In silence grows the immortal mind..

My visit to the otolar otorhin ENT resulted in a situation that could be a lot better, but could be a lot worse. If I were giving myself a grade in healthy throatage, it'd be a D+ that can be raised with extra credit and correcting my test in the future. I gave myself a D+ only because the 8th grade me--the one who would've sprinted the bathroom and cried through fourth, fifth, and sixth period because a D means I will die, frigid and alone in my parents' house because no self-respecting boy would EVER date a girl with a D on her middle school report card and I might as well stop going to school now and just get a job at Sonic so I can at least work my way up to assistant manager by the time I'm thirty--well, that girl still lives inside my head so I just couldn't bear not to give her a passing grade.

Anyway, the doctor made me sing Sinatra with him for five minutes, frowned, shot some foul-tasting anesthesia down my nose and throat, and then stuck a long rubber tube down the same path before the Lidocaine actually kicked in. The pain was TOTALLY AWESOME, especially when he had to jab to turn corners through my "extremely crowded craniofacial anatomy", and especially awesome when the Lidocaine did finally kick in right in the middle of my Crunchwrap Supreme on the drive home and I nearly died right there on I-435, choking on a piece of tortilla my benumbed throat refused to swallow.

He's determined that my vocal cords have blisters on them, and that I'm prone to getting them, and if I don't do something soon I'll develop either inoperable callouses or cancerous growths or both (exciting!) so I've been put on a 7-10 day vocal rest and subsequent vocal therapy after that which my insurance may or may not decline. I do so love spinning the Roulette wheel of health care to determine whether I'll have to choose to pay my doctor bills or eat food with nutrients in them instead. I had to call the principal of my school and explain everything, and so now I'm either going to be given the week off with short-term disability, or I'll run through my sick days, or Human Resources is going to make me a custodian's aide at another school so they can pay me for my time.

So anyway, weekend plans having been canceled because I'm not allowed to utter polite social phrases anymore, I am here. Alone with cats and expanded basic cable and two-thirds of a jug of orange juice. Message me if you want to watch a movie or play charades, yo.