In Which I Earn Back Pretty Much Exactly What I've Paid in Insurance Premiums This Year

I finally went to the doctor, and it looks like the bone dislodged at some point between the x-ray and the appointment, leaving nothing but very bad scratching in my throat and a bunch of muscles that are perpetually contracted, strangling me but giving me a sort of impressive looking neck. We found this out by attacking me with a tongue depressor and, after that failed, feeding a camera through my nose and down to my voice box, which is weird and unpleasant but now checked off of my bucket list. The doctor shrugged and asked how late I usually eat, and I told him I usually drink coffee and have toast right before bed, and he explained that my throat wasn't healing because acid crawls into the base of my throat when I lie down. Lovely.

So now I'm on a low-acidity diet, eating and drinking nothing for three hours before bed, and doing shots of Gaviscon after every meal. The really notable part about the whole experience is that I've been so worried about getting a throat infection that I failed to notice that September has flown past, and that I have just under two weeks left until I leave South Africa. I thought about that yesterday and panicked thinking about all the stuff I have left to do, and then Anna asked if I wanted to roadtrip through the Garden Route over the long weekend just before I leave, and I was like, yes, definitely. I'm going to tell people my flirtation with death has made me appreciate things like roadtrips.

Bloodlust

I got an awful night's sleep last night, and woke up about a dozen times to a mosquito that repeatedly tried to fly in my ear and my mouth and kept trying to suck blood from my face. I woke up this morning and saw it on my ceiling, and I savagely killed it - like, half-naked, with a noise, and with actual blood on my hands. I felt so invigorated that I got up early and jogged to work, and have been flying through my projects all morning. This is not a healthy way to finish my PhD.

Dear Everybody I Know Who Thinks the Free Market Efficiently Delivers Health Care:

I went to the hospital as instructed this morning, and was told that the doctor could see me for a consultation about removing the bone fragment from my throat on Thursday. I asked if they had anything earlier, and the receptionist was like, oh, are you busy on Thursday? And I was like, oh, no, I'm free on Thursday, it's just that there's a bone lodged in the lining of my throat, which I prefer to keep clear for such functions as "eating" and "breathing." The doctor is solidly booked, and the ER can't look at it unless it's actually an emergency, so I set up an appointment for the end of the week. (Remind me to bring this up the next time my grandma rhapsodizes about privatized medicine and how good it is at not rationing care.) In the meantime, I'm waiting by my phone for any cancellations and self-medicating with a small stockpile of Coke Light that I picked up outside the hospital. The bubbles are my last hope.

Life Imitates Art

Tonight's James Bond movie on eTV is On Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is triply famous for being the one where James Bond gets married, for starring George "Who!?" Lazenby, and for being based on the book by the same name, which I incidentally finished reading this morning. I'm not even ashamed that I plan my Sundays around these anymore.

Algebra!

I remember approximately nothing from high school algebra, but a Saturday in the office - being in pajamas the entire time = 0.

Adventures in Respiratory and Skeletal Health

Ugh, it turns out I have a bone fragment lodged in the back of my throat. Of all the ways I could potentially spend my last two weeks in South Africa, the prospect of throat surgery is somewhere at the bottom of the list, around, say, getting carjacked or losing my passport. I can allocate approximately twenty minutes to throat surgery, and anything greater than that will cramp my style.

(On the upside, I looked at the x-ray at the hospital, and I think doing yoga over the past two months has really helped my posture.)

Medical Slapstick

I have this persistent lump in my throat, and I'm kind of concerned that it's a fish bone from a sandwich I had about a week ago. It doesn't hurt, and I don't think about it most of the time, but there's a lump very low in my throat that I don't remember having there prior to spitting out another bone from this sandwich.

Apparently, it could be a phantom bone, which allegedly happens when you swallow a fish bone and fuck up the lining of your throat a little. (I learned this from Yahoo!, where the barely-insured like myself get all of our foolproof medical advice.) After a week, though, that's starting to seem implausible and I suspect that there's just a tiny bone painlessly but sort of worryingly hiding in my throat.

I plan to do shots of lemon juice tonight to see if I can soften the bone, and if that fails, I think I'll finally go to the emergency room tomorrow to see what they suggest I do about it. The saddest part is that, as embarrassing as that would be, it would probably rank third on my list of mortifying ailments that I've had to go get fixed in a foreign emergency room. I'm at the point where I count my blessings when I don't have to ask a volunteer to translate my problems into Dutch.