During a massage session 10 years ago, the therapist working on me casually asked, “Do you knowyou have a big growth on your back?”
Not having eyes in the back of my head or the ability to explore my upper mid-back, I said, “No. What does it look like?”
She prodded a spot close to my spine. “Well, it moves around. I think it’s just a fatty lipoma.”
“What’s that?” I asked suspiciously.
“It’s a benign tumor made of fat tissue. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”
I didn’t. But over the course of the next decade, all it did was grow. And every doctor I went to for a checkup reassured me of its nature. Then, a couple of months ago, it started to hurt. Soon thereafter, it burst—quite grossly.
“It’s an infected cyst,” said the doctor who had assured me of its lipoma status only a year previous. “Let’s get you on some oral antibiotics and an antibiotic ointment, shall we?”
Five days of treatment later, it was only getting worse. I was at a friend’s house when the doctor called with the bad news that the cyst next to my spine held a highly antibiotic-resistant staph bacteria called “There’s one antibiotic
