The Drone And My Stigmata

A Short-Lived Drone and a Brief Sainthood

One day, in late 2017, out of the blue, the palms of my hands began to itch. And I mean REALLY itch! Little did I know, I was on the cusp of contracting the usually Catholic affliction known as stigmata.

I lived with my family in Philomath, Oregon at the time. Philomath is a strange little town tucked into the Coastal Range on the western side of the Willamette Valley. Yes, we were Valley People at one time. Flatlanders.

In Philomath, we lived in a small cabin located on an acre of land. We didn’t own an acre of land. This is Oregon, and I’m not an orthodontist, so naturally, we were renting. You don’t just BUY a home in Oregon unless you have the salary of a well-paid orthodontist.

The cabin was located on what had previously been an orchard of some undetermined type. Possibly a hobby orchard? Is that a thing? There were scattered apple trees and pear trees that produced iffy apples and strangely shaped pears. There was even a quince tree. I had never heard of a quince before we moved the cabin, but it sounded quite British. Even though we were there for five quince-producing years, I never ate one.

This is a quince tree. Ours would grow giant quinces and I’d throw them to the deer. The turkeys would eat them. 🦃

There was also a flock of wild turkeys that lived in our neck of Philomath. A flock of 65 (yeah, I counted them!) big, wild turkeys. Sometimes they would fly up onto the roof and it would sound like a rabid werewolf had gotten up there. Don’t believe the idea that turkeys can’t fly. These turkeys could fly. They could also eat quince. Lots of quince.

Why am I bringing up the turkeys? I have an irrational fear of bird flu. Also, I have an irrational fear of waking up before six a.m. and these birds were often awake before 5 a.m.

This is all to say: we lived in the Oregon boondocks.

The Drone Makes Its Appearance

One day when I was sitting out on my rickety porch drinking a Zima, my friend Beau appeared with a cheap drone he had bought from The Dollar General. This was when drones had become popular and everybody hadn’t started hating them yet. Now we ALL hate them unless you’re a DroneBro™. I just coined that phrase, if you would like to use it, please contact me for DroneBro™ rights.

So, we sat on our dangerous, wooden porch that looked over the derelict orchard and we flew the drone. It was exhilarating. For about five minutes. I had always wanted a drone, but I mean, how much up and down can you do before it just becomes a droning activity.

So, the drone went up, and the drone went down, and the drone even went sideways. Magical. Maybe if he’d bought one of those two-thousand dollar drones with a Go-Pro mounted on it, it would have kept my attention for ten minutes. Maybe.

Luckily for me, a wind gust came up and blew the thing into the top of a tree and ended our up and down and sideways adventures. The tree it blew into was in a large grove of trees down by the highway that passed by our acre of land that we didn’t own.

These were some extremely tall scrub trees. Probably about ten feet tall. It was almost impossible to locate the drone. We couldn’t find it, and my friend was incredibly distraught that his $59.99 drone from The Dollar General had disappeared, never to be seen again.

Later that night, I was sitting out on the porch, drinking a beer and trying not to fall through the rotten floorboards. I looked down at the grove of trees. There, up in the branches, was a blinking red light.

It was, the drone. Somehow after eight hours the little thing still had power in it.

I knew exactly where it was and notated it in my mind. The next morning, I grabbed a tall broom and headed down into the grove of trees.

The trees were in a small gully alongside the highway. A herd of wild deer, are there any other type, often slept in the grove, so there were some natural trails leading in and out. I clambered down, worried about deer ticks. And, the cougar that had been spotted in town recently was still on the prowl.

But, I mean, come on, it was a $59.99 drone. (It would cost me much, much more than that in the end; including my sanity)

I had made a mental note of its location, so after some crawling around under the high scrub trees, I found it. I reached the broom up to cajole it down, but the broom wouldn’t reach the contraption. The trees were taller than I had surmised because they were inset into the grove. What a conundrum. It was about four to six feet deep, and I was down in it.

I stand at just over six feet tall. If I’ve grown out my hair, six-feet one. My hair is very curly. If I’ve grown it out, it is a solid mass and must be measured.

There was only one thing I could do. I shook the tree. I briefly considered cutting the tree down, it did have a very small diameter, and I owned a very old saw. The whole operation was becoming a bit overwhelming, tbh.

Luckily, after about five minutes of shaking the tree like a crazed orangutan, I was able to dislodge the damned drone. It, mercifully, fell to my feet.

Usually in these type of situations I am a failure. I don’t have much acuity in the manly arts of “getting things done.” I don’t know how I would rate getting a drone out of a high scrub tree, but I did it, and felt a certain welling of pride.

But you know what they say about pride. Pride cometh before the fall. In this case, after the drone falling out of the scrub tree.

AND it turned out there was poison oak all over the trees. So pride cometh before the boils as well.

I had never seen poison oak before, so thought it was just a pretty vine. I had been in the hospital with poison ivy, but I was only twelve years old during the poison ivy incident of 1985.

The next morning my forearms and hands were covered in blisters. Yellow, painfully itching blisters. It was horrible. My arms and hands looked like they had been exposed to The Black Death. I looked like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly mid-metamorphosis.

As you might imagine, as a highly-sensitive person, I have very sensitive skin. I am a day-walking ginger, after all. If I sit out on the beach for more than about ten minutes, I become irritable. More than a half hour? Forget about it. I’m roasted.

I will spare you the gory details of how I dealt with the poison oak incident of 2017. Let’s just say that we didn’t have the best health insurance (Deductible? $15,000), but I DID have a half gallon of witch hazel, a bottle of Benadryl and a razor.

After about three weeks later it had completely cleared up. Thank Zeus!

My Stigmata

Stigmata is a condition that devout Catholics sometimes catch from their faith. It often involves bleeding palms, feet, and even the head. It represents the suffering of Jesus on the cross and a deep faith of his followers.

As a lapsed-Lutheran, I’m not usually afflicted with Catholic-specific religious ailments such as stigmata, but...

About a month after the poison oak debacle, my hands started to become itchy again. That’s weird, I thought, I hadn’t even been back down into the poison oak grove. But my palms just became itchier and itchier.

A few days later, both palms of my hands started bleeding. This wasn’t something I was accustomed to.

Listen, I was raised a Lutheran, and not just any Lutheran. An ELCA Lutheran. That’s the chill form of Lutheranism. ELCA Lutherans don’t believe in the same religious doctrines as Roman Catholics.

I didn’t believe in stigmata. I barely knew what it was until I had Googled my condition. WebMD just said, “Consult your local priest for information.”

That said, both palms looked as though they had large nails driven through them. That was fun.

Even if it was a sign from God, I decided to head down to my local family doctor. Plus, I hadn’t been to church in over a year and decided on science vs. faith in the matter.

Usually, a local family doctor in a small town of about 5,000 people will send you to a specialist when you come in with potential stigmata. Sometimes, even the local Catholic Parish.

Not Dr. Johnson. (Name changed due to Hungry-Hungry Hippo laws.) He had a two-second look at my hands and told me the one thing no cat owner ever, ever, ever, ever, wants to hear.

He said it was: ringworm. Caused by the cats.

I know, gross. Plus, I’d never heard of stigmatic ringworm. Especially ringworm that was confined to my palms. But the doctor seemed convinced it was NOT stigmata. Even after reading the print-out I brought him on stigmata.

Aside: Did you know that doctors love it when you print out pages from WebMD or even Reddit and bring it in to your visit as a pre-diagnosis? Neither did I!

Dr. Johnson gave me a prescription cream AND a prescription pill for ringworm. I felt like a dog at the vet being treated for, well, ringworm.

It should be noted that ringworm isn’t actually worms, thank the sweet Lord above. It’s a fungus. Microscopic mushrooms that form a ring. Sure, it’s not great, but the thought of one long worm that forms a ring on my hands is something I’m not cool with. And that’s exactly what I had thought it was until, he told me like I was a preschooler, that it was a fungus.

SO, I made my way to the pharmacist with my prescriptions for ringworm. As I waited in line with my bandaged hands, I became a bit self-conscious. The pharmacist probably wouldn’t want to handle the paper prescription.

The pharmacist looked at the prescriptions, then my bandaged hands. He squinted. And then he said, “Are you sure you want to take this medication?”

I did want to get rid of the ringworm causing my stigmata.

“Yes,” I said. “I want to get rid of the ringworm!”

The line behind me took a step back from me when they heard this.

“Well, this is some pretty potent stuff. Are you sure you want to take this medication?”

"Listen, man, I have no idea. I just want to get this cleared up.”

He proceeded to explain to me that the medication was incredibly dangerous! WTF, I said, no, I’d rather have stigmata than die from some risky oral ringworm medication. He gave me the topical cream and I was on my way. To this day, I do not know why he didn’t want me to take that pill. Perhaps, he thought I was the antichrist.

Over the next week I applied the special ringworm cream, and things just went from bad to worse. My palms not only got more stigmata-ish, my head started itching and breaking out. Then a few other spots I shall not mention.

After a week of itching and bleeding from my palms, I lost it and K.L. Rockwell , my wife, drove me to the Urgent Care Center, even with our crap health insurance. These worms were driving me insane. It felt like they’d gone into my brain.

I needed to get that pill and right fast!

I got in quickly to the doctor. She seemed very professional and asked me if my skin had been examined in the lab for ringworm? I said, “No. The doctor in Philomath said he could tell it was ringworm.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything else. THEN, she took scrapings of my skin. SCRAPINGS! And sent them off to the lab and told me to wait.

I must’ve looked like somebody dying of small pox. She was taking it seriously and she cursed my family doctor for not following medical procedures before just handing out dangerous medication.

After sweating the results of my horrific rash-stigmata-ringworm, I was finally called back.

The all-biz doctor told me, “Well, luckily it’s not ringworm. Or stigmata.”

I was incredibly relieved. “What is it?”

“Eczema.”

I had heard of eczema before. She had told me the ringworm cream was making it worse because I was sensitive to it. And the poison oak I had earlier had possibly caused the eczema outbreak.

I asked her what I could do? She told me to put on topical antibiotic cream and take a few Benadryl. I was scheduled to see a dermatologist.

I showed the dermatologist my eczematic hands and he said immediately: Dyshidrotic eczema.

Not stigmata.

I asked him what caused it and once again he said, “Well, anything can cause it. Watch what your hands touch.”

I now have the strongest topical steroid cream known to man to cure what I’m just going to go ahead and call stigmata. That’s mostly because Dyshidrotic eczema is too hard to spell. I don’t even know how to pronounce it!

After years of stigmata that may or may not be related to my poison oak outbreak, I’m pretty sure it’s actually caused by a metal allergy. You know, my phone, guitar strings etc.

I often have to apply the incredibly expensive steroid cream to my hand (they are looking buff) and wear a white cotton glove at night. I was warned by the doctor this medicine could not get on any other part of my skin other than my palm. NEVER! So I try to be careful, but the other night I woke up, my glove was off and my hand was on my eye. Now I have to rubberband the gloves on.

So now, many nights I wear my Michael Jacksonesque white gloves that make me look like I’m preparing to become a serial killer. Luckily, I know K.L. Rockwell loves my white cotton protective night gloves. But I know she loves it even more that I don’t have stigmata.

Maybe.

Or don’t I???

My actual protective night gloves! Cross between Mickey Mouse and a serial killer. It’s a good look, I know.

Postscript:

After a suitable time of healing, my friend brought the drone back over. We were going to give that thing another try.

We launched the drone and it went up really, really high. I don’t know how high. Is 1,000 feet high? Anyhow, something like that.

And suddenly, it must have become a self-aware drone. It was tired of being controlled by the likes of us mere mortals.

The drone turned around mid-air, took one final look at us and then, it suddenly looked east, and flew away. We tried everything but it didn’t respond to controls.

We watched troublesome $59.99 drone disappear into the distance, somewhere over the lumbermill.