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Here's what happened: I adopted a tiny kitten and it buried one of its little claws in my chest, right over the sternum. No biggie - just a little scratch. I didn't give it a second thought, except to swab the area with iodine. After a week or three, my lymph nodes in my neck and right armpit became swollen.

Each morning I awoke feeling fine, but by lunchtime I was dragging; and I mean dragging. After a few days of feeling like I was going to die, I finally went to the family doctor. He immediately thought of mono, but the tests came back negative. We're sitting there, both baffled by my condition, when he asks, "Do you have a cat?". So I sez, "Do you think I have cat scratch fever?". He answers, "I can't think of anything else. Unfortunately, there's no known treatment, since we don't know what causes it."

Well, that wasn't good enough for me, so I went to the library downtown with an eye toward conducting some research. There's a publication called the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature or some like that. Within five minutes I had located a promising article by some researchers at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. They had isolated a teeny tiny, previously-unfilterable gram-negative bacteria that had escaped detection. They found it in something like 22 out of 25 patients who displayed symptoms of Cat Scratch Fever, but who tested negative for mono.

So I went back to the doctor and presented him with a xerox of the article. He immediately poo-pooed the idea. At the same time, I had a serious sinus infection - yellow mucus and all. I asked for and received a prescription for Tetracycline. He gave it to me solely to treat the sinus problem. I filled the prescription on my way home and took two tablets when I got home. That was about 11:00 AM. Within two or three hours, the swelling had gone down and I was feeling almost human again. That doctor is still an arrogant prick who has never forgiven me.