Everything is Horrible, AND good news!

I feel like crap. 

I actually have an entirely different post for you planned, but I decided to do this first, so I have a reason to explain my ailments. 

My body, especially my head and neck, feel like it's just full of wet cement. 

I move, and the slow goop inside shifts to become extra heavy on the bottom.

Laying down, my bed is sometimes made of rocks…
 

Sometimes I get lost in the too-fluffy…ness. 
 

My toe keeps cramping. 
 

Just the one.  I don't know why.

My chest is a giant knot of flesh.
 

When I shift to my back, an invisible sandbag materializes directly onto my face.
 

My arms feel… flat. Two dimensional?
 

I can't even explain this one.

My nails are brittle.

My eyes are itchy and horrible.
 

They cry at nothing now.

My ass has turned to lead.
 

I'm told this is a head cold, brought on by the weather and pressure changes.

I hate this.


*ahem*

On a much LIGHTER note, Oh Hell Donna! is now in a countdown until the first comic is posted!! 

Go here to check it out: 
Oh Hell, Donna!
(If you wanna buy the Fleyes pictured in FULL COLOR then just clink one of the links in the journal part.)

Therapathetic

People find themselves drawn to different professions for a lot of reasons.  

Personally, if I had my way and all the money required, I'd be a cartoonist.  

Still, gotta make a living somehow, and being a Psychologist not only makes sense for me, but allows me the opportunity to help someone...
...Or accidentally screw someone up pretty badly. 

Exciting!  

Okay, so I'm actually pretty terrified.  

That being said, I learned what to do from my classes, and what NOT to do from most of my therapists.  

I've had a lot of therapists.

I take this as a strength.  
I've been where the client is.  
Also, as a therapist, I'll know that not all cases will be the same.

I even had a therapist direct me to a hypnotist who got SUPER excited over the idea of me puking in her office.

Let me explain that one.

See, I told her that I was having nightmares.  
She asked what happens when I wake up.
I told her that if they are really bad, I get sick.
Her response was: 

And so my response was: 

And my mother promptly removed me from the woman's office.

Mind you, I've had nice, sane therapists too.  
My current one, in fact.  

She's been very helpful, which means she's been supportive in a way that allows me to come up with what I need to do for myself. 

She guides without telling, and gives hope when needed.  

The one before her also wasn't awful.  

She was an art therapist and helped me learn that I like art therapy techniques but would like to do other things with clients.

The one before that one was mostly...  Good?  
...ish? 
 
She went out of her way to say that once I was diagnosed with PTSD, that would be my life forever.  

Don't tell your client, who is in your office to get better, that there is no such thing as healing or a future without intense psychological pain.  

Not cool.

Also, she was wrong. 

So, let's get to the utter shit of it, shall we? 

When I was of Bat Mitzvah age, I went to a woman about my crippling anxiety and dealing with some physical pain.  

After hearing that I was not going through this traditional Jewish ceremony (which was a very minor part of my story), she explained to me that: 

Yeah.  

She decided to let me know that I'd be "letting my congregation down" and that the rabbi and my own PARENTS would hate me for not doing it. 

This was utter crap. 

I responded with a: 

And my parents reassured me that they weren't going to disown me AND that I didn't have to see that woman ever again.  

It turned out that my family actually knew her, but didn't realize that she had a different last name than her child.  

My father was training her child for his/her Bar/Bat Mitzvah.  

Projection!  Don't do it!  

Next up was a woman I actually had twice.  

What I mean by that is that I saw her for many months, then switched to someone else, and then tried her again.

I had left the first time because she was very open about also being the therapist for a frienemy of mine.  

She'd talk openly about said friend/enemy and I felt uncomfortable, realizing she was probably doing the same about me.  

Breach of confidentiality, for one thing.  

The second time was somehow worse.

I was talking about something... I don't remember what.  

It triggered her. 
She started crying.
A lot. 

I was not crying. 

Pretty much everything this lady did went on my "Don't do this to people" list.

Still, not as bad as a woman who forced me to take drugs. 

Look, if you have a chemical imbalance and want to be on medication, more power to you.  
It can be helpful. 

I didn't want it. 

Beyond that, I had ZERO signs of clinical ANYTHING that wasn't direct cause and effect.  

I had anxiety and some depression because my legs didn't work right and my sister was scary.  

I wanted to talk about it. 

I wanted to find ways to work with it and build my life into something better.

She decided that would be too difficult, and handed me a pill. 

Since I had said from day one that I did not want to take any medications, and she had agreed...

I figured I must be REALLY screwed up for her to demand I try them.  

...So I took the pill.

It didn't take long before I started feeling like I wanted to kill myself.

I had never felt like that before.  

Thankfully, I was able to see that it was the medication having a strange effect on me.

In retrospect, the fact that she didn't mention that as a possible side effect, the fact that she talked me into taking something at all, and the fact that she didn't mention just STOPPING instead of weening off of it could be dangerous... 

Bitch could have killed me. 

DON'T DO THIS TO PEOPLE.

And you know what her response was when I said I wasn't going to take it anymore?

Thankfully, I had brought Dad in that day. 
I don't even know why I had dragged him in.  

Maybe I was afraid of what else she'd ask me to do. 

He told me I never had to see her again.
...She had always silently repeated everything I said with her own lips anyway.
That was really creepy.  

Like I said before, there have been good therapists in my life.  

They don't need to be on this list in pictures because every day that I talk about the progress I've made shows how not-shitty they are. 

Those are the people I hope to emulate. 
I hope to be a not-shitty therapist.

Lovey Dovey, Except That I'm A Loon

Now, it's true that in past "relationships" I've been known to blame things on myself that were not my fault (See: Every single post about a year ago and that whole year prior) and I often forgave people who probably should have just been cut right out of my life.  

And then I came back home. 

These days, I'm fully aware that I deserve better, and I've watched myself move past a fairly fucked up set of trauma symptoms.  

Don't get me wrong here, I still have some and I will always have some things to work through, with and around.  
That does not mean that I cannot live my life the way I want to live it.

I've also become a little paranoid, assuming that I must always be wrong about people and no longer trusting myself.  I'm working with that.  
The fact that I'm actually pretty content (besides not seeing most of my friends NEARLY enough) means that I'm somehow more afraid.  

Having stuff to lose is scary for me. 

And then there is Rob.  

My other housemate is also endlessly sweet (and single, ladies!) but for some reason his sweetness doesn't freak me out besides making me feel like I should be baking him cakes or something.  I don't know.

But Rob...  He freaks me out.  
He thinks I'm pretty in the morning: 

And he makes sure that I actually eat: 

He is TOO nice to me and kind and open and I have trouble believing that I deserve that.  

I spent so much time getting settled in the idea that I was being treated poorly for a reason, that it is now hard to feel anything else.  

When I'm crying for no reason or having a panic attack or whatever comes with being me these days, he is calm and comforting and supportive.  

Sometimes, I wonder if he really understands what is happening: 

He actually, openly wants to spend time with me.  
He doesn't want to hide me away as some embarrassment like so many other people have in my life.  
He doesn't call me crazy, and does not let me call myself crazy, even when I'm doing incredibly crazy things.  

That being said, he is also really excited to see me, all the time, beyond what might be normal.  
This works, because he and I are both pretty clingy with each other, and we both know to give each other space when needed.  

On days where, with anyone else, I would have just hidden away and hope I survived, he texts me when he can't be there...

 ...and holds my hand when he can.  

I am not yet used to that. 

I'm sure it makes everyone around us ill, but I'm too thankful to hold it back. 

It's only four months in, and we've seen each other every day.  I'm sure this will wear off eventually.   

Right?  

...Or, we'll be like my parents, and that would be nice too. 

Birthdays!

Again, being back at my parent's house is odd on many levels.

For one, I forgot about what my mother does for birthdays.

...My mother keeps things. Like... Everything. I'm not sure if it's a security thing or what, but it means that she'll reuse decorations like a really environmentally aware crazy person, rather than just a regular crazy person.

As such, I get bombarded by every birthday I ever had upon walking into my old room.

So, I had a troll birthday once.

I really, reeaaalllly liked trolls. I had hundreds of them, but they've since all been given away. Well, not all. I kept a couple really neat ones, like my Egyptian guy.

I'm awesome.

Shut up.

So the birthday party... How old was I? I don't even remember.

I had a troll birthday ice cream cake, troll plates, decorations... Oh yeah. I was trolled up, and apparently, this one fragment survived to say hello today.

Next up was a balloon attached to the inside of my door. Meaning, a deflated balloon. My door is kind of disgusting because I used to have a lot of stuff all over it, then tore it all down when I moved, aaaaannnd it still has gunk from all that crap.

So this is what that looked like:

Real classy.

My window is now sporting a bikini, 

and there was also a banner on the stairs.

What I'm not showing you is this foldable thing that involves a cupcake with eyes. Not only was this particular item kinda creepy as a kid, but as a now 27 year old adult, it was a little funky having it at the head of my bed... lookin' at me.

I asked my mother if she minded it's removal.

She thought about it.

She got me a couple tops and an action figure of Otho to add to my Beetlejuice collection.

Otho is kind of a big deal in my brain, just as Mayor Maynot of Nightmare Before Christmas. They were both played by Glenn Shadix, who has passed on.

In any case, the figure was wrapped in metallic silvery paper. I opened it up and realized that it was the inside of another wrapping paper made for Hannukah. I thought that was a smart way to re-purpose the wrapping paper.

Actual quotes below:

My mother is actually a very intelligent woman.  

She is also a nursery school teacher and I think somewhat in denial of the entire world.  So...  There is that. 

In any case, my father gave me a cold for my birthday, and I started my morning with a nose bleed. 

As I told my friend and my mother, it was like my face was trying to participate in the festivities.

“HERE! HAVE A NOSE BLEED! LOOK! I MADE IT MYSELF!”

My mother was looking on the bright side, as always...

My eighteenth birthday was a fun one. It was a Bruce Campbell party. I had all my friends dress up as various characters of his, while I was the man himself. This meant I wore a Hawaiian shirt and glasses.

I quickly questioned my assignment of Ash to a friend of mine when she said “Oh, that costume will be easy! I'll just go to my father's workshed, get the chainsaw and-”

We even had a cake with Bruce Campbell's face printed on it. ...Yep.

Most of my cakes over the years were either ice cream cakes or actually pumpkin pies.  I have no use for normal cakes. 

By the way, I actually sort of met Bruce Campbell in person once. 

I'd say he was solidly unimpressed by me. 

Nice enough guy though, so it didn't help my fangirlness. If anything, it just made it worse, because then I could say “ZOH MUH GUH HE LOOKED AT ME FOR A MINUTE!!”

I'm sure I'll try to relate that whole story sometime. For now, back to birthdays.

Lesse...

OH!

So my 21^st birthday was a hoot. I had a vampire masquerade. We rented out a space in the firehouse for it, and my friends acted as a live band. I invited everyone I could sort of call a friend at the time. It was like Facebook but in person.

“I vaguely know you! You don't know this person... but you should! BE FRIENDS NOW.”

I still have my giant blow up grim reaper. The decorations over all were pretty freaking awesome.

My birthday last year was actually a lot of fun for me, even if it ended kind of horribly.

See Birthday Bashing

Now, there is one special birthday I should mention here.

My 19^th.

It never happened.

I'm not saying it was bad. Not at all. It was a very peaceful day. So peaceful, in fact, that I totally missed that it was my birthday.

...as did everyone else.

It was my first time really away from home, off at art school three or so hours away (depending on who was driving). I had a cellphone for the first time in my life and I didn't really know what to do with it, I had my computer... I had ways to tell the date.

I did.

But I didn't have any clue that it was November 17^th.

And neither did any of my friends or family.

I had been in a minor car accident (this seems to be a theme?) with my mother, and being over 18, the insurance guy called me to hear my side of things.

What else? Ah. My 16^th.

I called it my “Sour Sixteen” because I was a creepy goth kid even then.

A costume party, as most of mine are, I told everyone to come dead. If they didn't come in a ghost/ghoul/zombie type costume, we'd “kill” them. ... With makeup.

We had people drown, be slapped to death, strangled... It was a lot of fun.

I was thinking of not posting this right away and saving it all till tonight, because tonight is glow golf... but I'll just add an edit after the fact. 

TO BE CONTINUED 

...
EDIT: 
 Here is an image of one of my friends, to give you an idea of how the rest of the night went.  

The glow golf is at the mall around here, and we had about ten people playing.  Mom stayed for a bit and then fled... Which was fine because a couple of my buddies came home with me.  We played a couple ridiculously long games of Batman UNO, because I'm an adult and I do what I want.  

In any case, glow golf itself was a ton of fun, and I wasn't the only birthday-haver present.  A gaggle of children were seated in the little party corner, and when they started singing "Happy Birthday", I decided that they were very nice.  Well, clearly, they were totally singing for me.  

After all, I am the Empress and it was my birthday. 

The whole place is divided into two sets of golf, but it doesn't make any sense since there isn't another entrance.  You can't actually play the other one unless you've gone past the first... so the fact that it starts over at "One" is stupid. 

We all behaved rather well until that second "One" showed up.  Then it was chaos.  

It was a good chaos though.

The music was hilariously awful.  A friend (who I call Xena for probably obvious reasons) described the people in charge of the music as "a bro and three *giggles like a valley girl*"  Another friend decided later on that this made them "sises"...  

They didn't know who Queen was.  We all felt a bit old, but...  Really?  Really you don't know Queen?  

I wanted to slap their parents. 

Xena described "Under Pressure" and got it played in honor of the fact that the band played that at my 21st birthday.  Nostalgia for the win!

Even sitting on a bench afterwards and hanging out while mini Christmas trees were fisted was fun.  

Yes, you read that correctly, and no, I'm not going to elaborate. 

Of Foodstuffs and Other Terrors

I'm going to finally respond to “Wrote a Blog-Like Thing” and tell you what led to my recent eating issues, by telling you a little bit of my history with food.

We've never gotten along terribly well.

From age one there was an issue.
There is a chance that I was reacting poorly to soy in the formula, since I do have an intolerance to soy which was at one point a full blown allergy. However, soy wasn't quite as common in EVERY GODDAMN THING when I was an infant.
 

~~Before anyone chimes in with “all your problems are because your mom didn't breastfeed you” I'm going to go ahead and say A. No. and B. she actually tried to breastfeed and just couldn't. 

It's like telling someone who has no feet that by not running, they are purposefully trying to get fat.
By telling my mother that she did something wrong by not doing something she really physically couldn't do, you are a bad, hateful person.

...Quite frankly, it's right up there with people explaining to me that I'm unhealthy because I don't eat the things I'm seriously allergic to.  It's backwards, stupid logic. 

So, moving on.~~~

I was diagnosed with a “failure to thrive” and often this is an emotional thing. Babies sometimes get this when they just don't have a will to live, as well as possible physical reasons. So, it could have been a lot of different things.  "Failure to Thrive" is kind of a catch all in this respect.  

Regardless of the reason, the doctors didn't have much faith that I would survive, because food and I were already on bad terms.

 

It was like getting in the middle of a gang war. What doctor wants to do that?

Luckily, interns are used to being thrown into the middle of gang wars, so an intern put some cereal in milk, which I guess flavored it or something? I'm not really sure what went down, actually. One way or another though, this guy got me to eat.

My thought, as depressing as it may be, is that with all my other medical ailments putting me in incubators and making it most likely pretty uncomfortable to do anything, even as an infant... Having someone just be with me and spend that time with me may have done a lot.

My parents absolutely tried and they are wonderful people. However, when you've got one daughter who is loudly mentally unstable and then a much younger one who is physically funky, something has to give. I could never cry as loud as my older sister could. That is a simple fact.

By four years old, I had the rest of my hearing back.

Lemme explain that one. 

I had been mostly deaf due to a common fluid problem, but it took two surgeries to fix instead of one because my inner ear, like the rest of me, is kind of wonky looking. This made it so my speech was also funky. I spoke the way I had always heard things, which was reeeeaaaalllly quiet and kinda mumbled. I still speak this way if I get nervous.

Anyhoo, I had my hearing but I couldn't really communicate well. I could understand everyone around me, but only my sister (of all freaking people) could ever understand what the Hell I was saying.

Around this time, I fell down.

Hard.

In my memory, there was a push involved and a traumatic moment attached, but we seem to have chosen to pretend it didn't happen.

...Kay.

So, my parents took me to the doctor and because we were having a bit of a disagreement as to how it happened, and any verbal argument from me wasn't entirely audible, it was decided that my S shape of a septum was just yet another deformity.

The problem here is that having a deformity from birth isn't something so easily fixed when you are a little kid, as it could just grow back as you age.

...So I didn't get my nose fixed. He took out my adenoids instead. 

It didn't help.

Not being able to breathe meant I couldn't really taste anything either.

More than that, I had to breathe out of my mouth. This meant that I couldn't scarf food and I had to be extra particular about drinking, because I wouldn't be able to breathe.

Beyond that, I had come in contact with a number of things over the years that had made me itchy. We understood that I had food allergies, but we had no idea what that meant other than a lot of food seemed to make me really uncomfortable.

We didn't even really look into what the foods were, besides nuts. This made for a vague sense of ALL food being potentially unpleasant.

This was made much worse when I was thirteen.

We went to Israel.

As a Jew-type person, this should have been a wonderful experience.

It was not.

The main reason?

Turns out, I'm allergic to chickpeas. Hummus is kinda big there.  Kind of a big freaking deal.  

At the time, we had no idea that anything, even nuts could do what this thing did.

I blew up like a balloon, broke out in hives all over my body, my eyes swelled shut and blinded me...

And still, I was the calmest person in the whole damn room.

My parents were in a frenzy, unsure of what to do “What the fuck is an epi-pen??”

There were doctors on the phone telling them I may need something injected into my heart...

But, no one said to take me to a hospital either.  The phone-doctor just said to watch me.  ...Having no epi-pen, what would have happened if I had keeled over?

But I didn't.

I threw up. Waited for it all to get worse or better, and then calmly stated that I should eat something I know I'm not allergic to, like pizza.

This is hilarious in retrospect, because it turned out at the time that I was also allergic to wheat and tomato, but to a more mild degree. I've since grown out of them for the most part. Somewhat experimental allergy drops have helped.

By the way, ordering pizza on the Sabbath in Israel?  Amazing freaking feat.

Either way, after all that...

It left me, every now and then, like this:

I was pretty good for many years at hiding this. People could eat things I was allergic to, and I'd just quietly panic and tell them it was fine. I'd only seriously panic if a boyfriend ate these things, because then kissing him could be potentially dangerous.

I felt like a giant asshole.

“How dare I expect a man who loves me to not eat something that could kill me? I'm ruining his life!”

Talking to anyone else, I'd think they were being unreasonable. They can't help what could hurt them. But me? No no. Ever accommodating I am. Even if it actually does, in the end, kill me.

This is part of what led to the Fishbone incident.

Part one and two are here:

How a Fishbone is Slowly Driving Me Mad

Okay, So It Wasn't the Fishbone

At fifteen, we went to a crackpot quack of a surgeon to fix my nose. He was purely a cosmetic doctor, which was upsetting. He wanted to shave my jaw down because I looked too “masculine” and give me my sister's nose. He wanted to make me look like a different person.

Being a fifteen year old girl with a speech impediment, a slouch from boobs that were too big, gnarly hair... My self esteem was already garbage.

I did not need that shit.

So I just cried a lot and for some reason they let him cut me open anyway, in hopes that he'd find my damaged Happy gland.

He sort of fixed one side a little.

I still couldn't really breathe, which led to another doctor giving me a nasal inhaler that I couldn't use. 

 It was not a lung issue, you freak.

Also, throughout my childhood, I would stand at the table or eat elsewhere. This was because of two things:

A. Pressure. The pressure to eat like a normal person made me feel like it was something I could fail at, and so I pretty much made myself fail.

When I'm upset, I don't eat, and my childhood wasn't exactly fantastic. This was not my parent's fault at all, by the way.

I want to make that clear.

B. I felt silly and too small. I had to sit on phone books in order to reach the table.

So, fine.

Back to the nose thing.

After a very unpleasant healing process, I could wheeze through my nose with a lot of struggle, but at least I looked the same. I guess he was afraid to even straighten the damn thing with the “fuss” I had made about him wanting to rearrange my face.

Not enough space to breathe, smell or taste, but there was just enough space to shoot food out of my nose by accident.

I can not express how incredibly painful and embarrassing this was.

Powered cheese product on macaroni should never exit through nostrils.

Five years after that, a reconstructive surgeon fixed my nose for real. I was very happy.

He also went out of his way to try to prevent me getting anything else done, realizing that I was also asking for things I didn't need. He worried that I had Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and... maybe? I may have had some variation of it. I figure I was just oogly and now I've accepted that I'm... a “unique” kind of pretty.

I felt so bad for my mother here. Her immediate instinct was to jump on “OH! Don't worry, you don't have BDD!” The problem with that was that if I didn't have it, that meant I was ACTUALLY as hideous as I thought I was, and that it wasn't just in my head.

It seems to have been a phase though, rather than the actual mental illness. It pops up every now and then when I'm already depressed. My brain goes to “you are deformed” and just kinda sits on that.

...

Back to food.

With all this nonsense, it isn't really that remarkable that I've spent most of my life underweight.

I don't really look like that. But, it is how I feel sometimes. I liked the year or so when I was a bit more filled out. I looked the same, just healthier.

After the Fishbone incident/Everything that was where I was living for ten or so months, I wound up like this:

So eating was just... Not something I ever associated with causing happiness.

And now, you know.

A Fishbone is Slowly Driving Me Mad

Okay, so, as most of you know by now, whenever I say "Wow, this has been the most awesome day ever!" something horrible happens.

This was particularly evident on my birthday: (see Birthday Bashing)

Here are some pictures I drew that may help describe what I've been feeling:

You know, like a chest burster from Alien, but in my throat.

So, here's what happened.  Ready?
The day was awesome.  I had gone out with a friend and her mother thrift-shopping.  Then, we wandered around town a bit and looked at some artwork, including some awesome outside sculpture.
Then, there was dinner.  They had made reservations and included me!  YAY!  People think of me! 

This is where happy set in.

This was a terrible mistake.

I got a salad, wary that I often don't think I'm going to be having an allergic reaction to something, and then something goes terribly wrong.  I had this weird "Something bad is about to happen to me" feeling, so I figured a salad would be safe.

Technically speaking, it was.

(EDIT: Okay, as it turns out, the reason bad things often happen when I have a bad feeling is because it's really just a panic attack waiting to happen.  Otherwise, I probably would have been...well, not "fine" but less bad?  I guess?)

On this salad was an anchovy.  Three of them, actually.  They mocked me.  Since they had been sliced open and had all their innards removed, I popped one into my mouth. 

The whole thing. 

Even the head.

I'm an idiot.

I felt that there was a bone, but there wasn't really any pain.
Instead, I got this sudden warm sensation followed by a serious sense of light-headedness. 

This is generally the first sign that I've eaten something I'm deadly allergic to, so I assumed I was going to die unless I took the necessary steps. 

I calmly excused myself, saying that I thought I might be having an allergic reaction, and went to the bathroom to desperately try to vomit up the offending food item.

I couldn't puke.

This is a terrifying thing, knowing that all I had on me was a couple benadryl and an expired epi-pen.

Again, I'm none too smart.

EDIT:  I couldn't vomit because of an amazing amount of throat damage that I was unaware of even having.  But shh... I didn't know that when I wrote this entry. 

So, I sat my ass back down and drank some water, noting that the flashing warmth and panic seemed to be going in and out, which is admittedly odd for an allergic reaction.  I took the benadryl and requested that I go home.

I felt like garbage, and my housemate took care of me.

By "took care of me", I mean that he was polite enough to ask if it was okay that he was going to have a girl over and have sex and not really pay attention to me.  If I had looked worse, I'm sure he would have rushed to my aid, (Probably.  ...Hopefully) but over all I was just confused and miserable and I assume he was well aware of that.

A week went by and I was fine.  I forgot about it entirely.

Then, the fishbone moved.

This is where some may say, "Bullshit.  If it was a bone, you would have noticed the discomfort for that whole week."

Clearly, these are people who do not have chronic discomfort.
I do.
My throat is always a little wonky.  My glands are always kinda puffy.  I'm always a little physically miserable.  So, no.  I didn't notice a difference.

Every time I swallowed anything, even water, that warm sensation and head spinning flared up. 

I called Boyfriend and he and Housemate came to pick me up to take me to the ER.  They had errands to run and people to meet up with, so Boyfriend wasn't going to stay with me there.  He looked very sad about this.  He held my hand, kissed me on the head, and DID stay with me at least until I was all checked in.

(EDIT: This is the part that makes my father want to punch everything in the world.  While I am endlessly forgiving to a fault when I'm in a relationship, this doesn't change the fact that he left his panic attack ridden girlfriend at the ER.)

I was fine, obviously not dying, but very much worried and panicking. 

What I didn't know was that I was surrounded by quacks.

After waiting a thousand trillion bazillion years, I was ushered into a cubicle.  Not an examining room... A cubicle.  I waited for the doctor there.  I could hear everyone else's ailments.  I watched as a girl in the stall next to me got up and walked around a few times, explaining that she was claustrophobic.

Then, I felt myself swallow the bone. 

The doctor came in.  He was nice enough, but he looked down my throat for all of a second with a flashlight and no scope, and then proclaimed that it must not be a bone and must be seasonal allergies. 

As someone with a shit ton of allergies, I can tell you, no. 

No.

Just no.

(EDIT: Turns out, he wasn't entirely wrong.  Check out Okay, So it Wasn't the Fishbone.)

Then, I was moved to another not-examining-room to sit in a circle of chairs with a bunch of other people where were sitting by their loved ones.

Oh, look.  Some people have loved ones.

A nurse man came in and handed me a little bottle.  I thought about keeping the bottle because it reminded me of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but filled with a numbing drug, rather than something else.

I was told to chug it.

Then he ran away.

Okay, yes, I was in the ER so if I had keeled over, someone would have (hopefully) noticed and done something, but I'm used to a doctor or nurse sticking around when I'm taking a new medication to see if there is any bad reaction.

Nervous, I drank it down.  It numbed up my throat, but since I wasn't really in any direct pain to begin with, making my throat numb and making it warm and even more difficult to use for swallowing just made me panic even more.

Thankfully, it wore off quick.

The nurse came back and asked if it helped.  When I said no and why it didn't help, he let me leave.

...Then a nurse looked at my chart, back at me, back at the chart and said, "Oh, this is totally a fishbone.  This doesn't make sense as allergies.  It'll pass."

Thank you nurse lady.

So, a week after that, I'm fine, until it flares up again.  It wasn't as bad that time, but still jarring and a bit fucked up in the grand scheme of things.  I called the ear, nose and throat doctor to make an appointment and this happened:

So, okay.  Two weeks isn't bad.  I had already gone that amount of time with this bone reeking havoc on my life, so fine.

...


And then it got worse. 

No more warm sensation, or spinning... But my throat was healing whatever had been scratched up, and so, still, it's difficult to swallow and sometimes to breathe.

I noticed that tilting my head felt better, and found myself doing it all the time.  Even when talking to people.

After a while, I stopped eating, afraid of what it would feel like.

Even with barely any food in my stomach, I started getting nauseous.

I became weak, walking around on the floor on all fours, because when I stood up, I'd just fall over.

And then finally:

Which somehow led to me questioning my entire position in life and what the Hell I'm doing at 26 instead of following my dreams.

It was like the stages of grief, but with more stabbing pains in my stomach from trying to digest a freaking bone and nothing else.

I've gotten a system of eating everything very slowly and trying to take benadryl on occasion to reduce swelling.  I see the doctor in three or so days.

(EDIT: As it turns out, what I did during this time turned into what some do on purpose as the "Apple Juice Detox Diet" and I would not recommend it.  I did lose fifteen pounds but to begin with, I was only about a hundred.)

Really, I just want to know if it's itchy and extra puffy now because it's healing, or if I'm just infected.  We'll find out soon.  Woo.

(EDIT: Again, check out Okay, So it Wasn't the Fishbone for more.)