On to EI Paso, Texas, and another anecdotal medical story, this time from Richard Brandt. You've probably noticed by now that many of the articles in this issue are linked with influences of 1950s and other previous-era fandoms on today's fandom. One of the most obvious influences is humor. Richard is another of present-day fandom's best fan humorists, but as far as we can determine, the only connection Richard has with the 1950s is that he was born then... It was a hot July morning in 1983. My then-wife Monica was out of town attending a conference of newspaper editors, and her plane wasn't due in until very late in the afternoon. I decided to go out ín the yard and uproot some of the intruders cluttering our desert landscaping. The more weeds I yanked, the more I became aware of a vague tingling sensation in my palms and fingertips. I began to scrutinize my fingers closely, looking for any telltale discoloration; I couldn't quite decide whether I was seeing or imagining some dark patches, but I was starting to feel some concern. (If I had read any Stephen Donaldson back them, I might have been really worried.) I grew a little queasy as the day wore on, but around five o'clock I popped a few Pepto-Bismol tablets and drove to the airport to pick up Monica. That night I was uproariously ill. My temperature soared and I couldn't hold down anything. Monica made an appointment with our family doctor first thing in the morning. He was a little puzzled by my symptoms, but gave me an anti-nausea shot and said to call him if I didn't improve. After a few hours back home, I was genuflecting once more at the great porcelain altar. The doctor told us to meet him at the hospital emergency room. Doc ran a few tests, but was puzzled by my combination of syndromes; the nausea lacked the accompanying irregularity that usually indicates flu or food poisoning. They put me to bed, started pumping in glucose and anti-nausea medication, and scheduled a GI man to see me first thing in the morning. That night, like the days and nights that followed, I spent drifting in and out of a drugged stupor. Every now and them I'd awaken, see a piece of some bizarre late-night movie playing above my head, and slip back into unconsciousness. My roommate, a Spanish-speaking gentleman who afforded little opportunity for conversation, kept switching the television to a Juarez station; we compromised once and watched some movie with Sterling Hayden fending off the Mexican hordes at the Alamo. My fever raged on; one time after the nurse removed a thermometer from my mouth, she exclaimed, Oh, a hundred and two point nine" with considerable interest, but I never heard any more on the subject. I don't know if the staff had a few harsh words with her or what. Doc was afraid to give me any full-spectrum antibiotics, which have a wide range of side effects, until he got a handle on what it was I had. The GI man gave me a series of humiliating and uncomfortable tests, involving a video camera venturing into regions that have never known the light of day. (I never dreamed my television career would come to this.) He found nothing bearing on my condition, so Doc decided that next morning I'd see the best infectious diseases doctor in town. A few friends dropped in for a visit that evening; as luck would have it, they arrived at the only time during those five days that the anti-nausea medication stopped working, I'm afraid I wasn't very sociable, but they seemed to understand. (As they told me later, "Richard, you looked ghastly.") The infectious diseases man, Dr. Sczeyko (like the watch), came in the next day, asked me some questions about my symptoms, notes how my hands had swollen considerably beyond their normal size, and departed without sharing his conclusions. The first inkling I had was when my family doctor came in and asked me what brand of tampons I'd been using. Seems I had fallen prey to Toxic Shock Syndrome. All it takes, it turns out, is a simple staph or strep infection. In my case, the bacteria had proliferated in the seasonally muggy E1 Paso summer, some had mutated from Type A bacteria to the more sinister Type B, the little malcreants started pumping toxins into my bloodstream, and voila! another miracle of modern medicine. Sczeyko hadn't ever seen a case quite like mine, but he'd heard of them. It seems the inexorable link between Toxic Shock and tampons in the American consciousness is purely a local phenomenon. In Britain, the first outbreak to gain public notice was linked to a product used largely by men, so it's escaped the connotations which led me to endure such extensive ribbing in the following months. As one of my workmates said, "I told you to switch to pads." (Prizewinning entry from Omni's Best Unsubstantiated Rumor contest: "Mae West died of toxic shock.") In any case, Sczeyko (like the watch) started pumping antibiotics into me, my condition improved, and gradually they were able to remove the IV from one very tired arm ("Worn out from all that chewing," said Monica), and put me onto something resembling real food. I was discharged from the hospital after five days, dropped by the office to pick up my paycheck and hear everyone tell me how awful I looked, and went home to rest up for a couple of days. As my hands shrank closer to their normal girth, the skin began to peel; not so much as if I'd had a sunburn, more as if an enormous blister had covered the entire hand. I dropped by Sczeyko's office for a follow-up visit. He was ecstatic. "This confirms my diagnosis!" he cried exuberantly, and brought in his associates, and his nurse, and his receptionist, so he could show me off. I guess he wanted them to know what this looked like in case they ever ran into it again, of else he figured this would be their only opportunity. Sczeyko told me I'd probably wind up as a footnote in a medical journal somewhere. In the meantime, he doled out extra hand lotion. When the bills came due for my hospital stay and the services of three lucratively employed physicians, it developed that my two insurers -- one being my private plan, the other my wife's group plan on which I was a dependent -- would not coordinate payments. Rather, each would pay me full benefits. I came out something like three thousand dollars in the black. It was the most money I ever made lying on my back. Only recently have I started realizing how close I was to the brink, and how fortunate I was to receive the level of medical care I did. At other times of my life, without medical coverage, I could easily have wound up in some county hospital, with an overworked staff physician who'd scratch his head over my condition, and chalk it up in the end to another of life's little mysteries. Still, at the time all I could see (beside a financial windfall) was a new riddle sure to stump all my friends. "You'll never guess what I was in the hospital for," I'd say, cackling with glee. No one even came close. At Constellation that year, I presented this poser to Allen Beatty. He scrutinized me critically, and guessed: "Dermabrasion?" That shut me up. All illustrations by Diana Harlan Stein