Notes from a Strange World

A writer’s attempt to understand a world being weirded by a network. Authored by Quinn Norton.

Infection

12 min readJan 7, 2014

--

Your author, in blue.
Escherichia coli mognified 10,000 times.

While E. coli can come from many sources, I am the most likely source of my infections.

Twenty minutes later a slightly bored doctor was giving me Keflex, another broad spectrum antibiotic. Without that nurse and the Keflex I almost certainly would have died, or been terribly mutilated from within. I drove home, and was back to normal within a few days.

We, my doctors, my friends, and I would say that I've "lost that drug," as if I misplaced it while I was out.

Five days later, a faint but familiar ache had invaded my left kidney, I was weak and had a very mild fever. I realized that I didn't know what drug came after Nitrofurantoin.

Nightmare Bacteria” Threat: States with one type of drug-resistant infection,
carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), in 2001

Despite being so unimaginatively bigger than what I contain, I am not the god of this plane of existence anymore than God could ever be a box.

These days I know there's a death waiting for me, that it's in my own body, and what I can hope for is that I get old first.

--

--

Notes from a Strange World
Notes from a Strange World

Published in Notes from a Strange World

A writer’s attempt to understand a world being weirded by a network. Authored by Quinn Norton.

Quinn Norton
Quinn Norton

Written by Quinn Norton

A journalist, essayist, and sometimes photographer of Technology, Science, Hackers, Internets, and Civil Unrest.

No responses yet