Forsaking the Porcelain God

I was "out" last night. Along with four other good friends, I celebrated a monday night with the company of several beers. Anyone who knows me is well aware of my featherweight tolerance, and last night was certainly no exception. Drinking at bars is always a challenge for me because lots of people TOUCH things. With their fingers. This is why I limit my consumption to bottleneck beer, in the hopes that the tiny opening limits the amount of bacteria seeping in.
After more than enough Coronas, my unfortunate designated driver dropped me off in front of my apartment. I managed to make it five steps inside when my stomach turned on me. Finding no strength to make a mad dash to my pristine, recently-Cloroxed toilet, I am forced to approach the kitchen trashcan.
This is quite possibly the worst moment of my life. I need to throw up,which is already heinous enough, and now I have to yak into the trashcan filled with what looks like Tuberculosis and Gangrene.
I'll spare the details. But I am permanently scarred from the decision I was forced to make, and I spent the next hour simultaneously scrubbing myself down in the shower and rinsing with mouthwash.
Which incidentally had alcohol in it. This time, I was right next to the toilet.

Mysophobia

So I've been unprofessional. I have used "germobphobia" as a scientific term to describe my personal concerns of contracting disease. I foolishly felt I was using "Germophobia" as a scholarly term, something you find in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Wrong.
Evidently, "germophobia" is a slang, a dirty street term for "Mysophobia". According to the highly reputable, quasi-peer reviewed, online journal that is Wikipedia, Mysophobia is "a term used to describe a pathological fear of contact with dirt, to avoid contamination and germs." Further, those that "suffer" from Mysophobia are considered Mysophobes. Well. I feel misled. After all, it was in fact a gray-haired, squatty, 8th-grade English teacher that first accused me of being a Germophobe, following an incident of sharing a chewed-up pen with the pizza-faced Neanderthal that was my desk partner. Aren't these teachers supposed to have a Master's Degree? If you are still walking this earth, Mrs. Denny, I sincerely mean it when I say "Take THAT!"
But I digress. The term "germophobia" is just one in a series of words thrown carelessly around to describe Mysophobia. Apparently "bacillophobia" and "bacteriophobia" round out the list. My slightly obsessive compulsive nature is deeply disturbed by this confusion, because when I have an obsession I absolutely must call it by the right name.
This realization demands more research, which is soon to follow. After all, now I can't get it out of my head.

On Rage and Hysteria

Enraged doesn't quite cover the scope of my emotions at the moment.
Enraged, by definition, is to make extremely angry; put into a rage; infuriate.
I am extremely angry, I feel put into a rage, and I am certainly infuriated. However, this does not cover the borderline maniacal, hysterical, fury that also bubbles just under my chest bone. One could say I am hysterically, muderously, enraged.
For the love of all that is holy, somebody coughed onto my face.
MY.FACE.
A face is like the aircraft carrier of all germs: you can get in and out almost anwhere. They have all sorts of places to quietly sleep, reproduce, and thrive.There's the soft, conjuctiva of the eyes, the quicksand of the nostrils, gaping wound of a mouth (which, if you are 70% of the population, probably has an open cold sore on it at some point), and the black holes of the ear. And I essentially got maced in the face with bacteria.
I was sitting behind the desk at my place of work, quietly minding my own business. A patron of my work walks in, and I recognize him as one of my favorite customers. He has a question about our new services, prices, blah blah blah. He reveals he's been fighting a "nasty cough" for quite some time; I silently gag and pray he will have a sudden overwhelming urge to leave my work. Miracuously he does, but not before heaving a massive windstorm of cough onto my face, not three feet away from me.
Well.
Once I came-to from my rage blackout, I grope around the desk for a tissue and some antibacterial handgel. Somewhere far, far, away, I detect the client's muted apologies; however my ears are ringing from the white-hot hatred I feel toward him. I hack into my tissue, hoping and praying to undo the germ spread his own cough could have done to me. By the time I calm down, the client has long ago sprinted through the door. I am alone, seething, and my finger twitches over my doctor's speed dial (he's big on antibiotics). Reminding myself how important exposure to some germs can be, I hold off on the doctor call, but do not completely dismiss it. This time, because I feel so completely defeated, this time the germs win.