TB Scare

Yesterday ended up being a very unusual day. Gram was taking the kids for the day so I was going to run errands, clean the house, go out to lunch, get myself prepared for going back to work. Enjoy a day to myself, more or less.
One of my items of business was to head to CVHS to finish my hiring paperwork and meet one of the teachers I will be working with this year. Plus I had to get my TB test from the other day checked out. I thought I'd simply drop by the nurse's office on the way up to the Humanities planning center. Well, my whole day changed as soon as I saw the nurse. She looked at my arm, puzzled, and told me that the skin test looked positive. WHAT!?!? A million questions ran through my head but mostly I was just shocked. I have TB?!?! I am perfectly healthy. How is that even possible!?!? The nurse was so kind but really didn't know where to send me - they see so few positive results. She spent the next half an hour on the phone trying to figure out what I needed to do next. She obviously had to notify the district and at that point I would no longer be able to start work on Monday. After mentally preparing myself to go back to work, now this! Ugh!
Turns out that since TB is such a highly infectious disease, the nurse had to call the State Health Department, where I would have to go to be recorded, diagnosed and further treated. Luckily, there is an office right in Carlisle, so I made an appointment to be seen that afternoon. But right then I had to head up to the planning center and tell my department chair that I had just tested positive for TB and couldn't start work on Monday until I was cleared. Thankfully, she was very understanding, as were all the teachers I met, but I couldn't help but feel infected, like I had a scarlet letter on my arm.
That afternoon I met with Marilyn at the State Health office. Again, she looked at my arm and said it was a positive result. Oh, great! The confirmation set in. Ok, this was for real. She asked me a lot of questions, explained a few things to me and then told me I would have to go get a chest x-ray to rule out the disease. My head was still spinning, trying to wrap my mind around the idea of having a disease like TB, but I took the necessary form and headed to the x-ray office across town. Once at the office, I had to wait a while and simply tried to not think about why I was actually there despite the fact that my mind was racing. I finally got in for my chest x-ray and then was free to go. By then, my day was shot and it was time pick up my kids at Gram's. I was hoping they would be able to process my results that day but the x-ray technician said it wasn't likely given the time. They would probably fax the results to the healthy center in the morning.
Full of anxiety, I waited until this morning to get any word. Turns out my chest is clear. I don't have the disease. But I am still so shocked and puzzled by the whole scare. Needless to say, I am just so thankful to be healthy!! And I will start work on Monday.