Right forearm numbness chantix

It’s causing so many issues:

• Decreased my confidence: it changed my face. My cheeks look puffy. It seems like I grew extra bone on my jawline…(has anyone experienced this?) I’m so insecure about my face shape now.
  
• Can’t find a comfortable resting position. Constantly making slight movements but I could never find a resting position. I hate that it’s always at the back of my mind.
  
• Sometimes I’ll just stop talking because my jaw is too tired and it’s frustrating
  
• Constant feeling of tiredness in the jaw and surrounding muscles
  
• Crepitus on right jaw joint caused me to get a numb sensation on the right side of my face
  

I got braces in the past. I had jaw fatigue and cracking prior to ever getting braces but after braces my teeth didn’t feel like it fit right. I still had a bad bite (still uneven in places). I currently have it again in the hopes that it will fix my bite.
I also got Botox several times now. It’s hit or miss.
Just needed to vent. Currently having jaw pain and I’m so tired of it.

My boyfriend broke up with me yesterday & he was sad but like barely? We broke up bc we’re different religions and his mom said he can’t be with me. We’re both 24.
He said he can’t be friends with me for some time and he was my best friend :( and I don’t really have any other friends in my city right now. So I really just miss my best friend, even if we can’t be together.
And he really seems like he doesn’t care at all anymore. We talked every single day and he’s just fine but we were together for 9 months & yesterday was actually 9 months and I never felt this way about anyone.
My ex was so emotionless when he broke up with me too, and he never really cared about me AT ALL but I didn’t realize that until much later. But this guy, I really thought he cared :( I told myself after my ex I was just done but I met my bf and he was so cute and he was so nice and so good to me and he would listen when I talked and I really let myself believe he cared.
But if he cared it wouldn’t be so easy to just dump me (on our anniversary) and push me away. It came out of nowhere, we hung out almost every single day this week and it was so much fun and I thought things were so good.
Now I’m all by myself crying and all my friends are in relationships, literally EVERY SINGLE FRIEND. And I don’t want to make it a big deal. But I just want it to be my turn 😭
I’m sad but I feel so numb and empty inside. My dog just passed away a little over a month ago and I haven’t felt good since and now I feel sad but just empty. I’ve been struggling with severe anhedonia for months and months now but having my best friend was so nice, having someone to do things with and talk to.
I never got along with anyone ever the way we got along. Not a single person. I have friends but I’ve never been so comfortable with a person the way I was with him. I just feel so sad I miss my friend. I wish we never dated sometimes just so we could be friends again because he was my best friend and I don’t have anyone now :(

I’ll try to get a photo if my shy girl cooperates
So for starters, I’ve had my girls a bit over 6 years and they came to me as adults. I noticed today that one of them Yin has a fairly sizable mass behind her right forearm. It is fairly solid and doesn’t appear to be causing her pain but does limit her movement a bit.
My Wife (a CVT) agrees that it appears to be a tumor, it grew very rapidly as she most certainly did not have it at the time of the last substrate change on Friday. Or if she did it was too small to be noticed. My question is what would be the likelihood of my little lady being able to survive and recover from surgery? I of course want to help her but don’t want to risk her dying that way. From what I’ve seen the older the gerbil is the drastically lower recovery rates get and if she is going to go I’d rather it be at home where she is comfy and has her sister nearby. Sorry I’m being a snowflake but I love all our little critter companions and want the best for them so seeing her like this breaks my heart.

first things first i’m an artist - i got whatever injury i have mainly from drawing (and probably not helped by my frequent computemouse use). this first started maybe a little over a year ago, but the symptoms went away on their own and i never even needed to look up what was wrong with me - it cleared up in about a week or two no problem. back in january i had a bout of inspiration and drew for hours and hours for 3 days straight. i had no particular pain during most of that time up until the very end where i absolutely pushed myself too hard. ever since then my symptoms have only gotten worse and worse to the point where now even trying to rest and not draw for weeks i am still in pain. i tried training my left (non-dominant hand) to write/draw/use my mouse but after a short while of that (a week maybe) it started having the exact same symptoms as my right arm.
my symptoms are specifically: if i use my hand for anything finer than blunt force (pushing things is fine, things like writing, drawing, typing, etc are not) for varying lengths of time (depending on how well im doing) my entire arm starts to get extremely fatigued. at first this was the only problem - it wasn’t exactly pain but it was impossible for me to do simple tasks after that exhaustion set in. it feels like i’ve been lifting weights for hours but i’ve only been trying to draw or write or use my phone. but recently, as in within the last few days, the symptoms have ramped up to include real burning pain in my entire arms (mainly located in the upper forearm near, but not at, the elbow).
this is debilitating to me as someone who has been used to drawing something new at least every few days. being unable to do the one thing i’ve always loved is not an option long-term. i’ve tried to do research into what i could have but i come up blank every time because my symptoms do not sound like that of any injury i’ve read about.
a few extra things: my posture at home is embarrassingly bad. my chair is falling apart and i assume it’s adding a lot to the pain and inability to recover. i work retail and walk at least 2-3 miles every day and i am constantly walking and active outside of the house, but while i’m at home i am completely sedentary due to normal work-related tiredness. my diet is also laughably bad - i have suspected i have an iron deficiency for a couple of years now. i have not been able to talk to any professionals about any of this as i do not have health insurance (us american) and cannot afford the appointments necessary if i’m to afford the rest of what i need to recover.
basically: i need to know if what’s going on with me has a name and what exactly i should first focus on to recover as quickly as possible. the effect that not being able to make art has had on my mental health is not something i’m willing to suffer through for longer than i have to.

Male, 185 lbs, 28 yo, 5'11
The back of my left arm (in the area above my elbow) and my left hand are colder than the same areas on my right arm. Also, my left leg, like lower calf, and left foot are colder than my right foot. Several years ago I noticed this and kinda blew it off as nothing. Recently I've been noticing it again. So it may have been going on for years. There's no noticeable discoloration, no numbness. I thought this may be nerves or in my head, but it is physically colder. I used a thermometer and placed it against my arms and legs (I did this a few different times to try to account for environmental changes), same places on both sides, and the thermometer did consistently measure colder on the left by a few degrees. I do have high blood pressure as well, doc didn't want to put me on medication until we tried some more exercise and diet changes. Is this a big deal, or is this normal?
Thank you so much!

I am about 12 days into my new prescription for nortriptyline, taking 10 mg to start. Since my sinus surgery, and probably before it, i've been having extreme trigeminal nerve cramps, and what he says are atypical vestibular migraines. I didn't believe it at first, since i dont really get the headache. But lately i get overwhelming face pain/pressure when the barometric pressure swings (happens constantly here in colorado), i get super sensitive to lights and sounds, my whole body goes numb, and i get super dizy and have a lot of trouble walking, talking, weird shortness of breath. I suspect I have POTS too as my heart rate spikes 30-40 bpm every time i stand up, which makes me super dizzy and light headed, but it will be a few weeks before my appointment for that.
I tried many forms of magnesium which have done absolutely nothing. Sumatriptan did seem to help about 70% of the time, but made me feel wierd and groggy and almost drunk? And then i got weird body aches?
So I finally tried the nortriptyline. I initially started taking it at night because they say it makes people sleepy, but i found it kept me up most of the night, i would wake up in the morning extremely anxious. I've also noticed my heartrate has increased (and it was already a bit too high) which increases my anxiety. Now i've started taking it earlier and earlier, maybe i'll start taking it in the morning.
So far, I don't know if it's helping much. I'm still getting pressure and cramps in my trigeminal nerve area, but it hasn't been as painful. I took a week off work and spent my time trying to walk more, exercise more, and be more active, which i havent been able to do in months. I was getting excited, thinking maybe i was starting to improve, although i had a migraine on wednesday. But then. yesterday, the barometric pressure dropped really far and is still dropping and i'm in the throes of an intense migraine. I can't even function today.
Makes me wonder if the nortriptyline is doing anything other than making me feel a bit more anxious and making the world around me look a little different. What have been your experiences with this stuff? I know it's supposed to take some time to work, but i'm starting to feel a bit pessimistic.
Also, I'm prescribed sumatriptan to take as an abortive. My doctor said its alright, but i'm a bit concerned about combining the too as its never good to have too much serotonin. I'm not asking for medical advice, i'm planning to call my doctor again this week and get a solid confimation on mixing these, just wondering if anyone else gets prescribed both and how its worked for you?
I honestly kind of hate nortriptyline right now. I'm still getting migraines and i'm extra anxious on top of it? I thought it was supposed to help with anxiety...

Hi all, I may be a salty English fan after this weekend but I want to open up a debate about breakdown rulings and other such things. As an ex backrow I pull my hair out watching other leagues refereeing… cos I’m used to premiership rugby. That’s not to say that prem is right either, I think it’d massively narrative driven and made for English weather. I guess that makes it slower to make it easier referee.
I just get the feeling this week that the English teams are not willing to play in the grey area as well as the other teams at the breakdowns e.g late rolling away, hands in the ruck to slow it, Pressing the 9 early to hit the forearm, and in at the side. Maybe in our own league we are getting over refereed?
What do we all think?

This is sort of a follow up on a previous post where I was asking for tips on how to make the shooting not horrendous. Unfortunately(with a few supportive exceptions) a lot of the comments were people just shitting on me and saying it’s a skill issue or things along those lines instead of giving actual tips. I have spent some time learning the mechanic and reading the manual so here’s some tips in case anyone else is struggling to enjoy the shooting as much as I was:

1. You CAN move while aiming(sorta). Although the game doesn’t let you move with the analog you can still take a step to the left or right or even peek over something. In the masters collection edition if you hold L2 or R2 you’ll shift to the left or right respectively and holding both will let you peek over cover. This is extremely important in lining up a shot while you’re hiding behind cover, especially indoors.
   
2. You can snap to target for autoaim(thanks to a comment on my other post for telling me). On masters collection it’s L3 the left analog stick. This makes forced combat scenarios a breeze instead of mind numbingly frustrating trying to slowly aim at individual soldiers in first person or blindly firing around just by moving and shooting. This made it so I stopped just running around and knocking everyone out and actually started using weapons whenever I got found out💀
   
3. You can reload in this game. This might seem obvious to some but so might the last two things I mentioned so whatever. To reload just unequip and equip whatever weapon you’re holding. You can do this instantly by double pressing R2 on the masters collection edition or whatever you have to hold to switch between weapons.
   

Anyways these might not seem like much but without this knowledge the shooting was nearly unplayable for me on frustration alone. The boss fight with the Fear was always easy even before I learned these things but I was not having any fun trying to aim lethargically. Now it was genuinely really fun and slightly exhilarating trying to land shots behind cover without getting tagged. Anyways hope this helps someone!

It's time I shared my newest fanfic "properly".
title: No Feelings So In Unison
rating: G
Length: 6k words (oneshot)
Summary: Overwhelmed by the all-encompassing brightness and endless vastness, Aziraphale manages to sneak out of heaven.
Excerpt:
Crowley hesitated again. His brows furrowed as pain crept onto his features. Of course, safety (Aziraphale’s safety) came first, but that didn’t mean the demon wasn’t hurting. He now smacked his lips and sighed.
‘Do you want me here?’ he asked, the same defeated voice that had been resonating in Aziraphale’s mind ever since that ill-fated morning, despite the passage of time.
The angel was so, so glad he had made it rain. He could only hope the raindrops would mask it when the tears building up in his eyes would inevitably overflow. Still, as he nodded, he could do nothing about the quiver of his chin.
‘Kay,’ said Crowley, but rather than joining the angel on the bench, he crouched in front of him to meet him at eye-level.
Aziraphale was wishing so hard that he could remember a single scenario, a single opening line of the countless speeches he had rehearsed ad nauseam for when he met Crowley again. I’m so sorry. I was wrong. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know what to do. I never should have… Please, give me another chance. Forgive me. I need you. I can’t do this without you.
I love you.
Yet, nothing sounded right, nothing was coherent. It felt as if an impenetrable wall had risen somewhere between his mind and his lips. Messages crashed like angry waves against this dam that held them, so desperate to get across, but instead only scattering into a chaotic whirlpool where he could no longer make head or tails of any single thought.
‘So what happened?’ Crowley broke the silence, his voice a little less distant.
Aziraphale opened his mouth, but words still wouldn’t come. How could he even begin to explain?
‘Did they kick you out?’ Crowley tried guessing.
Another head shake was all he could manage.
‘Did you run?’
‘S-sort of,’ Aziraphale finally forced his speech apparatus to obey, though each syllable spilled out of his mouth in a clumsy murmur. ‘N-not quite. Just… for a while. I, I couldn’t… It was all… All so… so…’
He began gasping despite himself. It frustrated him how hard it was to formulate simple concepts into plain sentences. The frustration made his thoughts even more scattered. His lips, his cheeks, his tongue and his limbs felt so numb as if they weren’t even parts of his body. He felt he would either be sick or start crying any moment.
‘Bright and empty?’ Crowley supplied to the angel’s massive relief. ‘Yeah, you never did like it. Neither of us did. Always jumping at the first excuse to get away from the office, do some fieldwork instead.’
Inspired by: this tumblr post and this fanart
A massive thank you to the GOAD WG members for helping me choose the perfect setting!

Summary: A young college student is excited to enjoy his first power hour with this roommates to horrifying results.
My Last Power Hour
I haven't thought about this in awhile but it's coming back to me now like it was yesterday. I think they call it “set and setting” or “state dependent memory”. I don't remember exactly I guess I don't have to anymore.
It was two years ago and I was a sophomore in undergrad at a state university in the Midwest. It was the proverbial ivory tower, a land of oz, an urban oasis amid a sea of corn. It was a Friday night some early in Fall Semester either late August or early September. I remember my flooded sinuses and raw eyes vividly as a sign we were downwind of harvesting.
I knew why I wasn't taking my allergy medicine tonight. I sat maniacally mashing my xbox controller beside my HALO brother in arms and roommate Kevin while our second roommate Pete illegally bought tonight's booze from whoever he said he knew could get us some. I wasn't much of a drinker, in fact I only had a couple of beers in my entire life up to that point and all since starting undergrad. I was kind of straight edge kid in high school and I justified drinking now as a breaking point, a landmark of sorts between my cringe high school years and my new maturing college years.
I supported in this endeavor by my high school friend Kevin. Pete on the other hand was a rando from the dorm Kevin and I lived in during freshman year and through the close quarters and mutual interest in HALO and poker, we decided it would be cheaper to split a four bedroom apartment 3 ways rather than two. Kevin and I were childhood friends since peewee soccer. Pete on the other hand, was a bit more, uh, let's say rustic, oh hell, a bit more redneck but seemed to take well to the college life or a form of it. He had kind of become our immoral compass.
Kevin and I were in the midst of losing a round of team death-match online when Pete came bursting through our door hauling a case of beer and a large brown paper bag of clinking bottles and the telltale squeak of foil snack bags. He was a woodland camouflage blur as he stormed purposefully between Kevin and my line of sight to the video game. “Power Hour, bitchesssssssssssss!”
Kevin, with his red side burns jutting around his Chicago Bears baseball hat, reacted to Pete's overt rudeness by rolling his eyes. I shot back the opposite: a bright smile, a burst of boy on Christmas morning enthusiasm and wonder at the prospect of getting really messed up doing a power hour. With that I flew to the kitchen table where Pete stood unpacking goodies.
“Hey, Kevin,” Pete shouted, “Go get your CD player and speakers.” I watched Kevin dutifully obey, duck into his room before hauling out a portable CD player, two brick sized speakers tangling in a mess of their own wiring.
Pete patiently unpacked a thirty case of Coors marked with camouflage and blaze orange. “Jay, count them out, seven a piece. I'll get the shot glasses from my room.”. I blew my nose and counted the chilled cans and placed them within reach across the table. Pete swung out of his bedroom with shot glasses but snapped his fingers and retreated back.
“Hey man, you know, you don't have to do the whole thing.” Kevin said untangling the sound system and a DC adapter.
“What do you mean? Of course I'm going to do it.”
“I'm just saying you're kinda going from zero to sixty pretty damn fast.”
“Oh, right, you're the expert all of the sudden on drinking.”
“Well, I drank in high school and you didn't.”
“They called you chuck 'ems because of your barfing at Jessica Z's birthday party.”
“Right, that's actually sort of my point. I don't do that anymore, I did that because I drank too much without wading into it.”
“I'm sure this is going to be fine.”
“Well, whatever man, I'm just saying don't let Pete bully you into continuing if you're not up for it. I'll support you in that.”
Pete thundered into the room singing something in choir pig latin that I vaguely remember from Monty Python and Holy Grail when they carried out the holy hand grenade. Pressed between his finger tips was a CD jewel case containing a gold re writable disk scribbled with black sharpie “ultimate power hour”.
“So, what exactly are the rules?”
“Silence!” Pete declared as he popped the disk into the CD player. “I'll let the mix do the talking.”
So there we were packed around a circular table in a dingy dimly lit poorly furnished campus apartment with barely painted blotchy drywall ready to kickoff our weekend. The first track crackled to life with fake static and the muffled and occasionally squeaky voice echoing a 1950's educational film reel but with shades of Rod Sterling. “Gentlemen in opposite alphabetical order indicate this quarter's beer master – he is responsible for refilling your beer once per track for the first fifteen tracks. If there are fewer than four of you, simply rotate back to the first or alternate per quarter. Each track is timed for one minute and each player must consume their shot of beer within that one minute period. Each quarter consists of fifteen drinks with a 1 minute pause at the end of the first and third quarters. There will be a five minute half time and shot of liquor.” Pete rummaged displayed an unopened bottle of black labeled whiskey, “A shot at the end is also mandatory. Each person will be permitted 1 five minute time out per game. By the end of the this roughly sixty nine minute game, assuming no timeouts, you gentlemen will be well on your way to a blissful gentlemanly state perfect charming that sweetheart on your wonderful night off. This track will end in five, four, three, two, one.”
“Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin blasted through the speakers like a nuclear bomb as I enthusiastically dropped the first once and half of gold down my throat. I gagged a little as I was not accustom to doing shots much less shots of carbonation. I was left with this inoffensive sweet bready taste that slowly turned slightly more irritating and metallic. The only way to get rid of that taste was probably to drink more and I wouldn't have to wait long.
“What's with this old stuff?” Kevin objected to the first track as he cleared his mouth.
“It's got something for everyone.” Pete declared as he splashed around,
Something for everyone indeed but I do not for the life of me remember all sixty tracks and I'll probably get a few wrong as I relay the course of this experience to you.
A minute elapsed and then the intro to Pulp Fiction had me slamming another pour of beer. Recounting all of this now seems kind of dumb I guess I can skip the next twenty eight minutes and let you know I think “Sweet Escape” by Gwen Steffani wrapped half time. None of us had used their time outs. I was feeling it and was kind of besides myself in a swamp of gilded pleasure. I was jarred back to the table by the lack of music to get lost in.
“How you doing there Jay? You gonna puke?” Pete flicked my shoulder hard. I blinked and focused in. I realized Kevin was down the hall in the bathroom. “We're half way through, man. You're doing it!”
“I'm doing it” I mouthed back as I noticed I was losing my ability to control my vocal features with precision. I tried to take my mind off of it by wishfully thinking about what we would be doing after this, where would we go and with whom.
“We should go down to that event down at the Student Union. Show the straight edge kids what they're missing and then maybe hit up Rocko's Cellar.”
In the moment where my thoughts were heavy I was instinctively reactive against the Student Union. “Maybe just go to the Rocko's.”
“Oh, because you know Sydney is going to be there and you don't want her to see you drunk off your ass.” Kevin chimed in with a surly tone from the hallway.
Yup, Kevin was right, that was the underlying reason. I had an undergrad crush on Sydney Cole, a beautiful sleak blonde woman apparently from Nebraska.
“Well, you know its goddamn sensible to not, you know, go to an undergrad thing like that piss ass drunk off a power hour. I'm good to go to Rocko's though.” I explained.
The silent track started to pick up and the coy sickly sweet vibe of “Tubthumping” filled the air. Peter pushed fresh shot glasses brimming with caramel colored whiskey at us. There wasn't a lot of room in my gut but I was okay with this and as the song started to fade we took the shot and as the liquor burn started to linger I was looking forward to another shot of smooth tasty beer as “Down with the sickness” started to play.
I don't remember the last song on the playlist. I remember Pete flicked my ear and then pointed down at my shot while smiling at me. Everything felt like I was wearing a soaking wet wool jacket and a plastic bag over my head. I took the shot without thinking and about half of the burning yet numbing liquid dribbled out of my mouth. Pete clapped his hands and announced he was leading us out to Rocko's. Kevin shrugged and then shook his head violently before nodding. I garbled something to effect I needed to go to the bathroom then with all the grace of walking through a foot of water with inverted buckets strapped to my feet I waded down the dark hallway occasionally bracing myself against the walls.
I wasn't going to throw up. I knew that about myself. I wasn't going to throw up. At least I thought I knew myself. The alcohol was not playing nice with my allergies. I needed some cool water on my face. I shut my eyes hard and blew out my nose in effort to clear some snot and restore equilibrium. I turned on the faucet and I knocked Kevin's contact holder into the sink. I finally felt something pop back into place in my head and sinuses as a stream of snot left my nostrils into the sink.
“Ah crap!” I let out a garbled yell as dunked both hands into the sink to fish out the contact case from the torrent of my snot. My hands dove in and it didn't feel like water nor like snot. It felt sort of rubbery almost like gelatin. I opened my eyes and found my vision had been impaired and distorted, almost like after you rub your eyes really hard and see the dark blotches but this was narrow tunnel with the blotches around the edges and skewed colors. I couldn't really make out much around the sink. I blinked a few times to try to clear my vision but to no avail and that's when I turned my head down and saw what was in the sink.
I nearly leapt back in fright as I saw my eyes, and the flesh of my nose, and my lips floating on of the water in front of the faucet. They were staring back me from the sink for a panicked count of three before they cartoonishly swirled together like a runny egg flushed down the drain with a slurping noise. I gripped the sink with both hands as I mustered the courage to look at myself in the mirror. It was impossible I told myself. What I saw was impossible. In my limited vision I could make out skin covered indentations over my eye sockets, a flat patch of flesh where my nose had been, and my lips were replaced with a small dark hole barely wide enough to fit a pencil.
I shook and held my breath as my hands confirmed what the blotchy after image of missing eyes saw in the mirror. What was worse is my skin felt gelatinous, sweaty, and infirm, like ice cream warming on the counter. I shuttered and fell back against the wall with a painful thud. I heard Kevin and Pete laugh in the kitchen.
Okay, I told myself I must just be going a little nuts. How could I still see, afterall, if I had no eyes? I tested a hypothesis by smelling some soap and I was discouraged by the fact I couldn't smell the Tropical Waterfall scented liquid. I gulped and knew I at least still had a tongue and I could still hear myself make sounds which could loosely be interpreted as words. Mixed results I thought, maybe I could clear my head by casually leaving this nightmare bathroom and checking with my roommates.
I opened the door and made it half down the hall when Kevin casually headed my way cradling a bag of chips. The mushy look on his face lit up and his mouth erupted with a spray of chip crumbles before he literally fell on his back and did his best backward crawling Sarah Conner spots a Terminator impression. He chokes then starts screaming. Then the horror of it all hit me and the next thing I know I'm back in the bathroom with my back laying against the door. My head quaked as I came to grips with the fact this was real. This was really happening and somehow it was getting worse by second.
“It has no face!” I could hear Kevin screaming at Pete.
“Wasn't Jay in there? Where is he?”
“I don't maybe that thing got him!”
I could hear them right outside the bathroom. Pete started yelling for me but I didn't dare yell back. They turned the door handle but I had it locked and they both started pounding their fists on the door.
“Dude...what are we going to do? Who are we going call? The police, hello, police, there's a faceless monster in our bathroom?” Kevin murmured during a lull in their attempts to break in. “How did it even get in here?”
“I don't know man! Let me think!”
“Maybe it climbed up the side of the building and into the window.”
I could hear them pacing back and forth around the door.
“Get a spoon or fork or something okay, there's a little slot and tab in the door handle that will unlock it.”
“And then what? We don't want that thing in here with us.”
“I'm getting my baseball bat.”
I knew I had to get out and going through the apartment was no longer an option. It was only a second floor apartment and the window overlooked the trash and utility area for the complex. My vision was becoming more and more impaired as I braced myself leaning out the window to see if jumping or climbing down was out of the question. I could just barely make out the outline of an abandoned brown couch near a gutter and cable shaft running down to the ground within my reach out of the window.
I heard them jiggling the flatware into the little hole for the lock release and my drunk ass reasoned this was my only out. I punched out the screen and lifted the window as high as it could go and in a single move thrusted my ass out over the ledge turned and grabbed the metal bits that held the gutter and utility cable to the brick siding. I seemed to be a stable but painful place to grip but I had no choice to swing my footing on it as the bathroom door swung open.
My footing slipped and I dangled down one rung when Pete charged his head out of the window with the bat. In the overhead shine of the nearby street lamp his eyes met my featureless face and he gasped in terror. I slipped again and lost both footings and my hands gave way against the pain of the sharp narrow grip. I must have dropped a good eight or nine feet onto that old ratty, smelly, and wet couch.
I was shocked and I groaned but the soggy cushions and my own intoxication seemed to break my fall rather than me. The moment after I realized I was intact I bolted from my block because the last yelling I heard from Pete and Kevin indicated they intended to chase me down. I wasn't thing but graceful and agile as I swerved with wobbly footfalls across the sidewalk. Glare from the street lamps and passing headlights was almost blinding as eyesight continued to fail. To my dismay my ears started to fell wet inside like they were melting and occasionally my hearing was completely overwhelmed by a loud draining sound.
I veered off of the sidewalk and away from the road and ran through gravel planters to keep bushes between myself and possible onlookers who might also violently confront me. I was winded as sucking air through a tiny hole in my face was more like breathing through a gas mask or wet socks.
Ahead was the first thing I recognized in a bit. It was the five story student union building. Despite the event Sydney was attending, the Union was a quiet, unpopulated and dark place to be on a Friday night. The Union also housed the student clinic.
In my head I pictured the doors as grand white rectangles but all I could see now were dark green blotchy oblong outlines on a black and purple surface. I believed I was coming in the back corner of the building where I may give a security camera operator a fright if he looked closely enough but otherwise I believed no one would be near. I remember myself contemplating heading straight for the clinic or hiding out in one of the empty study rooms and waiting this condition out.
Despite the occasional draining sound in my ears I was able to make out Pete and Kevin's winded voices somewhere behind me. My plans went out the window as I ran scared through the wide halls of the Union with my roommates still in pursuit. My luck was running out as I tried multiple study room doors and found them locked, in fact an entire wing, the wing with the student clinic was closed off by an overhead chain link divider. I was a rat in a maze running out of places to run.
I pushed through the first door I found open and froze. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of people in this room. I realized immediately I had stumbled into the event Sydney was involved in. My hearing had steadily degraded to where everything sounded like I had my head dunked in an aquarium but I could still make out someone talking about the sponsor of the event – Students for a Sober Society.
“Oh my god!” I recognized the voice as Sydney. She blindsided me, “That is such a great costume! I love the spandex work over the head! That is hardcore.”
I garbled something back to her. I tried begging her for help but she kept fawning over my costume.
“I've never would have expected someone to be so committed to the cause of sobriety – you're literally an anti-drinking icon. You drank your face off!”
There was a whirlwind of activity as she turned more and more heads and attention my way. Someone came in with something in their hand. Sydney wrapped her arm around my shoulder while I heard someone's flip phone make a fake shutter snap sound.
I backpedaled out of Sydney's embrace and out of the room. I wasn't going to find the help I needed. I was shattered that I had won, for a moment, my crush's attention but had no way of knowing if she recognized me as anything more than a false mascot for the dangers of drinking. I plunged around to the other side of the Union when Pete and Kevin spotted me from the hall. I fell though the doors leading to the Square – the large grassy area at the heart of the campus.
At this point everything was totally fading out. My ears felt like they had been filled with concrete and whatever after image of having eyes I had was almost gone. I ran my hands across the bushes lining the square and weaved between the paths and the open grass hoping to continue to evade my roommates and anyone else. I had a map of campus in my head and there was only one other place I felt I could hide and be safe for now.
The street lamps on the Square seemed to brighten significantly all of the sudden. I wondered if campus security was now after me or maybe after Pete because the last time I saw his outline he was still wielding a baseball bat. I was running, as loosely defined, on rest of my adrenaline and the booze to Underground Library.
I knew it locked automatically late at night, would be poorly attended if not deserted,, and had plenty of places to hide. I pushed into the door and headed down the stairs, about thirty feet down and then ducked into the bathroom. I locked myself in a stall and sprawled out on the tile floor. I think I started to cry as the last bit of tactile sensation fled my body. If I had lips I suppose I would have kissed my ass goodbye as last outlines of things blurred into the rest of the deep black.
The next thing I knew I was that I was being poked painfully in the back. I instinctively rolled over and felt an immediate wash of stiffness and pain wash over me. I gasped and groaned but despite the pain I felt a rush of euphoria that I could feel and I feel my mouth unzip and make noise again.
“Another damn drunk kid.” Someone said over me. I could hear again! I willed my newly found eyelids open with the same force I'd open rip open a bag of chips. I blinked a few times and an older grizzled face of the janitor came into full color and full focus.
“My face!” I shouted as I curled myself up to bring my felt under me. My head felt heavy and pulsed and quaked with an unspeakable pain. As I lurched to stand, I felt like I had a manhole cover stuck in my stomach. “What happened to my face?”
“Why don't you check the mirror, kid.” The janitor withdrew his mop stick and let me walk out to the sinks. In the mirror I could someone or something had drawn in black marker on my face the phrase “Gone Drinkin'”.
I shambled home rubbing my head and my stomach. I bewildered by the hangover as I tried to retrace my steps. I walked through the door of my apartment and found Pete and Kevin passed out on the floor and couch respectively with beers spilled on the floor and the bat beside Pete. When finally woke up they wondered where I had been but I told them I left to go to Rocko's. They didn't seem to question it. When I asked them about the bat, they looked at each other and replied by saying they were just goofing around. We never spoke of that evening again.
A few days past and I wondered if I had dreamed this all up or maybe I was just incredibly drunk and had imagined some of it. The only proof I had was a blurred phone camera image of my faceless “costume” printed in the weekly student newspaper in an article about the Students for a Sober Society event. The whole response to my appearance only deepened my terror that something so strange and devastating could occur and no one bats an eye. We are instinctively driven to some banal explanation and go our own way in the face, pun intended, of true strangeness, of things truly unexplained, of things that make no sense.
Needless to say I did not drink again and I tried my hardest to put that night out of my head. The only reason I'm typing all this up and putting this out there is that tonight is my graduation night and it was the closest I've come to drinking since that night. Pete, Kevin, and Sydney are at this frat house celebrating our final night on campus and I've taken shelter in their small makeshift computer lab. Before I ended up here I wondered in a daze with a full solo cup in hand through the entire yard, the pool area, and the house as “Frank Sinatra” by Cake blared over me. There are dozens of people without faces here.
By Theo Plesha

Hi there,
I am getting four wisdom teeth removed and a tongue tie snipped in a bit less than a week. I noticed that there is a bit of numbness in my tongue by the right wisdom tooth, which may be a product of the right wisdom tooth invading the lingual nerve’s space.
I know that nerve damage is a semi-rare complication of the surgery and is always a risk, but if the lingual nerve is wrapped around the tooth or otherwise is in contact with it, is there any chance that surgery could take place without any damage?
The surgeon told me that, according to my X-rays, my case doesn’t look complicated and it should go off without a hitch. I will be going forward with the surgery no matter what, since I’ve already dealt with a few infections. But if there is some sort of nerve issue, is it basically a guarantee there will be temporary problems at minimum, or are there ways to work around this while the operation takes place?
Thank you for your time and your expertise.
Also, re: the automod, I do not smoke or drink.

ngl i js need to be reassured that what i have been experiencing is anxiety. these are the following systems i have had in the past months: Racing Heart Feel Emotionally Numb Bad Memory Visual Snow Sometimes Dizziness Feeling Sick DPDR (i can’t tell if i have it but i feel different and idk how to explain it when i go outside or am somewhere new and not comfortable) Left Side Rib Pain Limbs Falling Asleep A lot Brain Fog
now all these symptoms seem like anxiety but i also have an enlarged right ventricle so. at this point i want to die, i don’t want to live. it’s like hell. i don’t wanna reach out to my parents but i know i should. what should i do. when my “anxiety” idk if it’s anxiety feels good life is good but that is so rare and usually i feel better at night but it’s still there.

Summary: A young college student is excited to enjoy his first power hour with this roommates to horrifying results.
My Last Power Hour
I haven't thought about this in awhile but it's coming back to me now like it was yesterday. I think they call it “set and setting” or “state dependent memory”. I don't remember exactly I guess I don't have to anymore.
It was two years ago and I was a sophomore in undergrad at a state university in the Midwest. It was the proverbial ivory tower, a land of oz, an urban oasis amid a sea of corn. It was a Friday night some early in Fall Semester either late August or early September. I remember my flooded sinuses and raw eyes vividly as a sign we were downwind of harvesting.
I knew why I wasn't taking my allergy medicine tonight. I sat maniacally mashing my xbox controller beside my HALO brother in arms and roommate Kevin while our second roommate Pete illegally bought tonight's booze from whoever he said he knew could get us some. I wasn't much of a drinker, in fact I only had a couple of beers in my entire life up to that point and all since starting undergrad. I was kind of straight edge kid in high school and I justified drinking now as a breaking point, a landmark of sorts between my cringe high school years and my new maturing college years.
I supported in this endeavor by my high school friend Kevin. Pete on the other hand was a rando from the dorm Kevin and I lived in during freshman year and through the close quarters and mutual interest in HALO and poker, we decided it would be cheaper to split a four bedroom apartment 3 ways rather than two. Kevin and I were childhood friends since peewee soccer. Pete on the other hand, was a bit more, uh, let's say rustic, oh hell, a bit more redneck but seemed to take well to the college life or a form of it. He had kind of become our immoral compass.
Kevin and I were in the midst of losing a round of team death-match online when Pete came bursting through our door hauling a case of beer and a large brown paper bag of clinking bottles and the telltale squeak of foil snack bags. He was a woodland camouflage blur as he stormed purposefully between Kevin and my line of sight to the video game. “Power Hour, bitchesssssssssssss!”
Kevin, with his red side burns jutting around his Chicago Bears baseball hat, reacted to Pete's overt rudeness by rolling his eyes. I shot back the opposite: a bright smile, a burst of boy on Christmas morning enthusiasm and wonder at the prospect of getting really messed up doing a power hour. With that I flew to the kitchen table where Pete stood unpacking goodies.
“Hey, Kevin,” Pete shouted, “Go get your CD player and speakers.” I watched Kevin dutifully obey, duck into his room before hauling out a portable CD player, two brick sized speakers tangling in a mess of their own wiring.
Pete patiently unpacked a thirty case of Coors marked with camouflage and blaze orange. “Jay, count them out, seven a piece. I'll get the shot glasses from my room.”. I blew my nose and counted the chilled cans and placed them within reach across the table. Pete swung out of his bedroom with shot glasses but snapped his fingers and retreated back.
“Hey man, you know, you don't have to do the whole thing.” Kevin said untangling the sound system and a DC adapter.
“What do you mean? Of course I'm going to do it.”
“I'm just saying you're kinda going from zero to sixty pretty damn fast.”
“Oh, right, you're the expert all of the sudden on drinking.”
“Well, I drank in high school and you didn't.”
“They called you chuck 'ems because of your barfing at Jessica Z's birthday party.”
“Right, that's actually sort of my point. I don't do that anymore, I did that because I drank too much without wading into it.”
“I'm sure this is going to be fine.”
“Well, whatever man, I'm just saying don't let Pete bully you into continuing if you're not up for it. I'll support you in that.”
Pete thundered into the room singing something in choir pig latin that I vaguely remember from Monty Python and Holy Grail when they carried out the holy hand grenade. Pressed between his finger tips was a CD jewel case containing a gold re writable disk scribbled with black sharpie “ultimate power hour”.
“So, what exactly are the rules?”
“Silence!” Pete declared as he popped the disk into the CD player. “I'll let the mix do the talking.”
So there we were packed around a circular table in a dingy dimly lit poorly furnished campus apartment with barely painted blotchy drywall ready to kickoff our weekend. The first track crackled to life with fake static and the muffled and occasionally squeaky voice echoing a 1950's educational film reel but with shades of Rod Sterling. “Gentlemen in opposite alphabetical order indicate this quarter's beer master – he is responsible for refilling your beer once per track for the first fifteen tracks. If there are fewer than four of you, simply rotate back to the first or alternate per quarter. Each track is timed for one minute and each player must consume their shot of beer within that one minute period. Each quarter consists of fifteen drinks with a 1 minute pause at the end of the first and third quarters. There will be a five minute half time and shot of liquor.” Pete rummaged displayed an unopened bottle of black labeled whiskey, “A shot at the end is also mandatory. Each person will be permitted 1 five minute time out per game. By the end of the this roughly sixty nine minute game, assuming no timeouts, you gentlemen will be well on your way to a blissful gentlemanly state perfect charming that sweetheart on your wonderful night off. This track will end in five, four, three, two, one.”
“Immigrant Song” by Led Zeppelin blasted through the speakers like a nuclear bomb as I enthusiastically dropped the first once and half of gold down my throat. I gagged a little as I was not accustom to doing shots much less shots of carbonation. I was left with this inoffensive sweet bready taste that slowly turned slightly more irritating and metallic. The only way to get rid of that taste was probably to drink more and I wouldn't have to wait long.
“What's with this old stuff?” Kevin objected to the first track as he cleared his mouth.
“It's got something for everyone.” Pete declared as he splashed around,
Something for everyone indeed but I do not for the life of me remember all sixty tracks and I'll probably get a few wrong as I relay the course of this experience to you.
A minute elapsed and then the intro to Pulp Fiction had me slamming another pour of beer. Recounting all of this now seems kind of dumb I guess I can skip the next twenty eight minutes and let you know I think “Sweet Escape” by Gwen Steffani wrapped half time. None of us had used their time outs. I was feeling it and was kind of besides myself in a swamp of gilded pleasure. I was jarred back to the table by the lack of music to get lost in.
“How you doing there Jay? You gonna puke?” Pete flicked my shoulder hard. I blinked and focused in. I realized Kevin was down the hall in the bathroom. “We're half way through, man. You're doing it!”
“I'm doing it” I mouthed back as I noticed I was losing my ability to control my vocal features with precision. I tried to take my mind off of it by wishfully thinking about what we would be doing after this, where would we go and with whom.
“We should go down to that event down at the Student Union. Show the straight edge kids what they're missing and then maybe hit up Rocko's Cellar.”
In the moment where my thoughts were heavy I was instinctively reactive against the Student Union. “Maybe just go to the Rocko's.”
“Oh, because you know Sydney is going to be there and you don't want her to see you drunk off your ass.” Kevin chimed in with a surly tone from the hallway.
Yup, Kevin was right, that was the underlying reason. I had an undergrad crush on Sydney Cole, a beautiful sleak blonde woman apparently from Nebraska.
“Well, you know its goddamn sensible to not, you know, go to an undergrad thing like that piss ass drunk off a power hour. I'm good to go to Rocko's though.” I explained.
The silent track started to pick up and the coy sickly sweet vibe of “Tubthumping” filled the air. Peter pushed fresh shot glasses brimming with caramel colored whiskey at us. There wasn't a lot of room in my gut but I was okay with this and as the song started to fade we took the shot and as the liquor burn started to linger I was looking forward to another shot of smooth tasty beer as “Down with the sickness” started to play.
I don't remember the last song on the playlist. I remember Pete flicked my ear and then pointed down at my shot while smiling at me. Everything felt like I was wearing a soaking wet wool jacket and a plastic bag over my head. I took the shot without thinking and about half of the burning yet numbing liquid dribbled out of my mouth. Pete clapped his hands and announced he was leading us out to Rocko's. Kevin shrugged and then shook his head violently before nodding. I garbled something to effect I needed to go to the bathroom then with all the grace of walking through a foot of water with inverted buckets strapped to my feet I waded down the dark hallway occasionally bracing myself against the walls.
I wasn't going to throw up. I knew that about myself. I wasn't going to throw up. At least I thought I knew myself. The alcohol was not playing nice with my allergies. I needed some cool water on my face. I shut my eyes hard and blew out my nose in effort to clear some snot and restore equilibrium. I turned on the faucet and I knocked Kevin's contact holder into the sink. I finally felt something pop back into place in my head and sinuses as a stream of snot left my nostrils into the sink.
“Ah crap!” I let out a garbled yell as dunked both hands into the sink to fish out the contact case from the torrent of my snot. My hands dove in and it didn't feel like water nor like snot. It felt sort of rubbery almost like gelatin. I opened my eyes and found my vision had been impaired and distorted, almost like after you rub your eyes really hard and see the dark blotches but this was narrow tunnel with the blotches around the edges and skewed colors. I couldn't really make out much around the sink. I blinked a few times to try to clear my vision but to no avail and that's when I turned my head down and saw what was in the sink.
I nearly leapt back in fright as I saw my eyes, and the flesh of my nose, and my lips floating on of the water in front of the faucet. They were staring back me from the sink for a panicked count of three before they cartoonishly swirled together like a runny egg flushed down the drain with a slurping noise. I gripped the sink with both hands as I mustered the courage to look at myself in the mirror. It was impossible I told myself. What I saw was impossible. In my limited vision I could make out skin covered indentations over my eye sockets, a flat patch of flesh where my nose had been, and my lips were replaced with a small dark hole barely wide enough to fit a pencil.
I shook and held my breath as my hands confirmed what the blotchy after image of missing eyes saw in the mirror. What was worse is my skin felt gelatinous, sweaty, and infirm, like ice cream warming on the counter. I shuttered and fell back against the wall with a painful thud. I heard Kevin and Pete laugh in the kitchen.
Okay, I told myself I must just be going a little nuts. How could I still see, afterall, if I had no eyes? I tested a hypothesis by smelling some soap and I was discouraged by the fact I couldn't smell the Tropical Waterfall scented liquid. I gulped and knew I at least still had a tongue and I could still hear myself make sounds which could loosely be interpreted as words. Mixed results I thought, maybe I could clear my head by casually leaving this nightmare bathroom and checking with my roommates.
I opened the door and made it half down the hall when Kevin casually headed my way cradling a bag of chips. The mushy look on his face lit up and his mouth erupted with a spray of chip crumbles before he literally fell on his back and did his best backward crawling Sarah Conner spots a Terminator impression. He chokes then starts screaming. Then the horror of it all hit me and the next thing I know I'm back in the bathroom with my back laying against the door. My head quaked as I came to grips with the fact this was real. This was really happening and somehow it was getting worse by second.
“It has no face!” I could hear Kevin screaming at Pete.
“Wasn't Jay in there? Where is he?”
“I don't maybe that thing got him!”
I could hear them right outside the bathroom. Pete started yelling for me but I didn't dare yell back. They turned the door handle but I had it locked and they both started pounding their fists on the door.
“Dude...what are we going to do? Who are we going call? The police, hello, police, there's a faceless monster in our bathroom?” Kevin murmured during a lull in their attempts to break in. “How did it even get in here?”
“I don't know man! Let me think!”
“Maybe it climbed up the side of the building and into the window.”
I could hear them pacing back and forth around the door.
“Get a spoon or fork or something okay, there's a little slot and tab in the door handle that will unlock it.”
“And then what? We don't want that thing in here with us.”
“I'm getting my baseball bat.”
I knew I had to get out and going through the apartment was no longer an option. It was only a second floor apartment and the window overlooked the trash and utility area for the complex. My vision was becoming more and more impaired as I braced myself leaning out the window to see if jumping or climbing down was out of the question. I could just barely make out the outline of an abandoned brown couch near a gutter and cable shaft running down to the ground within my reach out of the window.
I heard them jiggling the flatware into the little hole for the lock release and my drunk ass reasoned this was my only out. I punched out the screen and lifted the window as high as it could go and in a single move thrusted my ass out over the ledge turned and grabbed the metal bits that held the gutter and utility cable to the brick siding. I seemed to be a stable but painful place to grip but I had no choice to swing my footing on it as the bathroom door swung open.
My footing slipped and I dangled down one rung when Pete charged his head out of the window with the bat. In the overhead shine of the nearby street lamp his eyes met my featureless face and he gasped in terror. I slipped again and lost both footings and my hands gave way against the pain of the sharp narrow grip. I must have dropped a good eight or nine feet onto that old ratty, smelly, and wet couch.
I was shocked and I groaned but the soggy cushions and my own intoxication seemed to break my fall rather than me. The moment after I realized I was intact I bolted from my block because the last yelling I heard from Pete and Kevin indicated they intended to chase me down. I wasn't thing but graceful and agile as I swerved with wobbly footfalls across the sidewalk. Glare from the street lamps and passing headlights was almost blinding as eyesight continued to fail. To my dismay my ears started to fell wet inside like they were melting and occasionally my hearing was completely overwhelmed by a loud draining sound.
I veered off of the sidewalk and away from the road and ran through gravel planters to keep bushes between myself and possible onlookers who might also violently confront me. I was winded as sucking air through a tiny hole in my face was more like breathing through a gas mask or wet socks.
Ahead was the first thing I recognized in a bit. It was the five story student union building. Despite the event Sydney was attending, the Union was a quiet, unpopulated and dark place to be on a Friday night. The Union also housed the student clinic.
In my head I pictured the doors as grand white rectangles but all I could see now were dark green blotchy oblong outlines on a black and purple surface. I believed I was coming in the back corner of the building where I may give a security camera operator a fright if he looked closely enough but otherwise I believed no one would be near. I remember myself contemplating heading straight for the clinic or hiding out in one of the empty study rooms and waiting this condition out.
Despite the occasional draining sound in my ears I was able to make out Pete and Kevin's winded voices somewhere behind me. My plans went out the window as I ran scared through the wide halls of the Union with my roommates still in pursuit. My luck was running out as I tried multiple study room doors and found them locked, in fact an entire wing, the wing with the student clinic was closed off by an overhead chain link divider. I was a rat in a maze running out of places to run.
I pushed through the first door I found open and froze. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of people in this room. I realized immediately I had stumbled into the event Sydney was involved in. My hearing had steadily degraded to where everything sounded like I had my head dunked in an aquarium but I could still make out someone talking about the sponsor of the event – Students for a Sober Society.
“Oh my god!” I recognized the voice as Sydney. She blindsided me, “That is such a great costume! I love the spandex work over the head! That is hardcore.”
I garbled something back to her. I tried begging her for help but she kept fawning over my costume.
“I've never would have expected someone to be so committed to the cause of sobriety – you're literally an anti-drinking icon. You drank your face off!”
There was a whirlwind of activity as she turned more and more heads and attention my way. Someone came in with something in their hand. Sydney wrapped her arm around my shoulder while I heard someone's flip phone make a fake shutter snap sound.
I backpedaled out of Sydney's embrace and out of the room. I wasn't going to find the help I needed. I was shattered that I had won, for a moment, my crush's attention but had no way of knowing if she recognized me as anything more than a false mascot for the dangers of drinking. I plunged around to the other side of the Union when Pete and Kevin spotted me from the hall. I fell though the doors leading to the Square – the large grassy area at the heart of the campus.
At this point everything was totally fading out. My ears felt like they had been filled with concrete and whatever after image of having eyes I had was almost gone. I ran my hands across the bushes lining the square and weaved between the paths and the open grass hoping to continue to evade my roommates and anyone else. I had a map of campus in my head and there was only one other place I felt I could hide and be safe for now.
The street lamps on the Square seemed to brighten significantly all of the sudden. I wondered if campus security was now after me or maybe after Pete because the last time I saw his outline he was still wielding a baseball bat. I was running, as loosely defined, on rest of my adrenaline and the booze to Underground Library.
I knew it locked automatically late at night, would be poorly attended if not deserted,, and had plenty of places to hide. I pushed into the door and headed down the stairs, about thirty feet down and then ducked into the bathroom. I locked myself in a stall and sprawled out on the tile floor. I think I started to cry as the last bit of tactile sensation fled my body. If I had lips I suppose I would have kissed my ass goodbye as last outlines of things blurred into the rest of the deep black.
The next thing I knew I was that I was being poked painfully in the back. I instinctively rolled over and felt an immediate wash of stiffness and pain wash over me. I gasped and groaned but despite the pain I felt a rush of euphoria that I could feel and I feel my mouth unzip and make noise again.
“Another damn drunk kid.” Someone said over me. I could hear again! I willed my newly found eyelids open with the same force I'd open rip open a bag of chips. I blinked a few times and an older grizzled face of the janitor came into full color and full focus.
“My face!” I shouted as I curled myself up to bring my felt under me. My head felt heavy and pulsed and quaked with an unspeakable pain. As I lurched to stand, I felt like I had a manhole cover stuck in my stomach. “What happened to my face?”
“Why don't you check the mirror, kid.” The janitor withdrew his mop stick and let me walk out to the sinks. In the mirror I could someone or something had drawn in black marker on my face the phrase “Gone Drinkin'”.
I shambled home rubbing my head and my stomach. I bewildered by the hangover as I tried to retrace my steps. I walked through the door of my apartment and found Pete and Kevin passed out on the floor and couch respectively with beers spilled on the floor and the bat beside Pete. When finally woke up they wondered where I had been but I told them I left to go to Rocko's. They didn't seem to question it. When I asked them about the bat, they looked at each other and replied by saying they were just goofing around. We never spoke of that evening again.
A few days past and I wondered if I had dreamed this all up or maybe I was just incredibly drunk and had imagined some of it. The only proof I had was a blurred phone camera image of my faceless “costume” printed in the weekly student newspaper in an article about the Students for a Sober Society event. The whole response to my appearance only deepened my terror that something so strange and devastating could occur and no one bats an eye. We are instinctively driven to some banal explanation and go our own way in the face, pun intended, of true strangeness, of things truly unexplained, of things that make no sense.
Needless to say I did not drink again and I tried my hardest to put that night out of my head. The only reason I'm typing all this up and putting this out there is that tonight is my graduation night and it was the closest I've come to drinking since that night. Pete, Kevin, and Sydney are at this frat house celebrating our final night on campus and I've taken shelter in their small makeshift computer lab. Before I ended up here I wondered in a daze with a full solo cup in hand through the entire yard, the pool area, and the house as “Frank Sinatra” by Cake blared over me. There are dozens of people without faces here.
By Theo Plesha

I’m very nervous about my WLE tomorrow and I was wondering if anyone can tell me anything that helped them?
I’ll be going to the office after work, and I’m wondering things like: should I eat first? Right before? Definitely not? Does it even matter? Should I make sure not to look at it? Will there be a lot of blood? How bad is the pressure & tugging? What happens before or after? How quick does the numbing wear off? Do they give you pain meds?

Possible TW for ER visit story
Long story incoming about my Epossible stroke scare. I guess this is sort of sharing my story of a weird experience I had but I’m also asking if anyone needed to stop wearing contact lenses to prevent headaches.
I’m 18 weeks pregnant with my first and I wear contacts almost exclusively. I only wear my glasses when I go to bed- I can’t see great without them but glasses drive me crazy so for most of the day I wear contacts.
So for the ER portion: yesterday I had a little bit of a headache in the morning. I thought it went away and I went to the store with my husband. While out, I noticed I was having trouble saying normal words and at first didn’t think much of it. Then the fingers on my right hand started going numb and tingly. At this point we were on the way home and I got on the phone to try to call my OB clinic. As I was on hold my arm was getting sort of numb and tingly. We got home and the numbness/tingling went away but when the nurse picked up the phone, I had a really hard time stringing words together. Some of my words were slurred and I was just having a really hard time speaking. I ended up passing the phone to my husband and at this point I burst into tears because I knew those were possible stroke symptoms and I was obviously freaked out. Throughout the phone call I was eventually able to talk again.
She asked us a bunch of questions and eventually the verdict was since the “episode” was short and the symptoms went away, we didn’t need to call 911 but I definitely needed to go to the ER right away.
My husband drove me and the ER team calmly whisked me back to CT very quickly where I was immediately surrounded by doctors and nurses hooking me up with wires and asking me questions. Again by this point my symptoms were seemingly gone and they decided to wait and do an MRI instead. They still wanted to look at my brain but it wasn’t as much of an emergency anymore.
I ended up in a waiting room for about 4 hours before finally going back for an MRI which ended up being clear. During the wait, I had another few minutes where I could not recall names of my coworkers but I could see their faces. It was frustrating and scary. I kept having my husband quiz me (we work together) and I seemed to go back to normal eventually. I did bring this up to the nurse when she came to check on me.
Anyway. That was long winded. All this to say, the MRI was clear and they said it could have been similar to a migraine, which I’ve never had. And I actually hadn’t even mentioned the headache at the ER because it seemed insignificant and I genuinely forgot I had had one earlier.
Now it’s a day later and I still have a little tiny headache (barely bothering me) and I’m wondering if my contacts are irritating my eyes and causing headaches. I happened to throw out the pair I was wearing yesterday so I have a fresh pair and my eyes seem tired. I just want to avoid any chance of those “migraine like” symptoms again because that was honestly kind of freaky in hindsight.

For the past few weeks I’ve felt too sad to go outside, so what I’ve done instead is spend all my weekends and time after school rotting in bed and numbing myself by sleeping a lot. Nothing else seemed worth doing.
My parents don’t let me go out much anyways because theyre super strict, but after a month of this I think even they got concerned.
I don’t even know why, but this morning I made some plans with 3-4 friends to go out and eat something. I honestly felt a bit excited.
But, when I checked my phone after driving 20 minutes to the place, everyone had canceled for some reason or another. Im sure they had legitimate reasons idk, but it still felt bad.
Now I’m sitting alone in my car, typing this post, unsure of what to do next. Everyone around me is with someone.
I think I was right, and there really is nothing worth doing. I’m probably going to drive home and go straight to bed, I dont feel like doing anything else anyways.
Sorry to anyone who’s reading this although I guess this sub is called offmychest.

27M, been doing the dance with my doctor who keeps attributing everything to ANXIETY... Year of bad sleep, max 5-6 hours if I'm lucky and only recently realized I am acting out my dreams more and more. Kicking and raising my arm and talking waking me up a lot recently. I've had random sensations of numbness or just strange feelings in my legs torso face arms and my neck/under chin has felt like its about to lock up with TMJ symptoms more and more consistently. I can swallow and eat fine, but it often doesn't feel right... Occasional cramps in my hands and fingers. I already have vitiligo so I know I'm in the autoimmune boat. I've had some dizziness but never fell or fainted. I am waiting on a sleep study next friday, and I feel like that is going to finally put me on the road to having a Parkinson's type diagnosis once they see how jacked up my sleep is. I've gotten brain and neck MRI's to clear tumors or MS (they wouldn't let me do spine MRI so I'm still not 100% sure on that), and blood work just shows I have high cholesterol and low vitamin D.
Going to doctors makes me feel like im fucking crazy or not explaining how serious I feel like my symptoms are. Even after telling him I was kicking HARD in my sleep my doctor says I am worrying myself for nothing and should stop googling. As if I should just stay in the dark and wait until I'm unable to walk to take it serious... Can all of this REALLY be anxiety?? Once I saw myself reacting to my dreams on camera I started waking up from it every night, after learning how likely that is a sign of neuro issues. I am right in between getting my life together and all that is screwing me right now is not knowing if I'm gonna be able to function or be alive in the next 10 years and it's driving me crazy. I wish I could avoid sleep altogether but can't and every night is like a fight for my life and im just tired boss.

Hello, I’m sorry this is going to be long and ranty. I was diagnosed with JIA years ago, chronic knee, back, shoulder and hand joint pain. I had a flare up and 4 of my finger joints were swollen. I’ve been in pain since age 11. I was put on weekly Enbrel shots with pain meds for a couple of years. I had to switch hospitals and my new rhuem told me that I didn’t have JIA and said it was fibromyalgia. Completely brushed me off and sent me home samples of a new drug. She didn’t even pull my records from the other hospital. I felt completely unheard and stopped going.
Years later my symptoms are completely unmanageable. Doctors still say, “you’re healthy just eat better.” I have less mobility in my left hand and visible swelling on my ring finger. My left shoulder and upper back are at a constant 6/10 pain and physical therapy is not helping. I have new symptoms that have persisted for a few years now.

1. Entire left side of body is in constant pain. Numbness, tingles, it goes to sleep if I’m sitting on the toilet for a few minutes and when driving. In the last month it’s travelled to my head. Tingles and face numbness. It feels like my face is drooping? I cannot sleep on that side or I wake up numb and my shoulder feels “caught”. I have to manually unstick it.
   
2. Rashes. I never used to be sensitive to sun. 5 minutes of sun and my legs get itchy, burn and become red with bumps. I now have a rash on my nose and cheeks only. The skin is slightly rougher. Face rash is constant even without sun but sun makes it more noticeable.
   
3. Asthma has gotten worse. I’ve had pneumonia twice. My chest cracks and catches and is super painful.
   
4. Left side of Back went out for the first time ever. My rib cracked out of place and it took a week to subside.
   
5. I’m hyper mobile in my shoulders, knees, hips, elbows and toes. My elbows are achy just lifting them.
   
6. Allergies are worse.
   
7. Headaches and vision in right eye is impaired. Driving at night is stress inducing. Everything blurs and my sensitivity to artificial light is high. Lights in the house give me headaches and prefer being in the dark. Pressure behind eyes and dry eyes. I use artificial tears.
   
8. I used to have great arm strength. I can’t even open jars anymore. I’m a massage therapist and my pressure is so different now. I can’t carry groceries bags without having to drop them.
   
9. Tired. ALL THE TIME. I have ADHD and my meds don’t help with it. I want to nap constantly.
   

I feel like an old person. I have fantasies about scraping and digging in my skin to relieve pain.
I feel lost. I walk dogs and massage. I love it but my body doesn’t. Honestly wondering if something else is going on.

We are all looking for answers, and we are only accused of being anxious and it is true, it can be. And we try to find cases similar to ours. But we are too mixed up in many publications and between comments on publications.
For example, the case of Jamesspoon from 10 years ago that he published that started with cramps in his belly, numbness, fasciculations and he even thought it could be ALS.
"These spasms are really what distracts me and feel like the barrier between feeling anxious and feeling good, normal, okay. Please don't tell me I have to live with this forever, I don't think or feel like I want to or I can. A "Sometimes it makes me so agitated that I just want to collapse and start hitting myself everywhere, tearing off my skin and muscles. It's just not fair that this happens to me." (Jamesspoon)
And he published 2 years ago:
"Good luck with you! It's gotten a lot better over time for me, thankfully. I'm glad to report that with some mild antidepressants, therapy, and mindfulness, I've gotten it under control and I'm a much more settled person now! Wishing the same for everyone who sees this post." (Jamesspoon)
10 years later, he is still happily posting on reddit, there is no need to ask him if he is okay, 10 years have passed we can confirm that he is okay even though his story seemed dark.
Post your story of your symptoms here summarized, to see if there are others like you.
We will try to do it in order to compare ourselves with other people.
Since we are all here for fasciculations/twitches/cramps, starting with your first fasciculations will be the first month of symptoms, it should be month by month until the months you have had your symptoms. (You can participate if your symptoms started today, yesterday, 1 week ago, etc.)
But we must start with basic data, age, sex, place of origin, and health history before the first fasciculations/twitches/cramps/etc.
For example, "In March 2019, one day I fainted but I ignored it" or "In October 2021, I felt dizzy, but I ignored it" or "In February 2022 I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes."
Things from the past that can give us clues.
We must go in order, from the past to the present.
In each month, you can detail your symptoms, if you went to the doctor, if you had an EMG, if something happened to you like an anxiety attack, whatever.
I will do mine as an example.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Background]
23M, Mexico.
I have no history of diagnosed illnesses.
I just have high cholesterol (220) and a little kidney problem.
I have always been very nervous and anxious.
In 2013, in high school, a teacher noticed that my hands were shaking a little more than normal.
In 2016, a doctor (without doing medical tests) said that this hand tremor was due to the myelin that covers the nerves in the hands being damaged.
Once in 2019 I felt intense tingling in my private part, but it didn't happen again.
In 2022 when I started going to the gym, the first few days my arms stiffened as if there was a lack of blood, I stretched them and they returned to normal, it didn't happen to me again.
In June 2023 I was finishing my exercises and the trainer told me "What do you have on your face?" I already knew what he was referring to, sometimes my eyelid on my right eye tends to droop, and it seems to happen more when I'm exhausted from exercising, so I lifted the eyelid with my finger and went home.
At some point in 2023, while I was sleeping, I suddenly got up to take a deep breath from my mouth, it was as if I had run out of air while I was sleeping.
In October 2023, something happened to me that had never happened before in my life, I was just starting my gym routine when a transparent crystal appeared in my left eye, at first I ignored it, but then it started to grow in size and it scared me, then I started to feel tired with sleep, I decided to go home, but while I was driving my left arm got weak, when I got home I felt like I was going to faint, but everything went back to normal, the episode lasted 1 hour. Very similar to a stroke, but it wasn't. Then I saw on the internet that it is called Hemiplegic Migraine.
[FIRST MONTH OF FASCICULATIONS/TWITCHING, JANUARY 2024]
On January 19, 2024 I had a viral infection of unknown origin, I don't know if it was covid or what, but my throat and ears became very swollen, I couldn't swallow because my uvula was stretched. The antibiotics did not work, it took 14 days for the symptoms of the infection to go away and another month for the inflammation of the inner ear to decrease.
But it was on that night of January 19 that my first fasciculation began in the shoulder of my left arm.
I had completely ignored the fasciculations, since they had happened to me before in my life when I was in an exam, like on my eyelid, or my leg, but it went away.
[SECOND MONTH, FEBRUARY 2024]
I still had traces of the January infection, because my ear still felt inflamed since I couldn't hear well, but my fasciculations continued in my arm, I no longer ignored them, although sometimes they went away and sometimes they came back. So I decided to search on Google, I panicked about deadly diseases like ALS. So I quickly went to the doctor scared, they did blood tests and they didn't find anything strange, other than my high cholesterol and slight kidney/liver problem, because my creatinine was 1.53 when the standard is 0.6 - 1.20. Even so, I didn't believe the doctor and they sent me to the psychiatrist. The doctor diagnosed "tetany" because in the Trousseau test he saw that my thumb moved. He prescribed calcium, but it had no effect.
[THIRD MONTH, MARCH 2024]
Obviously in panic and anxiety, I looked for answers in this forum, but I realized that we are just mixed up, some had nothing, others just deleted their accounts, others did not put their symptoms well, others left and did not respond, after the Nothing years later they responded, confirming that they were fine.
My fasciculations between January and March went from being in specific points like my shoulder, my elbow, behind the knee to being everywhere, calves, hands, fingers moved, face, neck, even on the scalp.
[FOURTH MONTH, APRIL 2024]
My twitches continued throughout my body, sometimes they came and went and I noticed that my little finger and thumb sometimes moved on their own.
In the middle of this month I decided to go to the neurologist for the first time, they did tests on all 4 limbs, but they found no signs of MND.
Although I commented on the Amplitude mV of some parts on the left that were noticeably smaller than the right, for example. Of the Tibial nerve - ankle = Left 3.0 and Right 15.16.
He just said, "Because we use one side of the body more than the other."
But on April 20 I began to feel a sensation in my throat, like liquid, mucus, something tickling that made me uncomfortable and cleared my throat, but the sensation returned after a few seconds, I mentioned this to the neurologist and he ignored it. Also, he felt like he was breathing hot air and needed to breathe deeper to feel oxygen. At this point the finger oximeter showed Sp02 99%.
[FIFTH MONTH, MAY 2024]
The sensation in my throat continued like this until May 2, the sensation of dripping in my throat decreased, sometimes I cleared my throat but rarely, until today, May 5, I still feel a sensation of lack of air, the brand oximeter Sp02 98 - 99%.
—------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUMMARY OF PRE-SYMPTOMS AND SYMPTOMS:
Symptoms in chronological order:

1. Mild tremor in the hands noticed by a teacher in high school.
   
2. Diagnosis without medical evidence of damage to the myelin of the nerves in the hands in 2016.
   
3. Intense tingling in the private part in 2019.
   
4. Stiffness of the arms when starting in the gym in 2022.
   
5. Right eyelid tended to droop, especially after exercise, since 2023.
   
6. Stroke-like episode in October 2023, diagnosed as hemiplegic migraine.
   

[onset of fasciculations]

1. Viral infection in January 2024, with inflammation of the throat and ears.
   
2. Fasciculations in the left shoulder began on January 19, 2024.
   
3. Fasciculations spread throughout the body in February 2024.
   
4. Diagnosis of tetany by a psychiatrist in February 2024, without improvement with calcium.
   
5. Fasciculations become more widespread in March 2024.
   
6. Continuation of fasciculations and involuntary movements in the little finger and thumb in April 2024.
   
7. Neurological tests in April 2024 with no signs of motor neuron disease detected.
   
8. Feeling of dripping in the throat and need to breathe more deeply in April 2024, without response from the neurologist.
   
9. Continuation of slight feeling of lack of air, but I can't prove it, the sensation in my throat has decreased. in May 2024, with pulse oximetry readings of 98-99%. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   

[Background]
[Symptoms, per month]
[Summary of pre-symptoms and symptoms]

I've been really struggling as of late, and although I feel like that's a statement that could've been said about any point in time during my.. journey with this, right now is a really bad spot.
Every day starts with a dim feeling of disappointment about waking up, and ends in physical pain and mental anguish that numbs me and silently prays I won't wake up. Maybe even just for a little while - a small coma. A break from all of this, from myself.
I'm really trying to get better, but I don't, or can't recognize it, or the improvements around my eating issue just aren't substantial enough to make me feel like anything is worth it anymore.
Things aren't enjoyable anymore, since everything is stained from the constant obsession. Films, songs, drawing - it all pales. I live between the pitfalls of complete deflation and all that I really have in those inbetweens is the panic of knowing it's gonna happen any moment. Now? Now? Now.
It's been catching up with me over the years. My body is tired, which stresses me out and pushes me further down. I have this knowing feeling that says that it'll kill me or I'll kill myself before it does. And then I feel stupid and childish for giving space for such a thought. For typing this. I always make these posts and delete them out of shame. It's almost funny, if I look at it from a certain angle
Sorry for the post, be well

Hello readers of nosleep! My younger brother recommended that I come on here for some advice, but I am admittedly a skeptic. Hell, if I wasn't so desperate I wouldn't have even considered it, but I feel like I'm on the verge of losing my fucking mind.
For some basic context, my wife and I purchased/moved into our first home together a year ago. Everything was going great besides the occasional giant bug and the torrent of ridiculous mosquitos coming from the swamp just behind our modest backyard. The neighborhood wasn't the fanciest, but there was no HOA and the police station was only a block away. We, naively, believed that we would be free to live our peaceful couch potato existence in peace. As of about a month ago, I'm convinced that something is messing with me and my wife.
It started out subtle, as these things seem to tend to do according to the little I've read. To be frank: the house started to smell like shit. For three nights we woke up sometime after midnight to the most wretched gut wrenching stench you can imagine. At first we thought that Rosie, our 90lb 11 year old pup, had just had some horrendous gas, but it was simply impossible given the location and ferocity of it. After about an hour on the first night, it subsided in what seemed like mere seconds. That morning, I checked the toilets, sink, and attic for anything that could've possibly caused the smell. I thought that maybe something had died in the chimney or the walls somehow, or even that our shitty city's sewer line was backed up.
Then it came back the second night (at around the same time, my wife and I can't agree on what time we had been awoken. She SWEARS that it was at 1:12 am every night, but I clearly remember it being more like 2:30), and it definitely freaked us out. That night carried on just like the night before it, just with a little less initial confusion and a lot more anxious pacing. The third night really fucked with us, and even Rosie started freaking out when the smell came.
I called a handyman that my mom recommended as soon as possible and practically begged the guy to prioritize my house like some selfish asshole. Luckily, the guy was a family friend and could see that I was starting to lose it.
He looked everywhere and found nothing.
The smell hasn't been back since, but it has been replaced by something.
Nightmares.
Horrible, fucking insane nightmares. The kinda stuff you would see in some twisted cartoon on YouTube. For me the nightmares mostly consisted of being tortured by these little goblin creatures in a cave. It was so trippy and honestly still has me freaked out. They started out random, the only oddity being that my wife and I seemed to get shitty sleep on the same random nights for a couple weeks. We just assumed it was because of the sketchy delta 9 vape we bought and the amount of melatonin we had become to rely on. It wasn't pleasant, and it was certainly weird as hell, but it wasn't every night and it only lasted a couple hours at most.
That is until a week ago, when after a few hours of what felt like sweet dreams, I woke up in the middle of my backyard. I was sprawled out in the wet, unkempt lawn beside our small gardening shed that came with the home. It was pitch black outside, and I immediately started freaking out. I looked down at my naked body, despite the fact that I had been wearing shorts to bed. How the fuck did I get outside? Am I about to get murdered? My gut instinct was to get inside to relative safety, and I quickly ran to my backdoor.
Locked.
How the fuck did I get back here if the door is locked from the inside? Did I really piss my wife off? I knew for a fact it wasn't anyone's birthday or anniversary. Regardless, I didn't have a key so my only hope was to bang on the glass and hope it woke my wife up. I yelled to her, probably startling a few neighbors as I knocked on the screen door. My wife, confused and horrified and definitely pissed off that I had woken her up, came waddling to the door wrapped in a blanket and quickly ushered me inside. A confused bout of anxious yelling ensued until my wife had heard the whole story. I was truly shaken and had no idea what to do. My wife didn't notice anything. Our security system hadn't been disabled until my wife woke up to let me in. So how the hell did I sleepwalk into my backyard and decide to lay down? We had a few large windows that could be climbed through if you slid aside the screen, but that would've been detected by the security system. The only reasonable explanation was sleepwalking, but it just made no sense.
I did it again last night.
After 5 days of peaceful sleep, I was startled awake by a mosquito tickling my cheek, its disgusting proboscis (or whatever its called) looked so imposing when I first opened my eyes that I thought I was on an operating table staring down on a massive needle before my vision could adjust to the lack of light. My legs and arms felt numb, and I struggled to move my hand as it seemed like all of the strength had been sapped from my body. I watched through gritted teeth as the mosquito gorged itself, piercing the skin on my cheek and slowly filling itself with crimson nectar. It didn't hurt, but the sheer helplessness I felt in that moment was beyond surreal. it was like I was being tortured and I had no idea why.
After a what seemed like hours, I felt my strength return to my limbs and I was able to slowly pull myself to my feet, solemnly wrapping against my back door in defeat. I fought back tears as my wife rushed to my aid, embracing me as a sobbed against her shoulder. She stayed awake with me. I was too afraid to go back to sleep.
My wife and I have been taking turns having fearful breakdowns all day, and have no idea what to do. We can't afford much right now, so a trip to a psychologist is going to have to wait. We are going to set some security cameras up in the hopes that we can at least figure out how I am getting outside.
It's become hard for me to fall asleep. I'm terrified of what, or who, is bringing me outside. I'm just so tired, and I feel like can't think straight anymore. I know I'm a skeptic, but if there is anything I can do to keep everyone safe or get to the bottom of what's going on, I'm all ears.