This is Your Tongue on Drugs

Image from the Faber Book of Science. Photograhper Pietro Motta.

I'm writing this not for sympathy but for my own public record. It's been ten days since my Bleo treatment and I'm worse than ever. I thought I'd turned a corner this weekend and I had but it was a turn for the worse. There is a searing, sharp pain on the left side of the tongue, along with residual pain in the tonsils and a deeply painful ear ache (by deeply painful I mean it feels like there's a knitting needle in my ear). The whole left side of my head is like a foreign object.

Again, I'm not looking for sympathy, just to record that I thought I was feeling better by Sunday, but by Monday 4:00AM I was feeling as badly as I ever had. Of course this means I haven't slept and can barely put two thoughts together so I've stayed home from work again. My resentment towards healthful, laughing, smiling individuals is complete.

I noticed in the news today that Son Pham, a Vietnamese boy of 13 is going home to Hanoi. Son Pham has had a much harder time of it than me. His venous malformations were like a football-sized growth on one side of his head that made breathing, speaking and eating difficult. After over a year and 26 procedures he's had a major improvement and is leaving Boston for Vietnam soon. Just think of that. 26 procedures. 26. In just over a year. He must've been in constant recovery. I feel like I have a boo-boo next to this kid.

Still, it's not his pain I'm feeling. It's my own and like anything you own in entirety, you're left to deal with it solely by yourself.