because I thought it was "the man" doing it, and I was in love with him.

Not understanding this might be a symptom of Histoplasmosis and being still sick, I imagined that "the man" was "punishing" me with the rough sex and smell, perhaps because I had "stood him up" July 4th, but I couldn't figure out how he was doing it.

Maybe he was proving he wasn't impotent, since I had emailed or texted asking who was impotent after hearing the Viagra commercials in Arkansas.

Finally, exhausted, I reached either the Texas/Louisiana border or the outskirts of Shreveport. The Coldplay song came on that said to say she loved him even if it was a lie, and when the words "call it true, call it true love" played I started to cry. Because, crazy as it sounds, I had fallen deeply in love with "the man" in the woods and the Rockwall Hilton, feeling as if I was "communicating" with him.

I lied about why I was crying, saying I was just tired.

It was as if someone could see and hear me in my car, because as soon as I started crying the rough "sex" stopped for a minute and then it continued less rough, as if someone had suddenly realized with a shock I was in love with him, or maybe realized that I couldn't take it anymore.

It now felt as if someone was gently making love to me, and the horrible smell stopped.

During the next few weeks, it gave me solace feeling like I wasn't alone. He was there with me...the strong, silent type.

This was the point when I started talking to "Mr. Dashboard" and having the best sex of my life for weeks, in various places, always alone, with my "invisible boyfriend." I never touched myself, and I appeared to have no control over it, but it never happened when anyone else was around.

"He" appeared to be learning new tricks as the weeks went on, with my feeling different feelings in different areas like "he" was doing all kinds of things with different things to me. He apparently took my advice to talk to some lesbians at work.... It was a good thing I thought it was somehow "the man" or I would have freaked out, not that it wasn't freaky anyway. But I imagined the CDC or someone else in the government had developed something that was able to do this to me remotely. Or that he had put something inside me in the Hilton hotel room. At least I didn't think Satan was raping me...I thought it was "the man," and it was consensual.

And I had promised him I wouldn't tell anyone.

At times it even seemed like I was tiring him out with my constant demands for more. I felt like a bride on her honeymoon, only without the wedding ceremony...and the bridegroom was invisible.

"Maybe I'm being used to test-drive this wonderful new device the CDC has developed," I thought. Kudos to them, this would make them a fortune!

I even jokingly emailed the CDC asking how they were doing it and could they give me a remote control.

When I got to the insanely hot and humid Shreveport I felt nauseous and light-headed. I yelled at Mr. Dashboard, "Are you happy? See what you've done to me!?" He seemed chagrined, since he didn't try anything as I pulled into the hospital parking lot.

Inside the hospital, I was given an IV with potassium and an anti-nausea drug in the ER, treated for "heat exhaustion," the repulsive feces/musk-like odor still clinging to my hair and clothes.

It was here the ER doctor told me about Disseminated Histoplasmosis resulting in calcium in the spleen, and I wondered where the calcium came from. I wondered if it was leached from bones and if it might cause osteoporosis.

Thinking the fungus scavenged sugar from the body, I tried to think of what else comprised bones, but couldn't and thought about other things the fungus might do.

Back in my car that night, I blurted out "polysaccharides," and an intense tingling sensation started from my forehead and went back to the nape of my neck. It almost felt as if God was stroking my head.

#  Chapter 21 - Our Love is Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma Madness

(aka: "I Sure Feel Strange, But I Sure Feel Good")

For weeks my "invisible boyfriend", who I thought was someone from the CDC, continued his torrid romance with me. We worked out a code that once meant yes and twice meant no.

I got my nails painted red and showed them to Mr. Dashboard asking if he would like me to rake them down his back as we were doing it and, BAM, "it" happened. It also happened when I let down my long hair, told him I thought I'd like it if he talked dirty to me, and when I got undressed. We went bra-shopping together and he helped me pick out sexy bras.

"Oooo, look at this black lace one, do you like it?"

BAM! One meant "yes."

"What about this red one?"

BAM!

"What about this plain beige granny one with quilting?"

Bam, Bam. Two meant "no."

"Ha, I was just joking. Look at this teal one. I love how sheer and thin the fabric is, so when you touch me you can feel me through my shirt."

BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM!!!!

There seemed to be certain songs he liked best, so I played them endlessly. Thinking there might be a camera in my car, I started dressing up so I'd look nice for my "invisible boyfriend, Mr. Dashboard" from the CDC.

Hey, it's only "stalking" if I'm not interested, right?

And no, I wasn't triggering "it." I didn't seem to have all that much control over it and couldn't seem to make it happen when I wanted it to, darn it. I even woke up once and "it" was happening, over and over again. Strange how I was always alone when "it" happened. "It" happened while I was putting on makeup and fixing my hair, lounging in the bath, watching a movie at Sci-Port, alone in an elevator at a hotel, etc.

"He" liked it when I was on my knees and when I "surrendered", and he didn't seem to like it if I tried to be dominant...he preferred me to be submissive. And he seemed to love when I begged him for it.

I couldn't understand how he could see me in my bedroom at my mother's house. I guessed the government put cameras and bugs in the rooms while we were out. But I sat on the bed clutching my nightgown to my chest, asking "him" if he wanted to see, then dropped only the straps off my shoulders, teasing "him," and BAAAAM! I flew back into my pillows from the force of the "orgasm," giggling with glee.

I was in LOVE! And SO happy! I wasn't sure who "he" was...maybe someone from the CDC? I didn't know, but I wanted it to last forever!

"He" made me feel so sexy, so feminine, so...pretty. I glowed. It was heaven.

I started avoiding people so I could spend more time with my secret CDC lover, "Mr. Dashboard/my invisible boyfriend." I thought "the man" from the CDC was doing this to me and watching me, and the idea that the faceless man from the woods/room 528 was in a darkened room somehow controlling what I was feeling and watching me was strangely exciting.

Of course, the music reflected what was going on 24/7 now, and we were having "conversations" in between the lovemaking. Kind of one-sided...I did all the talking and he responded with the radio or the one/two code.

We were really getting to know each other.

I couldn't figure out how "the man" from the CDC could spend so much time watching me and still make it to various CDC photo-ops. And what a mess his floor must be by now!

He must be going through boxes and boxes of Kleenex. How would he explain THAT on requisition forms?

I'm sure the real-life Director of the CDC had no earthly idea that for weeks I was under the impression I'd been having an intensely passionate affair with him or someone from his agency.

#  Chapter 22 - Just the Facts, Ma'am

(aka: "You Wanted In and Now You're Here")

To make this book a little shorter, I'll just skim over the events that happened in Shreveport and Smyrna. (I didn't know until afterwards that Smyrna is mentioned in Revelations.)

While staying with my mother in Shreveport, she kept locking me out of the house and constantly accused me of taking drugs because I was sick. She apparently couldn't register that I had a disease and that's why I felt sick. She was always accusing people of wrongdoing.

My "invisible boyfriend" paid daily visits to me in Shreveport. And the TV and radio continued to give me "hints." For example, I couldn't give blood or plasma or be an organ donor, because I could infect someone with the fungus. Was that true?

And there were more "signs." For example, I went to AA meetings to have people to talk to, and at one a man spoke about his daughter who died from glioma and he believed it was for a reason. I went home and Googled glioma and one photo looked exactly like a photo of stars that was in the Catholic Church where the meeting was held. Later I read the fungus "mimics" glioma.

Weird how I smelled incense in odd places where incense wasn't burning. "Must be the Catholics," I thought.

The friend who had told me about the prophecies had gotten sick with bloody diarrhea like I had, gone to the hospital, was acting strangely, got MRSA, and was given too much of a medicine he was allergic to. He was in a coma for nine days around the time I was "fulfilling prophecies." I listened to his hospital fubar experience, looking at him with his golden blonde hair which was almost the same color as I had mine done when I first got sick. His hair almost looked like a lion's mane. And he's a Leo, I think, and born 1962, like me.

I asked him about a friend he had at our college in Ruston who had a breakdown and was found walking barefoot down the highway carrying a cross. He said the friend was also using a garden hose to "baptize" people as they walked by. Bats are in Ruston...bats are everywhere. I had my suspicions about what was wrong with his friend.

He also mentioned his sister, who died from lupus, and told me something I had never known before. They used to watch bats fly at night where they lived. Apparently there was a bat colony in the oak trees across the street. This was only a couple of blocks from where I grew up.

At one point a Centenary College sign jumped out at me. Going there, I saw nothing special, but got out to pray. As I was walking back to my car I stopped. "Is somebody watching me in my car?" I asked aloud.

Immediately a bell started to toll. I hadn't known there was a church there. The bell gave one resounding ring...one...that meant yes. So odd. Yes, it was now 1:00 pm, but I hadn't known it was or planned it that way.

Another time, I was upset about something...maybe "the man" never showing up in person anymore, and I went back to Centenary, got out of my car, and raising my voice turned my face up to Heaven..."Hey, God. We need to talk!"

"Someone keeps f#@king me in my car!!! And no one will talk to me. It's driving me crazy!"

My "invisible boyfriend" went away for a day or two after that, but returned when I asked him to. The entire time I was in Shreveport he visited, although it wasn't anything like what happened in East Texas.

At my mother's house I read a very old National Geographic article about a radon spa that helped people with autoimmune diseases for some unknown reason. Since low-level radiation boosts the immune system, I thought this was just one more example of how "autoimmune" diseases are actually the immune system fighting a pathogen.

Being drawn to the El Dorado hotel, across the river from another Outdoor World, I would wander around the hotel for hours and hours, experiencing the same issue with the musak that I had at Embassy Suites. At one point I went to Sam's Town and felt an overwhelming compulsion to go up an escalator and pass some meeting rooms: The Arkansas Room, The Louisiana Room, and The Texas Room (I forget what order). As I walked past The Arkansas Room I felt a visceral "pull."

Was someone in Arkansas or The Arkansas Room? Was I supposed to drive to Arkansas? I couldn't drive to Arkansas, I probably needed an oil change. It had been a long time since my oil was changed, and I had the mechanic somehow disengage the warning light since I liked to change oil every 5000 miles instead of every 3000 since I read newer oils need changing less often. It had been more than 5000 miles since my last change...I was fairly certain of that.

In my car I asked, "I wonder if I need to change my oil?" Immediately, the "Change Oil" light came on, and I was parked at the time. It was as if my car was possessed.

One night I got a room at the El Dorado, but no one showed up. I emailed the CDC they could kiss my big fat @ss and went to my car. Immediately a song played that jokingly made fun of my "big fat @ss."

A night my mother locked me out of the house and I spent the night in my car, I heard a song to follow the star. The only star I could see was to the ENE and I thought it was Sirius due to the time of year and location (although it might have been Venus). As I tried to sleep the radio kept playing love songs like Iris. I cried and then the next and last song before I turned off the radio to sleep was Silent Lucidity:

Hush now don't cry

Wipe away the teardrop from your eye...

I .... will be watching over you

I ... am gonna help you see it through

I ... will protect you in the night

I ... am smiling next to you, in silent lucidity

Of course, it must have been random, but it made me feel better anyway. I imagined it came from "the man," a guardian angel, or God.

One thing happened that I can't explain with coincidences. My mother confronted me once when I came in about taking the door key. There was only one key in the house for the front and back doors, and it was kept in the lock of the front door. If the key was missing there was no way to lock the door, or if the doors were locked there was no way to exit through the doors without the key.

My mother usually accidentally placed the key in her pants pocket and forgot it. But she was accusing me of having it. I looked at the front door and there was no key. Then my mother followed me to a back bedroom, haranguing me, and when we came out again the key was in the front door lock!

Neither of us had been near the door, so I don't know how the key got into the lock on the front door. It was so weird! And all of a sudden there were three twenty-dollar bills in a side pocket of my purse that I had checked numerous times since I had no money.

I suppose I could have overlooked the money over and over and over again, but I can't think of anything to explain the key.

Finally having enough of my mother, I left her house to stay at a "mission." Told I would have to join their year-long "program," I told Mr. Dashboard, "I'm not staying there a year!"

Mr. Dashboard replied, as always, with the radio, "I will wait, I will wait for you."

Off and on during the day I kept saying, "No! I'm not staying there a year." And Mumford & Sons kept answering over and over, "I will wait, I will wait for you." Even the next morning when I again insisted I wouldn't stay there a year, Mr. Dashboard would use Mumford & Sons to assure me he would wait for me.

Remembering the star to the ENE, I decided it might mean Atlanta or my sister's, since they were in that direction. As I drove, with my expired tags and insurance and missing driver's license, I prayed for God to protect me from the police.

Everywhere I drove there were lots of police on the highway, but they always pulled over someone not too far in front of me.

I thought the CDC was doing it, clearing the way for me.

In Tupelo, I never had a visit from my "invisible boyfriend," and I started getting better at my sister's house, but her husband forced me to leave after about a week, which made me angry since I had sent her quite a bit of money the previous year.

Then I drove to Smyrna, where I stayed for a few months since I felt better there. When I first arrived in town I drove near the CDC at night to see if I became ill or smelled anything. I didn't.

Even though no one from the CDC would talk to me, I still wanted to protect them.

My first evening in Smyrna, someone on the radio creamed, "Go home!" and I said, "Don't tell me what to do!" The song on the radio replied, "You're right, I can't tell you what to do." Weird.

I did become very ill in Atlanta near the airport and on Freedom Parkway, and in Doraville, Marietta, and other cities that adjoined Atlanta. Places connected much like how all the cities converged in DFW. After driving through those areas my "invisible boyfriend" would visit.

And when I drove to one area I smelled the feces smell again. Ironically, I was half-way between Dallas, Georgia and Carrollton, Georgia. I guess the bats weren't certain which Dallas/Carrollton I would be in.

In Smyrna the bottoms of my feet felt like they were bubbling, and my body vibrated so hard it made the bed feel like a massage bed, and the headboard banged against the wall. I Googled and it was fibromyalgia. Later throughout the months, there would be a lot of vibrating. At one point the vibrating was so strong in my arms that it might have been considered "tremors."

It was lucky I was so averse to doctors, preferring to let my robust good health flourish with the sleep and nourishing food that I loved. And vitamin/mineral supplements. I preferred nature as a healer to doctors...the doctors who all seemed to have some type of obsessive-compulsive disorder with their prescription pads.

"Doctors are like drug pushers," I tweeted to Dr. Frieden. "Drug pushers with medical licenses."

The reason my aversion was so lucky is because now none of those doctors who would fight to the bitter end claiming all my symptoms were NOT caused by the histoplasmosis couldn't try to claim the histoplasmosis was an opportunistic infection. And they couldn't claim any of my symptoms were side effects to prescriptions.

My innate laziness had finally paid off. There was nothing but the bats and the fungus that could have caused everything I experienced.

Of course, they'd still probably claim it was all in my head. "Yeah, you're right, it IS in my head. And in my chest, and in my abdomen, and in my feet!"

Unlike other people, I wasn't overly impressed by most doctors.

Also, I was not as weak-willed and insecure as I might have seemed while ill...I have a very basic sense of my intelligence and sanity, and no mere doctor, just the same types of guys and gals I went to school with, could convince me otherwise. After all, I knew that I always tested higher than those classmates who were now doctors, and I'm no omniscient God-like being...and neither are they.

While in Smyrna, I sent a joking email to the CDC that I had to go back to my room because I left God and Satan there, and if I left them there alone too long Satan would drink all the booze...that he always came over uninvited...it was so annoying. I hoped they realized it was a joke.

Then again, maybe they didn't. I wasn't overly impressed with the CDC, the agency that a Congressman had called the "gold standard." Sorry to sound cruel, but if the CDC is the best and the brightest these days, then we're ALL in big trouble.

Being a woman, I'm well-aware that even some of the prettiest girls owe their attractiveness to smoke and mirrors. There's a lot of silicone spray/flat irons to make their hair "naturally" shiny and sleek, lots of highlights to create "natural" sun-kissed streaks, lots of padded pushup bras and Spanx to create a "flawless" figure, lots of Crest strips to create that "naturally" bright smile, and lots of primer and makeup to create those perfect poreless beautiful faces, with their "naturally" thick and dark lash extensions/false eyelashes.

The CDC appeared similar to these women to me. Perhaps the CDC's and its director's "goodness, intelligence, and competence" were equally distorted and improved by their busy media relations department's careful crafting of reputations and accomplishments.

I'll bet they hadn't even caught the sarcasm in my emails and really thought I had been running around in a mental asylum clothed only in a fig leaf and garlic necklace. The CDC Director eventually appeared to me to be the "incompetent boob" one Georgia congressman called him.

But I hadn't realized that in Smyrna, as I sobbed uncontrollably and sent letter after letter to Dr. Frieden to please speak with me. And could someone get me some antifungal?! One of the last letters was marked "confidential" and asked if he had been in DFW and could he mail my necklace back. I literally BEGGED him to allow someone, anyone, to speak to me for just a minute. No one contacted me.

Getting down on my knees, I cried and begged God to send "the man" to me. "I'll do anything you want," I implored Him. "You can do anything to me you want...give me leukemia, make me go blind, make my face rot off, kill me...whatever it is you want to do to me...whatever your plan is. Just please, PLEASE send him to me...I'm BEGGING you," I sobbed.

And God answered my prayer. The answer was, "No."

No one came, except for me of course, whether I wanted to or not, but someone changed the a/c setting while I was out of the motel room. I didn't think maintenance or anyone had been in there while I was gone.

And the music kept being oddly coincidental.

One night in my car my entire body was filled with an INTENSE tingling. As it started I had just landed on a station where the words began "There is a God, there was a Christ, there was a Crucifixion, and Christ is Coming Again." The intense tingling throughout my body lasted about 60 seconds, steady and strong, almost like an electrical current. And those were the only words I heard...the rest was instrumental.

Creepy...I do remember the a/c vent was blowing cold air on my right elbow, so maybe that caused the intense tingling...I guess a symptom of fibromyalgia?...it was NOT an adrenaline rush. No, this tingling was different from that.

Just prior to this "message" I had said, "Let's just do this!" and the song played, "I've Got a Feeling, That Tonight's Gonna Be a Good Night." For two weeks I gave myself pregnancy tests, just in case. Yeah, I know it's silly, but I didn't want to drink or smoke if I was. And, as I tweeted Dr. Frieden, I thought parthenogenesis was possible with a sudden release of calcium and then phosphorylation of something that would prevent meiosis. Didn't histoplasmosis cause hypercalcemia and excess phosphorous? And Histoplasmosis could do something in the womb concerning melanin, so it was possible I could give birth to a black baby girl without having sex. It was an interesting theory, anyway.

And when I said I'd love to be the mother and wanted a girl this time, a song immediately played, "I want the same thing, too."

Later I would wonder, if low electrical currents could help kill pathogens, like AIDS, hepatitis, and cancer, for all I knew I could have unknowingly been cured of one or deadly diseases when a low electrical current was created throughout my body by fungal hyphae. Maybe that really WAS a good night.

That's what I'm saying. We could be saved from horrible things all the time and never even realize it. That man who dumped you could end up killing his wife. That divorce or employment termination could have moved you away from bats. That traumatic series of events could have forced you to move away from something horrible or toward something wonderful.

You never know.

Btw, James Holmes does not deserve to die IMO. He did everything he was supposed to do when he became ill. He went to a psychiatrist, who failed him. He tried to get help. He warned a woman to stay away from him. Evil, cold-blooded killers don't warn people to stay away so he won't hurt them.

Anyway, in Smyrna, I emailed myself I needed answers, and a song played he needed answers, too. I emailed myself were any of my theories correct and to send me a sign. I heard the lyrics to a song that "The Dog Days Are Over" ...here come the horses.

Another night a profane song started that said all the things he was going to do to me and my jaw dropped open. I stared at the radio and the singer said, "Yeah, I see you get what I'm talkin' about." LOL...I couldn't wait.

I stared out at my side rearview mirror and the song said he saw me looking in the mirror. I was eating in my car and some food fell out of my mouth and he made fun of the way I ate. Things like this (and even much more specific ones) happened constantly, and the songs also hinted at other diseases and conditions that might be caused by Histoplasmosis. (One autopsy proved Disseminated Histoplasmosis in a victim after negative lab test results and indicated basic molecular effects that could wreak havoc on the human body.)

One time I joked to the CDC that I was glad my right hand, particularly the middle finger of my right hand, was still usable...I hated the thought of losing the use of my right hand. When I went to my car I was amazed at how many songs, played one after another, had a guy telling a woman he'd be her "left-hand man."

And of course there were never-ending songs about being the chosen one, an angel on the run, heaven-sent, etc. It seemed every song that played had something like that.

I said aloud I liked when a man, while being intimate, to call me "baby." I never realized how many songs there were that had a man calling a woman baby that played the rest of the day after I said that.

The songs told me to say my fantasies out loud, and then the songs would comment on and describe my fantasies. The songs also described my lingerie and said he liked my body and liked seeing me naked. Fearing cameras hidden in my room, I started changing clothes in the bathroom in the dark.

I asked the CDC Director if it was normal for the fungus to focus on all the erogenous zones so much...the HIT-or-miss, puh-JEYE-na, and Mipples. He never replied, of course.

One night I was thinking about how a much older man had a stroke and a PET scan indicated damage to an area of his brain. He became a pedophile. Usually pedophiles start at a young age, and I thought of Sandusky. Then I blurted out "Pedophilia!" and the radio immediately sang, "She's Unbelievable!"

I actually thought the whole radio thing was crazy, but it seemed to be accurate about the things I was able to check. And it was the only thing that would talk to me.

At a hotel in Atlanta I saw the bat colony of 25-30 bats flying over an adjoining building and right over my head. It seemed I couldn't escape from bat colonies!

I got on Twitter to tell the director and seeing his wedding band had a meltdown. Trying to hold back the tears, I searched the Internet for friends' numbers to call. "When did Renee's number get disconnected?" I wondered.

I wanted to burst out sobbing, but I was in a hotel lobby. All I could do was pace back and forth, trying not to scream. Apparently, I had forgotten what was said in the Hilton hotel room. But my memory was fuzzy, because my brain was fuzzy. Fuzzy with fungus, like a piece of old cheese.

I realize it was irrational, but oh well. He could have called and just said, "Why no. I was never in DFW at that time or in the woods or in room 528 of the Hilton Hotel. It was probably just a dream or hallucination. After all, those are symptoms of your disease." And then I would have said "thank you very much," quickly gotten over "the man," and been on my happy way.

But he refused to tell me. Was he a sadist!? I wasn't a masochist!!! I didn't like pain. Maybe a little light bondage, but that was it.

Filled with hostility, I taunted Dr. Frieden on Twitter, saying he was ugly and I hated his face and hated him. I mentioned the CIA and how someone told me they could make people have heart attacks remotely. Maybe the CIA would kill him. I said I wasn't afraid to die, was he?

Immediately after, I went to my car. As the engine started, The Toadies coincidentally sang, "Do you wanna die?" It startled me. "Do you wanna die? Do you wanna die!? Do you wanna die!? Do you wanna die!? DO YOU WANNA DIE!? DO YOU WANNA DIE!?!? DO YOU WANNA DIE!?!?"

"No, not really, but I'm not afraid to anymore," and the radio replied, "I promise you I will treat you well, my sweet angel, so help me Jesus."

So many coincidences...no wonder I was delusional.

I flipped stations, saying I couldn't take this anymore, and the radio sang, "After all this pain, think of all the joy it will bring."

So weird. You can imagine how if your head was filled with fungus all these coincidences would be off-putting. Why wouldn't those jerks at the CDC HELP me!? I TOLD them I tried getting to a hospital and couldn't, and they KNEW what I had! And my emails/letters/tweets were like a real-time documentary of all the weird things that were going on. They wouldn't even contact me to inform me that what was going on were symptoms...I had to figure that out myself.

Arriving back at my extended stay motel, I realized the Toadies had been singing "Possum Kingdom." And then I saw a possum walk by me. And then another possum walked past me. And I realized possums' slightly lower body temperature kills rabies, so why not lower humans' body temperature to kill it? It made sense to me. But maybe it's just another stupid idea.

Thinking of the night in the woods with my reddened blurry eyes, I emailed or tweeted Dr. Frieden something about Coldplay's song, "Remember once upon a time, when I was yours and you were blind. The fire would sparkle in your eyes and mine." Then I turned on the radio and Jason Derulo immediately sang, "Your eyes remind me of a Coldplay song." Weird.

Then I tweeted, "Are you a Doubting Thomas?" to Dr. Thomas Frieden. The radio replied, "No, I don't doubt."

I said aloud, "The signs are a little ambiguous, can you please be more obvious and specific when giving me a sign?" I forget what song started the next time I turned on the radio, but I remember the effect was the same as if someone on the radio screamed, "Susan, multiple sclerosis is disseminated histoplasmosis!!!"

Lil Jon screamed from the radio, over and over, "Bend ova, make ya knees touch ya elbows. Bend ova, make ya knees touch ya elbows. Bend ova, make ya knees touch ya elbows."

"Ok Mr. Dashboard, but give me a week to limber up," I replied. Then I realized what it must mean and emailed Dr. Frieden, "The fungus affects synovial fluid and/or cartilage? Synovitis? Synovial sarcoma?"

MKTO sang, "I wanna thrill you like Michael (Jackson=lupus, vitiligo, and arthritis), I wanna kiss you like Prince (epilepsy and bad hips), Let's get it on like Marvin Gaye (both Marvin Gaye's father, who killed him, and Tammi Terrell, a very close friend, had brain tumors, one benign and one malignant), Like Hathaway..."

"Hathaway. Who's Hathaway?" I wondered. So I Googled it. Hathaway=Donnie=paranoid schizophrenia.

That's when I realized..."Oh my God, I've been paranoid schizophrenic...the fungus can cause paranoid schizophrenia!"

Sia sang over and over she wanted to swing from the "Chandelier", everywhere I went people were cleaning chandeliers, and EVERY woman on TV and in real life, even an apparent butch lesbian in men's jeans with a crewcut, had on...chandelier earrings. "Could the fungus affect Chandelier cells?" I asked the CDC.

And then came on onslaught of pyramids...pyramidal neurons?

Spiders were in my room and all over my car, Iggy Azalea and Rita Ora would NOT stop singing "Black Widow Spider," and then the announcer introduced Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" by saying, "What's she trying to shake off? Spiders?" So I emailed the CDC something about arachnoid/subarachnoid. Only later would I read that the fungus can cause arachnoiditis. That would explain the feeling of cold water dripping on my legs. And could it affect the cerebrospinal fluid in the subarachnoid space? What about the lumbar subarachnoid?

There were signs I couldn't understand about Kanye West and Australia, until the radio mentioned Kanye West had been taken to the hospital in Australia due to a severe headache and possible seizure. Later he would become psychotic. And why did 100,000 dead bats fall from the sky in Australia January 2014? Did the Australian government know something the CDC didn't?

Why the signs about Bobby Brown? And Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." Was it in the blood supply?

Lots of signs about mirrors...maybe mirror neurons, associated with empathy and autism?

And why, when the music made me think there might be a link between one disease and algae, did I see so many "signs" as I drove to the library to email the CDC? Wouldn't you think it was odd there were so many signs about pool algae and other algae along the route, as well as a sign close to your destination of an auto repair shop named "Al G's"?

I emailed myself for the government to see that I was sick of the b.s. and they better do something soon...or ELSE. Then I went to my car and heard Phillip Phillips immediately sing, "Settle down it'll all be clear. Don't pay no mind to the demons they fill you with fear. The trouble it might drag you down. If you get lost, you can always be found. Just know you're not alone 'cause I'm going to make this place your home."

This place? Smyrna!?!? No offense to the Smyrnians or Smyrtians or whatever they called themselves, but I didn't want to live in SMYRNA! Although the radio had promised he would buy me a new car and a new home way up in the West Hills, and there WAS a small group of houses called Westhills in Smyrna.

But could my love for "the man" survive living in Smyrna? I didn't think so.

I dreamed about Parkinson's disease, the movie Brian's song (embryonal cell carcinoma?), the word "blastocytes" and "parthenogenesis." How did I even KNOW those words?

I tweeted I felt almost suicidal and could Dr. Frieden PLEASE just put on a pair of gloves, type an anonymous note, and send it to me that said "no the CDC wasn't there," or "yes someone might have been there but it wasn't me," or ANYTHING?

"I'm not a mean person, normally, I swear. Usually I'm a very nice person. I'm BEGGING you to have someone speak to me for just ten seconds, please, please, please, please, please" I tweeted to him.

He didn't reply, and I tweeted, "Seriously!? I said I would kill myself and you still won't reply!?" I wasn't going to kill myself, not then anyway, but it sure felt so bad sometimes I considered it.

So I ranted at him on Twitter...vicious insults. Sooo many horrible tweets. I wanted to make him feel as bad as I did. I wouldn't hit him, so I "hit" him with words. At that point I felt like I had never hated anyone so much. This grinning a-hole was just so rude!!!

"Why do grin so much?" I asked him. "If I was doing as bad a job as you are I sure as h-ll wouldn't go around GRINNING about it!"

My tongue (fingers, actually) were as acidic as my blood had been while most ill with the fungus. I never knew I could say (or type) such ugly things. But I didn't care. I was suffering and my coworkers were sick, and Dr. Freiden apparently couldn't care less. Even if he didn't care personally, it was his JOB to do something. There weren't enough expletives in the English language to express my hatred for the Director of the CDC at that point.

But then when I got over it I tweeted more diseases and facts to back up my opinions. And I joked with him.

There were so many "signs". Another example was when I got into my car and someone had pulled the emergency brake, my car smelled like my dad, and a Diet Coke with "Share a Coke with your Dad" had come out of the machine. My dad was a sports writer, and the radio said Coldplay would be at an ALS fundraiser. I Googled ALS...Lou Gehrig's disease, thought it was related, and smiled up at my deceased father saying, "Today-ay-ay I feel like the luckiest gir-ir-irl on the face of the ear-ear-earth." My dad got it. He was the one who had me watch a clip of the farewell speech.

Another "sign" was seeing a muscular African-American girl in a tennis outfit getting her tennis gear out of her trunk at the hotel entrance, right in front of me. So I Googled the Williams sisters. Venus Williams...Sjögren's **Syndrome...an autoimmune disorder that causes dry mouth, eyes, and "elsewhere." I had complained at Care Now that my mouth was extraordinarily dry even when I guzzled water, I bought eye drops for my dry eyes, and...well, you know...I was dry elsewhere.**

There were dreams and songs and "signs" about soooo many diseases and people who had diseases. I'll have to add them later, because there were too many to mention here and I want to finish this book.

But there were so many signs about diseases and "cures". It was overwhelming. Some seemed stupid, but others seemed plausible. And the CDC steadfastly refused to comment on them. To be fair, many were sent from made-up emails/people or literary characters/historical figures, since I suspected the CDC might try to block my messages.

One message was from Putin and told them he selected "Media" from the pull-down menu because there was no choice for "Supreme Leader of the Soviet Union." (Yes, I know it's not the Soviet Union anymore.)

Another was from Dr. Marvin Gaye of the Atlanta Institute for Sexual Healing.

Some had been written as if someone else was writing about me...something about whooping cough and measles and ferret saliva with sialic acid and worms drying out and polyphenols...the CDC didn't REALLY believe I had been running around in a fig leaf and garlic necklace, did they!? Or that I met the singer Seal!? Lol...if so, they're kind of gullible for such "smart" people.

I'll add everything later, but I want to hurry and mail this to Dr. Frieden. Wait, make that: I'll add everything later if I'm not in a federal prison for threatening to f#@k the Director of the CDC to death.

One of the weirder things was when I was in bed one night in Atlanta unknowingly being pooped on by the 25-30 bats flying around the adjoining property and, like one of the Pythia from the Oracle of Delphi, saying words and phrases in some type of free word-association way. And I was saying (because of "signs" about mustard gas I tweeted to the director) "Clue...Colonel Mustard...Miss Scarlet...burning of Atlanta..." and suddenly the tops of my feet started to feel warm and got very hot. "Owww!" I cried out as they got so hot they felt like they were on fire. It felt like the tops of my feet had burst into flames and I could feel them licking my legs for about five seconds.

Paresthesia? But a curious kind of paresthesia...it felt like flames ignited and I was being burned at the stake, with flames brushing my legs.

And I thought...Joan of Arc had symptoms...and so did Vivien Leigh.

Then the tops of my feet felt like someone was putting cold compresses on them.

I continued with my word association game from "signs" I'd seen. "Rome...Rome apples...Roman Holiday?...Audrey Hepburn?"

Suddenly I felt a sharp pain in my back on my right-hand side, midway on my back and between my ribs. It felt like someone had stabbed me in the back. Was it Dr. Tw@t? Oh well, I had done the same to him. And then I thought, "Et tu, Brute?" Caesar...epilepsy. It seemed to fit.

"Stop it!" I angrily told whoever it was that was hurting me, lol. And it stopped.

In Smyrna/Atlanta the "signs" and dreams came fast and furious. It was as if all the angels had heard and some were coming to let me know they, too, or someone they loved had been victims of this fungal disease and the bats.

I imagined their spreading the word that someone was listening...someone who wasn't playing Angry Birds or Candy Crush on their phone and was paying attention to what appeared to be their cosmic game of charades...the only form of communication left available to them.

"Quick!" I thought of their saying. "Hurry up and give her more clues before she gets better and starts ignoring the signs like everyone else does!"

It all seemed like I was the star of The Truman Show, and people/events were being directed by someone unknown (I assumed the Director of the CDC) and everyone had a script except me. I had to improvise.

All the little pains that felt like pin pricks and pinches reminded me of the Salem witch trials and stories of poltergeists pinching), biting, hitting, and tripping people.

One night I went to my car and told Mr. Dashboard, "I'm going to drive around the block. I want to know 1) if I should stay in Smyrna, 2) if there's a man here for me, and 3) what the HECK is going on." As I drove slowly around the block the radio played 1) "Stay," 2) "If you gave me the chance I would take it," and 3) "This is it, the Apocalypse."

Coincidences, sure. But hundreds a day, it seemed. But you might understand how at some point it would appear there was more going on than just coincidences.

The sicker I was, the more coincidences...the better I was, the more random songs seemed.

And I already mentioned the time I cried and asked if "the man" was real and the words I heard in the musak were, "I'm real." Things like that happened all the time.

So maybe I can be excused, since I was so sick and it seemed so much like someone was "communicating" with me via songs, dreams, and signs, for thinking that maybe somehow it was the Director of the CDC.

After all, who else could it have been?

#  Chapter 23 – Have a Little Sympathy

(aka: "With a Taste of a Poison Paradise")

The following song kept playing in DFW and later in Smyrna. At first, it frightened me:

"Please allow me to introduce myself" (Thanks, but we've already met)

"...I stuck around St. Petersburg  
When I saw it was a time for a change  
Killed the czar and his ministers  
Anastasia screamed in vain

I rode a tank  
Held a general's rank  
When the blitzkrieg raged  
And the bodies stank

Pleased to meet you  
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah  
Ah, what's puzzling you  
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah...

I shouted out,  
Who killed the Kennedys?  
When after all  
It was you and me..."

But then I realized "Sympathy for the Devil" was more hints:

"I stuck around St. Petersburg..."

Lenin, an insomniac with apparent epilepsy, who died from unexplained seizures or stroke and/or apparently a status epilepticus. Lenin, who was suspected of being intellectually challenged as a small child, with his possible autism as he repeatedly banged his over-sized head (hydrocephalus?) against the floor.

"When the blitzkrieg raged..."

Hitler, with his violent gastrointestinal problems and embarrassing uncontrollable flatulence (trust me, that's a symptom). His low libido and rumored cryptorchidism. Researchers have suggested he suffered from  irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, irregular heartbeat, coronary sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and tinnitus (sound familiar?). Hitler, limping as he dragged half of his body around the bunker. **Hemiparesis** / **Hemiplegia?** Goebbels, who suffered from inflammation of the lungs and a deformed right foot. And Himmler with lifelong ailments, including stomach complaints. I had never known what poor health the top Nazi leaders had, or that Middle Eastern terrorists like Bin Laden and Hussein had, before I became ill.

"Who killed the Kennedys?"

JFK, constantly in and out of hospitals with his gastrointestinal problems, static hypotension, Addison's disease (auto-immune polyendocrine syndrome type II?), autoimmune adrenal failure, hypothyroidism, and possible pernicious anemia/colitis/celiac disease/Cushing disease, etc. Oswald, with his fibrous thymus. And Jackie with her brain cancer...Ari with his myasthenia gravis...his daughter's hirsutism and pulmonary edema...Callas with her dermatomyositis.

I wondered about Mao Tse-tung with multiple lung and heart ailments and rumors that he possibly had Parkinson's disease in addition to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

"And I was 'round when Jesus Christ  
Had his moment of doubt and pain  
Made damn sure that Pilate  
Washed his hands and sealed his fate"

The night Jesus was arrested he sweat blood...hematidrosis, unknown cause. It can be caused by primary thrombocytopenic purpura, which can be caused by disseminated histoplasmosis.

Could it possibly be? All the people throughout history that I had an interest in and read about (historical biographies were my favorite form of literature). The list was too long to include here, but it was an impressive Who's Who of history. All their physical and mental problems.

Almost every person I had ever heard of suffered and/or died from something I thought could be caused by the same disease I had.

This was just too much. They couldn't ALL have had it, could they?

I knew from my research that psilocybin could cause people to figure out cures for disease...not by learning new information and gaining new skills, but from UNLEARNING incorrect information. But I also knew hallucinogens could cause you to make connections that didn't exist in reality and cause you to believe that you had come up with something brilliant when in reality you hadn't.

So, understandably, I was confused. But I DID know I was correct about MY disease being disseminated histoplasmosis. So I knew that I had at least figured out how to help myself. And it's ok if I didn't save the world. It was ok if I only saved one person, and it was ok if that one person was me.

Unfortunately, the fungus might be deluding me into thinking that I was helping millions of others, too. So I prepared myself for the disappointing day I finally woke up to the ugly reality that I was wrong about everything.

#  Chapter 24 - Got a Strange Magic

(aka: "What Have I Done to Deserve This")

Although I felt better in Smyrna, I could tell there were apparently bats in certain areas of Marietta, Atlanta, and surrounding cities.

The doctor at the Rowlett Hospital told my sister it would take a year or two for me to get well, but from what I read I needed months of oral antifungal to do so. Antifungal several doctors refused to give me, always saying, "Well, you don't LOOK that sick."

Do epileptics "look sick"? Because later I would have an apparent lightning-fast epileptic-type seizure that appeared to emanate from my left temporal lobe. Is that temporal lobe epilepsy, cause unknown? Idk, I'm not a doctor. But people who don't "look sick" drop dead all the time.

Is "not looking sick" some sort of diagnosis I've never heard of?

Later I would feel "tingling" in different areas of my brain...the occipital lobe, the parietal lobe, and a band across the top of my head. Were those partial seizures of temporal lobe epilepsy?

What was the weird "crackling" in my head? Was it really neurotoxins released by yeast, like I read? And why did it feel like ice picks were jabbed into my ears?

Was it all just part of my "hypochondriasis"? The "hypochondriasis" that made lymph ooze out of my forehead and red blotches appear on my palms, like stigmata. Somehow, my "psychosomatic" illness made blue lumps and bruises appear on my hands, lumps appear on my face, bruises and broken blood veins appear on my eyelids and eyeballs, cause me to go temporarily blind, give me an inflamed liver, rashes-some crusted with pus, and strange growths on my skin.

Wow! I should take my act on the road. "Come one, come all, and see the amazing woman who can cause lymph to ooze and lumps to appear, ALL USING ONLY HER MIND!"

Why, I could make a fortune! A one-woman freak show.

But back to epilepsy. When I Googled it, I found a type that occurs 25% more often in lower socio-economic populations for unknown reasons. When I went to my car the announcer stated some "news": something like that during Katrina 50% of upper-income houses flooded compared to 75% of lower-income houses. That's 25% more lower socio-economic victims (well, not exactly mathematically correct, but you get the connection), just like the epilepsy. (They also have more sarcoidosis.)

Katrina was old news. Why did the radio mention it now? And I wondered, aren't lower-income houses traditionally built in lower-lying areas? And people worked in more industrial-type areas/buildings...big run-down warehouses with holes in the ceiling for bats to enter? Just like at least two or three, maybe more, of my old workplaces in DFW? Workplaces where I got sick. Old swampy, marshy areas. The poor people eating inexpensive white bread and sugar and drinking sugary sodas and Kool-Aid...feeding the fungus?

Did the moths the bats eat prefer low-lying, damp areas? Or did the fungus thrive better there?

Not even searching for it, I found info about kidney disease of unknown cause in field workers in Central America. The disease affected only the workers in the lower-lying fields and not those 500 feet higher up. The effects on the kidneys matched disseminated histoplasmosis. Could it be that?

I constantly mailed, faxed, and emailed doctors, researchers, and medical/research facilities all my beliefs concerning the fungus, even in other countries. I was convinced at least some of it was right, at least in some people. People like me infected with fungus. I couldn't possibly be the only one with disseminated histoplasmosis that doctors misdiagnosed.

And if even one idea was correct, I wanted someone somewhere to realize it in case I died. And if I was wrong, so what if I embarrassed myself or appeared crazy? Because...what if I'm right?

"If I'm wrong I'm just another nut...an insane idiot, one of many. But if I'm right? Well, if I'm right this is the greatest story ever told!" I was willing to roll the dice.

In Smyrna, I did something I shouldn't have. I started "looking for" and "forcing" signs instead of waiting for them to walk up and slap me in the face like they had been doing.

While searching, I came across a park to walk in, some sort of old battlefield, and saw a plaque "Climax on Cheathum Hill." After reading the sign and seeing a huge hawk on a cannon (hawks eat bats) I laughed realizing that I probably would do just what the sign suggested.

And after my walk I did climax on Cheathum Hill, in my car and against my will, while the radio sang "Stay" and something about "until Christmas" after I asked Mr. Dashboard again if I should stay in Georgia or not.

Then I saw "Wallis" on a sign. As in Wallis Simpson. And Edward VIII. It all seemed to fit.

Incredibly frustrated with the CDC ignoring me, I went to my car and, instead of talking to it, I just THOUGHT about how Dr. Frieden was apparently doing nothing. I was sick of it and would go to the press. Wasn't he worried? And Adam Lambert sang:

"Hey, slow it down  
Whataya want from me  
Whataya want from me  
Yeah, I'm afraid  
Whataya want from me  
Whataya want from me

Just don't give up  
I'm workin' it out  
Please don't give in  
I won't let you down"

Weird. And I said, "No. You're taking too long. I'm contacting Fox 5 Atlanta." And Jeremih sang, "Don't tell 'em. Don't tell 'em. Don't tell 'em. Don't tell 'em."

"I'm telling, because I think you're lying and not doing anything about it. I'm telling!" I insisted.

"Soon you will come to know, when the bullet hits the bone," Golden Earring replied.

"Is that a THREAT!?" I held out my untrembling hand to Mr. Dashboard. "Go ahead, shoot me. I'm not afraid."

Again some song with the lyrics, 'I'm gonna shoot you in the head!'

"F#@k you! Go ahead and do it! You don't scare me!!!" There was quite a little drama going on in my car in the Sun Suites parking lot.

Was that Ella Fitzgerald singing, "I didn't mean a word I said"?! What a weird radio station.

Me: "Who ARE you?

Radio: The Police "We are spirits in the material world, are spirits in the material world"

Me: "Why are you doing this to me?!"

Radio: Coldplay "This, I guess, is to tell you you're chosen out from the rest."

Me: "WHAT is going ON!?"

Radio: Imagine Dragons "This is it, the Apocalypse, whoa-oa."

Me: "You have GOT to be kidding me!"

I thought the federal government must be controlling the music and wondered why they were trying so hard to drive me insane. Didn't they have better things to do?

Around this time I made a bet with Mr. Dashboard that the Saints would win a football game, maybe against Atlanta? If Mr. Dashboard won the bet I'd do something to him, but if the Saints won he'd do something to me.

The Saints lost and Mr. Dashboard sreamed, "Lick it, Lick it, Lick it!" And I tweeted to Dr. Frieden for him to tell Mr. Dashboard the Saints won by Vegas odds, so tell him I do NOT have to "Lick it, Lick it, Lick it." I thought it was funny. I hoped he did, too. Maybe he just thought it was disturbing.

Good if he did. Why should I be the only one upset and stressed from this disease?

I also tweeted to Dr. Frieden to have a talk with Christ (it's a joke!) that as far as that "New Sensation" INXS sang about and he tried (which I didn't like since I don't have a prostate and I'm not a gay man), that I didn't care how powerful His Father was, no means no!

"Of course, no can sometimes mean yes, but only when mutually agreed upon with a safe word like 'bats' or 'disseminated histoplasmosis.' Although 'disseminated histoplasmosis' isn't a good choice, because by the time someone got out the words 'disseminated his-' it was already too late, and there'd need to be a hasty cleanup of fingerprints and a staged 'accidental' autoerotic asphyxiation scene."

I also tweeted I was getting married with a photo of Christ as my fiancé. "But I can't decide between him and this guy" and added a photo of a Saturn dashboard.

"Maybe I'll marry both," I tweeted, "but I'll have to move to Utah. Are there any bats in Utah? Of course, I can't wear white...."

The reason I joked about Christ was because when I went around asking out loud, "Who am I supposed to marry? Who loves me? Can I please have an answer?" buses and signs with "Christ is the Answer" popped up everywhere. There was even a bus with that on it in a mall!

Of course, you couldn't travel through the Baptist Bible Belt without seeing signs like that everywhere, but I jokingly emailed the CDC, "I don't want to marry Christ. Don't get me wrong, I'm flattered, and there are probably plenty of perks being Queen of Heaven, but he would have to go around LOVING everyone else. I think that would make me jealous. I wouldn't want to share my husband with anyone. I'd want him all to myself."

"The man" should have been flattered...I was throwing over Christ for him.

But I must have offended Christ and His Father, because that's about the time my luck got even worse.

#  Chapter 25 - I've Got That Summertime Sadness

(aka: "Rollercoaster of Love")

Most of August 2014 was spent sobbing (can the fungus cause major depressive episodes?), writing emails/letters to the CDC, and hearing the radio respond to my letters and emails. I felt like I was slowly drowning, and no one would throw me a line. Even though they could hear me screaming.

Crying, I wrote a letter to the Director of the CDC, my tears smearing some words, BEGGING him to tell me if anyone had been in my Rockwall hotel room, PLEASE could he tell me? Taking the letter to the mailbox, I turned on the radio to hear the lyrics, "No woman has ever loved me so much." I guess none had.

Unfortunately, my great love was probably erotomania (speaking of which, didn't Hinckley grow up in Oklahoma/Dallas?), but at least I REALIZED something was wrong and asked Dr. Frieden if it was erotomania, since I was ill. His response? Well, if my radio was on right now Simon & Garfunkel would be singing "The Sound of Silence."

The fact that what I felt, perceived, and thought seemed crazy brought some solace, since THINKING you're crazy means you're not irrevocably crazy, right? At least I hoped so....

I couldn't STAND Dr. Frieden at this point, but he was the only person who could tell me if "the man" even existed. And, with Ebola, I couldn't walk through a store, restaurant, or hotel lobby without seeing his stupid face on TV. Strangely, his image appeared to constantly change while I was ill. Maybe it was clues, or maybe just too much Restylane.

Dr. Frieden's face appeared to look like Frankenstein at one point, and seemed to get uglier every day, like the "Picture of Dorian Gray." Were Mary Shelley and Oscar Wilde playing Celestial Charades and trying to get someone to notice their illnesses/causes of death looked suspiciously like Disseminated Histoplasmosis? Apparently, the angels love party games.

Some friends told me that the fact the CDC refused to deny they had been in DFW made them suspicious that they actually WERE there. So you might be able to imagine how confused I was.

"He wasn't there," I'd convince myself. But then a little part of me would wonder, "But what if he was?" Then I'd feel like he'd think I was crazy for thinking he was there and again I'd convince myself he wasn't. But...what if he was? Most people thought I was crazy to believe he was, so I tried my darnedest to think of something implausible in my memory, besides the part where the CDC was in DFW, which is SIGHTLY plausible. "He wasn't there and he hates you!" I'd think, but still there was that tiny little hope, "Maybe he was and he doesn't hate me."

By now I resented the heck out of the CDC and Dr. Frieden for putting me through that bizarre emotional carnival ride, day in and day out, for months. If you want to know what almost all day every day felt like, watch the scene where Maleficent wakes up after falling asleep in Stefan's arms. Is that what "afterglow" is?

I saw on tv that ISIS was going to release bubonic plague in hand grenades. Then the tv sang, "Grease is the word, is the word, have you heard." Hmmm, they're remaking Grease? "Grease is the word, is the word, is the word." It was then I remembered seeing a documentary decades before where a woman was cured of bubonic plague...how?..."Grease!"...oh yeah, after drinking a pitcher of animal fat! Wouldn't consuming animal fat release lipoprotein lipase, which would kill bubonic plague?

I told the CDC that there was a type of earth worm that consumed the components in anthrax, so could those worms clear anthrax from the soil? As I walked out the door of my hotel, I thought about the CDC's silent treatment saying, "Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, I'm going to go eat some worms." Then I twirled around from the door and went back to the computer. A five second Google search revealed someone selling worm larvae to drink. Would larvae from that certain worm consume anthrax in the stomach?

I couched my suggestions in ridiculous emails using aliases. Did they really think I was reading, "Love in the Time of Cholera"? I suggested cures for measles, whooping cough, and the common cold.

Didn't anthrax die within seconds in an anaerobic environment? For anthrax in the lungs, why not just puncture the thorax to keep the lungs from working (like in open-heart surgery) and have a perfusionist oxygenate the blood and keep the heart pumping while the lungs were made an anaerobic environment? Would that work?

Was it just a coincidence only humans and chimpanzees can get Hepatitis C and are also the only animals with no liver uricase? I got the idea about Hepatitis C after having a dream where young schoolchildren were watching television. "Count the children," someone said. "Children get into groups of five," I instructed, rounding them up into groups. "Five, ten, fifteen, twenty...twenty schoolchildren," I said, and "They're watching Sesame Street...a song on Sesame Street."

"What song is it?" someone asked. "One of these things is not like the others," I replied.

Oh well, just coincidences. Btw, did you know the Unabomber had a rash of unknown cause when younger? What on Earth could have caused that rash...? And did the doctors ever do tests to prove what pathogen caused Jim Henson to die from "flu-like symptoms?"

At some point the radio stopped singing love songs to me, and every song was hateful. Phil Collins sang "I don't care anymore about you." Funny, I don't ever remember "about you" in that song. The song played again, but I didn't hear "about you." I checked the lyrics online. Does it really say, "about you"? Subsequent songs were insulting and full of hate. "You know what you did, and it's over."

What?! No, I don't know what I did. But the songs insisted I was a horrible person and he hated me. WTF did I do!?

"Right back at you, Twitter Tw@t," is all I could say, even though the truth was the songs hurt my feelings, and I tweeted and emailed my hateful replies.

But if Dr. Tw@t was half as smart as he claims to be, he would have realized hate isn't the opposite of love...indifference is.

#  Chapter 26 - Boom Clap

(aka: "Love Is An Angel Disguised As Lust")

Apparently, one of the only songs available to Atlanta radio stations August 2014 was "Boom Clap," which seemed to play four times an hour on all stations and alternated like a merry-go-round with only about three to four other songs like "Talk Dirty to Me" by Jason DeRulo.

Over and over, Charli XCX endlessly sang:

"Boom clap

The sound of my heart

The beat goes on and on and on and on and

Boom clap

You make me feel good

Come on to me come on to me now

Boom clap

The sound of my heart

The beat goes on and on and on and on and

Boom clap

You make me feel good

Come on to me come on to me now..."

Then I'd hear "Talk Dirty to Me," then "Come On to Me," over and over and finally Lorde singing, "My friends and I we've cracked the code."

So, wondering what it was I was supposed to be doing, I remembered the time over four decades before when my father turned to me and blurted out the code "read between the lines." He told me to always remember it and use it if I ever needed to get a message to someone. So, I went to my room and laughed while composing my "threatening" love letter for Dr. Frieden.

"Don't read it while I'm out," I said aloud, "I want it to be a surprise." At this point I suppose I thought the government must be keeping tabs on me, and it seemed that someone or something must be able to see me in my room, since the radio would describe everything I had been doing. How else would it know I was wearing a blue lace bra?

"Boy, I'll bet he never got a letter like this before. I hope he likes it!" I thought, laughing about how silly it was and imagining his laughing as he easily decoded it. After all, he must be a genius.

Unfortunately for me, Dr. Frieden is apparently NOT a genius.

"Maybe the CDC is studying the effects of disseminated histoplasmosis by watching me" is what I thought, although I couldn't understand why "the man" refused to come to me again.

But at some point it became painfully obvious that either Dr. Frieden had never come to me in DFW or, if he had, he had no intention of ever coming to me again. He hadn't hit it, but he still quit it.

"Jerk!" Like many who've been romantically rejected, I was thoroughly pissed. Ghosting is SO rude!

I know some people will think it's stupid for me to have fallen so fast for a possible dream/hallucination, but it was so realistic. From my point of view, I had two meetings..."dates"...with the Director of the CDC that lasted 1-2 hours each time, and we really liked each other. And now I was being cruelly ignored while so ill. Ignored by people whose JOB it was to help Americans with diseases. It was heartbreaking...maybe if I hadn't been so sick it wouldn't have affected me so much. Blame it on the fungus among us.

But, if you think about it, it would be odd if the CDC DIDN'T show up to check out an infectious disease outbreak in a huge American metroplex.

But back to the Apocalypse. There were still constant "clues." The song would say, 'Look at the street sign'...

Cascade...the name of the street was Cascade. Did that mean the fungus could interfere with the hormonal cascade and/or clotting cascade? Yes, I would later learn...it activated the coagulation cascade.

The cycle of love/hate/lust continued, despite my best efforts to get over it. But surely once Dr. Tw@t got my filthy love letter he'd understand how much I wanted him. Maybe it would finally convince him to come back to me.

But it didn't, and it wasn't until much later that I realized "Talk Dirty to Me" might mean coprolalia/Tourette's Syndrome.

And later I would read that osteomyelitis (chronic recurrent osteomyelitis, cause unknown) can be misdiagnosed as metastasized osteosarcoma.

So I emailed the CDC, "Oops! My bad...Come On To Me (Boom Clap) didn't mean to come on to the director. It's a song from the movie The Fault in Our Stars, so it's a hint that disseminated histoplasmosis might either cause or be misdiagnosed as thyroid cancer and/or osteosarcoma?"

#  Chapter 27 - The Good Samaritan

(aka: "I Just Want To Have Something To Do")

It seemed like a good time to leave Atlanta. I got no reply to my filthy love letter, and the message in Shreveport had been to follow the star and the only star in the sky in Shreveport was to the ENE, so maybe I was meant to go to North Carolina and Samaritan's Purse, which was started by the son of Billy Graham. (Billy Graham, with his Parkinson's disease, hydrocephalus, pneumonia, broken hips, and prostate cancer.)

The only money I had was $100 from my extended stay hotel deposit so, $100 in hand, I filled my car with gas and headed to Boone, NC.

Driving east on I-20 I felt a new pain I hadn't felt before. Was it bursitis in my left shoulder and some other parts of my body that hadn't hurt before? I felt it as I crossed the border from Georgia to North Carolina, passing over a lake or reservoir.

Arriving in Boone, North Carolina at night, I parked my car in a church parking lot and tried to sleep. My "invisible boyfriend" paid a short visit (he hadn't been around for a few days) so I was filled with hope and didn't feel so alone.

As dawn neared and I waited for 8:00 am so I could go to Samaritan's Purse, I drove around trying to find their location. As I drove, I noticed something new. The fingers of my left hand started to twitch and curl up as I held my cigarette (I was chain-smoking by this point). The thumb and forefinger seemed ok, but the last three fingers seemed to subtly want to curl into my palm as I drove around Samaritan's Purse killing time. I never would have noticed it if I hadn't started smoking.

Rushing to a hotel, I pretended to be a guest so I could use the Internet. Googling "fingers curled to palm" I came across something about ALS and the 3rd, 4th, and 5th fingers curling inward. I emailed the CDC about this, and also about the apparent bursitis at the border. I mentioned again it wasn't hypochondriasis, since I always had symptoms BEFORE Googling to see what it was. I also questioned why my symptoms were so fleeting as I drove all over eight states. Was that normal? I was like a Cliff Notes for disseminated histoplasmosis.

And why was I almost always worse at night? Is it because that's when bats were flying around and defecating? Or was it because fungus follows a circadian rhythm?

Also, I had read ALS symptoms included not being able to raise your arms at the shoulders and rapidly switching from laughing to crying. These symptoms match Disseminated Histoplasmosis. They also match pseudobulbar affect

Morning had come, so I arrived at Samaritan's Purse, naively thinking they would almost immediately send me overseas somewhere to help in some underdeveloped country.

I spoke with a man who said to email him my resume. He told me that one man there had died from ALS and another was presently dying from it. He was nice enough to give me some money for gas.

Driving back to Atlanta, I could tell there had been bats in North Carolina. Later someone told me they have a lot of caves/bats there. No wonder I had felt afraid to go there.

While driving, with only enough money for gas to get back to Atlanta, I wondered who I could turn to.

I thought of an old boyfriend who had been a very nice man. Remembering only his first name, I asked aloud, "What was his last name again?" A semi-truck immediately passed me on the right, and there on its side in huge letters was the last name of my old boyfriend. His last name was the name of the trucking company. What a weird coincidence.

My ears buzzing loudly, I could tell I was tripping a little. Thinking of my former supervisor, I thought of a story he told me about a Nobel Prize winner dissolving his gold Nobel Prize in aqua regia when the Nazis came to his lab.

Signs about gold and limestone were everywhere. For some reason, I thought of El Dorado and streets of gold. Then I thought, if you melted gold in aqua regia and poured it over a limestone road, would the road then be paved with gold?

I Googled it...Revelations 21:21...I was still stuck in Revelations. Emailing myself the idea, I got back in my car. The song Abracadabra started playing as soon as I turned on the radio, and after it finished there were a few other songs about magic.

Weird.

My 401k money had been deposited in my account, which made me very happy, and I could tell by the way I felt I had been exposed to a lot of Histoplasmosis. Then my "invisible boyfriend" came back with a vengeance. He must have missed me, because BAM, BAM, BAM! It was so hard I flew sideways in my car seat and my eyes crossed. Glad to see him again, I laughed and told him to stop or I'd have a wreck.

He stopped.

Later I wondered if crossed eyes and/or lazy eye might be caused by Histoplasmosis.

My invisible boyfriend behaved himself for the rest of the night, but later I checked into Rite4Us, after spending a month in Sun Suites, because the Rite4Us sign appeared illuminated and when I read the name I felt "BAM." One...that meant yes.

That hotel was apparently right for us, whoever the second half of "us" was.

#  Chapter 28 - Getting All the Way to the F...B...I

(aka: "With My Good Bag and My Cheap Shoes")

On Thursday, September 18, 2014 a man approached me as I walked to my car. He was apparently from the FBI.

My hands shook wondering what could have happened. But I remembered the evening before a truck drove by with "DISASTER!" on the side in huge letters and someone on the radio immediately sang "Don't Panic, Don't Panic, Don't Panic."

I guessed this was what I wasn't supposed to panic about and tried to remain calm.

The FBI man seemed overly worried I had a weapon, and when he asked if I had a gun or knife I almost said, "Yes, I have a knife" and handed over some plastic cutlery from the passenger seat.

"Oh yeah, and I have this sword," while handing over the tiny plastic toy sword I had saved from a **piña colada** in case Clarence Darrow lost our motion in Pearly Gates courthouse that my blood-stained shirt fulfilled the criteria and I had to redo the 3rd Horseman ride.

But the FBI man might not have a sense of humor, so I kept those "weapons" hidden...along with the secret weapon hidden in my pants.

He asked if my car got good gas mileage and I said, "Yes...sometimes it seems as if it's not burning any gas at all." He didn't get it.

The FBI man called a Smyrna policeman to be present at our interview, and when the FBI man pulled the policeman to the side I'm 99.99% certain I heard the policeman say he could take me to the State Mental Hospital.

Soooo, Dr. F_ _ _ - Face (a new nickname I gave Dr. Tw@t, asking him if he could figure out what the blanks were and did he wanna buy a vowel?) decided he would send me to the State Mental Hospital. I had read that electroshock treatment was making a comeback.

I had tweeted I was nuts seeing signs, asking that he send an ambulance to take me to the hospital to get antifungal and maybe some happy pills, but he had other plans for me. I no longer felt guilty for calling him ugly. My disdain for and opinion of the Director of the CDC hit an all-time low. But not as low as when soon later Ebola was found in Dallas within days of the director's smugly smiling assurance of "No Ebola."

I had emailed the CDC in April or early May to be ready for Ebola in the U.S., even before the Samaritan's Purse man told me about the African outbreak. I felt like Cassandra in the Trojan War.

And I had emailed the CDC about a month or so before Ebola came to America that the song said, 'The prophecies have been fulfilled...Hell is on its way to the USA.'

Oh well, just a couple of weird coincidences.

I had also tweeted to Dr. Frieden about Fireball...so many references in music, signs, etc. everywhere I went. I think I told him a couple of days before I read about fireballs seen over the southeast U.S., including Atlanta.

But Dr. F#@k-Face definitely had NO intention of HELPING me. In fact, it was pretty clear he wished I would disappear for good, my brains forever scrambled with electricity and drugs. Was he so desperate to cover up how apparently stupid and incompetent he was that he'd have me locked away forever? I'd joked to the CDC, "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy." Little did I know then that it was apparently an option the CDC's director was considering.

The cold hard truth that I had stubbornly refused to believe now seemed so clear: Not only did the Director have no intention of helping me, but he wanted me dead! He refused to send anyone to me when I thought I might be dying, but he sure as heck sent someone the minute he thought he was threatened.

What a selfish jerk!

I had even prayed in the past that if he had a disease that God take it from him and give it to me instead, since I seemed to have such an uncanny ability to heal. I felt like such a fool!

Inside the break room of the hotel, the FBI man mentioned the "threatening" letter I sent for Dr. F#@K-Face to give to "the man" in Dallas if he existed. But the Director of the CDC was apparently unable to decode the letter, even after I TOLD him it was in code, read between the lines, and the code was abababababa. He wasn't impressing me much.

"How stupid can he be!?" was the constant stunned refrain in my head. Either he WASN'T in DFW and was an idiot for ignoring an outbreak, or he WAS in DFW and my hotel room and abandoned me, allowing me to wander through eight states alone while delusional.

Still stubbornly in love, I was in denial and kept trying to think up plausible explanations for why he was so cruelly ignoring me.

Apparently, the director only sent the FBI the tweets where I ranted that I hated him after I saw the bat colony over my hotel and his wedding ring. But he left out subsequent tweets where I told him about more diseases and joked with him.

The FBI man said it was 'all there in black and white.' Finally!!! Now I understood all the numerous references, songs, signs and announcements about black & white. And he also repeated what I had told Dr. F#@K-Face (when I wrote that every stupid thing I said and did was just another piece of the puzzle) saying, "It's like pieces of a puzzle."

"Well, no, not really," I thought. It was just a misinterpreted letter and some carefully selected tweets when I was angry. "You seem to be missing quite a few pieces of that puzzle there."

At first I had no idea what threatening letter I sent. Was the CDC framing me? And then I tried not to laugh as the very serious FBI man read, "your life will never be the same when I'm finished f#cking with you" and "I want to s#ck you dry."

Oh, my God! This was just too funny. Are you KIDDING me!? The Director of the CDC, a man of presumed above-average intelligence, didn't "get" it!? Even when I TOLD him it was in code, the phrase "I want to suck you dry" didn't even raise one eyebrow?

Maybe he was incapable of raising one eyebrow anymore. Maybe he had overdone the injections a little?

I almost laughed at the FBI man the same way I laughed while writing the letter and imagined Dr. Tw@t laughing as he deciphered it. What had I written? I could barely remember, since the "threatening" lines were just ridiculous snippets to fill in the blanks. I had purposely made it over-the-top.

Did people USUALLY write, 'Pardon how long my letter is' while writing truly threatening letters?

The FBI man said he'd arrest me and take me to trial, and I said I thought both the judge and the jury would probably find me not guilty after the note was decoded. He wrote down that I said Dr. Tw@t should start with the first line and then read every other line...he said it would be included in my classified file in his notes.

I laughed later, thinking of my filthy love letter in an FBI Classified file, along with the decoded version and book that I later sent.

Even funnier, I imagined the Directors of the CDC, Homeland Security, FBI, and CIA, along with Obama, each with their own copies of my filthy (eventually dog-eared and sticky?) love letter in my unfinished book that I sent to each of them.

Did they have meetings? Did they discuss it? Did they ask to have certain lines reread to them? Did they each have to order extra Kleenex?

The FBI man told me if I EVER contacted the CDC or Dr. F#@K-Face again he'd arrest me. He also said, "They deal with sensitive material!" He said that more than once.

"WHAT sensitive material!?" I wanted to ask. Sure, they store dangerous pathogens, which should be locked up instead of released on a regular basis...and LABEL them this time! But what could the CDC do that couldn't be common knowledge? They should post all their findings of the day online for other researchers to see. They could do that instead of tweeting for us to wash our hands. What did they have to hide?

Their salaries were being paid by the American public. Even they, on their website, stated their purpose was to inform the public. So, what in the world could be so "sensitive" that they couldn't just do their job and inform us?

We're not children. And not all of us are idiots, either.

So why were they acting like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men...."You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!"

Well, sorry to inform you, Skippy, but I'm pretty d@mn sure we can.

You're not better than we are. You're not smarter than we are (maybe better-educated, but not smarter). And you're not entitled to be informed while keeping everyone else in the dark.

So, what information was so "sensitive?" Were they releasing disease like I read the government did not too long ago to study the effects on humans, like when the government purposely gave people in Florida whooping cough? After all, it was the federal government that did the Tuskegee Syphilis Study on black men, wasn't it?

In 1950, the U.S. Navy purposely and secretly released bacteria to 800,000 citizens in San Francisco to study how disease would spread in case of a biological attack.

And Dr. Frieden wonders why I don't trust him.

Did the CDC know people had Disseminated Histoplasmosis and then just stood back watching and taking notes? At least one man, who claimed to have been in the Army and CIA (of course, he could have been lying or messing with me) thought it was possible, because I was so "unpredictable." I agreed, telling the CDC, "At least I'm an interesting case study."

The Army man had also told me there was a good chance the government might try to kill me, so I wasn't THAT paranoid to think the government was capable of harming me.

But thankfully they weren't going to kill me today, and I promised the FBI man I wouldn't contact the CDC again, a promise I didn't keep (strange, I always kept my promises before I got sick). He was fairly nice after that and left.

And the Smyrna policeman, sitting in his car, said, "Maybe it's a conspiracy," and I laughed. Even funnier was when I looked at his name tag.

For days "signs" everywhere had indicated something to do with "gold" and "man." I had been puzzled thinking "Oscars?"..."Barry Goldwater?"..."Goldman Sachs?"

It didn't make any sense. Until I saw that the policeman's last name was...

...wait for it...

...Mangold.

#  Chapter 29 - What a Mind F#@k!

(aka: "He Seems to Have an Invisble Touch")

I imagined that by at least the next evening, Friday pm, Dr. F#@K-Face would have received the message from the FBI how to "crack the code" of my letter. I wondered what he would think about it. I felt bad...I had sent it before I saw his wedding band. Sorry, Mrs. F#@K-Face.

On late Friday and Sunday morning I went to the Drury Inn in Marietta to use the computer. I noticed my ears always buzzed a little louder after being there and thought bats might be nearby. On Sunday it was much worse than ever before. I could feel a huge lump in my throat and could hardly swallow. I wondered if it was my thyroid. In the past I would occasionally feel a small lump in my throat. But this time it felt huge and I could hardly swallow my own saliva. (As soon as I got back to Smyrna the lump in my throat was gone.)

Or maybe it was Cricopharyngeal spasms, cause "not yet clear."

Inside my car Friday evening I had started the motor and right at that moment the radio was singing Stone Temple Pilots' "Waitin' on a Sunday afternoon for what I've read between the lines."

Strange.

Turning off the radio, I wondered if maybe "the man" had gotten my letter and decoded what I told him he needed to "read between the lines." Was he going to show up at my hotel on Sunday afternoon?

I turned the radio back on, and Peter Gabriel began singing "In Your Eyes," which I had tweeted to Dr. Frieden was "the money shot."

Changing stations, I heard Crosby Stills & Nash sing, "Friday evening. Sunday in the afternoon." Then I turned off the radio again. Hmmm...Sunday afternoon.

Thinking there might be a chance this was a hint that "the man" would show up Sunday around 2-3 pm, I made sure to be in my hotel parking lot. As Sunday afternoon wore on, I decided the songs were just a coincidence.

Bored, I turned on the car radio to hear Stone Temple Pilots again, and I think this was the time Scott Weiland was ominously singing, "I know you want what's on my mind. I know you like what's on my mind. I know it eats you up inside. I know, you know, you know, you know...Here I come, I come, I come. Here I come, I come, I come. Here I come, I come, I come."

BAM! BAM! BAM! My apparently super-horny invisible boyfriend was back in my car after taking a powder for a while. It was a few minutes after 4 pm...Sunday afternoon...the time he had been waitin' for.

The incredibly strong "orgasms" happened three times in a row and then stopped. "It's probably just a symptom," I thought, discouraged and realizing that there probably was no one in the woods/room 528, and no smart, wonderful man loved me.

I had dated men in my past that I had felt very fond of, and I felt a kind of love for some, but I can't truly say, looking back, that I was "in love" with any of them. I always felt in the back of my mind that there was someone else waiting for me who was my perfect man. He didn't have to be perfect...just perfect for me. And I thought he had finally found me.

But I had been chasing after a ghost...a cruel figment of my imagination and the fungus...and Satan? Mr. Perfect, the brilliant, heroic Director of the CDC and probably my last chance at finally falling in love, didn't even exist! All that remained in his place was a cruel CDC Director who I hated.

My eyes welled up a little bit, and as I wiped away a tear from my cheek I again turned on the radio. Led Zeppelin was singing, "When I read the letter you wrote me, it made me mad mad mad. When I read the words that it told me, it made me sad sad sad. But I still love you so, and I can't let you go...."

I mean...C'mon! Sick of music, which was obliviously taunting me, I turned off the radio and went upstairs to lie down and relax. It had been a stressful week and I needed something to cheer me up.

Upstairs as I relaxed on my bed I was surprised at just how much I was being cheered up. For the next 20-30 minutes or more my invisible boyfriend and I had a wild time. It was amazing "sex," and at times it almost felt like he was trying to turn me over and push my head down (anterocollis?)...toward what I'll never know, since he was invisible.

It was great!!! It was like someone was on top of me, and I was having an "orgasm" with each thrust...approximately one every one to three seconds...at least 400 of them. Wave after wave of strong, rhythmic, wonderfully orgasmic seizures or convulsions. He was the best I ever had.

If I had tried to get up out of bed and walk around, I probably wouldn't have been able to. But why would I even try? I came over and over, and "he" did all sorts of things to me! It was exactly as if an invisible man was there giving me the best sex of my life. And I wasn't even touching myself.

Unfortunately, I didn't know about Persistent genital arousal disorder, originally called persistent sexual arousal syndrome, Weiss Disease, and also known as restless genital syndrome, until much later. Of course, it's "cause unknown."

Then after my wonderful rendezvous in Rite-4-Us with my invisible boyfriend, it was if he was joking with me. All the stupid and funny things that had happened the last few months, especially with the FBI man and the filthy love note, seemed to come to my mind as if someone was talking to me about them, and I laughed until my stomach hurt.

"Stop it, you're making my stomach hurt!" I exclaimed. And it stopped.

At first I wondered if somehow a human did this, and then I wondered WHY the fungus was trying so hard to make me think it was Dr. Frieden.

The first song that played afterwards when I turned on the radio was, "He's a Magic Man."

I had no idea who "he" was, but yes, he certainly WAS magic!

Here's another song that started playing and I first heard while driving to a hotel to tell the CDC my bubonic plague "cure"...probably the worst lyrics for someone to hear when they're delusional with an infection known to make people super-religious:

"If the heavens ever did speak  
She's the last true mouthpiece  
Every Sunday's getting more bleak  
A fresh poison each week (from food/cows/milk contaminated with histoplasmosis?-I thought of it while hearing a commercial about bats and frogs and organic milk-all those bats flying around the fields and defecating fungus. And fungus in drinking water.)

What you got in the steeple? (Bats!)

We were born sick (with histoplasmosis?), you heard them say it.... That's a fine-looking high horse (Why thank you! I have three more in different colors)...

Take me to church."

Church...I should probably start going, since I was part of the Apocalypse and all.

#  Chapter 30 – This is a Land of Confusion

(aka: "I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me")

I tried not to think about Dr. Frieden after seeing a Twitter photo showing a wedding ring. (I had apparently temporarily forgotten the Hilton Hotel room.) The moment I saw the ring was devastating. That's when I called him ugly and emailed that it must be humiliating for him to stand at the urinal in Atlanta beside all those black men. (Oh well, the black man beside me thought it was funny.)

I was angry he was apparently married-even though I knew I had no right to be. It was none of my business if he was married or not. "But why couldn't he just have told me months ago that he wasn't in DFW, the woods, or my room?" I thought. "I asked him...BEGGED him...to tell me. That would have saved me MONTHS of anguish."

I was also angry about seeing the 25-30 bats at the hotel where I stayed immediately before seeing the wedding ring...wasn't the CDC doing ANYTHING to get rid of bats!?

It was hard to understand what was going on with NO ONE talking to me, even back when I was nice and/or begging. I felt bad about the note, since he had a wife, and embarrassed about everything, but in my defense I was still full of fungus.

Could the fungus in the CNS somehow interrupt with memory, either storing/fading memories? Because everything that had happened regarding "the man" and all the embarrassing things I said and did kept replaying like a loop while sickest. Could it cause PTSD? Because later when I was better all the bad memories would fade, like they're supposed to do.

And then there were the dreams. The worst were when I tried to get to him, but couldn't.

In one dream Dr. Frieden walked up and was being nice to me. We were standing on a beach, and in my dream I looked to the right (where a coffee cup had been on the nightstand) and said "Seattle," looked out on the water and said "Sea," and looked at his left side from the right and said "Hawk."

"Seattle Seahawks," I cried out, waking myself up. Later I was ecstatic they went to the Super Bowl, but they didn't win. Maybe Dr. Tw@t showed up in my dream because I thought New England Patriots, since he's from New England (was he wearing a Paul Revere costume?), but I'll never know. But I did think it was odd how I knew Dr. Frieden had a hawk-like nose from his left. The only time I would have seen that was in the Hilton hotel room. How did I know what his nose looked like from the side?

Another dream was a hairy arm reaching from under my bed and then Dr. Frieden hopped onto it, naked! I gave him a "massage" (he was so tense with all the Ebola mess going on) and felt a mole or skin tag. He threw his head back when I touched him, and then he tried to push me down and get on top of me, but I said, "No, let me bathe first." And when I got up he shook his head and grabbed at me. Then he disappeared.

Strange dream. Usually I can't feel things I try to touch in dreams, but I could feel him in this one. So I decided the Hilton hotel room must have been a dream, too, but I couldn't be sure.

There was the dream I had after I emailed asking the CDC if Dr. Frieden liked big vehicles and if he wanted a Hummer. I told them I knew where he could get a hummer, but he should probably just ask his wife for a hummer. That night I dreamed I was trying to get to the CDC to tell them histoplasmosis can cause premature aging, but they were surrounded by a tall brick wall, and I tried to climb over the wall but couldn't. Then a man came over the wall driving...you guessed it, a Hummer!

What weird dreams I was having.

One day I tried to nap, but the nerve tingling that would make the bed vibrate (fibromyalgia?) started again in my entire body and I had what I think was a myoclonic jerk, and that's when I had what can only be termed some type of lightning-fast epileptic seizure that appeared to emanate from my left temporal lobe, like an electrical shock down the left side of my body. It wasn't a grand mal seizure, since I was watching TV and didn't "lose" any time.

Then I felt very cold and shivered.

Falling asleep and waking in the late afternoon, I felt stupid and wrong about everything. Can you imagine how you would feel if you kept going on almost daily mushroom trips, and then woke up fairly "normal" later, remembering everything you had said and done? So humiliating.

All my stupid ideas. I wanted to drive away and disappear, full of shame. And I felt dead inside. But at least feeling "dead" I wasn't crying.

Later I would read a paper linking Disseminated Histoplasmosis to nihilism...and OCD.

(Note to self: check to see if Nietzsche, who wrote bizarre letters called the "Madness Letters" to friends and had shortsightedness that left him nearly blind, migraine headaches, violent indigestion, strokes, clinical hemiparesis/hemiplegia on the left side of his body, dementia, and pneumonia might have had Disseminated Histoplasmosis.)

All in all, it wasn't so bad being delusional as long as I kept my mouth shut, emailed only myself, and still had money. Think about it...spending days thinking you had cured diseases and that someone wonderful loved you and it was only a matter of time before you were together.

And the sex!!! I was happier being delusional than I was in my "normal" life.

At least I was finally dating again...even if he was invisible and I was just a "booty call."

One time I felt sad and prayed, and the song said something like, 'I know it's painful now, but think of all the joy it will bring.' If none of my ideas were correct, at least someone, something, or coincidences were making me believe they were correct.

Sometimes I felt like I was being set up for huge disillusionment and promised myself that I would not get upset if I was wrong about everything and publicly humiliated and embarrassed. Above all, I would not kill myself.

There was a Bible in my room and I opened it randomly, praying for a sign. The page I opened it to was in Psalms and said something about being given an affliction, that I would be okay, and that my enemies would be vanquished.

Hopefully I and they would be.

#  Chapter 31 - The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

(aka: "If Our Love's Insanity, _Why Are You My Clarity_?")

It was now time to end this strange obsession I had developed about "the man." As Janeane Garofalo wrote, 'I had imbued him with qualities he could never even hope to possess.'

Plus, he was married. Why wear a ring if he wasn't? That would be like lying. I imagined he slept cuddled up with his wife, who he loved, and had breakfast with his children, who he loved. They probably had this great home life...the kind I wanted to have and that other people took for granted.

Of course, his marriage was probably nothing like I imagined. For all I knew his wife might look at him every morning and think about how sick she was of him. She'd probably roll her eyes if I described how wonderful, exciting, and sexy he was to me.

And the fungus continued to mess with my head. There was the night I was watching a TV show about food, and as I was almost asleep my "invisible boyfriend" was paying a thoroughly enjoyable visit...moving VERY slowly and apparently taking great pleasure teasing me (boy, some doctors really DO know all the right places to touch). The announcer was saying, "You want it, you know you want it. You need it"...well, I guess I was wrong when I texted "the man" at Embassy Suites that I didn't need it.

Maybe everything that happened concerning the Director of the CDC was just meant to show me how vivid dreams and false memories could seem so real. Either that, or the Apocalypse had started and the Director of the CDC could have sex with me telepathically.

The first possibility seemed more probable, but the second was the one I liked better.

"He" even showed up the evening they found Ebola in the Dallas health care worker. That time I was lying on my right side and could tell my "invisible boyfriend" was approaching me and thought, "I don't feel good, be gentle." And I swear it felt like someone came up behind me and very gently put his "pulsating manhood" into my "moist purse," and touched me in a couple of places, and made me "opposite of go" within 15-30 seconds. Normally it took me 15-30 minutes when I did it myself.

My "invisible boyfriend" was AMAZING! (For some reason it reminded me of Dylan Farrow.)

I still needed to tell Dr. F#@k-Face, who I had renamed Dr. Douche (I had successfully fought the urge to send him a box of Massengill with a note that read, "Saw this and thought of you") the additional information I had dreamed about. What if one was right?

There were more diseases. The list went on and on. So many diseases involving the entire body and all organs. Almost any idiopathic affliction (i.e., of unknown or uncertain cause) could be caused by this fungus. Even DNA/RNA damage. But I knew I was being as obsessive about the fungus as I was about "the man." All these things couldn't be caused by the fungus, could they?

But some of them could.

And, although I felt sorry for the bats, they had to be eliminated. They're vermin.

I heard a song about "high voltage in her lips/kiss." Then I found a 1990 study about low voltages breaking down the outside of AIDS and herpes. What about higher voltages?

What about the song that sang, "What are you smoking, what are you smoking?" I looked at my hand. It was an e-cig with glycerol. Something about retroviruses being created when calcium and phosphorous flocculate on a bacteria or fungus in an HEPES or BES buffered solution (is that like mammalian blood) aided by glycerol.

Is this how AIDS was created? Was the outer structure similar to the African variety of Histoplasmosis? Did it form in monkeys chewing gum from rubber trees?

Wasn't the outer structure of Ebola similar to a certain fungus associated with coffee plants, like the crops in West Africa, and known to be carried by bats. D@mn bats!

Why did Ebola not infect skeletal muscle? Was it the electrical charge, or maybe myoglobin, which binds oxygen more strongly than hemoglobin? Or maybe it's lactic acid in skeletal muscle?

As Meghan Trainor endlessly sang "All about that bass, 'bout that bass, bass, bass"...base, base, base...base, base, base.... Why does Ebola affect only air-breathing vertebrate mammals? Is it due to the high buffering capacity of their blood? A man gave Ebola to his wife two months after he was "cured." Did it hide in his seminal fluid? It liked fructose and an alkaline environment? Is that why Africans, with their diet of greens causing more alkaline blood, spread it more easily?

The mortality rate maps of Ebola outbreaks seemed to inversely match the map of sickle-cell carriers? They had more acidic blood, right? Was that just a fluke?

What about herpes and HPV? The coatings of which appear similar to the American variety of histoplasmosis? Maybe not, I had to look at things other than fungus. I needed to expand my repertoire.

What about bacteriophages? There was one suspected to cure cholera in the Ganges River. Why did cholera outbreak maps appear to stop at the Ganges River?

I dreamed I had Ebola and was in a hospital room with Dr. Douche. I had a hemorrhagic rash on my arm. I had a cup in my hand...it was soda with cigarette ashes. Citric acid and carbon? I think they put a heating pad on my arm and the rash turned into blisters. Probably just a stupid dream. I think it had more to do with hyperthermia killing Histoplasmosis, so I went and bought sweats and an electric blanket to try to raise my body temperature to that of a bird, but it was a stupid idea. (Birds don't carry Histoplasmosis because their body temperature is slightly higher than bats or humans.)

And I wondered about possums (that I saw two of one night after I heard the song "Possum Kingdom") who have a body temperature slightly below human body temperature and so can't get rabies. Isn't the rabies killed by their slightly lower body temperature?

I wondered if a human body forced into hypothermia or hyperthermia could kill pathogens.

There was a LOT more stuff I thought about. I felt the key lay in where the pathogens liked to make their "home" (pH, temp, etc.), and then make their "home" inhospitable so they'd leave, much like I wanted to leave my childhood and marital "homes."

I'll bet I could have figured out a lot of things about diseases by observing and studying. Like maybe, since I saw signs about horseshoe and horseshoe bats carry Enterovirus 71, the outbreak of the similar Enterovirus 68 was caused by bats. The outbreak map appeared to include ten of the states known to have the highest amounts of histoplasmosis. Heck, I shouldn't be banned from ever contacting the CDC. They should have given me a job!

One in a building far away from the director, so I wouldn't be fired for sexual harassment.

Oh well, their loss. I didn't want anything to do with the CDC anymore. Besides, I couldn't work anywhere like the CDC, where they routinely inadvertently exposed their lab workers to live infectious diseases like anthrax and Ebola. CDC workers appeared even more vulnerable to pathogens than the workers at Ultra Pure. (An ironic name, don't you think?)

There were more diseases that I could possibly link to Histoplasmosis and other ideas I had. I needed to tell the CDC. But if I contacted Dr. Douche with this information, which was probably wrong but still might be useful, the FBI would arrest me.

The song by Sade played, "Is it a crime, is it a crime? That I still want you, and I want you to want me, too." Yes, apparently it IS a crime...a FEDERAL crime!

I felt embarrassed and ashamed. But then I thought...why did I feel that way? I had spent my entire savings trying to help my coworkers. I had eaten sugar and driven around my former workplace with the windows rolled down to stay sick and get a diagnosis. I did it for my coworkers. (But I have to admit that part of it was to prove I was right and that I did have Disseminated Histoplasmosis.)

I didn't get a corticosteroid(?) shot at Care Now in the very beginning because I didn't want to suppress any symptoms that might help figure out what I had. I risked my health and my life to help my coworkers and everyone else. Should I be ashamed?

One of my biggest fears was being embarrassed...I hated it more than physical pain. But I opened myself up to embarrassment to email the CDC numerous times a day under various names in case anything I told them was helpful. I embarrassed myself in front of them for months. (Sometimes I just emailed to irritate them. But I almost always tried to make my emails funny.)

At Ricca Chemical in 2008, where I had symptoms of acute arsenic poisoning and saw a man who looked like a leper with signs of chronic arsenic poisoning (had it been bats, instead?) I had cut out huge chunks of my hair at the roots to send to be analyzed for metals. (Everyone told me I was "meant" to be there and also some had prayed for someone to help them.) Not many women with long hair will cut huge chunks out at the roots to help others.

Was it arsenic? They had been working on a leaky roof in the warehouse. I thought arsenic because of my symptoms and also because of the "leper" I saw with raindrop pigmentation, corny warts on his palms, bloody-looking eyes, and Mee's lines across his nails...signs of chronic arsenic poisoning.

But could it have been Disseminated Histoplasmosis: hypo/hyperpigmentation, lesions on the palms, hemorrhaging eyes, and horizontal Mee's or Muehrcke's lines across his nails from renal failure, nephrotic syndrome, or the fungal infection causing onychoptosis/onychopmadesis?

Ricca Chemical, with its anemic-looking workers with gastrointestinal problems, some with weird rashes, huge "dandruff" flakes and strange growths on their faces, odd behavior, and white lines across their nails. After leaving I noticed that I couldn't get anyone to reply to my emails and letters then, either, that stated something was wrong in the building with the damaged roof and located near water in DFW, just like Ultra Pure.

One night after being at Ricca for about a week, I had profuse bloody diarrhea and large bruises that suddenly appeared on my thighs as I lay on my stomach. That night, feeling like I was speeding, I viciously ridiculed my son. I was so mean, and he was so hurt and cried out, "Why are you doing this to me?" I didn't know why. I felt so bad later...that wasn't me. And the doctor looked at my blood test results with an odd, bewildered look on his face. That was the first time I noticed photophobia, tinnitus, and the nodule that appeared in my palate. And my heart felt like it was "fluttering."

My sister said she thought I was having panic attacks, like most of my family and some of our neighbors had. And my breast had a warm lump and leaked...histoplasmosis can infiltrate the parenchyma and mimic a type of breast cancer. Could it cause atrial fibrillation?

There were signs in Smyrna about "Notice." What was I supposed to notice? And as the red nail polish flaked off my unmanicured toenails (no money for a pedicure) I noticed something. Were those white horizontal lines across some of my toenails? Why was half of one toenail so thick and yellowish-white? Probably nothing. But later the nails on my left foot looked like psoriatic nails and some fell off...onychoptosis/onychopmadesis?

So what if there was no "man" in the woods and my room. I thought there had been a man and had loved him and tried to protect him...out of love. I was SO in love. I would have taken a bullet for him. Even if he was a hallucination and/or dream, it was pure and true love.

So what if I lashed out at Dr. F#@k-Face on Twitter when I saw the wedding band on his hand...he was a big boy, he'd get over it. (Funny how after I wrote this a song said, "I'm a big boy, I'll get over it.")

And it was kind of his fault I was sick, since the CDC should have had info about the bats and fungus on their website, where I (used to) get all of my disease-related information. When I heard about the bats at work I actually checked the CDC website. Now I avoided the CDC website and anything CDC/Dr. Frieden-related like the plague (pun intended).

So what if I was wrong about all the diseases and sent crazy emails on July 4th...I did it trying to save and help people. I tore up my car driving over grass and barriers that seemed to pop up everywhere.

Plus, if you think about it, everything I was doing was the fault of all the people I sent crazy, even abusive, emails to. It was their fault I was sick...the city's fault for not inspecting the building and finding the bats, the county's environmental health department's fault for not letting the public know about bats, and the CDC's fault for not knowing about, or at least letting the public know about, bats. And my supervisor's fault for not investigating and removing the bats when I told him to.

The same supervisor who ignored everything I told him to the point where I said, "I'm sorry I don't have testicles, but that doesn't mean I'm stupid!"

When my eyes oozed lymph/blood and I was afraid of going blind, I STILL drove toward Dallas and known bats to get to Parkland hospital and save a child...at least I thought there was a child. I thought I'd go blind...my biggest fear...but I did it anyway.

And I'm going to anger some people by mentioning the elephant in the room. I'm a white woman who grew up in the Deep South during the 1960's, the daughter of working-class Republicans, and I risked going blind to protect a black child. And not just because I thought he/she was the messiah, because at one point I was afraid someone would hurt the baby because they mistakenly THOUGHT it was the messiah. Because black lives really do matter. Everyone's life matters, including my own.

EVERYONE is important. EVERYONE is equal. I'm JUST as important as Dr. Frieden. The smelly, dirty, "crazy" person under a bridge is JUST as important as Dr. Frieden. The smelly, dirty, "crazy" people are JUST as important as Obama or Trump or the Queen or Kate Middleton.

So what if there was no Satan and witches...I had struggled (much of the time gravely ill) to save children, and I rejected power and money for love and to help all people.

I was kind to strangers, and most strangers were kind to me. (One more reason to be puzzled and hurt by the complete and utter rejection I experienced from the federal government.) I gave out gift cards for food to homeless people and rescued stray kittens. I carried dog and cat food in my trunk to feed hungry strays. I gave money to groups of homeless people so they could eat when I had little for myself.

I was a good person full of love and compassion. I didn't cheat on boyfriends, would never knowingly sleep with a married man, always tried to tell the truth, and didn't steal. I always put other people's needs before my own. Why beat myself up over anything I had done the last few months while so ill?

And when I did do something wrong or mean (I was only human, after all, and would never be perfect) I felt bad about it and tried to make amends. But I shouldn't beat myself up. Life was good enough at doing that without my assistance.

And, Dr. Skeletor, if I was contacted by someone begging me for help, I sure as hell wouldn't ignore them.

I took on the CDC and FBI trying to do what was right. One middle-aged, sick, vulnerable woman taking on the federal government to try to do what I KNEW was right. I'd take on Homeland Security and the CIA if I had to. I wasn't afraid or intimidated.

As a child, when other girls dreamed of being ballet dancers or princesses, my daydreams included hiding Jews from Nazis and being a part of the French Resistance. At a young age I was already on my way to becoming a stubborn, altruistic fighter. What did I have to be ashamed of?

And, with only a few thousand dollars between me and living on the street, I was going to pay to print this book. And I was going to mail it to Dr. F#@k-Face to give him my ideas...even if I was wrong about everything. But what if one thing I thought was right, or maybe gave him an idea?

But the FBI man threatened to arrest me if I mailed anything to Dr. F#@k-Face.

I did it anyway in case any of my stupid ideas were valid and could help just one other person and end their suffering. And if the FBI arrested me...oh well, at least I'd have a place to live.

That made me a pretty good person. And in the future I would have to love myself as much or more than I tried to make "the man" love me. If you think about it, in a movie I would kinda be the hero. Maybe Emma Stone would play me, and Ryan Gosling could be "the man."

Why did Dr. F#@k-Face refuse to spend 30 seconds to tell me there was no CDC in DFW and no "man" in the woods or room 528? He could have saved me MONTHS of pain. Some friends of mine thought it indicated the CDC really WAS in DFW.

Within six months (actually the first three months I was ill) I had lost everything...my job, my savings, my health, my sanity, my credibility, my pride, and the love of my life...even if he was just a delusion, he was real to me. It was stunningly swift how it happened, and I had done nothing wrong and nothing to "deserve" this. And I didn't even see it coming.

I thought my bosses, supervisors, and the CDC would THANK me for figuring out it was the bats and the fungus. So naïve of me. It seemed I was trying to do the RIGHT thing, so why was I the only one in this whole scenario who was broke and homeless and no one would talk to? Why was I punished?

What had I gained, besides a few new wrinkles and more damaged organs? Maybe knowing what it's like to be homeless and how it feels to be sick while uninsured? Maybe knowing what it's like to be desperate and dirt poor? No one should have to live like that.

Maybe knowing what it's like to be treated like (bat)sh#t?

No, wait, I had already known that from various family members, coworkers, boyfriends, and my ex-husband. But I had thought those days were over.

Before all this happened, I had thought there couldn't be a God, because how could he just sit there and let bad things happen and do nothing. But then I realized...how could I just sit there and let bad things happen and do nothing?

Some people say they pray and God never answers. But maybe He/She DOES answer. Maybe we're just not listening. Or maybe we don't get the answer we wanted.

Or maybe God is like a parent. He SHOWS us the answer and hopes we'll figure out the right thing to do ourselves. He/She teaches and hopes we learn. But we ignore it because we're staring at our cell phones, or backstabbing someone, waging wars both literally and figuratively against each other, or planning our "revenge," or self-medicating and wallowing in bed because we feel like we can't go on.

As I wrote to Dallas County, "Satan sees us turning on each other...black against white, white against Hispanic, men against women, Muslim against Jew, Atheist against Christian, Democrat against Republican, etc. etc. ETC. Satan sees us fighting and even killing each other. And Satan LAUGHS. He laughs at us. Because as long as we're fighting each other no one will notice what he/she's doing."

Had a messiah been born or was soon to be born? If there was and I knew who the baby was I wouldn't tell anyone, so that no one would be certain which child it was. Because, as I had emailed Dallas County, "all little boys and girls deserved to be treated as if they were the son or daughter of God."

Maybe it was to prove to myself that I was as least as smart as the Director of the CDC? I already knew I was smarter than some doctors. And, like "the man" in the woods said, "It's ok to think you're smart." And it was ok to think I was a great person who deserved to be treated well and loved.

As for the CDC Director...well, Christina sang:

"Makes me that much stronger  
Makes me work a little bit harder  
It makes me that much wiser  
So thanks for making me a fighter  
Made me learn a little bit faster  
Made my skin a little bit thicker  
Makes me that much smarter  
So thanks for making me a fighter"

So...thank you, Dr. F#@k-Face.

Funny...I hadn't heard the above song in a long time, but here it was playing on the musak immediately after I just typed those lyrics. It felt like a joke. WHO was controlling the music!?

Anyway, I couldn't leave Atlanta just yet. After walking through a store called "Nazareth," another called "Tripoli," and a restaurant called "China" the next day, I tried to recall if my friend said something about that. Didn't he say something about walking across Asia, from Africa to China, in one day?

I didn't know if there was one more thing I was supposed to do, but it sounded so familiar and I had heard it in a song.

Hoping that Dr. Douche wouldn't call the FBI to arrest me, I made plans to stay in Georgia until at least October 17th so that I could unflinchingly walk through "Hell's Gates."

#  Chapter 32 - And the Story Goes On and On and On

(aka: "Baby I Can Feel Myself Givin' Up")

Now I was getting sick at East-West Connect in Smyrna. It seemed the Histoplasmosis was closing in on me like an aggressive male bat. A male bat will either mate passively or he will mate aggressively, which means he isolates the female before forcing himself on her. Why did I find that so...interesting?

Being a bit of a pervert, which I had only realized within the last few years and tried to suppress in the past, I now decided to embrace the fact. After all, wasn't I a little old to be playing the ingenue? (Yes, I did plagiarize that from "Nip/Tuck.")

Actually, I wasn't as much of a pervert as I thought, because later I would read a list of the most common female sexual fantasies. And all of mine were on the list, even the "rape fantasy" (#3).

I imagined the blurry-faced CDC man playing a "game" with me. He isolates me by blocking the phone and internet. Finally, he comes into my room and backs me into a corner, slowly removing his suit jacket, loosening his tie, and unbuttoning the top button of his shirt...leaving the rest of the buttons for me...is it hot in here, or is it just me!? Hopefully it's just a fever, which would kill the Histoplamsosis.

Anyway, I didn't think I was tripping anymore, but still the invisible ball-and-chain would visit...like when Iris played. I myself wondered if I was triggering it somehow (except for the really hard ones) but I didn't seem to be able to make it happen when I wanted it to.

It would still happen occasionally...not very often, and it seemed to do what I thought in my mind for "him" to do. I even thought, "This is absolutely INSANE. There is NO WAY the MARRIED CDC Director is doing this to me telepathically. If you are, do it right now." And immediately BAM BAM BAM.

Hahahaha, this was so funny!!!! SOOOOO weird.

"This is f#@king crazy!!! It's insane! This is just my subconscious or incredible coincidences. There are rational explanations for what's happening," I told myself.

But still, I couldn't help but wonder.... And I hoped against hope the government didn't have some alien holed up somewhere doing this...one that looked like E.T. Love is blind, but not THAT blind.

Fate or the cosmos had decided to pull some kind of elaborate Punk'd on me. Was Ashton somewhere around? I'd like to meet him and Mila. Wasn't six months a little long for the joke to go on?

The morning of October 20 I was tired of the young homeless guys (the girl had left) that I was taking care of but who seemed to have no intention of getting jobs, and I left Rite4Us.

I needed to leave Smyrna, because now I had apparent Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo, "no known cause." I hoped it wasn't Ménière's disease. Can't that cause deafness? The bats seemed to want me blind, deaf, insane, catatonic, and/or lame...or dead, they definitely would have liked me dead. It was as if they were trying to prevent me from doing something I was supposed to do.

I was sick of Atlanta, the CDC, Dr. Frieden, and the Apocalypse and headed out of Georgia. Why would I try to help the world? All they, even most of my family, did was toss me aside while sick. Most people seemed to do nothing but at least disappoint, at best neglect, and at worst abuse me. Even my son would spit food in my face and be nasty to me.

I tried to always be nice, but felt like a doormat. The resentment would build and build until it overflowed, like water in a glass, and I'd lash out. And after that came the guilt. Why did people always seem to act nice only after I was nasty to them? Did they go around "testing" to see how far they could go? Why were so many people such jerks?! Humans are so irrational.

I'd soon be living on the streets in winter. Maybe I'd try to get warm in a dumpster and get crushed to death in a trash truck like that Fort Worth man was.

Maybe humans were a scourge and should be eliminated. They seemed to ruin everything they touched. They'd let a man having a heart attack die in the snow instead of risking their crappy little ER jobs by bringing him inside. If he was conscious, can you imagine how he felt...dying in front of medical workers who did nothing but watch him? Can you imagine the horror?

Did you know a poll was conducted and 75% of people think that by the time we make the world unlivable scientists will have figured out how to live in outer space? Like Earth is disposable. Those people apparently have more faith in scientists than I do.

Many humans constantly criticize people caught doing something wrong for LOTS of money, while they themselves hypocritically sell out on a daily basis for much, much less. Being a selfish sh*t appears to be encouraged, rewarded, and admired these days. "Selfish people live longer," I've read.

And people watch the Kardashians...the KARDASHIANS. Do you think the inventors of TV and computers imagined all the wonderful things their inventions would do and are now shocked and dismayed by what people really use them for?

Humans spend BILLIONS, maybe TRILLIONS, creating weapons of mass destruction and playing their stupid little pissing contests of war, like little boys who didn't get enough time playing with their Cracker Jack decoder rings. And meanwhile everyone else has to suffer.

In Dallas there are huge mansions a couple of blocks from homeless people sleeping on benches. And you think I'M crazy....

Do you know how scientists can tell when a bee hive is willingly abandoned versus dying an unnatural death? If there are still capped eggs/larvae in the hive they know it died unnaturally, because even honeybees won't abandon a child.

But humans will.

So I headed out of Georgia to find somewhere with lots of cedar trees. Bats eat moths, and moth larvae hate cedar. (Did your mother keep linens in a cedar chest, too?)

Apocalypse and saving the world be d@mned...maybe it wasn't worth saving. But then a lovely African-American woman complimented me at a gas station. So I headed to Dawsonville instead. There, on a Monday morning with no one else around so I wouldn't startle, I unflinchingly walked through the closed "Hell's Gates." I even laughed at the "bloody" guillotine. While walking, I remembered another part of the prophecy my friend told me. And I had just fulfilled it when I "laughed while walking through the Gates of Hell."

Then I went back to Smyrna. I remembered giggling with my friend and thought he said something about being on a spaceship/starship, it made me think of Jefferson Starship, so I walked through Starship (Enterprises). I didn't realize it was an adult shop and spent some time looking at spreading rods and other things I never knew existed. I certainly was a naughty horsewoman. Oooo, why did riding a horse suddenly seem so appealing? But the song said if I wanted to ride, don't ride the white horse. Probably because he was married.

There was something about the moon, I think, so I walked into Luna's Taqueria. I didn't eat, because the buffet wasn't out that day. Later it seemed like going to eat lunch on the moon, but not eating...maybe looking at the menu and leaving...sounded like something my friend had said.

I was just going through the motions at this point, and it was more like, "Why not?" Did I need to find somewhere with "sun" in the name, too? Why did sleeping/staying on the sun for a month sound so darn familiar?! I don't know, but I had stayed at Sun Suites for a month.

It was kind of fun, playing this Apocalypse scavenger hunt game. I should market it as a party game..."The Apocalypse/Passion of Christ/Nativity game." For example, you'd have to find a hotel with no rooms available: "No room at the inn."

Music lovers could play the game, and if the task was "Rise from the dead" they could lie down on the floor with cds by Jerry Garcia and his bandmates and then stand up while The (Grateful) Dead stayed on the floor. Rise from the dead...get it?

Or "arose from the dead" and you get a rose from a cemetery.

There was something in the prophecy about skipping or hopping around the world. So I went on a tour of World Gym. But how was I supposed to hop without having the Smyrna police tote me off to that state mental hospital? So I hopped on the gym floor asking if it was padded. Upstairs the man and I noticed the floor, only where we were standing, vibrating and he said it felt like an earthquake. So weird...maybe it was just vibrations from the movie that was playing in an adjoining room. But I seemed to remember what my friend had said was something about someone "shaking on top of the world."

Then I headed out of Georgia. My work there was done. As I drove, I grimaced at the broken blood vessels in my left eye and the bruise on my left eyelid that spontaneously appeared. At least now I was beginning to LOOK ill.

Later I tweeted for Dr. Frieden to go ahead and have the FBI pick me up in one of their black cars with the scales of justice on the side. He never did, even though I wanted him to so I could be the 4th Horseman of the Apocalypse-War.

But I still didn't think I was right for the part.

#  Chapter 33 - No More Tears

(aka: "I'll Mend Myself Before it Gets Me")

On October 29, 2014, after several nights at the Clarion hotel in Shreveport, where I ended up after leaving Atlanta, I seemed to be getting better. When I would wake up my nodule in my upper palate would be smaller and the buzzing in my ears would be less noticeable...both seemed almost gone at times. But my right arm hurt...like pain INSIDE my left radius.

And the 3rd, 4th, and 5th fingers of my right hand seemed to cramp up into my palm again. And one time I walked weird...and my back felt "funny."

Gone were the "signs"...at least I thought so...I was hardly listening to the radio or watching TV. But when I did watch TV I saw a documentary about John Hinckley, Mark Chapman, Andrea Yates, and others. (Strange how all three of these batsh#t crazy people were from DFW.) When I looked up "erotomania," I read something about thinking someone is sending secret messages through the media. I had never known that before. And then the TV and music suddenly stopped "communicating" with me. The erotomania was gone.

Also gone were the religious delusions, paranoia, and most of the physical pains. Unfortunately, also gone was my money, with the exception of approximately $500. And I was a little disappointed because apparently my "invisible boyfriend," much like "the man," had deserted me.

I no longer cared about "the man," because even if he was real he had ultimately betrayed and abandoned me. And even if he didn't exist, the CDC, Dr. Frieden, and Ms. Burwell, federal employees charged with helping Americans with diseases, had ultimately betrayed and abandoned me, an American with a disease, and my coworkers.

If foreign enemies were captured in the U.S., the Geneva Convention ensured they would be treated better than the CDC treated me. Now that I think about it, those enemies would be treated better than uninsured Americans and homeless people.

Whether Dr. Frieden had been in DFW or not, I now thought he was a jerk. I no longer worried if I was young enough, thin enough, pretty enough, smart enough, sexy enough, charming enough, classy enough, or ANYTHING enough for the Director of the CDC. His wife could have him.

Funny how a song played after I wrote the paragraph above saying never to feel like you're not enough.

After almost seven months it seemed my last bout of Disseminated Histoplasmosis was finally almost over (although even after more than two years there was still some left). I hoped there wasn't a relapse, and I dreaded driving through East Texas on I-20 or up 71 toward Arkansas to take I-30, especially since one of "the boys" had broken my driver's side window.

The only reason I had let "the boys" stay with me for so long was because one could have been my son's twin. I felt like maybe karma would have someone help my son if he was in need if I helped them. They even called me "Mom."

Funny how when I was in a car with the homeless girl and two boys I let share my room I was thinking of the game "Clue" and the girl suddenly blurted out, "Clue! Isn't that a game? How do you play it?"

So weird.

The reason I wanted to vindicate Adam Lanza so bad was because the older photo where he's smiling at the camera and waving reminded me of my son.

Deciding to head toward DFW, I felt strangely calm and strong now, just like my "old" self, and the odd dreams appeared to have vanished.

I no longer felt sad. I no longer felt stupid. Wait...I take back about not feeling stupid, because I'd think about my refusing a shot to feel better because I didn't want to suppress any symptoms until I figured out what I had, and how I ate sugar and drove around my breezy former workplace to make myself worse and stay sick to prove what I had. In my mind I imagined the CDC and my former coworkers THANKING me, not ostracizing me. I guess that was pretty stupid.

But I no longer felt ashamed. I no longer felt guilty. I had been a VICTIM...of a disease.

I didn't want another baby. Not at my age. I didn't want to get married and live in the suburbs. The idea of a suburban life terrified me. Washing breakfast dishes and doing laundry while watching daytime TV seemed like a fate worse than death. No...make that a fate worse than Disseminated Histoplasmosis.

Maybe I was the messiah...why not me? The messiah supposedly cures disease and plague, has a son, and has reddish hair.... It's said the second coming would come back different this time. Well, I guess a foul-mouthed, horny middle-aged female is different. Just think how angry so many men will be if the messiah is female. LMAO

It amused me to consider I was and texted myself for the government to see, "This better not end the way it did last time. I'm not at all happy about the way it ended last time." Lol

And I also sent, "I get SO sick of having to do everything myself!"

But for now, songs said to go west and go home. It must have been time to return to Texas.

So, Dr. Frieden, are you gonna call the Feds? Go ahead. I'll tell you and them the same thing I told "Satan" and his "demons" when I first arrived in Smyrna.

"Bring it on, b!tches."

#  Chapter 34 - Under the Influence

(aka: "I Wish You Would Come Back")

And "bring it" they had done. I know a lot of people have it worse than I did, but it still felt like going through hell to me. But, as Winston Churchill said, "If you're going through Hell, keep going."

Winston Churchill with his apparent lifelong struggle with "prolonged and recurrent depression" and its associated "despair."

Arriving in Dallas after driving on I-20, I felt ok, but my eyes were red and my fingers on my right hand curled up to my palm during the drive. And there was a strange piercing pain, as if someone had stabbed me in my left jaw, and a sharp pain like an electrical current shot from my left jaw down the left side of my neck to my shoulder. Was that trigeminal neuralgia? Cause unknown?

Driving through Garland, I felt more ill. But I drove through it anyway to get to the Rockwall Hilton. They had HEPA filters, and I had a soft spot for the hotel. The only available room was pricey, but I got it because a song in the lobby played, "under the influence of you." I wasn't hearing "signs" anymore, but after only 1 ½ drinks and eating I still had a slight buzz, so I paid attention to "under the influence." It seemed that a $209 room would be cheaper than a DUI, especially since my insurance was expired, so I checked into room #457. Funny how the only available room was for handicapped people. Did someone think I still had vertigo? I didn't.

And funny how I felt completely sober immediately after checking into the room. Maybe I was meant to be there. Maybe the next morning I was supposed to read the sign I had missed so many times at the Rockwall Hilton pool that read a rock wall that gave the city its name was submerged in Lake Ray Hubbard. I wondered if someone walking on that wall would appear to "walk on the water."

Or maybe I was supposed to hear the man talking about the Gulf War and notice Gulf War Syndrome shared numerous symptoms with Disseminated Histoplasmosis.

I have to admit that, even though he had sorely disappointed me for months, if "the man" somehow showed up all would be forgiven. This made me think about how, in the past, I argued that people couldn't do heinous things and be forgiven by God. But maybe God loves us as much as I had loved "the man," so much that no matter what they had done he would take them back...if only they would come to him. I wondered if God was as hurt and disappointed as I was when someone He loved refused to do that.

"C'mon, God, I thought the deal was that I'd get a wonderful man out of all this. Where IS he?!" I was tired of waiting...I had been waiting my whole life for this guy to show up.

It wasn't as if God never answered my prayers. In fact, many times he had given me exactly what I had asked for. I just wasn't asking for the right things. For example, I had prayed to get the job at Ultra Pure.

He had also answered my prayers regarding men, too. "Please send me a man who loves me." I forgot to add one I loved back. "Please send me a man who loves me that I have feelings for." I forgot to add one without a meth lab. "Send me someone good." I forgot to add someone I was attracted to. "Someone I'm attracted to." I forgot to add "not an abusive narcissist." I was a loser magnet.

"You-dammit, God! What in your name is WRONG with you!?"

At some point I realized God HAD answered my prayers. I had prayed for a man to ravage me. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that "ravage" means "cause severe and extensive damage to."

"Thanks, God." Maybe I should start praying for someone to "ravish" me instead?

So, I resigned myself to being alone. And I was content. But occasionally I prayed for a wonderful, smart, accomplished man who I loved and loved me. One who I could admire and respect without faking it. Someone heterosexual, honest, and faithful; who found me sexually attractive; and who I was sexually attracted to. I thought I had covered all the bases.

But I forgot to add, "Someone who I know is real, spends time with me, who talks to me, and I can tell my family and friends about."

Oh well, I still managed to have a good time by myself at the Hilton Hotel without "the man." And now all the other attractive men who surrounded me started appealing to me after months of only wanting "the man." It was crazy to sit around waiting for someone who refused to speak to me.

Slowly I was getting over both the fungus and "the man." Maybe I should just pick up random men for the occasional roll in the hay. Nah, I can't do that. (Btw, Terri Garr has multiple sclerosis.)

Why did so much weird stuff always happen to me? All I did was read, work, and go home. I was so conservative...tried to be such a "good girl"... so why was I always sucked into so many weird situations. It wasn't like I sought them out. My idea of a good time was going to Barnes & Noble.

Out of all the people in the world to hallucinate was in the woods and Room #528, why in the world did my delusional, fungus-filled brain pick the Director of the CDC?! Why not Hugh Jackman?

The MARRIED Director of the CDC, so I couldn't even have applied for a job at the CDC and tried to attract him in real life. Not that I was in any position to work for all those months, but I could have after I got better if I had kept my big mouth shut. But I don't think I was meant to keep my mouth shut.

Oh well, just one more weird thing in a life filled with drama, stress, and weird things. Funny, because I valued peace and calm, believe it or not. My favorite pastime was looking online at funny cat photos with captions and reading sarcastic e-cards.

Maybe it was...I'm thinking of The Church Lady here...Satan? Maybe Satan posed as Dr. Tw@t, my Kryptonite, hoping that the reality of the CDC Director not caring if I died would push me over the edge...to either madness or suicide.

At least it's an interesting theory. Because walking out of my job didn't stop me. Losing all of my earthly possessions didn't stop me. Losing all my savings didn't stop me. Even the lying and betrayal from doctors and family members didn't stop me. The pain, the fear, none of it had stopped me. The closest anything came to stopping me was losing "the man," either real or imagined. I had to be strong and not give up, even if I thought the person I cared about most couldn't stand me. I had to put my love and my faith in something stronger than the Director of the CDC.

Maybe Satan rubbed his hands in anticipation of the babbling mess I'd be after being savagely "raped" by the fungus and thinking somehow it was the Director of the CDC. Maybe I'd accuse Dr. Tw@t of being a witch, like those nuns did to that priest burned at the stake years ago in Europe. Maybe Satan imagined my sobbing to the police about being telepathically "raped" by Dr. Frieden and my being carted off to that state mental hospital, drugged into oblivion.

But God and His angels were snickering behind Satan's back, because only they (and I) knew the truth...that, instead of being devastated and angry at Dr. Frieden, I would...LIKE it! I'd beg for more!!! And the only reason I'd be angry at the director was because he wouldn't show up and do it in person.

God had chosen well. I was open-minded, free to travel, and enjoyed party games like charades and scavenger hunts. I liked riddles and could think up novel ways to fit the criteria of seemingly impossible prophecies. I had a basic science background, good research skills, and a noted attention to detail. AND I was a little bit of a pervert. I was the perfect candidate for the job.

Anyway, the Director of the CDC was such a good listener as I tweeted him, his never replying, just like Mr. Dashboard. He could send me a bill for this latest therapy session, and I'd throw it in a pile with all the other unpaid bills I accrued from the doctors and hospitals in DFW who had tried their best to kill me.

#  Chapter 35 - Crazy Stupid Love

(aka: "As Real As It May Seem, It Was Only in My Dreams")

This is as good a point as any to admit that some of the letters I sent to the CDC Director, who I still thought might have been "the man," weren't as innocent or crazy as they might have seemed. There was a method to my madness.

While in Smyrna, leading up to the bawdy coded love letter that I THOUGHT the director knew was on its way, since I thought I was under surveillance and TOLD him it was coming (lol), I sent a couple of other letters.

With these letters I attempted to carry out an idiotic plan I concocted to seduce "the man." Interspersed in these letters were things like, "If my clothes keep disappearing from my room I'll end up walking around naked." Since the odds of my seeing or talking to "the man" were now next to nothing, my idea was to subliminally plant images in his mind, hoping he'd dream about them. I guess I was desperate at this point.

When turning on the radio I heard Coldplay sing, "...Tiger's waiting to be tamed." So I wrote a silly letter that I was a tigress waiting for my mate to catch my scent and "tame" me. Of course, after that remark, Maroon 5 kept singing over and over, "Baby I'm preying on you tonight, hunt you down eat you alive"....

"Yeah, promises, promises," I complained to Mr. Dashboard.

..."just like animals, animals...Maybe you think that you can hide, I can smell your scent for miles, just like animals, animals...It's like we can't stop, we're enemies, but we get along when I'm inside you-you."

Mr. Dashboard, who I strangely thought might be "the man" controlling the radio stations, was at it again...such a jerk for always disappearing when I needed him the most, but still SO sexy.

Other letters I sent to Dr. Frieden mentioned various stupid phrases engineered to catch his attention. And of course I "innocently" made sure to add bits of my fantasies. It's stupid, but I was in such a powerless position, and sick to boot! And I had no idea he was married.

And what if he WAS in my hotel room? Why did everyone REFUSE to deny it? I tried my darnedest, in my IDIOTIC way, to try to "win" him back if he had been there...even though part of me despised him. It was so weird, and for the first time I understood what a love/hate relationship is. It's like you can't decide if you'd rather knock him upside the head with a frying pan or f@#k him.

Yes, it's dumb, but anyone who has been truly in love or wanted to be in love might agree that you don't imagine and hold out for someone you "get along with."

"Love is patient, love is kind," the saying goes, but I think true love is also passionate and sometimes crazy...like the movie title reads, "Crazy Stupid Love." When truly in love a person can do mind-numbingly stupid things.

There's nothing you desire more than to feel that person's skin and warmth next to yours. You'd do almost anything. You "come alive" in their presence, and no one else will do. You imagine catching each other's gaze and smiling...and laughing together. Sharing little inside jokes. And imagining that person in the arms of someone else...desiring someone else...even LIKING someone else more...well, the idea of that can drive you insane. Of course, you think everyone else finds them as attractive as you do, when in reality most people are wondering what it is you see in them.

Imagine seeing that someone on websites laughing and smiling with other women while treating you as if you're a pariah and with such unearned hatred. Can you imagine how you would feel having to see their face three feet wide on TVs everywhere you went while ill? Or online, smiling and touching another woman's back to pass her. SHE wasn't so unworthy...not like you were.

"You're a filthy, disgusting creature, not even worthy of a simple reply let alone being TOUCHED. And everyone, even strangers in the federal government who are PAID to 'care,' all wish you'd just shut up, crawl back to wherever you came from, and die there," is the message I was getting.

Wouldn't YOU be hurt and upset? Confused and wondering what it was that you did, what you WERE that was so bad...so evil, to make that other person and everyone around them HATE you so much they'd wish you would literally crawl off and die.

All those childhood feelings of being "different" from the other children as you sat inside reading encyclopedias, watching documentaries, and waiting for that smart, wonderful man who would show up one day and appreciate it.

All those confused feelings in your teenaged years, trying to fix up and look pretty while some of the boys looked and flirted, but none ever asked you out...feeling like there was something inherently "wrong" with you so that you stopped even trying. Never knowing until years later that everyone thought you were dating your closeted gay best friend. Or thought you'd say no, because you made such good grades. So silly. I didn't care what their grades were like. All I wanted was to go out with cute boys and make out with them. I was a normal teenaged girl with normal teenage desires.

Maybe that will give you some insight as to why the federal government turning on me en masse was so devastating...reinforcing all the negative remarks and neglect of a narcissistic mother and inattention of an absent father...of being the sensitive scapegoat in my parents' failing marriage. The smallest, easiest target for all the rage and frustration of an incredibly dysfunctional family. Savagely beaten by an abusive, alcoholic husband who always acted like it was my fault. Feeling utterly alone...as if everyone around me was batsh#t crazy.

Living for the day I could escape my childhood and marital "homes." Working hard, waiting, and trying to find that man...the man who never, EVER showed up...until I was 52 and sick in DFW...or so I thought. Maybe then you might understand why losing "the man" in the woods and the Hilton Hotel while still ill with fungus, which makes people depressed anyway, filled me with despair.

Oh yeah, and on a side note...maybe the next time you look at some dirty, smelly homeless person, even one babbling incoherently to themselves, maybe even one with open sores or disgusting growths on their skin, instead of being repulsed and passing by grumbling, "Why doesn't he/she get a job?" you might stop and realize all it would take for you to be EXACTLY like them is some twist of fate...maybe innocently inhaling a few invisible fungal spores while diligently working...or some other stroke of bad luck. And maybe you can try to see the child they once were, a child so full of hope of what they would be in their future. A child who shyly smiled at cartoons, kittens, and puppy dogs and tried to always be a good boy/girl, completely unaware of the hopeless living hell their life would become. And maybe instead of just driving/walking by and ignoring them you could HELP them, the way you'd want to be helped if your luck changed. Cue the violins.

Maybe one knows how to fuel cars with air or water...or could cure cancer... or is the Messiah.

But back to love...think of the world's greatest love stories, and I'm not talking about Disney fairytales. The enduring love stories are the ones filled with passionate lovers doing the most inane things...Romeo & Juliet, Antony & Cleopatra, Rhett & Scarlett. True, romantic, passionate love is not always tidy and rational...sometimes it's messy...irrational...crazy...able to induce madness or ecstasy, depending on whether it's reciprocated or not.

I don't know about you, but when I imagine meeting someone I don't think, "I'd like to meet someone who I can spend a pleasant evening with eating dinner and watching TV before going to sleep after chores and a perfunctory kiss on the cheek." It's not, "I want a man who will split the bills, provide health insurance, and do half of the housework. And put the toilet seat down."

No! When I imagine meeting "the one" I think of exciting/fun dates, snuggling in front of fireplaces sharing secrets and fears in the safety and acceptance of my lover's arms, MINDBLOWING sex, passion, love, laughter...I want it ALL, or I don't want it at all.

When away from him I want to yearn for his touch and the slightly salty taste of his skin. I don't want to be relieved when he's finally gone for a while, since he annoys the cr@p out of me. When I imagine his thinking of me, I don't want his thinking, "well, she's attractive enough and can cook, and we share the same values and converse well....and my mother likes her."

No! When he thinks of me I want it to be with passion and unwavering loyalty and love. When he looks at me I want to see a sparkle in his eyes and know he's thinking the same thing I am..."I can't wait to get you away from all these people and have you alone." I don't want to "settle," and I don't want him to think that he is, either.

Watching his hands fondling a wine glass and his lips caressing the rim as he drinks...the sway of his back when he's turned away from me...the masculine curves of sinewy forearms...how he smiles that goofy grin...and wanting every inch of him inside and out, as is, and his wanting every inch of me the same way. Why...I imagine having that with someone is like living in heaven.

Sure, there are occasional arguments, disagreements, and hurt feelings. But then the two of you just can't stay away from each other, and still keep coming back for more, perhaps even stronger than before like a broken bone that heals even stronger in the area of the break. The adventures of discovering the wonders of the world and each other.... I guess I sound ridiculous.

There must be other people in the world who can understand how I feel. Or maybe I'm just bat$hit crazy.

#  Chapter 36 - Then You Really Might Know What It's Like

(aka: "I Won't Let This Build Up Inside of Me")

On Halloween night 2014 I only had about $20 left, so I decided since it was chilly I'd pay to park in Love Field's parking garage and sleep in the terminal. My tax return, filed in October, was taking a while to receive. I decided to try to sleep in my car, but one of "the boys" had accidentally broken my driver's side window, so it was uncomfortably chilly. With resentment, I thought of Dr. Frieden, Ms. Burwell, Jeh Johnson, and my former employers comfortable in their warm beds.

I wasn't getting "signs" from music anymore, but the radio did play some songs that made me think "the man" might be in the wooded area again that night and/or at the Hilton Hotel at midnight. So I started driving toward Rockwall, but stopped instead at a gas station. I tweeted insults to Dr. Frieden, stating that I wasn't going to try to run around following instructions from the radio anymore.

I also informed him that he and Jeh Johnson needed to find me a place to live or I'd drive down to Austin to the Texas governor's mansion and point out to the Republican Governor Perry that the Democratic Directors of the CDC and Homeland Security had the authority to control communications in the event of an infectious disease outbreak and that a map of the states with the most histoplasmosis, an infectious disease, curiously almost perfectly overlay a map of Republican states. So that meant if there WERE outbreaks and the CDC and Homeland Security were legally able to secretly monitor/control communications, then Democrats had control of Republican states.

I was still sick, with my ears buzzing, and apparently unable to function at 100%-not only because I was ill, but because I was still in shock. I was in shock about how ignorant the doctors in DFW had been, how evil some of the doctors and my former employers had turned out to be, and how evil the entire federal government appeared to be with their apparent conspiracy of silence against me. The realization that everyone in the world had apparently abandoned me while I was so ill immobilized me. It also filled me with frustration and anger, but unable to express it in any constructive way.

I was furious. I would never completely ignore someone so needy like that, even a stranger. I was the kind of person who would try to do all I could to help. Of course, sometimes people took advantage of my good nature, but I hoped I never lost my compassion because bad people disappointed me. After all, I wanted to still be a kind-hearted person for that man who was supposed to show up someday, even though it appeared I'd be too old to enjoy him by the time he did arrive.

Thinking of all the betrayal and abandonment reminded me of the story of Jesus. How Jesus went around trying to make the world a better place, and just look at what happened to him! If I had been Jesus on the cross I wouldn't have asked God to forgive them because they knew not what they did. I would have been screaming curses and threats, much like I did to the CDC and Dr. Frieden.

"You just wait and see what my Father does when He finds out!" No, I'm not as noble as Jesus.

Do you think if Jesus lived today he'd be in therapy for "pathological altruism"? I think if religious characters lived today they would ALL probably be locked up in asylums.

"Oh, so you're the Son of God and ALSO God incarnate? And you're going to die to save everyone else from going to Hell, but you'll rise from the dead? And you spoke with Satan. Here, Jesus, take this Haldol as I fill out your commitment papers. Oh, don't worry, those multiple sclerosis symptoms are just side-effects." (Btw, the night Jesus was arrested he sweat blood...hematidrosis, unknown cause. Hematidrosis can be caused by primary thrombocytopenic purpura, which can be caused by disseminated histoplasmosis.)

"So, an angel came to you and told you that you, a virgin, would give birth to the son of God without having sex. And you did and now he's going to die to save the world. Hey, you don't happen to know some guy named Jesus, do you? Oh, you're his mother? Must be hereditary. Swallow this Risperdal while I call some guys to come get you. No, those guys in the white coats are NOT more angels, Mary. And stop complaining about all your aches and pains, dry mouth, and spasms. They're just side-effects."

"So, Muhammad, you claim you split the moon, your food praises you, and you comforted a palm tree that was crying because it was upset that you leaned on it? You don't happen to be related to some guy named Jesus, do you? No? Oh, what's that you're saying? Guards, bring another one of those coats with the funny arms that tie in the back and lock up this guy. He's obviously schizophrenic and has a messiah complex. Give him some Thorazine, and don't worry if he gets hives and rashes, vision problems, and seizures, since those are just side-effects. And keep him away from Jesus!"

"Nurse, I'm going to need some more prescription pads. I don't know what's going on today, but so many people are being brought in. There was a guy who claimed a burning bush spoke to him, some guy who claimed he rose from the dead, another one who almost killed his son and said God told him to, and a couple of guys who said they saw their friend float up in the air. It's like everyone in town is going batsh#t crazy!"

Cold, desperate, and with nowhere to go, I went to the emergency room of Texas Presbyterian, knowing it would be empty after the Ebola patient had been there. I told the doctors about my apparent epileptic-type seizure and my positive histoplasmosis antibody test from the Mayo Clinic. They asked if anyone witnessed the seizure, I guess since people often lie to get antifungal. *eyeroll* They did another chest X-ray and I argued with the ER doctor who, like a lot of doctors I encountered, seemed arrogant.

I asked him why I was given yet another chest X-ray and we argued about the fact that 40-70% of people with disseminated histoplasmosis have no evidence of the infection on a chest X-ray. He refused to give me antifungal and we continued arguing about disseminated histoplasmosis. He said something like, "I've been an infectious disease doctor for 20 years!" until, after a few more minutes of my spouting disseminated histoplasmosis facts that contradicted what he was saying he asked, apparently befuddled, "What's DISSEMINATED histoplasmosis?"

"SERIOUSLY!? Why don't you go Google it, Mr. Infectious Disease expert!!!" I wanted to scream at him, but instead I demanded my lab results and left, signing the $950 bill I knew I would never pay.

With no money left, I now literally had nowhere to go. I didn't have enough access to the Internet or enough energy to do the required job searches per week, and I was too ill to hold down a job anyway, so I wasn't getting unemployment money. Imagine how long I'd keep a job with the alternating laughing and crying that was a hallmark of my disease. And what would happen if I suddenly started having seizures or "orgasms" at work?

The fear that had immobilized me in the past when laid off or when I had quit suddenly became reality...the thing I had spent countless hours crying in bed about when between jobs and afraid I'd never find another...the horrible fear...I was now officially "homeless."

Filled with rage and frustration, I didn't know what to do. I was so angry with everyone. Everyone who wouldn't help me when I needed it. All the people who I would have literally died trying to help.

Nobody loved me. It appeared nobody even liked me. Everyone appeared to hate me and not care if I died, which made me hate them, too. So I resorted to my tried-and-true method of relieving stress by tweeting insults to the Director of the CDC.

Thinking of ANYONE I knew in DFW who might let me sleep on their couch, I looked for an old friend of my son. I had once given a brand-new suit to his mother, and she was a nice woman who I thought might let me stay with her family for a day or two. While looking for their house, I happened to drive back and forth across and up and down a street named "Thames."

OMG! I suddenly remembered that I think my friend said something about someone going back and forth and up and down "The Thames," and he and I discussed the correct pronunciation of Thames. I was still fulfilling that old prophecy. But it didn't seem to be doing anyone any good, especially me.

At my son's friend's house, the parents weren't home, but my son's friend discussed his chronic pain that I had known about for years. Only now he added it was the result of a "bone infection" and he had a specific pain syndrome and took medication for seizures. I wondered if he really had disseminated histoplasmosis.

He told me about a homeless shelter in Fort Worth, so I went to E. Lancaster there. It was "homeless central," and the area was called the "Ho' Stroll." In the ensuing days, whenever I walked anywhere, men would constantly follow and honk at me, and I'd have to scream at them, "I'm not a ho!"

It was too late to get a bed anywhere, but I went to a church where they were feeding homeless people dinner. I met a hairy fellow known as "Brother Robbie" whose conversations comprised 98% Bible quotes. Brother Robbie told me about a wooded area by a park where homeless people live in tents. The first night I walked through this homeless "city" in the woods seemed magical. The weather was clear, and walking through the dark woods I'd come upon clearings filled with lamps, furniture, and tents. Of course, "black cars look better in the shade" and we all know how most women are fairly pretty in dark lights (and with the help of a few shots of liquor), so of course the woods seemed much more appealing in the dark than they would in the light of day. It seemed like a fairy-land or something out of The Hobbit. (Did J.R.R. Tolkien die of a bleeding ulcer and chest infection?) It must have been what people lived like hundreds of years ago, and it seemed neat. Like camping 100% of the time.

With no tent, I was forced to sleep in my car, still with no driver's side window. As the night wore on it became quite cold.

Brother Robbie, who had several locals vouch for him, insisted on watching over me as I tried to sleep. He said the area was dangerous, and later someone told me of the numerous murders around the park in the previous year. The night seemed to last forever, since it was too cold and uncomfortable to sleep. Brother Robbie kept spouting Bible passages and kept telling me what I NEEDED to do over and over to get into heaven. So many rules. Finally, I told him to STFU! He never shut up and never let me speak. When he would let me speak it was as if he wasn't listening.

He just blabbed on all night, even when I'd ask him to be quiet so I could sleep. I yelled at him that it was arrogant of him to think he needed to go around telling OTHER people what THEY needed to do, and assured him that I thought I had done enough the last few months and was pretty certain I'd end up going to heaven.

"GO AWAY! GET AWAY FROM ME! JUST GO!" I screamed at him, but he refused. Typical! Beg "the man" to come to me and he refused, but order another man to go away and he wouldn't. It seemed most men, at least the ones I always encountered, made a point of doing the opposite of what I asked them to do. What was up with that? I'd end up telling them opposite of what I wanted.

Also, Brother Robbie said EVERYONE should quit their jobs and live in the woods and contemplate the Bible 24/7. I asked him who would provide the food he ate for free every day if EVERYONE did what he was doing. He didn't have an answer for that.

Then something weird happened. I kept seeing what appeared to be smoke rising in the car, even though there was no source around. (It happened again the next day.) "Smoke on the water? Deep Purple? Up in smoke? Cheech and Chong?" I tried to figure out if it was supposed to be a "sign."

Brother Robbie said something about a Bible passage and something similar to "this world is but a vapor." What the heck did the smoke mean? Was reality really just a vapor? Please let that be so, because my reality at this point sucked, and I was ready for it to be over. My life had finally devolved to the point where death didn't seem scary anymore...it seemed like sweet relief.

Later I would read what some people wrote online...that they had MS and sometimes saw what appeared to be smoke. Another MS symptom caused by disseminated histoplasmosis.

It's shocking how quickly you start to smell like a homeless person when you have no shower, soap, laundry facilities, or money. But it's not as bad as it could be, because everyone else around you smells the same way. It makes me wonder how the human race even survived hundreds of years ago. How could people stand to have sex when everyone reeked?

I wondered if I was homeless for a reason. My life had sucked so bad the last few months, I begged God to let it at least MEAN something. Maybe I was supposed to get a TB false-negative? False-negatives can be caused by fungus, so maybe that's why TB rates had risen in the U.S. despite Dr. Frieden's best efforts. Didn't Dr. Frieden lower TB rates in India? But India is different than the U.S. Their diet is different, and they don't drink cow's milk, which has lactose. They also have much lower rates of sarcoidosis and Alzheimer's....

Meeting a handsome young man named Israel in a shelter, I wondered if the prophecy included "visiting Israel," which I did. I borrowed his Bible and it opened to a page where Jesus says whoever believeth in him will never know thirst, so I tweeted to Dr. Frieden that he should design a mask to simulate a camel's nose, retaining water lost during respiration. I also had a theory about how the water was turned into wine...a substance in Roman conduits that turns alkaline water into ethanol.

I Googled my lab results from Texas Presbyterian. They indicated leukemia or lymphoma. And a large blue lump appeared on the back of my left hand. It turned into a large bruise. Was it a symptom of leukemia? I was glad I might be right about leukemia, but "leukemia" meant death to me. A frenemy had died from it. I didn't know there were different types. Did I have leukemia!?

I tried to sleep in my car in an abandoned lot. Before I fell asleep the radio played a song where someone said 'I saw you in a spotlight.' Not long afterwards, I awakened with a blood-curdling scream...with three Ft. Worth policemen shining flashlights at me. One of them stuttered so bad he could hardly speak, and he had a large red lesion on his forehead. I thought he had disseminated histoplasmosis, maybe in his basal ganglia. And Gee-whiz, would you cover that thing up with a Band-Aid!? It's gross. But when I told the stuttering police officer my theories he seemed uninterested.

"Why doesn't anyone understand how important this is?!" I later asked. The radio replied with, "I understand how important it is" in a song.

Sleeping alone during a light drizzle on the hard floor of the woods on top of a blanket after being thrown out of the empty lot, I was damp, cold, alone, hungry, and miserable. A large group of feral cats came and lay on top of me. I tried to sleep in my car, but I couldn't, my head and body aching. And I was SO tired. All day commercials for carbon monoxide detectors had played over and over on all stations, and, flipping through the stations. I had heard "ventilation." I asked my dashboard, "What do I do now?" turned on the radio, and Bruce Hornsby replied, "Get a job."

"F#ck you!" I yelled at my dashboard and kicked him in the face.

The last song I heard on the radio sang "It's always darkest before the dawn." Around 5 am I had had enough. Feeling betrayed by everyone, left alone with apparent leukemia, broke, scared, dirty, in pain, cold, wet, and hungry, I stumbled out of my car onto the wet asphalt of the park's parking lot.

"You win," I called out, on my hands and knees sobbing, referring to the Director of the CDC. "I hate you!... Not you," I added, looking up to God. I had read people who committed suicide couldn't go to Heaven, but I wondered why. Why would anyone be punished for trying to escape this hell called Earth?

I'd had enough. I had no hope left. I wanted to die. But, even though I wanted this crappy life over, I still couldn't do it violently or painfully. The only way I would do it was with carbon monoxide, and my car window was broken, another blessing in disguise. Because if it hadn't been broken, I would have rolled up all the windows and run my car while I fell asleep for the last time. I didn't even have enough gas to do that. I wanted to kill myself, but there was no way to do it.

It truly was darkest before the dawn. But like Florence + the Machine sang (Florence Welch with her dyspraxia and depression), "It's hard to dance with a devil on your back. So shake him off." So I shook him off, although I still wasn't quite clear who "he" was. And as dawn broke I resolved to live just one more day.

#  Chapter 37- I Will Be With You Again...On New Year's Day

(aka: "You've Got to Get Yourself Together")

With the weight of the devil off my shoulders, but still with his near enough to whisper those lies in my ear, I waited in my car outside a shelter for breakfast. Turning on my radio I heard Billy Idol saying he felt good and for me to "Come on, Come on, Come on." I quickly looked around to see if I was alone, because I suspected what was about to happen and...Bam!...there it was. And then Billy sang "ride your pony, ride your pony, ride your pony..." as he saddled up.

"That's a HORSE," I laughed, sarcastically correcting him.

Flipping stations, I landed on Breakfast in America singing, "Please tell me who I am, who I am, who I a-a-am."

"Well, I THOUGHT you were the 1st Horseman of the Apocalypse."

"So logical," he answered, "One, two, three, FIVE!"

"That's four, you dumb@$$," I corrected him. Now I was starting to have fun with the strangely accurate songs on the radio. "Director of the CDC and you can't even count."

Later that day I helped a homeless woman who appeared stunned and confused. Sleeping behind a McDonalds, she had no money, was dirty and hungry, and she couldn't answer questions coherently, but she had recently been abandoned by some man.

I gave the woman a ride and showed her places to get food and clothes, giving her a blanket and a bag from my trunk to put everything in. As I drove and turned on the radio, I noticed she stared in shock at the songs and started laughing. I could tell from the look on her face the music was "speaking" to her, too, as she listened to and laughed at the lyrics. I suspected she had gone bat$het crazy, too.

One day turned into two, and I went to shelters noticing people everywhere that I thought had disseminated histoplasmosis...the man with seizures and a spot on his lung, the mentally ill girl who awoke with what looked like lymph on her pillow, the man who couldn't write legibly or speak but had pages of perfect mathematical formulas in his dirty papers...all of these "Walking Dead."

I tweeted to Dr. Frieden that the writers of that TV show didn't know something I did...that once the people got to Atlanta, the CDC would refuse to speak to them.

The days turned into a week and would eventually turn into months, and I was glad I hadn't given up that darkest night I ended up on the pavement in the park. That night was the closest I had ever come to suicide, but I had toyed with the idea in the past, whenever I was emotionally devastated after traumatic events and felt no hope for the future. Those other times my laziness and procrastination were blessings in disguise, and they went something like this:

"That's it! I've had it! I can't take this anymore! I'm driving down to the river, hide my car in some trees, and run a hose from my exhaust into my car and fall asleep forever. What do I need to do that? I'll make a list. Why can't I ever find a pen when I need one!? I know I have at least ten pens around here somewhere. Oh well, I'll use this eyeliner pencil. I'll need a garden hose and masking tape. Where are my scissors? I must have at least three pairs of scissors around here somewhere. Oh well, I'll have to buy scissors, too. The grocery store is closed, so I'll have to drive across town to Wal-Mart. And I'll have to get some gas. Do I have enough money? I'll have to stop by an ATM, too. Boy, this is beginning to look like a lot of work. And I'll have to clean my apartment, because I know Mother will make nasty comments when she comes to collect my things and tell everyone what a mess it was. I should probably wash my hair and put on some nice clothes and makeup, too. Oh, and I'll need to buy lots of cat food and some big bowls for water. And a new eyeliner pencil...this one is ruined. Oh, and some pens...I'll have to leave a suicide note. Hmmm, that's a lot of stuff to do and it's already 2 am. And I'm getting tired...and hungry. I think there are some Double Stuffed Oreos left in the pantry and some milk in the fridge ................................................................................................ ...............................Gee, these Oreos sure are good. It's amazing how yummy Crisco and sugar can taste. I wonder who invented Oreos. He must have been a genius. I'll bet he made a fortune......................................................................zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!"

Needless to say, I never quite got around to committing suicide.

Within a week of being homeless in Fort Worth, I sold a $200 notebook for $20 and drove to Shreveport after the songs said to go home. When I got there, my mother was in the hospital. After she was released I stayed with her for a couple of months to help her get back on her feet. My sister visited after Christmas, and the plan was for me to have a break New Year's Eve and stay at a hotel, just to get away. I'd use my tax return money, and I was now well enough to look for work and get unemployment compensation.

While not as sick as I had been in Georgia, the fungus still lingered like the memory of a lost love.

"I will be with you again, I will be with you again....on New Year's Day." That's what U-2 sang over and over. I wasn't delusional anymore, but I noticed it.

"Hmmm, maybe my 'invisible boyfriend' will reappear, or 'the man' will finally show up," I thought. Although at this point "the man" had better have a pretty good excuse for blowing me off for so long!

New Year's Eve 2014/2015 was big for me. I wanted to go out and meet a man to kiss at midnight and take my mind off Dr. Tw@t. With my long hair curled and wearing false eyelashes, makeup, leggings, boots, and a long sweater, my sister said I looked beautiful.

My mother (being her usual supportive self) said I looked like a whore. My mother, the fashionista...she looked like George Washington in drag.

At a store, one woman called me a "hot girl" and I was feeling pretty good about myself, thinking I looked nice, even though my eyelashes were a little crooked and I had some eyelash glue in one eye. But it was nothing a little eyeliner, mascara, and dim lighting couldn't camouflage. And alcohol wouldn't hurt. I imagined I'd look better to some guy with his beer goggles on.

It had taken a lot of work, not to mention money, but I figured at least ONE decent guy might find me attractive. One fairly handsome man in a club, shortly after midnight, offered to have sex with me. Telling men I hadn't had sex in 12 years was like an aphrodisiac...many were willing to help me out with that little "problem." But picking up strange men in bars wasn't my style.

Besides, the LAST thing I needed after my stupid crush on Dr. Tw@t was so-so sex with someone I didn't think was super-hot. That would just make me miss the man in the woods and room #528 even more. No, the next man had to be simply AWESOME!

The next guy needed to be out of my league.

(Apparently I'm a sapiosexual/demisexual, which means I'm attracted to intelligence/wit, and I can't get turned on unless I have romantic/emotional feelings for a man. I'm not a casual sex/one-night stand type of person. I really wish I could separate sex and "love," but I can't.)

Anyway, I had my "big" night out and stayed the wee hours of the morning alone in the hotel room I had booked just to get a break from taking care of my mother.

Early in the morning on New Year's Day in my hotel room, my "invisible boyfriend" paid a short visit. It was a fairly lackluster performance, but it was better than nothing. And he ended it all by a rolling pressure up and then back down my abdomen, culminating in...well, you know. From online descriptions, the sensation sounded like an abdominal aura. An abdominal aura "is associated with aberrant neuronal discharges in sensory cortical areas representing the abdominal viscera. Etiologically, it is associated primarily with paroxysmal neurological disorders such as migraine and epilepsy."

I had felt it once before, in Smyrna. Funny...when checking my symptoms, I kept reading the same words over and over: autoimmune, inflammation, epilepsy, migraine, etc... all "unknown cause."

Then it felt like someone was flicking a feather down the outside of my sternum. I later read online that at least one other person had felt that same strange sensation. The "feather" was a nice, unexpected touch from my "boyfriend"...how sexy of him. Then it reminded me of how Vivien Leigh was pigeon-breasted. I remembered reading about how costumers had trouble giving her cleavage because of it, and that was when I originally learned what pigeon-breasted meant (an overgrowth of cartilage causing the sternum to protrude forward...isn't the cause unknown?). Vivien Leigh, with her wild mood swings, mental breakdowns, nymphomania, and "tuberculosis," always apologizing to friends for her inappropriate social behavior. I suspected she had disseminated histoplasmosis, but then I thought a LOT of people had it.

Still imagining "the man" (I just didn't get it...looking at online videos I thought of how, before I was sick, I wouldn't normally have been so "batsh#t crazy" about him. I mean, he wasn't hideous, but it wasn't like I looked at him and thought, "Ooh, man, I need to get me a piece of that!"...why was I so obsessed?), for the first time since returning to Shreveport, I cried.

"Please," I sobbed out loud to God, "I don't want to love him or hate him, just please make me feel nothing at all for him."

God appeared to answer my prayer again, but this time the answer was "ok."

My dreams and fantasies started going back to starring the usual suspects: Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto, Hugh Jackman, Ben Affleck, Adrien Brody (see, Dr. Tw@t, big noses can be sexy), and Kevin Spacey (circa L.A. Confidential). Yeah, that last one kind of surprises me, too.

And there were some new additions: Henry Cavill, Jacob Fink, and Rob James-Collier.

Actually, my sister said the same thing about Kevin Spacey, and, looking at photos of him, I realized he kind of resembled...our father. EWWW, EWWW, EWWW! STOP thinking about Kevin Spacey immediately!

That's gross.

Watching Dr. Tw@t being grilled about Ebola on You Tube, I saw how, when asked about travel bans, he kept pausing, looking to the side, and robotically making the same insincere statement over and over. Something like, 'The CDC cares about the health of the American public.' It appeared the media relations and legal departments had coached him well. But not well enough...he didn't "sell it." He needed more coaching.

Then I remembered "the man" looked to the side like that three times: when he said he had something to help me sleep, before he answered if he saw the text about the cab driver, and then if it made him jealous. Strange. How did I know he did that!?

I tried to find a video of his pressing his lips together and "sighing" through his nose.

In reality, I couldn't STAND the Director of the CDC. I hated him. He had failed me and my coworkers when we needed him. Forget his doing it or not doing it based on his personal feelings for me. It was his JOB to do it. He got PAID for it.

I couldn't help but wish that he would suffer somehow, even if I would never cause it myself.

Why had I dreamed/hallucinated about him? He wasn't the brave, valiant, concerned hero I had imagined.

I was glad that in reality he seemed to be so fake and such an oaf. I was glad Jimmy Fallon(?) called the CDC the WTF. I was glad 86% of the American public had wanted the director to resign and numerous commentators had called him an incompetent coward. I liked that no one I met trusted the CDC or had any faith in the CDC's abilities.

Months before, I had read the CDC was the first or second most-trusted government agency, but then that's kind of like being the tallest pygmy, isn't it? Or the nicest Nazi.

Who did they poll? Their own employees?

None of the many people I asked trusted the CDC or its director, which was fine with me. Otherwise, it would have been nearly impossible to get over my erotomanic crush if in reality he had turned out to be as wonderful as in my imagination.

But get over him I did.

Why did my dream/hallucination use verbiage I never used? Why did he keep saying, "You can't tell anyone about this"? Why did he tell me to stop smoking, kiss me on the forehead, say he hated his nose, and ask me if I thought he was handsome? Why would he ask me why I liked him so much?

Why would my dream/hallucination be wearing a wedding band but then say he was divorced? Why not just dream/hallucinate no wedding band at all?

And why was my dream/hallucination shorter, older, and darker-haired than I originally thought the Director of the CDC was?

I would think my dream/hallucination would have been Ryan Gosling and said, "Yes, you were right about all the diseases...and here's your Nobel Prize!" He sure as heck wouldn't have said, "No" when I shyly asked if he thought I was pretty. He would have said, "Yes, you're so hot. I want you so bad!" and then pushed me down and gotten on top of me. I know me...that's what I would have dreamed. And then he would have asked if his friend, Jared Leto (who had been standing to the side watching), could join in.

I emailed the CDC, asking if Ryan Gosling could give me my Nobel Prize and present from the front while Jared Leto presented from behind.

(Note to men: NEVER ask me to do this in real life. IMHO, some fantasies are meant to remain just fantasies.)

Why was my dream/hallucination so realistically mundane? Why did he ask, "Do you want to have sex?" How UNsexy was that!? You don't say it like that! You say something like, "I want you so bad" or something while pulling her toward you! You don't say, "Do you want to have sex" with all the emotion of someone asking, "Do you want a glass of water?"

Oh well, chalk it up to being batsh#t crazy.

But, just to be on the safe side, I still emailed myself filthy fantasies and romantic porn links for Dr. Tw@t to see if he was watching (although my definition of "romantic" appears to differ from some people's), with the emails titled "Disseminated histoplasmosis, Outbreak, CDC, Dr. Frieden, Coverup, Conspiracy, Anthrax, Bubonic Plague, Smallpox, White House, Pentagon, Bombs, ISIS..." hoping they would get flagged and read by the government like someone told me they would.

If no one saw it, no big deal, but if anyone did see it then Dr. Tw@t would get to see what he was missing. In one email I wrote that I wished I was young, beautiful, and sexy...whatever his ultimate fantasy was...I wished I was perfect so I could wrap myself up in a bow and give myself to him. The lyrics when I turned on the radio were, "If perfect's what you're searching for then just stay the same." Awwwww! Mr. Dashboard made me weak in the knees.

Or maybe that was just my disseminated histoplasmosis.

I started emailing the CDC about men I met who I was attracted to, telling them I would tell Dr. Frieden to eat his heart out if I wasn't completely convinced he didn't even have one. Lucky him if he didn't, since I read infection with histoplasmosis can cause aortic aneurysm.

And I sent more coded poems when I felt randy. After all, a girl should keep her options open. And I did notice my email about Dr. Frieden and the CDC that I tried to send to Fox News was "Undeliverable."

Part of me still hated the director, and I wrote things like, "I'm as attracted to him as I am to a canned ham. LESS, because at least I'd eat the canned ham" after seeing unflattering videos. But then I'd see a more flattering photo and tear up the insult. Apparently, it was going to take as long to get completely over my unrequited passion as it was to get over the fungus.

At least I was getting better. And as I got better I seemed to remember my friend said something in the 1970s prophecy about how Bruce Jenner would be wearing a dress. Hmmmmm!

Oh well, hopefully I'd be completely well before the female bats lactated again in May 2015 (although I was in excruciating pain and bled quite a bit of dark blood from my intestines April 2015, and while at the ER I heard the nurse tell someone across the hall, 'We don't know what's causing your vision problems, chest pain, and gastrointestinal problems.' Then I prayed God for a sign if I should stay or leave and the next morning I walked to the store and there was a dead baby bat across the street from the house where I was staying. And then, in Lafayette July 2015 shortly before the shootings, after a long bike ride, lymph oozed from under my big toenail-that fell off, and hives lasting three days showed up on my legs. Lymphedema? And my toe...was that hyperkeratosis? So many bruises on my legs. That couldn't be good....)

So the New Year started a little happier. The soul-crushing, heartbreaking, nerve-wracking, gut-wrenching pain of obsessive yearning ended. Now I was just slightly depressed. But eventually, after a little more than a year, the depression lifted and I started to feel happy again and eventually began forgetting "the man."

Occasionally I'd wake up sad and weep a little, or cry myself to sleep, but those times were becoming few and far between. And I realized almost my entire "relationship" comprised IMAGINED meetings, conversations, dates, and sex. I had a bad habit of doing that. For all I knew, the Director of the CDC was a big dull dud and a lousy lay. For all I knew, he might be gay, or bi, or a crossdresser (not that there's anything wrong with that) and would stretch out and ruin my lingerie, or insist on cuckold sessions or degrading sex, or be abusive, or a cheater. I didn't know this guy from Adam. Maybe he wasn't great...maybe he was awful. Or he could be boring. Or mean. What if he was a drug addict, or an alcoholic, or even worse...a vegan?

("What's wrong with being a vegan!?"... I could already hear all the vegans getting their little panties in a wad....clam down! It's a joke!!!)

Maybe Dr. Frieden was incapable of love. Maybe he wasn't nice or any fun at all.

Maybe I should just give up and resolve myself to a life alone with my new black boyfriend, who I called "Buzz," because all he ever said was, "Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" and sometimes, Bzz...bzz...bzz..."

And maybe just watch movies, but not any more like the one named "Black and Blue," the name of which flew over my naïve head as most things like that did, starring James Deen. The movie I didn't like because he was too mean in it. He tells the naked girl, 'I can f#@% a lot of women. Tell me what you can do that they can't.' And I thought how, if that was me, I'd lean over and whisper in his ear, "Calculus." Then I'd grab my clothes and walk out after insulting him because no man was going to get away slapping me and demeaning me like that. Not even if he had been Dr. Tw@t.

I had been slapped by my father...I had been slapped (and punched) by my husband...I sure as heck wasn't going to let another man slap me, even metaphorically.

Often I thought, "I should become a dominatrix, because then I could slap the shet out of people without getting in trouble."

What had I been thinking? When most ill I had been so pathetic, so weak...that wasn't me. At least I was getting over Dr. Tw@t. So, unless I suffered a severe disseminated histoplasmosis relapse, the year 2015 would be better than the last one...knock on wood.

Then, shortly after the New Year started (before emailing the CDC I thought Selena Gomez had disseminated histoplasmosis six months before I read she was diagnosed with lupus) in Shreveport I saw a street named "India" and I drove down it, passing a connecting street named "Napoleon." And I remembered my friend saying the prophecy mentioned being in some foreign country and going past and waving at Napoleon.

#  Chapter 38 - I Don't Care If the World Knows What My Secrets Are. So-o-o-o-o What!

(aka: "I Am Not Perfect. But I Know I'm Worth It.")

Hindsight is 20/20, just like my vision suddenly became while ill with disseminated histoplasmosis. They tested me at Care Now during a lull when my eyesight wasn't blurry and I wasn't seeing double. Odd, because normally I needed glasses.

I realized that, in spite of ludicrous coincidences, it was highly unlikely the Director of the CDC could have sex with me telepathically, although I did dream he looked at me and said, "I CAN have sex with you telepathically." Lol...my silly subconscious.

Again, my apologies to his wife. I wasn't doing it on purpose. If I was I would have picked Ryan Gosling.

And I also apologize for, when remembering the night in room #528 of the Rockwall Hilton, thinking, "I should have f#@ked him when I had the chance." At least then I would have known the next morning if he was really there or not. It's kind of hard to miss those putrescent amines.

It probably wasn't God having invisible sex with me (too bad, that would have made me the envy of millions, but he would be a hard act to follow) or an angel, a devil, an alien, or a Smurf (hey, I'm a scientist, I have to consider every possibility).

No, my invisible boyfriend was most probably something else. The most plausible explanation was that I had been having a passionate affair with a fungus. And yet it STILL wasn't the dumbest thing I had ever dated.

I wrote to Dr. Frieden, suggesting he have the FBI arrest my "invisible boyfriend" for identity theft.

Were the "orgasms" caused by vagus nerve stimulation? Women with spinal cord injuries could have orgasms this way, I think. Oddly and coincidentally to my benefit, vagus stimulation is thought to result in suppression of the inflammatory response. Was I actually being given 'what I needed', not only emotionally but actually physically by my "invisible boyfriend"?

I speculated that my body had been so inundated with histoplasmosis that I possibly was now sensitized to it...allergic to fungus? Ironically, I now seemed to be the human litmus test for histoplasmosis that I accused the CDC of using me as.

Perhaps vagus stimulation even prevented anaphylaxis from the fungus.? Idk, Dr Tw@t's the doctor, ask him. No wait...I forgot, he won't reply.

Trying to think back, I can't tell you exactly what songs played, but this is similar to what it was like 24/7 talking to Mr. Dashboard:

Me: What should we do now?

Radio: Eddie Vedder sings "I'm Going Hungry"

Me: Yeah, I could eat...where should we go?

Radio: Commercial "Go to El Chico's!"

Me: Ok, what should I have?

Radio: "Try the ½ price fajitas and margaritas!"

Me: No margaritas. I don't think I should have any hard liquor, what should I drink?

Radio: UB40 sings "Red Red Wine"

Me: Ok, what should we do after that?

Radio: "go Downtown, where all the lights are bright"

(What an odd radio station...it played everything from Alice in Chains to 60's hits.)

Me: Ok, I'll go to the casino. Should I wear my red dress or my blue dress?

Radio: "Lady in Red"

Me: Ok, what shoes?

Radio: David Lee Roth sings "I like the way the line runs up the back of the stockings.  
I've always liked those kind of high heels, too."

Me: Seamed stockings...you don't think that's a little racy for me?

Radio: Pink Floyd sings "I need a dirty woman. I need a dirty girl."

Me: Ummm, you're calling me a dirty girl? That's insulting.

Radio: Drake sings "'Cause you're a good girl and you know it. You act so different around me."

Me: That's better. What will you be wearing?

Radio: Justin Timberlake "I've got my suit and tie. I'mma leave it all on the floor tonight"

Me: Ooo, that navy suit and red tie I keep fantasizing about? I think I'd like that!

Radio: ZZ Topp sings "Girls'll go crazy for a sharp dressed man"

Me: Oh really? The girls go crazy for the way you dress, huh?

Radio: "I'm too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, so sexy"

Me: (Rolling my eyes) Well, I hope you're not TOO sexy to other women...I look so old.

Radio: Rod Stewart sings, "To me you'll always be forever young."

Me: (Laughing) Okay, Sexy, you silver-tongued devil...honey is a natural antifungal...how about I pour some on you and lick it off?

Radio: Def Leppard sings, "Pour some sugar on me...I'm hot, sticky sweet. From my head to my feet."

Me: Okay, Sticky, let's go eat.

Sooo weird, like talking and joking with someone who's mute and has only a stash of cd's to communicate with. I thought it was somehow the Director of the CDC.

Maroon 5 sang, "But I wonder where were you. When I was at my worst. Down on my knees. And you said you had my back. So I wonder where were you?"

I felt guilty...I had told him I had his back, and then told people what happened, mostly hoping he'd show up again to tell me to stop. But when was he down on his knees? That song made me feel bad, until I realized the name of the song was "Maps" and started correlating maps with diseases.

After my coded message was presumably decoded I turned on the radio:

Radio: Something like, "You've made fools of us all, how does it feel to lose what you had won?"

Me: "Won?!"...all I "won" was being ignored and left alone while I'm so sick! Besides, it's not my fault you couldn't decode the message. I guess I won't get what I asked for...

Radio: "I'll make you scream, I'll make you laugh, cover your body with my 'autograph.' So let's get crazy, 'cuz I want to see you naked."

Me: Ohhhhh-kaaaaay, sure! What do you want me to do to you?

Radio: "Talk dirty to me"

Me: Anything else?

Radio: The Doors "Come on, come on, come on, come on, Now touch me, babe"

Me: You want me to touch you?

Radio: Ellie Goulding sings, "Love me like you do, touch me like you do, what are you waiting for?"

Me: Well, I'm waiting for you to acknowledge my existence. Oh well, your loss. I would have rocked your world. How are you doing the music?

Radio: "Whoa-oa-oa, it's magic. You know-ow-ow. Never believe it's not so."

Me: That's crazy...there's no such thing as magic.

Radio: Coldplay, "Call it magic, call it true"

Me: That's ridiculous, there's no such thing as magic!

Radio: Olivia Newton-John sings, "You have to believe we are magic. Nothing can stand in our way."

Me: This is crazy, are you watching me!? (Note: It's annoying to think the Director of the CDC is stalking you, because you wash your hands endlessly. Not because of OCD, but because you can just imagine his saying, "Don't touch that sandwich without washing your hands!" And you feel bad when you light a cigarette because you imagine his disapproving, "Stop smoking!")

Anyhooo, after I ask, "Are you watching me?"

Radio: Sting sings "Every step you take, every move you make...I'll be watching you."

Me: Oh well, I guess it's only "stalking" if I'm not interested, but you have to go to work/photo-ops sometimes. What do you do then?

Radio: Hall & Oates, "Private eyes are watching you, they see your every move."

Me: That's kind of creepy. This music is making me nuts. I regret meeting you.

Radio: Mr. Probz sings, "I wish I could make it easy, easy to love me, love me"

Me: Yes, this isn't the ideal "relationship," but I do love you.

Radio: Bear Hands, "I know that you love me I am loving you mo-ore, I am loving you more."

Me: This is crazy, I must be stark raving mad.

Radio: "You're crazy and I'm out of my mind. 'Cuz all of me loves all of you..."

That John Legend song played over and over and over, every ten to fifteen minutes on the same station, and also on different stations at the same time. That was "our song," mine and my perfect invisible boyfriend's. Mr. Dashboard almost always said the right thing. He was definitely worth waiting for. Some of you guys could take some pointers.

When I realized the CDC would never communicate with me and I stopped talking out loud a song played over and over saying, "Say something I'm giving up on you. Say something I'm giving up on you. I'm sorry I couldn't get to you."

Then a long block of songs saying, "Forgive me." Maybe the dj had cheated on his girlfriend or wife or something, but there were at least 30 minutes of "Forgive Me, Forgive Me..." When I finally said, "No!" Metallica sang "Unforgiven."

Honestly, I thought it was crazy, too. But it appeared the music and announcers responded to my questions and reflected my movements. At least, for a couple of months, it kept me from getting discouraged or lonely. I felt like I wasn't alone...like someone or something was there with me. Some songs were more obvious than others, but there are only so many songs to choose from.

I probably would have ignored it if I hadn't thought the federal government had been in DFW. I mean, I would have known it was impossible for a waiter or mechanic to arrange the music like that....

And then, because the songs/commercials appeared to be accurate about ALS and epilepsy, and because I was so sick, it seemed like someone or something was communicating with me.

When I was in Fort Worth with possible symptoms of leukemia (I think disseminated histoplasmosis is known to cause "hairy" cell leukemia? And leukemia patients go into remission when given antifungal) I sent a note to Dr. Frieden with a photograph of me in college (the only one available). The note said something about how I wanted to give a face to the person he was ignoring and who he was allowing the doctors to kill.

Guess what I started hearing all the time after he would have received it...

"Photograph, I don't want your photograph, I don't need your photograph, all I've got is a photograph...I want to touch you."

Weird disease.

It seemed I was getting every symptom I could possibly get from disseminated histoplasmosis. And then it seemed that each symptom would stop, for the most part, once I told the CDC about it. I'm lucky I'm not dead, or at least blind or permanently insane. And it seemed like all the people I had ever known, even my father's best friend, had something I thought was caused by histoplasmosis.

Maybe I was meant to write a book and explain what it was like. If you ever thought you're too strong or too smart to go "crazy," think again. That's like saying you're too strong and smart to die from cyanide. Because if something like a chemical or pathogen or damage disturbs the signals in your brain, you'll go crazy...I don't care who you are. Even if you normally think rationally. Mental patients are NOT weak or stupid. In fact, some of the most brilliant people who ever lived had mental problems.

And if someone slipped you mushrooms and you went on a trip, or something short-circuited your brain, or fungus invaded your central nervous system, you'd be a little delusional, too.

I sent a letter to the CDC that I was still on the fence about whether Dr. Frieden was a hero or a villain. The next time I turned on the radio was the first time I ever heard Metallica sing the song, "Get off the fence." And next Enrique Iglesias said, "Let me be your hero" and sang the song "Hero"... "I can be your hero, baby."

Frankly, I think it's better Dr. Frieden has apparently turned out to be a villain, because I think I'd be a little jealous if he was as wonderful as I once imagined him to be and he belonged to someone else. By the way, to belong to someone doesn't mean they own you, it means be suited to, have a rightful place with, and have a home. Normally I'm very independent, I've HAD to be, but I would have loved to belong to someone wonderful; however, it appears God wants me to be alone.

God gets His/Her way. I've noticed He/She will give little hints..."signs," if you will. And if you don't notice there are nudges. Then maybe a little push followed by a shove. And if you still don't get the message, God will roll His/Her eyes and metaphorically take out a bat (I was going to say a baseball bat, but I guess sometimes it's a flying bat) and knock the ever-loving $het out of you.

Sometimes you'll get laid off or fired. Or the business will close. Sometimes you'll lose a house. But maybe, just maybe, it works in your favor. Like maybe bats were roosting in the business or house.

Or maybe someone you love will die. But maybe someone else will start noticing that they and others in the same area have the same strange symptoms, and it turns out saving a lot of other people.

People say there's a plan. That's kind of hard to swallow. But the music kept telling me everything happened the way it was planned.

"SERIOUSLY!? THAT was the plan, God? Far be it from me to criticize YOU, but couldn't you have made that plan just a tad bit simpler?"

But, "simpler" might have meant "boring," and God must be pretty bored by now watching us humans. Most of us are so predictable that it seems like we keep meeting the same people and keep having the same dull conversations over and over and over. I hoped that at least God found me entertaining. There seemed to almost never be a dull moment.

Does God really answer prayers? It seems that a lot of time He/She does nothing. Things seem so screwed up. Sometimes it felt like Earth was really Hell for some of us. But I had prayed in the past, like Cate Blanchett's Nazi in that Indiana Jones movie, "Please God, help me understand everything."

So I fell madly in love, with someone who loved me, but then betrayed and abandoned me. I suffered excruciating pain, a potentially fatal illness, and (temporary) blindness. I now understood how it felt to be insane, terrified, loved, hated, rejected, and hopeless. I had felt the greatest joy and hope, and the greatest hatred and disappointment. I now knew how a major depressive episode felt, and how it felt to be homeless...to be ignored and treated like I was a worthless. I knew how wonderful it felt to think of something new and wonderful, and how it was to feel stupid, and shame. I now understood...everything.

"Gee...Thanks, God."

Even when I was better the radio still was coincidental, but at least I realized it was just coincidences. And now almost the only time I spoke aloud was when cursing at other drivers.

But there was still the occasional, "Why are so many people such jerks?" and the radio immediately replied with the lyrics, "I wonder the same thing, too." Or I would worry for a moment about the side effects of the Itraconazole and Fluconazole antifungals I was forced to order online from Thailand and India, and just at that moment the radio sang, "Don't worry about side effects."

The music would help with directions. "I think I missed my exit," I'd say aloud, "Am I going the wrong way?" Bonnie Tyler would sing, "Turn around...turn around, bright eyes" over and over, and she was right!

"Do I turn right or left here?" Beyonce would reply, "To the left, to the left." Correct again.

Some songs would play over and over every ten to fifteen minutes on a station...sometimes every other song. I'm pretty sure stations have ways to prevent that, don't they? Then when I'd change the station the same song would be starting on the other station.

I tried to drive without the radio, but I do like music when I drive. And I was still trying to fulfill that old prophecy, just in case it might save the world. Or maybe even just save one person. So I followed The Doobie Brothers' constantly repeated instructions to "listen to the music...listen to the music...all the ti-i-i-i-i-ime."

#  Chapter 39 - "The Histoplasmosis Poems"

(aka: "When I Think of You I Touch Myself")

"Erotic" coded poems jokingly emailed to "the man" at the CDC, because I was bored at a new job in a teensy weensy town. I worried that maybe Dr. Frieden would have the FBI arrest me for sexual harassment. A key follows the poems to help decode them.

(Hint: This is in the form of a Petrarchan Sonnet, the octave region. An additional hint is a Swedish rock group formed in 1972.)

I thought about you this morning,

About whether you're more of an incompetent boob

Or evil coward. And I also thought

As I came,

After quite some time thinking of you,

To the conclusion that you and the CDC

Are awful, that many people in the world suffer and

I hope that you do the same

(Hint: This next poem is a Cinquain rhyme scheme)

Sometimes I wish

That you resign or get fired. And

That you think of me as

you spend hours

Wondering where you went wrong and as

You come

To the end that you deserve. Always to be

Alone or with someone else

You can't stand

For the rest of your life.

When I think of that it makes me so

happy I could cry and

wet

myself with joy that

For the rest of your life

I imagine your

Living in obscurity

Lying

In the gutter

Or

In bed

In some cheap motel room crying and not

With me.

Because you are so miserable

And sad...and bald.

Rubbing my

Hands in anticipation of your

Legs against

The pavement

In the gutter outside that NYC bathhouse you frequent.

Yours

Will be a life I pity.

And your face

Will be all wrinkled

Because you can't afford any more injections.

Next to my heart

I hold the desire that you fail miserably.

As I moan

In pain from my disease and hope

Someday you do the same.

(Hint: Next, Edmund Bentley Clerihew...let me repeat that...CLERIHEW)

I thought of you again this morning

And came over and over and over

To the conclusion that you and the CDC are miserable so and so's,

and I'm happy my histoplasmosis-induced Tourette's foul language has cleared up.

Because I would say the dirtiest things to you,

And you would say dirty things back as we ravaged each other

With our words, savagely attacking each other

Verbally.

I was lying in bed and thinking of all

The positions you could put me in

at the CDC, like Director of Fungi, if I didn't hate

the CDC so much and would refuse to work there.

But if I DID work there, I would sneak

Into your office at lunch

And tell you what an awful director you were

And insult you so much

And you would make me

get down on my knees

and force me to apologize, but

I would refuse.

Key to decode poems

Poem #1: ABBA

Poem #2: ABABB

Poem #1: AABB

Example of "lewd" emails I sent to the CDC for "the man," who I thought was Dr. Frieden:

Is it disseminated histoplasmosis or Eugenol from cloves damaging my liver and giving me convulsions, diarrhea, nausea, dizziness, and a rapid heartbeat?

Do you think it's Eugenol and maybe I should remove the cloves from between my toes? I really want to keep the cloves between my toes so that I can have "cloven hooves" and "chew my cud" by thinking private thoughts so that I'm kosher for the Jewish man from the CDC who I thought showed up in my hotel room.

I don't actually have hooves, so if I put on a tight pair of pants will a camel toe count? Does that fit the criteria? (It doesn't, btw.) Speaking of camels, how is that mask that simulates a camel's nose to retain water lost during respiration in the desert coming?

Another example of stupid emails sent to the CDC, mostly just to annoy them:

Katherine Hepburn is shaking her head at me that I thought she had Parkinson's disease when she really had Essential Tremors. She wants me to ask you what you think caused them, and she says, "Stop making fun of my shaking. It's a symptom of my disease."

And I tell her, "Stop being such a pain in the @$$," to which she replies, "That's not me, that's your disseminated histoplasmosis." Apparently, her @$$ hurts, too, so she stands a lot. She's so annoying.

I don't invite her. She comes over with Tennessee Williams, who is helping me edit my book. He wants to know if his beloved sister's schizophrenia might have been caused by disseminated histoplasmosis. I mention Kip Kiernan's brain tumor at only 26 years of age might have been disseminated histoplasmosis, and Tennessee cries because Kip was the love of his life.

Poor Tennessee, he's so heartbroken. And I commiserate with him because my heart is broken, too. So we get very drunk together and wonder if the high alcohol content of our blood could dissolve the waxy coating of leprosy. Then we run around flapping our arms and laughing because we think we cured a disease. But then we realize that, no, we didn't cure a disease...we're just drunk. And the arm-flapping and laughing are just hyperkinesia and maniacal laughter due to our disseminated histoplasmosis.

More poems with that Swedish pop group formed in 1972 as the key to the code (see above how to solve):

As I lay down in bed

I remember how you and the CDC

Ignored me and mistreated me and

I imagine your

Hands on me

Trying to strangle me to shut me up

But it doesn't work-you do not prevail.

As I lay in bed

Tonight I will think of

Squirming to escape the net

That will bring you down and put

You beneath me.

And another:

I feel sorry for your wife

Being married to you

An incompetent boob

Because, unlike me,

She will never know you

The way I do

What an awful person you are, never to know God

Intimately the way I will.

Someday you will realize that

Your life has been a waste

Like the CDC is, and

I am the one

That will

Show you

How truly awful you are and

change your life

It will all become a reality

That I will embarrass you and the CDC publicly

And you will rue the day you met me, because

You will be f#@ked big-time

All your dreams

Will fall by the wayside

And your feared fall from power

Will become a reality with me

At the very least, you will be F#@ked

Over big-time

Losing your career and your friends

Until you can't stand it anymore.

Aaaand some more:

I sit here wondering if the man will ever show up again

Probably not because it was

A histoplasmosis hallucination.

But I wish he would

So that I can show him

How much I hate the CDC

And how incompetent he is and there is no way I would show him

How much I missed him.

The idea of his touching me

Fills me with dread and repulsion

Because he is so gross. The idea he resigns

Thrills me.

Tonight before I go to sleep

I will pray God smites him

And leaves him wrinkled and bald. That's the way

I will think of him.

Imagining him like this will turn me

Against him and the CDC.

Since I hate all of you and this is what I will ponder

On as I come

Over and over

To the conclusion

That I would rather have nails poked in my eyes than be

Thinking of him inside me.

One more:

Is it wrong that

I'm so mean?

You deserve it, but

I think so much about

screwing you

over and ruining you

and the CDC.

Does that make me a bad girl?

Maybe you should

Do everyone a favor and resign

and the joy I get from that will

Teach me to be nice.

By disciplining me

to work diligently for your failed career

I will be happy, and I will have joy in bringing you down

but without hurting me.

#  Chapter 40 – Someone to Watch Over Me

(aka: "I'll Think of You Every Step of the Way")

After leaving Shreveport at the beginning of 2015, I stopped smoking, started working out, and started living in the present with no worries about the future or regrets about the past. And no more fear...I let go of fear. It served no useful purpose.

Letting go of the fear was easy the better I became, and I noticed that as the nodule in my palate, the buzzing in my ears, and the aches and pains waxed and waned, so did my anxiety, fear, neuroses, anger, pessimism, depression, dependence, etc. etc. etc. Maybe it was just the passage of time and experience that made me feel so calm...so well-balanced...or maybe it was something else. Like not being infused with fungus.

Almost completely well, I remembered the prophecy included 'removing all the salt from Salt Lake.' And that would be soooo easy...all I needed was a can of spray paint. Or maybe just a map and a pair of scissors. But I ended up settling for a pen and Road Atlas as I bowed down and prayed to God. Maybe I was wasting my time, but I had read God appreciates the effort, even if you ultimately screw up. He's pleased by your wanting to please him.

Besides, what did I have to lose?

If there is no God, then it wouldn't matter. But if there is a God...well, maybe I was being tested to see just how far I'd go, just how much I was willing to give up, to please Him. Maybe everything that happened wasn't to save the world...maybe it was just to save myself.

Maybe God would take pity and throw me a bone.

"Oh my me, just look at her. What is she doing now! This is pathetic. You're doing it wrong! Seriously, what made you think THAT was a good idea? Ok, fine, there's a miracle in it for you if you just stop. You're making me look bad!" Maybe God would end up giving me an A for effort? Or maybe not, since nothing good ever seemed to come from any of my efforts. At least not that I knew of.

But sometimes, in more fanciful moments, I wondered, "What if I'm right? Maybe not about everything, but some things?" I'd bet good money my coworkers had disseminated histoplasmosis and had been slowly dying, just like I had been. I'd also bet some of my winnings from that bet on the fact that Adam Lanza and Brittany Murphy had it, too.

Why else would Adam's autopsy report not be made public? Answer: Because the cause is something common. Something that's everywhere and almost everyone had at some point.

But why worry people if I might be wrong?

Why!? So they'd realize when they were starting to go bats$et crazy and get some antifungal without having to go through what I did, that's why!

Even now if they published Adam's autopsy report to prove me wrong I'd suspect it was altered.

Did I mention I called the coroner's office about Brittany Murphy, and an officer told me some people involved actually mentioned disseminated histoplasmosis as the cause of her death? When I asked him, "Why was that theory discounted?" he didn't have an answer.

Anyway, I thought about the parents of those 20 schoolchildren, and Brittany's father who kept digging up her remains to get answers. I understood how these parents just wanted to know, the same way I had wanted to know at various times in my life, "Why?"

Why is this happening, and why is it happening to me!? I don't understand! How can there be a God, but still all these awful things happen and people suffer? How can God allow this to happen? And I've been so good...trying so hard...I don't deserve this...it's not fair!

But maybe God isn't something that can actually stop things from happening like that. Maybe God is a force that needs humans to be his hands, his eyes, and his ears. Maybe we have to help each other. Maybe God whispers in our ear, just like Satan.

I imagined God whispering in the ears of radio dj's and musicians, flawlessly putting into motion a plan that took years...no, make that decades...to come to fruition.

Think of all the coincidences that came to pass to put a little girl in an elementary school while a meek, middle-aged little moustachioed man in glasses (did he die thinking he had never accomplished much in life?) excitedly told a group of bored, inattentive students about the bats and fungus. And that little girl had to major in biology and travel around the South for 40+ years, collecting information about people's diseases. And then she had to end up in a building that either had a bat colony inside or nearby.

She had to be given Prednisone. And someone had to invent computers, and the Internet (why did I think the prophecy included throwing out letters with a net?), and smart phones...and she had to go ahead and buy the smart phone, even though she had resisted giving in to technology for so long while using her perfectly adequate, outdated clamshell phone.

And she had to be free to travel, without anyone close to stop her, and she had to not crack up and have a complete breakdown about the unusual things that were happening. She had to take everything in stride and go with the flow. She had to be resilient. And she had to willingly communicate everything she thought for free to the CDC.

And she had to believe in herself enough to not listen to her doctors...those oh-so-revered doctors who she looked at in the eyes and TOLD what she had...and who STILL managed to misdiagnose her!

And she'd have to be persistent and stubborn to the point where, even though she feared she was annoying, she wouldn't give up.

Ironically, about a month before my final illness I was actually planning a vacation to Atlanta the summer/fall of 2014. I didn't even know the CDC was located there when I did it.

It was the perfect storm. Maybe there were multiple possibilities, like "gifted" children I went to school with who ended up dying from lupus, leukemia, and diabetes. Children who had stomach cancer, multiple sclerosis, and some who were now drugged semi-conscious to combat schizophrenia.

By the way, did you know James Holmes had been studying neuroscience? And that he had a "guttural voice" before the shootings. The disease causes hoarseness. Adam Lanza was brilliant, too, and the Columbine shooters were gifted, weren't they? Hinckley had to be smart to go to the same Ivy League college Jodie foster did.... So many people who might have figured it out had self-destructed mentally and physically. And publicly. But it appeared God has contingency plans.

I hoped I was right about enough things that I could tell those parents in Sandy Hook and Brittany's father "why."

Because Sandy Hook had to be so devastating and dramatic that the woman who remembered about bats would notice. Brittany Murphy was someone she would notice. And Adam would be someone she'd notice, too. She'd read everything she saw about them even after everyone else had lost interest to the point that most people she spoke to didn't even know the names "Adam Lanza, "Brittany Murphy," and "Sandy Hook." They had all forgotten. But she hadn't forgotten.

Of course, I can't tell them that, because that just sounds batsh#t crazy. It's crazy to tell someone that it really WAS for a reason. And even crazier to say that those children and Brittany, like the woman, were happy that they could help. That there was something else out there...to not give up.

Is there really? Is there anything after death? I don't know, but I do hope there's a Heaven and Hell to even things out in the end. Some kind of "justice" that's lacking here on Earth.

Even now I sometimes doubt, since it's difficult to believe something is real when you can't see it. Something that so many "smart" people say isn't real. But then, you can't see fungal spores and mycelia, but they're real. And look how many "smart" people told me I couldn't possibly have disseminated histoplasmosis when I really did.

Sometimes even confident, arrogant "smart" people are wrong.

Like when teachers explain "penis envy." Trust me, no adolescent female I've ever known experienced any trauma when realizing they didn't possess a penis. No woman in her right mind wants a penis. They're too high-maintenance.

During the 2015 Labor Day weekend I flew from Lafayette to DFW on American Eagle. (Eagle with a hundred eyes...Revelations, anyone?) Laughing as I accepted the keys to my black rental car, I wasn't delusional anymore, but I decided to go to Target, get some scales, and throw them into my trunk before driving east from Irving to once again spend some time at the Rockwall Hilton pool. I got into my black rental car and, tired of my cd's, turned on the radio. And what did I immediately hear? You guessed it...Imagine Dragons singing, "This is it, the Apocalypse, whoa-oa."

Checking my makeup in the rear view mirror, I was startled to see a huge bloody blob covering my inner left eyeball...conjunctival hemorrhage?...and wondered if I should worry and go to a hospital, since I felt really bad. But as the radio sang to me, "Would you be the savior of the broken, the beaten and the damned?" I thought, "Why not?" I didn't have anything better to do. And even though I was no longer tripping and delusional I decided I might as well finish what I had started 1 ½ years before. And as I drove into Rockwall, the radio sang something about it being finished.

Thank goodness. I was sick of bats, fungus, and the Apocalypse. And I was sick of the CDC. Even if I was right they'd NEVER get on TV and announce it. And they'd NEVER admit they'd snuck around like that.

But does anyone recall anything about the outbreak of 100,000 people with disseminated histoplasmosis in Indianapolis? That would have been a major news story, wouldn't it? I don't recall seeing anything about it, like on the cover of Time or Newsweek. But I didn't pay much attention to news in the late 1970s. Maybe I just missed it?

I suppose, considering the circumstances, the government could have been, and still might be, spying on me. It's not THAT paranoid to wonder that. Heck, some people, mostly ex-military, think it's a very good possibility...they'd be surprised if they weren't.

And it would have been more odd for the CDC NOT to have been in DFW, a major metroplex with millions of people, when informed of an airborne infectious disease outbreak.

Btw, I later remembered that my friend in the 1970's said the person in the prophecy would kiss the Director of the CDC, and I said, "Maybe the director is a woman." That made my male friend laugh. Oh yeah, and I'm pretty sure he said the person in the prophecy would ride around on Saturn.

The person was supposed to be "vindicating a murderer and a whore"... Adam Lanza and Brittany Murphy? (Not that she was a whore...she was just called that. Btw, what's the definition of a slut? A woman with the morals of a man. Lol)

There was something about Zsa Zsa Gabor and Elizabeth Taylor...Hilton Hotel. (I made sure to walk on the steps of the Hilton swimming pool, too, to make sure I was in Rockwall. And I also went ahead and walked on a walkway erected on Lake Ray Hubbard as the musak sang, "You are still the one....")

Someone was supposed to walk between two cliffs. Maybe I was wrong about rabies and the songs mentioning Possum Kingdom and going west, and I was really supposed to have walked through Hell's Gates, two cliffs located in Possum Kingdom, just west of Fort Worth.

Looking back, I realize many of you will think it was incredibly stupid of me to have thought some of the things I thought while ill. The only thing I can compare it to is dreaming. You know how all those strange/weird things happen in a dream, and most of the time you don't stand back and think, "This is unbelievably strange...I must be dreaming." No, you just kind of go with it and react to all the unusual things in your dreams as if they were common, everyday occurrences. That's what it was like.

I hoped no one from the government really was spying on me...most of all Dr. Tw@t. Because, as a female coworker and I laughingly agreed, anyone spying on us wouldn't think we were very sexy...smelling our socks to see if we had already worn them. All those things you do when you think no one is around and you think no one can see you.

Most women (and men) probably aren't very sexy when they're alone. It's not like women hang out in sexy lingerie playing with ourselves and each other 24/7, in spite of most men hoping we do. Many of us don't even shave our legs if no one else will see them.

Oh well, Dr. Frieden had ignored and snubbed me. What did I care if he saw me blow my nose? I hoped he could see my flipping him off, too. He had wanted me to go away. So I did, knowing that, if he HAD been there, as he got older and older he might look back one day and regret what he had done. If he HAD been there, or even if he hadn't, he really blew it...and now I never would. Oh well, his loss.

Remembering the man in my hotel room asking why I liked him so much, I tried to figure out why. For some reason I was attracted to him, and for some reason I thought he was wonderful. Even though I really didn't know him at all.

What was I looking for, anyway? At one point I read about "Littles"...a type of fetish where women act like children and men take care of and cherish their "Littles." I wondered if I was one, and I emailed my friends at the CDC "Eureka, I might have finally figured it out," telling them they probably didn't hear, "Eureka, I figured it out" at the CDC very often...at least not as often as, "Oops, I forgot to deactivate that deadly pathogen before I sent it to the other lab."

But my sister and I agreed it's fairly normal for a woman raised the time and way we were to crave a man to cherish and take care of them, and only them, and that I really wasn't a "Little" woman. Then I wondered if maybe it was just Louisa May Alcott trying to make me notice that modern doctors think all her aches and pains, rash, and premature aging were due to lupus.

After seeing bats in a field next to my hotel in yet another city, I prayed that God would send me somewhere safe with nice coworkers. I was tired of working/living with miserable, malicious, jealous bullies. (Sometimes "depression" and "anxiety" are just a normal reaction to being surrounded by a—holes.) Would I ever find a place with nice people? Maybe someplace without bats?

As Bruce Hornsby sang, "Some things will never change."

But don't you believe it.

Maybe someday I'd finally be over this disease, stop seeing and talking to sick people...EVERY ONE one of whom had, or a loved-one had, a disease I thought was caused by disseminated histoplasmosis. I even thought Hillary Clinton might have it, with her rumored brain tumor and MS.

But I'd have to stop sitting around waiting for the big announcement from the CDC that some diseases are caused by disseminated histoplasmosis from bats. It was too stressful. Like Joel Olsteen said, I'd have to leave some of the work for God. I'd have to trust Him. Even though sometimes it's really hard to believe that He's capable of doing anything. (No offense, God, but it's hard not to doubt.)

The better and better I became, the less obvious things seemed. Everything made so much sense when I was sick. Everything was so obvious. Now I doubted everything I had thought. Sometimes I wanted to give up and thought I was being foolish. During those times I worried I wasn't smart at all. During those times I thought, "What if I only imagine I'm smart. Maybe I'm really incredibly stupid."

But even if I was wrong, it's still an original, clever theory, don't you think? At least I hope so.

And then I watched the "The Big Short," which is a good movie. And it gave me some encouragement, because it proved to me that even if everyone, even all the "experts," disagree with you, everyone else can be wrong.

#  Chapter 41 – I Wonder If I'll Ever See You Again

(aka: "You Make Me Complete...ly Miserable")

I've never understood why solitary confinement is considered punishment.

I'm not a big fan of people. Some are nice, but others are so obnoxious, rude, and selfish. I'm usually only happy when I'm not around people. I totally agree with the saying "Hell is other people." (I wonder if smoking was actually what caused Sartre's hypertension?)

Yeah, I can be rude and obnoxious sometimes, too. But I don't revel in it like some people do. Some people brag about the nasty things they say and do, like it's something to be proud of. They enjoy hurting other people. I don't feel proud when I hurt people. Not even when I hurt people I hate.

I like cats, and I love kittens. Dogs are ok, but I prefer cats. And very small children. Most small children are cute and sweet. Then at some point they stop being cute and sweet. And then they become adults.

I don't really hate all adults. Some are nice. But even if 9 out of 10 people are kind and generous, there will always be that one who's a prick. That one person ruins it for everyone else. And for some reason that one person always targets me. I've been told to take it as a compliment, but I think I'd prefer, "You look nice today."

Trying to make sense of the world and people is enough to drive anyone insane.

It's said Man was made in God's image, but I consider that an insult to God. I don't really think Man is God's best work.

I agree with the person who wrote, "We exist in a basically dysfunctional reality...." The majority of people and events are so dysfunctional that when a person is normal, kind, emotionally mature, etc., they feel like the "crazy" one, because the majority of people are so strange. But just because someone or something is considered "average" does not mean they/it is "normal."

If you're a kind, decent, caring, honest person, never let anyone make you feel like something is "wrong" with you, even if you're in the minority...or even "alone."

Even now I'm struggling to try to prove some people are suffering from the same disease I have. What's the point? I'm just ignored and ridiculed. Why do I care if other people are sick? Why spend all my time and money trying to help people I don't even like and who wouldn't do the same for me?

I don't know why. I just do.

It just feels like the right thing to do.

Sometimes I think all I have to do is stay quiet and then at some point I'll die and escape Earth and go to Heaven. But do I really want to go to Heaven? Just think of all those people in Heaven. Maybe my mother's there. And that mean girl from high school. The one with leukemia. Her eulogy, filled with half-truths and blatant lies, made her sound like a saint. Yeah...she was no saint.

Why are the worst people the ones people think are great, and vice versa? Idk, maybe that's more of Satan's work. Satan, the "Father of Lies." I think I've met and even dated some of his children.

Heaven. Do I really want to spend eternity around all those people?

No, but what's the option? Purgatory? Hell?

I don't want to go to Hell, but I'm not so sure I want to go to Heaven, either, if all the same people on Earth are there. Earth sucks. Earth is like Hell, but without the sparkling conversation. I mean, c'mon. It's probably pretty interesting hanging out with Hitler, Stalin, and Ted Bundy all day. Oh, the stories they could tell....

I'm kidding. I don't really want to go to Hell or talk to them. They were awful. Batsh#t crazy. But where else is there?

I don't know where else I can go.

I keep searching, but I can never seem to find a place where I want to stay.

Where can I go where people are kind and generous? Where people defend other people behind their backs instead of sticking knives in them? Where people peacefully get along and work together? Where people are honest and caring? Where they're not snide and don't betray others. Somewhere where people don't make me feel like I want to scream obscenities or run away, because they're just so toxic.

Is there anyplace like that on Earth? Someplace where I belong? Where it doesn't feel like a mental asylum descending into chaos and madness? Where everyone doesn't seem batsh#t crazy?

Probably not. There's probably nowhere on Earth like that. I should just be grateful I'm not starving or in pain. Maybe I'm not even good enough to belong someplace really awesome. Maybe I should just accept the world sucks and be selfish, bitter, and mean. After all, 'selfish people live longer.'

But I'm not even sure I want to live a long time. What's the point? Why survive just to see your body, and maybe even your mind, deteriorate? Why prolong this life that seems like nothing more than a neverending diet and fruitless search for the perfect man and haircut?

Mirrors, cameras, and bathroom scales must have been created by Satan.

What's the point? Jobs suck, people suck, and with no savings I'll end up living under a bridge eating cat food. If I'm lucky.

Whenever I feel this way I wonder, "What did Mankind ever do to make God hate us so much?"

And then I remember, "Oh yeah, there was that whole crucifixion thing."

Are you STILL not over that yet?!

#  Chapter 42 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

(aka: "Am I a Part of the Cure, or Am I Part of the Disease")

As I got better my invisible boyfriend, along with my delusions, disappeared. As you can probably understand, I'd miss my "boyfriend". But what might be less well-understood is my missing my delusions. I missed all of it so much I wanted to take up spelunking or move into Bracken Cave.

Think about it...how would YOU feel to believe that you had been chosen to start a peaceful Apocalypse to end disease, pestilence, famine, and war. And you were curing diseases. Wouldn't you be giddy? Add to that the belief that you had finally, after so many years, found "the one." After so many disappointments and constant setbacks and struggling, you FINALLY were going to have that love you had dreamed of and wanted for so many years.

I remembered how I kept driving past the Fate, Texas water tower. It reminded me of the eyeglass billboard in The Great Gatsby, and I wondered if this had been my fate.

I remembered the prophecy said someone would turn into a boomerang...I've been back and forth across the southeast several times the last two years, always returning to DFW. And someone would write letters and cast them out in a net. People thought it had something to do with the new technology of "computers" people were talking about (emails on the Internet). And riding around on the planet Saturn? I think he did say riding around on Saturn. Funny how much it matched my life. But maybe I subconsciously did that myself. Otherwise, prophecies can come true, and that's just crazy, right?

I thought about Revelations 13.2: looks like a leopard...bear feet...face like a lion (tiger?) Moths (that bats eat) include the Great Leopard moth, part of the Tiger moth family, whose larvae are called Giant Woolly Bear. Hmmm...interesting....

I noticed water to wine can be accomplished by alkaline water going through a Roman conduit. Roman conduits contained some substance...can't remember the name...and that substance makes ethanol from alkaline water. Did you know terra cotta is a catalyst with the ability to crack alkanes? How did ancient Jews purify their drinking water? With heat?

The night Jesus was arrested he sweat blood...hematidrosis, unknown cause. But hematidrosis can be caused by primary thrombocytopenic purpura, which can be caused by disseminated histoplasmosis. The Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives...an olive grove with olive presses...moths are olive pests. Were the people who screamed for Jesus' crucifixion batshet crazy?

What about Daniel in the lion's den...I bet the lions had feline histoplasmosis. That's why they were starving but didn't want to eat. Like my cat.

I firmly believe that if there is a God, He/She uses natural laws to create miracles, because God IS natural laws...He/She created them.

I also believe that there's a plausible explanation for the resurrection. But that wouldn't make it any less of a miracle. Zeolite's a catalyst, and dolomite exchanges ions (tombs were in quarries), or maybe something else in the tomb or in/on Jesus's body. I believe there was a Jesus. And I believe that, even if he didn't die for our sins he THOUGHT he was. And he willingly suffered and died to help us. That's a wonderful thing for a person to do, don't you think? Most people would be as surprised and shocked as I was to learn how few people would really do that for them.

And I believe, contrary to popular belief, brain death is reversible. Maybe with catalysts?

If the CDC ever released any of my emails, tweets, or letters I'm sure you'd be shocked, but I also hope you'd be amused. There would be nice emails, confused emails, begging emails, CRAZY emails, emails asking them what the HECK was going on, helpful emails, and funny (to me, anyway) emails. And there'd also be incredibly hateful, vile, and disgusting emails and tweets.

But, at the risk of bragging, I'm sure there must be at least one brilliant email.

Every email you could ever see from me would be an honest email full of the thoughts and feelings of a human being who was suffering, physically, mentally, AND emotionally, and struggling to save not only herself, but others, too, while the CDC and other federal agencies apparently stood by and did NOTHING.

Their website told me to go to my local doctors, but my local doctors were literally killing me. And the CDC apparently didn't give a (bat)$het.

Some of you won't care. It's not the CDC's fault I got sick, you might think, and you'll decide it's not their responsibility to take care of it (even though technically it is). Well, let's just wait and see how you feel when YOU get sick...or your CHILD gets sick...and NO ONE will do anything about it.

Anyway, among what by now must have been literally thousands of emails and letters would be one of at least two letters to the Director of the CDC himself, not just asking but BEGGING him to tell me if he had been in room #528 of the Rockwall Hilton...that I realized vivid dreams and hallucinations were symptoms of my disease, but could he please just take a couple of seconds to either call or have ANYONE else call and just say no, he hadn't been there?

Was that REALLY too much to ask? I guess it was, because I'm worthless, right? Because after working and following society's and the government's rules for so long, it was outrageous for me to ask an agency, paid for partly by my taxes, to waste ten seconds on me. I should just curl up and die.

I wrote to Dr. Frieden that I wanted to wait for "the man." That I was under the impression "the man" told me I'd have to wait one or two years and I wanted to remain "faithful" to him, but that I was already 52 (at the time) and didn't have many good years left. Dr. Frieden didn't want my sitting around waiting for someone who would never show up, did he? Couldn't he just let me know it was a dream/hallucination? Why torture me like this?

I asked him to please take a very small amount of his oh-so-important time to just tell me that he wasn't there and that the CDC was taking care of any possible issues concerning bats and/or my coworkers. Just tell me I was wrong about everything so I could stop trying so hard to prove I was right.

But he refused. Why?

Because he was way more important than I was? How dare a little nobody like me request a moment of his time! Who did I think I was, anyway, thinking I deserved a reply!?

Because he was Director of the CDC? Big zippity-doo-dah for him! I'm SOOOOO impressed. Most people don't even know what the CDC is, let alone who he is.

Because he thought I was crazy? Well, I WAS delusional and moody, but those ARE symptoms of my disease. He WAS a doctor, so he SHOULD have known that.

But all I ever got was deafening silence. If they had just said, "F#@k off!" it would have been better than that never-ending silence.

I had to take back control of my own life. My happiness couldn't depend on whether this man communicated with me or not. So, whether he was there or not...I couldn't care less! Whether he was there or not, Dr. Frieden and the CDC had betrayed and abandoned not only me, but probably my coworkers, and possibly other people, too. Whether he was there or not, I didn't want him anymore. He wasn't "the one." "The one" would NEVER betray me...not for another woman, or money, or a job, or for ANYTHING. "The one" would give me what I would give him: Unwavering loyalty. Unending trust. Undying love. Uncontrollable passion. And oral sex.

And "the one" would be there for me when I needed him, just like I would be for him. Maybe expecting that from anyone was a dream I should just give up. Sure, it wasn't easy, but it did get easier every day. Sure, there were still unresolved feelings, questions, and confusion, but those would fade with time. And my next boyfriend...a REAL one, not an invisible one...and one I KNEW existed and would talk to me, was going to be a very, VERY lucky man.

Certain there must be at least a few permanent effects from the fungus throughout my body, I didn't worry too much that large areas of my brain might have been damaged/destroyed, because even if I lost half or more I knew I could always apply to become Director of the CDC.

I tried to forgive the apparently useless and incompetent CDC and Dr. Frieden, but I would never EVER forget. Unless I was right about Alzheimer's/dementia being caused by Histoplasmosis.

Throughout it all, the evasive Dr. Frieden did to me what he had done to others during the Ebola scare...he blew me off. (Hey, maybe that's how he manages to hang onto that job of his.)

Would I do it all again? The pain, the disappointment, the confusion, the humiliation?

I thought of my friend's sister, a nice person, who had died from lupus, and all the people who had the fungus and false-positives for malignancy who might have been butchered, pieces of them hacked off or poisoned with chemo by ignorant doctors when a simple round of antifungal would have sufficed. I thought of my coworkers and the hideous-looking "leper" at Ricca Chemical who no one would sit near, staring down through his sad, confused, bloody eyes at the lesions on his palms.

Btw, the reason I saw the "leper's" palms, fingernails, and eyes is because I was the only person who would go near him. We needed change for the Coke machine, and he timidly looked up and said he had change. His head had been down, and people sat as far away from him as possible. The man standing beside me literally flinched when he saw him and said no, he didn't want change. But I felt sorry for the "leper." I had no idea what he had or if he could give it to me, but I didn't want to hurt his feelings. So, full of compassion and empathy, I smiled and walked over, handed him my dollar, and took the quarters from his palm. And I never forgot him. I thought of him often, especially now.

And I also thought of my son, whose estrangement from me was another blessing in disguise, since I would have brought him to DFW with me or sent him to UT in Austin where so many bats lived. My son who might one day be butchered and poisoned by doctors.

The same son who lived and attended my old schools a couple of blocks from a bat colony and suffered from "cystic acne," a ganglion cyst, and chronic earaches/vomiting and bad hearing when younger. The "gifted" son who acted toward me like he had Oppositional Defiance Disorder.

So yes. A thousand times yes. I would do it again. All the tears, all the anger, all the pain, all the betrayal. All the...sorrow. The almost unbearable sadness.

I once told my son that I loved him more than anyone in the world and that I would die for him. And I meant it. I just never imagined one day I might actually have to do it. So yes, I would do it again if I had to. But please, God, don't make me!

I KNOW at least one other person in the U.S. unknowingly has what I have and is suffering. Why? I'll tell you why, and I'll put it in all caps so you know I'm yelling...because, and I've said it before, I LOOKED DOCTORS IN THE EYE AND TOLD THEM WHAT I HAD, AND THEY STLL MISDIAGNOSED ME! Just one person being relieved of their pain and suffering, even a stranger, was worth it to me to fight for (unless they were someone like Bill Robb or Dr. Loftin...or Dr. Frieden...or anyone at the CDC...or Ms. Burwell...or the Director of the NIH...).

I also believe that if anyone at those government agencies got infected, at least anyone "important" enough, like Dr. Skeletor himself (or a member of his family), Ms. Burwell, Jeh Johnson, or Obama, Dr. Frieden would make sure THEY were given antifungal. That doesn't seem fair, does it?

What a bunch of @$$hats! That's the same thing I emailed to the CDC after their Legal Department's lawyers opened and then returned as "Refused" a signed statement from me that I wouldn't sue them. I had sent it as a goodwill gesture that we were on the same side...the "good guys." At least I was a good guy....

I threw away the opened and returned letter without reopening and reading what was in the taped-up envelope. For all I knew, they may have contaminated it with one of those nasty live pathogens they released in their own buildings on a regular basis.

Speaking of lawyers, doesn't the Bible say God gave Man dominion over animals that creep/crawl/walk on the earth and birds that fly in the air? Notice what falls through the cracks? Bats! Bats are animals that fly. Who has dominion over the bats?

Satan was good at finding loopholes. After all, he had some of the best lawyers with him, like Roy Cohn. And probably a couple of CDC lawyers.

Anyway, as for me, I had to take care of myself, because apparently no one else was going to do it for me, not even the same government agencies I had trusted and paid 20% of my income to for decades. And so, like always, I got back up and continued on, my sense of humor, at least, intact. Who am I? Well, if ISIS ever releases bubonic plague, you'll know who I am. I'll be the one sitting in the corner with a spoon and a bucket of lard.

What would I do now? Well, I could either allow all of what happened to destroy me and drink myself to death, "suicide for the faint of heart," like Nic Cage in "Leaving Las Vegas." Or maybe I'd go to Reno instead, since I'm fairly certain the prophecy said someone would go to Atlantis (Casino).

I could continue trying to be "good enough" for various men to love me...many of them incapable of love. Men I didn't even love, but who I wanted to love me. Maybe just to prove to myself I was lovable. And my always trying to be so "nice" and "liked" and to give and give and give to people who did nothing but take, giving nothing in return, until I felt used up and empty inside, unable to get out of bed, sleeping my life away, and thinking of the most painless way to just end it all.

Or I could fall in love with a kind, caring, honest person who would never let me down...myself.

I'd take this giant lemon life had handed me, but I wouldn't make lemonade. I'd make a huge effing lemon chiffon pie! And I wasn't going to give that pie to some man...I'd eat my pie myself. (And yes, I do know how that sounds, but even the histoplasmosis couldn't make me that limber, darn it. Unless it can cause hypermobility syndrome.)

To quote Tucker Max, 'The devil doesn't come dressed in a red cape and pointy horns. He comes as everything you've ever wished for.' I guess Tucker was right. So, I stopped wishing. Maybe that would keep Satan off my back and end what felt like his/her constant psychological warfare waged against me.

Satan...the "Great Deceiver." It's been said the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. But maybe that's not the greatest trick. Maybe the greatest trick was convincing doctors and researchers that histoplasmosis is usually harmless.

As for Dr. Frieden, why would I love a doctor who didn't make sure I got to the hospital and was given antifungal? He left me alone to go blind! He and his agency...the entire federal government...apparently ignored and betrayed me. So, see if you can "crack my code" to figure out my message for Dr. Tw@t (and the entire federal government). Remember to "read between the lines":

He Can

Lie On Top of Me and

Kiss My

Soft Lips While He Puts His

Big, Fat

Manhood in Me and Spanks My

A$$!

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