Sore throat skin rash aching joints

Hello to everyone, [26F], for three months I experience some symptoms: joints and muscle pain, muscle twitching, night sweats (and sometimes poor themperature regulation), my skin on my chest is sometimes randomly red, GERD (sore throat that my doctor told me it’s from GERD but idk) and also my stomach is very noisy. I would like to go to the gym again but I’ve seen that I should rest. If is somebody here with some of these symptoms to tell me what helped and also what is your opinion about returning to exercise? How much the recovery last? And were your symptoms progressilvely better or worse? I know everybody is different but I wanted to hear other stories

hi. I've been dealing with what I believe is Long Covid Syndrome (fatigue, brain fog, gastrointestinal issues, joint pain, intense dreaming and many more) for 2 years and most of my days look like this:

• I have these daily: fatigue, brain fog, sweating, gastrointestinal issues, phlegm in my neck.

And I got a cold recently and I am experiencing the same symptoms as above, but the phlegm is more intense and mucus also, the fatigue is more intense like almost lying in bed, the sweating increases and fluctuate with high temperature or chills, the join pain increases and I got also sore throat and hoarseness.
I don't know how to put this in words, but I really noticed that this cold is not something different than my chronic symptoms, but are the same but more intense. Especially that phlegm I have it daily, but during this cold is more intense. I believe that the COVID virus is somehow still in my body, creating chronic problems and reactivates from time to time and become more intense, acute?
Who else is experiencing the same thing?

After much research (here and online), close observation of personal symptoms / experiences and some hypothesized scenarios I may have a solution for at least a few physical symptoms that appear on the surface of our bodies.
I am not a doctor.
Background: I initially thought MD was alien in origin, but I gave that idea up because only crazy people believe in aliens. ;-)
Then I considered that it could be an ancient plague from days of old, but the study of children from 3 centuries ago (in England?) did not include the terrible symptoms many suffer today. So what we have today is relatively recent...
1) in researching this stuff I've found there are flesh dwelling fleas in the middle and far east mostly associated with dust, mold and fungi.
2) there are also studies examining the development (read weaponization) of parasitic fleas.
3) then I learned of graphine oxide. Wicked stuff that actually resembles small hairs, can activate with water and electricity and can be programmed...
So in my humble opinion this sh!t is a man-made 'kill-switch.' But to what purpose? Surely something so contagious and physically debilitating would not be released by anyone. What would be the point if everyone dies? Not even tree-huggers or globalist are that dedicated to depopulization.
So there must be a ready remedy that is available in most war-time scenarios. A remedy available to enemy combatants.
Salt is one natural remedy that offers some relief. Vitamin C is another. Sulfur is another. And then there is light...
I came to understand that this stuff is not a fan of light. The bright lights of medical facilities likely explain why doctors can't see what is troubling us just below the skin. I figured this out when I felt something moving around on an overcast day. When my flash went off prior to the camera focusing, the wyrm simply disappeared. This stuff is photophobic! In our bodies it becomes relatively inactive under bright light. Actually it hides.
Then I saw the thread about red light therapy.
I am not a doctor. This is simply my experience.
Not living near a red-light district and having no red light bulbs, I grabbed a small key chain laser.
When I moved the laser across the skin it felt as if I was brushing the surface with a soft thin brush. But I could only feel the sensation in places that had the wyrms. Another halucination? Nope.
To my astonishment when I pointed the laser at a small black sore (one of many much larger spots on my hand) for a brief period it seemed to fade. Unbelieving I hit the spot again for another brief moment. The spot scraped off with my finger nail with just a little pressure!
Then I tried one of the many tracks these wyrms use / leave when they move. The track disappeared! Seriously. Simply moving the laser back and forth along the track virtually eliminated it from observation.
When I tried the technique on a larger (more infested) spot the things immediately turn on the clear slime and when that fails they begin to move away.
The clear slime is not effective against the intense LIGHT of the laser! Additionally the laser is strong enough to penetrate slightly below the surface of the skin; right where this sh!t lives.
(To help contain the movement away from the laser I use a mixture of antibiotic ointment and OTC Sore Throat spray containing phenol. Applied liberally and frequently AROUND the infected area keeps the buggers in place.)
Your results may vary. I suggest trying the technique on spots not readily visible until you get an idea what the results are.
This method may be effective on the extremely fragile and tender skin of the face.
I have tried both red and blue lasers with similar results.
So, if inclined, give it a try.
No need to comment (though I enjoy reading everyone's posts and comments).
A simple 'up-vote' if it works for you. A 'down-vote' if it doesn't.
Call me crazy, but I sure hope it helps at least a few!
God bless!

My husband and I have been married for almost 4 years and we have a 3 year old son. I'm very extroverted and have a lot of friends while my husband is very introverted and only has 3 friends who all happen to be female. Over the past year and a half, he got very close to one of them but I never put the kibosh on it because he has so few friends. Just at the beginning of May he had a couple nights where he did not come home because he was at her house. On the second night that he did not come home, I waited up for him and confronted him when he came in the front door. I gave him the ultimatum to either stop talking to her or to leave. At first he decided to stop talking to her and to work on our relationship. However, after a few days, he decided it wasn't worth it after we had done a silly marriage workbook and I just ended up asking him about accountability. I wanted to know what kept him from doing this again or what kept him from abandoning me when something more so severe in my life may be going on like ill physical or mental health. He has also done other things like spend $500 on a stripper on my last birthday when he was on a work trip out of town, and then after I had my son he racked up more than $800 in bills on only fans. He thought about it for a moment and told me that he was only going to hurt me again and again, and that there was no reason to try. I ended up convincing him to stay and that it would be worth trying for to keep stuff together for our family.
However, a couple days later I caught him messaging her again. I confronted him and he told me that while he loved me, he wasn't romantically in love with me. That I wasn't meeting his needs and I didn't understand him like she did. At this point we were still having sex at least twice a week. I helped him get his green card. I helped him get his license back. I bought him a new car every time he wrecked one. And I just helped him get into college. It was also smoking anywhere from 100 to $300 worth of weed every week, and I was just taking it on the chin and figuring out our finances around it. At this point, I just asked him to leave. He cried and moaned while I made him pack a bag, and was upset that I was asking him to leave which would prevent him from being there for our son. However, I told him if he remained I wouldn't be able to be there for our son, and that's what mattered the most to me.
He ended up leaving and staying with his stepdad. According to his mother and his sister, he's been taking money from his dad because he said I was still receiving his paychecks (which I am not) and that he has been into his dad's medical cabinet to try to take painkillers and his dad's diabetic needles. The girl that he is hooking up with has mental health issues and with drug usage. He also has prior issues with drug usage. He's also been switched psych medications four times in the past year.
At one point he offered to reconcile and just get to come home by stopping seeing her. But I told him that there was way more that we would need to work on before he could come home. He ended up going back to her and then trying to come back to me. And then just yo-yoing between the two of us for several weeks before he eventually decided to just pick her. He's now trying to blame the end of our marriage on me for being a "mean bitch who is no fun" and that I'm not accountable for my actions in ending this. However, I had overlooked so much of his previous bad behavior to remain in a relationship with him so my son would have a father. I tried to get him to help me understand what I had done wrong, and he told me that I was impossible to communicate with which is why he never communicated his needs to me.
He has also told me that he doesn't want any more kids, and that he doesn't believe in God. He told me that co-parenting our son will be fine, even though I've told him how much my parents divorce at a similar age deeply ended up wounding me as a child. He thinks just because he's going to be around some. It's better than his father who wasn't around at all. However, I told him sometimes it's more painful to have your dad two cities away living a life with a new family than it is to have an immovable image completely gone from your life.
He talks about co-parenting our son, but he is only seeing him a handful of times in the month that he's been gone. Most of those occasions have been at my suggestion and I have also been present. He's also stood us up once because he told me he had gone to the woods to contemplate suicide instead of meeting up with us. He doesn't call our son every night even though a FaceTime call with him would probably only last like 2 to 5 minutes. He's only sent me $320 to deal with expenses in the month that he has been gone along with getting our son a haircut. At each of these meetings he starts off by being horrible to me and rude. By the end, he's softened and does whatever he can to spend as much time with me and my son before he leaves. Even after my son goes to bed he wants to hang out and smoke a joint together. However, this last time he came to drop our son off, he got really sore at me because one of our mutual friends had sent him pictures of a conversation I had with them. In the conversation, I had Said that my husband and this girl are in a codependent cabal, and the only thing that they have in common are poor morals and bad teeth. He was upset by that but all of it was true. Now he refuses to see me or communicate with me. He told me that he wants to be friends but I can't say mean stuff like that. However, he says a bunch of mean things to me all the time about me being a horrible wife and how perfect this new woman is. Both of us want to be friends for the benefit of our son, but I just don't think I have it in me. He always says things to me to make me feel low, and he acts like I should just be over it even though it hasn't even been a month yet.
My life has completely changed and I feel so much grief over the life I thought I had, the partner I thought I had, and the future that I thought I had. It feels like a devil has crawled into his skin and is walking around pretending to be him. I feel so much resentment being left to pick up the pieces of our life and to hold everything together for our son. He gets to go run away and fuck someone new, while I have to be strong and stoic. I don't understand how I can be friends with someone who's hurt me so much and has cared so little. He's going to miss out on so much of our son's life and he doesn't even care. He's just convinced himself that life with me would be miserable. Even though we had so many good times together, and I had always tried my hardest to make him happy and to make sure our family's needs were met. He didn't even want to go to therapy and he didn't even want to try to start things over by dating me again. I'm just so disappointed.
I don't know where to go from here. I am definitely talking to a divorce lawyer. I worry about whether or not he's using drugs, and whether or not he'd be safe around our son. I definitely don't want this woman around our son and he doesn't see the big deal with it. Should I just cut him out of my life? Should I cut him out of my son's life? Should I try to be friends with him? It's all so hard because it's just all so shocking and I still love him. Part of me wants to reconcile but also part of me is starting to realize how easy my life is without him around. He's also also kept trying to make reconciliation not an option. What should I do?

I’ve had these red marks on my body, some are itchy some are not. My dr suggested it was ringworm but now I’m second guessing it, I’m getting new rashes everyday and it looks like it’s spreading all over my body despite following proper protocols and hygiene (washing clothes/bedding/ wash clothes daily, applying topical treatment as well as the oral pill, frequently washing hands) i also now have it on my hand and im paranoid its gonna spread even more it’s affecting my daily tasks and life. I’ve also developed a sore throat and a runny nose, dr says it’s not related but I’d love a second opinion please I’m kinda loosing my mind

Logan the bounty hunter was in a really bad mood.
It all started when the coffee machine stopped working. This wasn’t a rare occurrence; in fact, it was the third time this cycle, but this time his go-to solution (taking out and reinserting the star powder battery) didn’t fix it, and he was all out of ideas.
It’s not that the caffeine even did anything for him. The nanomachines in his system filtered out many sorts of potentially addictive or harmful substances, and for some reason this included caffeine, which is a fact he only realized after the seven-cycle refund period had passed.
Still, it was an old habit and an act of comfort that he sorely felt the absence of.
That was the first thing. The second thing was that his tracker had stopped working. In fact, his entire connection to the galactic wide web (gww) had gone down. Without the tracker, he couldn’t pinpoint the exact location of his current bounty—a low-class deathworlder wanted for kidnapping and trafficking—which kind of made his whole bounty hunting business difficult to do.
Oh, and his ship had crashed.
Damn thing was overdue for maintenance, and the autopilot had started malfunctioning while flying over a small dusty-brown planet. It had taken some careful manual maneuvering and some buffeting about in the planet’s whirlwind atmosphere, but eventually he had managed the miracle of walking away from a smoking and unsalvageable wreckage with only minor cuts and bruises.
Here he was now, trudging through the sandy windswept dunes of a planet that hadn’t even showed up on the map. Armed with little more than a spacesuit, a blaster, and an undying will. And wishing he’d had that cup of coffee (and wasn’t immune to caffeine).
Logan raised a hand to his eyes, peering through the thick glass of his visor. There was so much dust and sand swirling around that it made it quite hard to see where he was going, not that there were any landmarks in sight anyway. It looked scorching hot outside, though his spacesuit registered a cool 286 Kelvin for some reason. Likely another malfunction, one that he’d rather not put to the test.
On a planet like this, he supposed, everyone (if anyone was even here) probably lived under the surface where it was probably cooler and probably free from sandstorms. All he had to do was find the entrance to their underground tunnels among all this shifting sand.
The chance of that happening was, unfortunately, not very high. Still, Logan wasn’t panicking yet; he’d been through worse, he thought. He’d been through jungles teeming with 8-foot beetles. Survived massive hiveminds circling to entrap him, faced slippery slimes that reformed their bodies to resemble those he held dearest. Horrible learning experiences, those.
That being said, sometimes it’s the mundane problems that pose the greatest threats of all. Starvation, aching thirst, and a dwindling oxygen supply while wandering a barren desert. It wouldn’t be a glamorous way to go out, and Logan was wracking his brain for ideas.
Now would’ve been a good time to use his rescue beacon, if he had one. This would be his, what, 127th bounty? And until now, he’d never had to use a beacon. Stopped carrying one a dozen bounties ago. Maybe it was just luck, but things had always gone pretty smoothly, and maybe he’d gotten a little overconfident.
Logan knelt down and grasped at the ground, watching the little grains of sand sift through his gloved fingers. Those little specks seemed to shimmer and flicker, like a low quality hologram call. Otherwise, though, they seemed normal; surprisingly similar to the sand he remembered from Earth. It made sense that some things remained the same throughout the universe; it’s not like every planet could re-invent the periodic table, after all. Even aliens had to remain grounded in reality, however loosely.
He looked down. According to his suit’s display, he had a few hours of oxygen left. He’d been walking for a while now with nothing but the sands to show for it. He also had to pee. It was really going quite terribly.
“It looks like you’re doing quite terribly,” a voice said, velvety and welcoming. Logan jerked his head up, blinking rapidly in surprise.
Standing before him, with crossed arms and a smoldering look, was a lithe, dusky-furred humanoid. They—or she, judging by the feminine face—was wearing a long, thin shawl translucent enough to reveal a pair of twitching, swiveling ears and a questioningly arced tail, swaying in the wind.
The feline features were unmistakable. It was, by all accounts, a catgirl.
Mentally, Logan pumped his arm and jumped for joy. Just wait until the guys back at Earth heard about this! Many a novice pilot first set out for the stars with dreams of catgirls and other alien babes in mind, but thus far, most alien species had been decidedly strange and eerily-shaped, though this didn’t stop everyone from pursuing them. Outwardly, though, he nodded, and rasped, “I could use some help. Do you know about this thing called ‘oxygen’?”
The catgirl frowned. “Great way to say hi to a girl. But yes, you aren’t the first traveler to crash-land on Shaw Prime. Follow me.”
“Oh, great,” Logan said. How convenient. “Where to?”
“My people live underground, hidden from the elements within a complex system of—”
“Tunnels? I knew it.”
The catgirl turned around and whipped her tail against Logan’s leg. It kind of stung for a moment. “I don’t know what culture you come from, traveler, but in mine, it’s rude to interrupt someone while they’re speaking. Especially if they’re the host and you, the guest.”
Logan rubbed the back of his head (or tried to, but the spacesuit got in the way). “Sorry. Just got excited. Interrupting someone speaking is actually considered rude in my culture, too.”
“So you should’ve known better.” The catgirl harrumphed and started marching forward, waving her tail to signal him to follow. He shrugged and started trudging along behind her.
“So where am I, exactly? ‘Shoe Prime’ you said earlier, I think?”
“Shaw Prime,” she corrected. “A small sand planet on the outermost reaches of the nearest solar system. Quite uninhabitable for most, and all our visitors arrive unwillingly.”
“I see. It certainly feels inhospitable. And,” Logan said, jumping in place a couple times, “you’ve got decently strong gravity, though less than where I come from. You know, this feels like at least a minor deathworld to me.”
“The term ‘deathworld’ is new to me, but it does seem fitting enough.”
“Right. I’m guessing the Galactic Federation hasn’t gotten around to marking your planet yet. Actually, your planet didn’t even show up on my map; people might not even know that civilization exists here. Huh.” It would be the first time for Logan to discover a new species. He could report this back home, and hopefully get handsomely rewarded for it.
“The ‘Galactic Federation’? I haven’t heard that term before. What does it mean?”
“That’s the big alliance formed by all the space-faring species of the known universe. They’re basically responsible for everything, including first official contact with new species like yours.” Logan paused a moment. “Wait, you said I’m not the first traveler to land here, right? How have you not heard of the Galactic Federation before?”
The catgirl’s ears twitched, but she didn’t look back. “They must have neglected to mention it.”
“Weird. Surely someone must’ve mentioned it. The Federation’s got these rules for first contact, see, and—”
“We’re almost there.” The catgirl interrupted, glancing back at him with those smoky eyes. “The hidden entrance to the tunnels lies just ahead.”
Logan peered through his visor. Ahead of his guide’s slim figure, he saw nothing but more of the same brown hues. A sudden uneasiness prickled his skin. “Where? I don’t see anything.”
“If you could see it, it wouldn’t be very hidden, would it? Come on.”
She beckoned him forward, and a few paces later, stopped entirely. She crouched down and scrabbled at the sand a few times, revealing a circular wooden hatch buried under a thin layer of sand. It didn’t look that heavy, but she grunted and strained to lift it up with her paws, revealing a dark cavern down inside.
“In you go,” she said, pointing her tail at the hole.
Something about this didn’t sit right with Logan. Maybe it was the way her fur stood warily on end, the way her ears shivered every so often. Maybe it was the fact that his guide didn’t know about the Galactic Federation, yet seemed familiar enough with travelers to communicate with ease. Sure his universal translator helped, but that was only supposed to work with discovered species, not ones that had yet to be contacted and researched. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t like jumping into suspiciously dark holes in the ground.
There was also the fact that the temperature gauge in his suit was now measuring a chilly 270 Kelvin. A far cry from the heat suggested by the sun-baked sands he saw.
He had a guess where this was going, and he didn’t like it, not one bit.
“Say,” he said, conversationally. “I noticed your hologram flickering earlier. Think you need some maintenance.”
“What?” The catgirl said, raising a dusky eyebrow. “I don’t know what that is. Won’t you go inside?”
“I’m just saying. It’s a convincing show and all, promise, but once you’ve been in the biz long enough, you start noticing small details like flickering sand and mismatched temps.”
“Look at you. All the heat must’ve gone to your head.” She said, sidling up to him. There was a sudden yet subtle shift in her demeanor, so quick that he almost didn’t notice. Her eyes lowered, her tongue darted out to lick her nose, and she placed one foot in front of the other gracefully, retracing her own steps perfectly. She approached him, casually curling her tail around his leg, sending tingles up his spine.
“Poor, weary traveler. It must’ve been tough, sailing through space all on your own. Won’t you come inside and rest a while?” She purred, tugging him gently towards the open hatch. “Quickly, before the sand covers it again.”
He inched a hand towards the blaster hanging at his side, unmoved by the obvious act. “Does the word ‘gelatinous’ mean anything to you?”
Her eyes locked onto his hand, her tail going stiff behind her. “Not as such, no. Why don’t we discuss this inside? After you, of course.”
“Of course. I’ll be on my way, then.”
Logan said, shoving her away, leaping back, and unholstering his blaster, all in one practiced motion. She landed softly on all fours, hissed, then sprang at him, fast as lightning. He raised an arm to block, pulling up his blaster and aiming it at her center mass. At the same time, she skidded to an abrupt halt before him, half-crouching as one hand darted past his arm without a sound.
They both froze. Logan’s blaster trained on her torso, her claws nearly piercing his neck. It seemed they were at a deadlock.
Wait, Logan thought to himself. I have a spacesuit.
His fingers itched on the trigger, but in that same instant, he heard a small tearing sound as a single claw slipped through several layers of synthetic polymers, Kevlar, and silica fiber to rest itself pointedly against the actual skin of his neck. A small hissing sound indicated the oxygen leaking from the new hole in his suit.
“That’’s a sharp knife you’ve got.” He said, feeling his mouth drying up.
“It’s not a knife,” she said smugly, though her raised fur betrayed her wariness.
“Enough of these illusions, okay? I’ve seen through ‘em. We’re not in a desert, and you’re not a catgirl. I’ve met your kind before—shape-shifting, amorphous slimes, always taking the form of something I love. Usually it’s my late wife or a dear friend, but pretending to be a catgirl is taking it too far.” He sniffed.
She hmphed, and said, “You’re only half-right, outworlder.” She let out a trilling sound, and a moment later, the world flickered out of existence.
With the veil lifted, Logan could see the world for what it really was. Gone were the tan-brown desert and the shifting sands. In their place was a world of ash. White and grey specks drifted through a sunless sky, cold and desolate. Looking down, he saw that his feet were buried ankle-deep in the stuff. So the feeling of sand had been real, sort of. He wondered what it was made of.
Dreading what he would see, he raised his eyes once more, only to see the same catgirl shivering in her shawl before him.
“This is what I actually look like,” she said, pricking her claw against his neck. “Now how about dropping that gun and sticking your hands in the air?”
“So catgirls are real.” Logan wondered aloud, feeling hope swelling in his chest.
“I… guess?” She seemed uneasy about the way he looked at her. “So about that gun—"
“What is this place?” He asked, prodding his blaster against her stomach. “I’m pretty sure it looked like a desert world from outside. Don’t tell me you have some, some kind of planet-wide hologram going on. That would be… I don’t know, prohibitively expensive, and very concerning.”
“Yes,” she said, straight-faced. “The hologram covers the whole solar system, in fact. We are at the center of a powerful criminal empire spanning the galaxy. The white ash is made from cremating the corpses of all who have dared to oppose us, and soon you will join their ranks.”
“Woah, really?” Logan said, raising an eyebrow. They must deal in trafficking, then.
“No, I lied. Although, usually that gets a bigger reaction out of outworlders. Now come on, you can surrender now or wait until my backup gets here, and then it’ll get messy. You choose.”
“I think I’ll wait for more catgirls to show up, thanks.”
She hissed. “It’s your lucky day. Here they are now, actually.”
From behind mountains of ash, they plodded forwards. All varieties of colors, from dusky to snow-white to calico, but all sporting the same unmistakable ears and tails. Logan’s heart beat with excitement, until he noticed the strange metal tubes being pointed at him from all angles.
“Ah, am I correct in assuming that those are your planet’s version of blasters?”
The catgirl retracted her claw from his neck and nodded in confirmation. “They’ll blast a big hole right through you.” She stretched her arms and yawned wide, letting herself relax now that her reinforcements were here.
Logan dropped the blaster to his side. “Well, shit.” Surrounded by armed enemies on all sides, he had no choice but to obey.
It was then that he had a really stupid idea. One that would probably get him killed, but which would be really funny if it worked.
His blaster had a laser scope that shined a visible red dot on his target when toggled on. An attached laser pointer, in other words. If these catgirls were anything like the felines he knew on Earth…
Hell, it was worth a shot.
[To be continued? Or maybe not. I didn’t know how to end this, and I felt pretty silly writing it :c]

Swollen Brain Feeling Stinging/Burning Brain Brain Fog Feeling Spaced Out Neck Pain Swollen Burning Sinuses Blurry Vision Lactic Acid Myalgia Derealization Depersonalization Shortness of Breathe Air Hunger Fatigue Tinnitus Pots Blood Pooling High Heart Rate When Standing Temperature issues Feels like I have a Brain Infection Head Feels Full Extreme PEM Poison Feeling Flu like symptoms Sore Throat Warm Sensations in feet Concussed feeling in forhead Arms Feel Cold/Chills Prickly Hands and Feet Chest Tightness Watery Eyes Shoulder Pain Kidney Pain Eye Floaters Can’t Focus Bladder Issues Confusion Orthastatic Intolerance Muscle Twitching Burning Skin Anxiety Depression Cool sensation when breathing in Thighs burn Cell Dying Feeling Cannot Produce Energy Brain Inflammation
Could use some hope, I’m completely bed bound with these symptoms. Scared I won’t get better.

I was dx with psoriasis age 7 and I' was covered head to toe really until my teens, where I had it bad but only on arms and legs and scalp. In my mid 20's it had settled down and I was mostly clear. However it would flare up badly when stressed. Only ever my skin and scalp.
I'm now 34 and my mother has been diagnosed with cancer and as you can imagine it's been very stressful for me. She's alone, autistic and has several conditions like fibromyalgia and arthritis. I'm looking after her the best I can whilst raising 4 children and working.
My psoriasis has very predictably flared up. But I've a whole host of new inflammatory feeling symptoms. I have read a bit online about PsA and tick some boxes - others I'm unsure of. Maybe I've inherited my mother's fibromyalgia? Who knows. I'd be grateful if anyone could share their experiences of any of these symptoms, and what to expect after I visit my GP on Monday.

• Lines across my nails. Currently my index finger nails on both sides. Two horizontal grooves. This is also starting on my left middle.
  
• what Google diagnoses as geographic tongue. Never had this before ever! I get bald patches on my tongue and these can become worse when eating acidic, salty or spicy food. The burning can be quite severe.
  
• aching muscles in the evening. Usually thighs or calves, regardless of how active or sedentary I've been during the day.
  
• now during the last few weeks my joints (feels like all over!) are clicking and grinding and causing me pain. I've ignored it for a while so unsure on how long I've been like this. But only this last week has it been bad enough and wide spread enough that I know I can't go on this way. Tonight it is my right shoulder, shoulder blade, elbow and wrist. They are crunchy and clicky and ache. I keep feeling like I need to make my joints 'click' to ease the pain, but it doesn't. My neck and ankles are bad tonight too, but nothing compared to my shoulder down to my wrist.
  
• 8 days ago I started with a migraine and was sick (never sick with them), today is my first migraine free day since then. I've never had one last for so very long.
  

I feel like my body is just reacting to my life stress. I'm surprised how strongly. Unsure if it's general inflammation, possible PsA, fibro, or something else. I'm not asking for a diagnosis obviously. Just opinions and maybe some hope. Thank you

A few years ago, I decided I needed a major life change. Everything seemed to be going downhill- my finances, my mental health, my life. I would go weeks without sleeping sometimes as the heavy traffic passed through the city streets down below. Every time I went outside, I saw more homeless people, more needles and crack pipes littering the ground, more muggings and assaults and overdoses and deaths. The city had become a wasteland, and I knew it was time to leave.
I had no girlfriend, no wife, no kids. My parents had both died a few years prior and I barely talked to my siblings anymore. I had nothing to tie me down to this place where I felt like I was dying inside a little more each day.
That was when I sold nearly everything I owned, got in my car and drove up to Alaska to try starting anew. I bought a small cabin and a plot of land in the middle of its majestic mountains and dark, enchanting forests. In the winter, the Northern Lights would shine through like the eyes of God, sending out divine trails of light that danced through the sky in cosmic waves.
And while the move did help give me some peace of mind, in the end, the source of all my problems had ultimately followed me thousands of miles into this endless wilderness. It would take me a long time to realize the cause of all this misery was myself.
Because, as a wise man once said, “Wherever I go, there I am.”
***
I lived in that cabin for three months without any major issues other than the constant threat of bears, moose and wolves. I had a rifle and a shotgun for hunting, a small garden in the backyard and a solar panel to generate electricity.
“This is the life,” I said, relaxing on a hammock I had strung across the corner of the cabin while staring at the endless beauty directly outside the window. White-capped mountains loomed like giants in front of thick clusters of evergreens. A virgin covering of fluffy snow made the entire world glisten and sparkle. There wasn’t a house or road in sight.
“No work, no stress, no pollution, no cars honking all the time…” I closed my eyes, breathing in the clean air. I ended up falling asleep for a couple hours, waking up just as the Sun had started setting. Bright orange streaks mixed with the bloody smears of the fading light as it disappeared behind the mountains.
I groggily arose, stumbling over to make a cup of instant coffee. As I sipped it, I wandered around the room, looking for something to pass the time. There were still quite a few random objects left behind by the last owner that I hadn’t gotten rid of yet. I had moved in to find a stocked bookshelf filled with classics by Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Bored, I started rifling through the collection, looking for something good to pass the time. As I shuffled past “A Maze of Death” and “Ubik”, something caught my eye.
A black, leather-bound book with no title or author name stood there, its cover faded with time and wear. Curious, I pulled it out and opened it. I saw the cursive scrawled across the pages in a neat, copperplate script and realized it was a diary left behind by the previous owner. The first entry was dated “January 9th, 2015.” This is what it said.
***
“I don’t know if I’m going crazy or not. I went into town to talk to my therapist yesterday and she said I should try writing everything down. She talks to me like it’s all in my head. But I know it’s not.
“When I first moved into the cabin, it seemed like Paradise. I never thought in a million years that something would be slinking around at night. I never thought it would be hiding under my bed, peeking in windows and following me like a shadow.
“Right now, I’m snowed in with a cup of coffee in one hand and my pistol in the other. I can’t sleep anymore. I keep hearing something shuffling around under the bed. Sometimes, I think I even hear ragged breathing, as if a corpse with dirt in its lungs had come back to life.
“I’ve caught glimpses of that thing in the darkness. Whatever it is, its skin is loose, almost falling off the bone. It almost looks like a naked, emaciated man. Its eyes are rotted and dark, its back hunched, its spine twisted and jutting out like tumors. It moves in this slow, jerky way, but I can never seem to catch it. Its body seems broken and out of alignment. Its legs bend the wrong way sometimes.
“By the time I turn on the lights or try to take a video of it, it’s always disappeared. But its fetid odor remains. It lingers in the cabin like a sweet-smelling, spreading infection.
“I don’t know what it wants from me. I want to leave, but with the storm raging outside, I’m stuck here, unable to get all the way back to town. The snow surrounds the cabin in mounds five feet high. I feel like a prisoner caged with a rabid beast, not knowing when it will strike.
“My wife claims she hasn’t seen or heard anything, but she keeps vanishing on me. Last night, she disappeared in the middle of a snowstorm. Where did she go? I asked her in the morning, but she said she was here the whole time. She didn’t remember anything. There’s no way she went into town. There wasn’t time and the trails were impassable that far down.
“Something’s going on here, but I don’t know what it is. I’m truly scared for our lives.”
I slammed the diary shut, not wanting to read anymore. I didn’t want to become infected by some kind of contagious cabin fever. If the last owner had gone insane in the mountains and started hallucinating naked corpses crawling around, I really didn’t want to know.
I shoved the diary back in the bookshelf, going for “A Maze of Death” instead. I tried to forget what I had read in the diary as I flew through the novella. All night, I tried to get the image of the naked, twisting man with rotted eyes out of my head, but I couldn’t.
I eventually fell asleep right before dawn. But, as my eyes were closing, I thought I saw a silhouette in the window- a starved man with excited, black eyes that seemed to be rotting out of his skull. I thought I saw him put his inhumanly long fingers against the glass as he leaned forward. I blinked, sitting up and glancing out into the white, snow-covered wonderland.
There was nothing there.
***
Another hunter occasionally followed the deer trails near my cabin. A frozen lake stood a quarter-mile away, the surface white and covered in thick drifts of snow. I bundled up, deciding to go outside for a hike in the frigid dawn. I strapped on my snowshoes and grabbed my shotgun, as I always did when I went outside. I never knew when a polar bear might be waiting around the next tree, after all.
I opened the door, seeing footprints pressed into the snow all around my house. At first, I thought it was that silhouette I had seen, the nightmarish thing from the diary. But the footprints didn’t go over to my window. They followed the trail twenty feet away, veering off towards the frozen lake at the bottom of the hill. I glanced down in that direction, seeing a black figure plodding slowly forward.
“Steve!” I cried, recognizing my only neighbor in a four-mile radius. He had a cabin about a mile away on his own little plot of land. He jumped, clearly startled by the sudden noise. His black snow pants and heavy fur coat swished together as he spun, raising his rifle high. When he saw me, he immediately lowered it and put a gloved hand up in a friendly greeting.
“Hey Josh! Surprised to see you up this early,” he yelled over the muted wintry landscape. Sounds always seemed different after it snowed, as if all the noise in the world had become faded and dead.
“Yeah, I’ve been having a little trouble sleeping,” I said, slinging my shotgun around my shoulder. “What are you doing anyway?”
“Just a little hunting, you know,” he said, giving me a sly wink. “Animals are always most active around dusk and dawn, it seems. That’s when I always have the best luck, anyway.” He stepped close to me, staring me in the eyes. “You do look like shit. Those bags under your eyes are big enough to carry groceries in.”
“Yeah, trust me, I know… Hey, this might sound a little weird, but did you know the previous owner of this cabin?” I asked. Steve’s wrinkled, old face fell into a scowl. His expression immediately became guarded and distant.
“Sure, sure, we met,” he exclaimed bluntly. He seemed to be searching my face for something, but I didn’t know what. His reaction left me feeling off-balance and nervous.
“Is he still around?” I said. Steve’s scowl deepened.
“Buddy, I don’t know what this is about, but he’s dead. He’s been dead. He died in that cabin, actually.” He pointed a finger at my home accusingly. With those words, my heart seemed to drop into my stomach. Waves of dread flowed through my body like water.
“How… how did he die? Like a heart attack or something?” I asked. Steve’s gaze turned downwards. He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Do you know that Alaska has the highest missing persons rate in the entire United States? It’s not even close. In fact, for the population size, we have far more people who go missing and never get found than anywhere else. They even have a name for it: the Alaska Triangle,” Steve said. “And we’re square in the middle of it.” I stared blankly at him, wondering where he was going with this. It seemed like a way to avoid answering my question.
“No, I didn’t know that…” I responded. Steve nodded, raising his head again. He heaved a deep sigh.
“Look, the thing with the last owner and his wife… it’s somewhat disturbing. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you, but it’s certainly not going to help your peace of mind. And it definitely isn’t going to help you get some sleep.”
“I want to know,” I insisted instantly. The wind started to whip past us. Flakes of ice and snow flew sideways in the sudden currents.
“Let’s go back to your cabin then,” Steve said, pulling his heavy fur-lined hood off and shaking out his long, black hair behind him. “I could use a bit of whiskey to warm up.”
***
We sat down with a bottle of Johnny Walker and two shot glasses. I wasn’t much of a drinker, but Steve certainly was. He chugged three shots in the span of a minute. I sipped at mine, drinking half and putting it back down on the coffee table with a thunk. Steve grunted, hissing through his open mouth for a moment.
“Ugh, that’s the good stuff,” he said, slamming his chest as the burning liquor worked its way down. Steve looked up at me with a new sparkle in his eyes. “Huh, so you want to know about what happened to Will Lenning. Well, I’ll tell you that no one really knows the whole story. I used to see him occasionally, come down and have a drink and talk. We all know each other around here, obviously.” I nodded, motioning him on. “He seemed like a normal, upstanding guy. He kinda reminded me of you, actually. A young guy trying to escape the hustle and bustle of the city life, the cancer of the American Dream.
“Well, he was here for maybe a couple months, I don’t know. Everything seemed fine. We used to go skeet shooting occasionally, have a beer, you know. We’d get together with a couple other hunters who live closer to town and sometimes play some poker. I never saw anything odd about Will. I never could have predicted what happened to him.” He heaved a long sigh at this, looking out the window at the sharp mountains with an expression of nostalgia.
“Well, what happened to him?” I asked, encouraging him to go on.
“He started talking about seeing someone peering in through his window at night. He talked about hearing sounds from under his bed while he was laying there in the dark- sounds like diseased breathing and shuffling. He started keeping all the lights on in his cabin twenty-four hours a day.” Steve leaned close to me. A glimmer of fear rippled across his pale, wrinkled face. “He started to lose his mind. Started digging holes all over the place, looking for something. Even in the middle of snowstorms, I would occasionally see him outside, digging. It seemed like he never slept anymore. It was classic cabin fever if I ever saw it.
“It was only a few weeks later that I came over here, concerned. I hadn’t heard from him in a few days, which was fairly unusual. I found the door hanging wide open. Propped up in a chair in the exact spot where you now sit, Will lay with a blast hole showing clear through his skull, a shotgun laying at his feet.
“And next to him, I found a blood-stained diary opened to the middle page. The last entry was stained with blood spatter, but still visible. I remember leaning down and reading it. It was only a few sentences long.” I glanced over at the bookshelf with the same diary, saying nothing.
“It said something like, ‘I see now what’s going on. The Twisted Man is leading me to the truth. Today, I will finally find it.’”
“And that was his suicide note?” I asked, my heart hammering in my chest. He nodded.
“Yeah. I went into town and got some rangers to come check it out. Eventually, they got cops and CSI there. They took all the stuff as evidence, including the diary,” he said. “Good riddance, I say. Reading something like that is never beneficial. Sometimes delusions spread like a virus, you know what I mean?” I did, but I said nothing. I glanced back at the diary, its black leather cover gleaming like a crouching snake.
And I wondered- if the police took the diary as evidence, how did it get back here?
***
“You said he had a wife living here with him, too?” I asked.
“Yeah… she went missing around the same time,” he said. “Pretty bizarre. The cops thought maybe she just moved away, but…” He shook his head grimly. “As far as I know, she was never seen again. It was like she had evaporated into thin air.”
After Steve left, I walked stiffly over to the bookshelf, taking down the diary. I flipped open through the pages. In the middle, I found the last entry. Spatters of old, darkened blood were scattered over the page like raindrops. I found the suicide note and read the date.
“January 27th, 2015,” it read. Will Lenning had not lived long after he started seeing the Twisted Man. I wondered if my fate would be the same.
The Sun had started to set outside as I sat with the diary at the small circular kitchen table, eating some stewed venison and rice as I read through the entries. At the end, Will Lenning said the Twisted Man had been trying to guide him somewhere, that, in fact, the Twisted Man had been trying to protect him from some great evil, rather than being the source of it.
I scoffed, feeling a flash of anger at his stupidity. His naivety obviously led to his death. But then a flash of insight struck me like lightning.
What if I was committing the same kind of stupidity? Perhaps I should just grab my gun and valuables and leave. I could take off on the snowmobile and be in town within a couple hours.
But, in my heart, I knew I would not. Something about the mystery of all this beckoned me to stay. Like a siren leading sailors to destruction, my curiosity called out to me, and I knew I would not be leaving that night. I needed answers.
And, sadly, I would find them.
***
I had fallen asleep with an empty bottle of beer in my hand. I sat in front of the TV, which only got satellite reception. There were, of course, no cable or phone lines threading their way through the forest. All of my power came from stored solar energy. Since I rarely watched TV and really only used it to cook or heat up water for bathing, the energy produced was sufficient even in winter. Tonight, though, I needed its sound, its mindless flashing of light and colors and canned laughter. It seemed to drive away the creeping, suffocating presence like a candle.
I woke suddenly. The TV flashed with static. The repetitive hissing of the white noise spit from the speakers like thousands of snakes. I glanced up at the clock. 3:33 AM. I looked around the dark cabin, confused for a long moment. I didn’t understand what had woken me so abruptly. The satellite had never gone out before, either, even with the howling winds and freezing hail of the Alaskan winter.
The TV started flickering as if the static were rising upwards. Black lines traced their way horizontally across the screen. The hissing deepened into a gurgle, and for a second, I thought I heard faint words behind the white noise. I thought I heard breathing, slow and diseased, like the death gasp of a drowning man.
A black line rose across the TV and an image came into view. The cabin was suddenly plunged into silence, except for the shrieking, wintry wind outside. I leaned close to the screen, confused at what I was looking at. It looked like a live camera feed of a room. As I took in the details, I realized it was my cabin. I saw myself in the chair, leaning close to the screen. I raised my hand, and the miniature version of me on the screen did likewise. Ice water seemed to drip down my spine as waves of dread coursed through my body.
“What the fuck is this?” I whispered, looking back to where the camera should be. It was just a coarse wooden ceiling in that corner. I turned back to the screen and nearly screamed.
The TV showed a pale, naked man crouching directly behind my chair now. With jerky movements, he rose, his broken spine twisting and shivering. A hissing voice rang out from the speakers. It spoke as if it had dirt and writhing maggots in its throat.
“He is a killer. The shadow of death,” it gurgled. “Many have fallen. Many lie buried across this forest. You will be next. He is watching you…”
Long, broken fingers with blackened nails reached out to touch my shoulders. I jumped out of the chair, stumbling back as I spun around in terror. My back smashed into the TV, and it fell to the floor with a shattering of glass and an explosion of light.
In those few moments before the darkness descended on me like a blanket, I thought I glimpsed a pale, sunken face with rotted, blackened eyes peeking out from behind the chair.
***
I turned on every light in the cabin, but there was no sign of the Twisted Man now. I knew I had to get out of there, though. I thought about the warning that the voice had spoken. If the creature wanted to attack me, then why hadn’t it just killed me while I was sleeping? None of it made sense. Who was watching me? The Twisted Man? And if he was, why warn me? Perhaps it was psychological warfare, I thought to myself. Perhaps the Twisted Man simply liked to play with his food before he ate it.
Thoughts raced through my head at a thousand miles an hour as I threw on snow pants and a couple heavy sweaters and coats. I covered up my entire body as much as I could to try to prevent frostbite. I had made up my mind to flee. There was no snowstorm tonight, though the entire landscape was blanketed in it and I knew the wind chill would be like an ice blade whipping against my skin. It was extremely dangerous to travel in the middle of the night like this in temperatures that might reach negative thirty degrees. Steve had been right, after all- Alaska had the highest missing persons rate of any state, and many of them were never found, their bodies likely frozen solid in the deep snow dozens of miles from the nearest town.
I grabbed my shotgun, jumped on my snowmobile and started heading to Steve’s cabin. I hoped I could wait there until the sunrise and then figure out what to do next.
But fate would take the decision out of my hands.
***
I felt like there were eyes watching me as I drove along the narrow, winding deer trail. The boughs of the evergreens reached into the path like greedy hands, grabbing at my coat and legs. More than a couple times, I thought I saw a pale, naked figure standing in the snow, but it had always gone when I turned to look.
I gave a sigh of relief when Steve’s place appeared in the distance. I could see the lights twinkling through the small windows of his log cabin. I pulled up next to his door, looking down. I saw two pairs of footprints there, one much smaller than the other. I found it odd, but shrugged it off. The snowmobile cut out with a sucking gurgle.
I knocked on the door hard a few times. Steve appeared after a few moments, groggy and half-dressed. He blinked slowly as he looked me up and down. His wrinkled face fell into a frown.
“Steve, I need a favor,” I said quickly. “Something weird is happening in my cabin. Can I stay here until morning, until maybe I can go to town or something? I can’t stay at my place tonight. I just can’t.” He nodded, yawning and motioning me in.
“You can sleep on the couch, I guess,” Steve said. “Put that shotgun somewhere safe, though, boy.” He had a partitioned bedroom in his cabin. It was significantly larger than my little one-room cabin, though it was basically still just a joint kitchen-living room, a small bedroom and a bathroom. He pointed to a well-worn couch in the corner and gave me an apathetic wave as he stumbled back into his bedroom, slamming the door.
I couldn’t sleep, though. I tiptoed around the room, looking at Steve’s bookshelf. He had a rather strange taste in books- lots of Anne Rule and true crime there. I saw dozens of books about Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Chase, Herbert Mullin, Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez among the collection. At the end, a large, black binder stood, unlabeled and worn-looking. It reminded me of the look of that leather-bound diary for a second, and my heart dropped. But logically, I knew this was just a coincidence. Yet, still, I pulled out the binder, my curiosity piqued.
What I found inside filled me with dread and horror.
Countless news clippings covered the length of it. The first clipping was from nearly twenty years earlier, about a woman who went missing in the Alaskan forest while hiking. A later one confirmed that her body was never found, and that her family was still hoping that she might turn up alive somewhere. A reward was offered for any information, it said.
And every page after that was more of the same: missing woman, murdered prostitute, missing man, no leads. I kept flipping through until I found clippings about Will Lenning’s suicide and the sudden disappearance of his wife. On the article about the suicide, Steve had used red marker to scrawl, “HA HA!” next to it.
I heard the click of a gun being cocked from behind me. I froze as Steve’s voice traveled across the room like a whisper.
“How do you like my work, friend?” he asked, his tone jovial and mocking.
***
I still held the binder of horrors tightly in my hands as I stared open-mouthed at this man I thought I knew.
“It’s you? What, you killed Will Lenning and his wife? And a lot of other women, apparently.” Everything felt unreal, as if I were stuck in a dream. Steve’s grin spread across his face, but his blue eyes stayed cold and dead.
“Yes, well, she was cheating on him with me anyway. Just another whore, you know. They always get what’s coming to them in the end,” he hissed with hatred oozing from his voice. “It’s too bad, really. I just killed another slut tonight. I was planning on saving you for later. The urge isn’t too bad yet right now, after all. It comes in cycles, you see. It comes in waves…” I saw a glimmer of pale, naked flesh writhing behind Steve. With jerky movements, the Twisted Man came up behind him. I said nothing, just watching with wide-eyed horror and amazement.
“You need help, man,” I whispered. Steve laughed.
“Help? The only help they give people like me is a needle in the arm. You know that. That’s why it’s important to always cover your tracks…” The Twisted Man ran a long, broken finger across Steve’s neck. Steve gave a strangled cry and jumped. He spun around, screaming. I glanced over at my shotgun next to the couch.
I jumped for it as Steve turned back to me, firing his pistol twice. The first bullet soared high above me, raining wood splinters down on my head, but the second ripped into my leg. A cold, burning pain ran like fire up my shin. I screamed in agony and battle fury as I gripped the shotgun, spinning and firing.
Steve’s head exploded as the slug ripped through his brain. His forehead collapsed like a smashed melon as bone splinters and blood sprayed the wall behind him.
The Twisted Man stood there, hunched over, grinning up at me. I felt warm blood gushing from my leg as I stared back at him, breathing hard. I wondered if I was dying.
“You… you weren’t after me at all, were you?” I asked. “You were after… Steve.” But the Twisted Man said nothing. After a long moment, he slinked back into the shadows of the bedroom and disappeared.
***
As night crawled its way toward morning, I thought back to the words the Twisted Man had spoken through the TV, suddenly understanding everything.
“He is a killer. The shadow of death. Many have fallen. Many lie buried across this forest. You will be next. He is watching you…”
He hadn’t been trying to hurt me at all. He had been trying to warn me. He had probably tried to warn Will Lenning and his wife, too.
I wrapped my leg in gauze, gritting my teeth. The wound looked puckered and deep, but I could still move my foot, and the bullet had gone clean through the flesh. I poured alcohol on it, screaming in pain as it burned its way through my skin. After rummaging through Steve’s bathroom, I found some prescription painkillers and swallowed a handful of them with a beer. I knew I would need the opiate high to get through the pain of riding into town with a mutilated leg.
As the Sun finally rose, I made my way outside the blood-stained floors of the cabin to my snowmobile. Before I left, I glanced back at that horrid place, the scene of so much torment and death.
In the open doorway, the Twisted Man stood, his back hunched, his rotted lips grinning at me. His hand lifted up into the air with jerky movements and waved.
I waved back as I started the engine and headed into town.

A few years ago, I decided I needed a major life change. Everything seemed to be going downhill- my finances, my mental health, my life. I would go weeks without sleeping sometimes as the heavy traffic passed through the city streets down below. Every time I went outside, I saw more homeless people, more needles and crack pipes littering the ground, more muggings and assaults and overdoses and deaths. The city had become a wasteland, and I knew it was time to leave.
I had no girlfriend, no wife, no kids. My parents had both died a few years prior and I barely talked to my siblings anymore. I had nothing to tie me down to this place where I felt like I was dying inside a little more each day.
That was when I sold nearly everything I owned, got in my car and drove up to Alaska to try starting anew. I bought a small cabin and a plot of land in the middle of its majestic mountains and dark, enchanting forests. In the winter, the Northern Lights would shine through like the eyes of God, sending out divine trails of light that danced through the sky in cosmic waves.
And while the move did help give me some peace of mind, in the end, the source of all my problems had ultimately followed me thousands of miles into this endless wilderness. It would take me a long time to realize the cause of all this misery was myself.
Because, as a wise man once said, “Wherever I go, there I am.”
***
I lived in that cabin for three months without any major issues other than the constant threat of bears, moose and wolves. I had a rifle and a shotgun for hunting, a small garden in the backyard and a solar panel to generate electricity.
“This is the life,” I said, relaxing on a hammock I had strung across the corner of the cabin while staring at the endless beauty directly outside the window. White-capped mountains loomed like giants in front of thick clusters of evergreens. A virgin covering of fluffy snow made the entire world glisten and sparkle. There wasn’t a house or road in sight.
“No work, no stress, no pollution, no cars honking all the time…” I closed my eyes, breathing in the clean air. I ended up falling asleep for a couple hours, waking up just as the Sun had started setting. Bright orange streaks mixed with the bloody smears of the fading light as it disappeared behind the mountains.
I groggily arose, stumbling over to make a cup of instant coffee. As I sipped it, I wandered around the room, looking for something to pass the time. There were still quite a few random objects left behind by the last owner that I hadn’t gotten rid of yet. I had moved in to find a stocked bookshelf filled with classics by Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Bored, I started rifling through the collection, looking for something good to pass the time. As I shuffled past “A Maze of Death” and “Ubik”, something caught my eye.
A black, leather-bound book with no title or author name stood there, its cover faded with time and wear. Curious, I pulled it out and opened it. I saw the cursive scrawled across the pages in a neat, copperplate script and realized it was a diary left behind by the previous owner. The first entry was dated “January 9th, 2015.” This is what it said.
***
“I don’t know if I’m going crazy or not. I went into town to talk to my therapist yesterday and she said I should try writing everything down. She talks to me like it’s all in my head. But I know it’s not.
“When I first moved into the cabin, it seemed like Paradise. I never thought in a million years that something would be slinking around at night. I never thought it would be hiding under my bed, peeking in windows and following me like a shadow.
“Right now, I’m snowed in with a cup of coffee in one hand and my pistol in the other. I can’t sleep anymore. I keep hearing something shuffling around under the bed. Sometimes, I think I even hear ragged breathing, as if a corpse with dirt in its lungs had come back to life.
“I’ve caught glimpses of that thing in the darkness. Whatever it is, its skin is loose, almost falling off the bone. It almost looks like a naked, emaciated man. Its eyes are rotted and dark, its back hunched, its spine twisted and jutting out like tumors. It moves in this slow, jerky way, but I can never seem to catch it. Its body seems broken and out of alignment. Its legs bend the wrong way sometimes.
“By the time I turn on the lights or try to take a video of it, it’s always disappeared. But its fetid odor remains. It lingers in the cabin like a sweet-smelling, spreading infection.
“I don’t know what it wants from me. I want to leave, but with the storm raging outside, I’m stuck here, unable to get all the way back to town. The snow surrounds the cabin in mounds five feet high. I feel like a prisoner caged with a rabid beast, not knowing when it will strike.
“My wife claims she hasn’t seen or heard anything, but she keeps vanishing on me. Last night, she disappeared in the middle of a snowstorm. Where did she go? I asked her in the morning, but she said she was here the whole time. She didn’t remember anything. There’s no way she went into town. There wasn’t time and the trails were impassable that far down.
“Something’s going on here, but I don’t know what it is. I’m truly scared for our lives.”
I slammed the diary shut, not wanting to read anymore. I didn’t want to become infected by some kind of contagious cabin fever. If the last owner had gone insane in the mountains and started hallucinating naked corpses crawling around, I really didn’t want to know.
I shoved the diary back in the bookshelf, going for “A Maze of Death” instead. I tried to forget what I had read in the diary as I flew through the novella. All night, I tried to get the image of the naked, twisting man with rotted eyes out of my head, but I couldn’t.
I eventually fell asleep right before dawn. But, as my eyes were closing, I thought I saw a silhouette in the window- a starved man with excited, black eyes that seemed to be rotting out of his skull. I thought I saw him put his inhumanly long fingers against the glass as he leaned forward. I blinked, sitting up and glancing out into the white, snow-covered wonderland.
There was nothing there.
***
Another hunter occasionally followed the deer trails near my cabin. A frozen lake stood a quarter-mile away, the surface white and covered in thick drifts of snow. I bundled up, deciding to go outside for a hike in the frigid dawn. I strapped on my snowshoes and grabbed my shotgun, as I always did when I went outside. I never knew when a polar bear might be waiting around the next tree, after all.
I opened the door, seeing footprints pressed into the snow all around my house. At first, I thought it was that silhouette I had seen, the nightmarish thing from the diary. But the footprints didn’t go over to my window. They followed the trail twenty feet away, veering off towards the frozen lake at the bottom of the hill. I glanced down in that direction, seeing a black figure plodding slowly forward.
“Steve!” I cried, recognizing my only neighbor in a four-mile radius. He had a cabin about a mile away on his own little plot of land. He jumped, clearly startled by the sudden noise. His black snow pants and heavy fur coat swished together as he spun, raising his rifle high. When he saw me, he immediately lowered it and put a gloved hand up in a friendly greeting.
“Hey Josh! Surprised to see you up this early,” he yelled over the muted wintry landscape. Sounds always seemed different after it snowed, as if all the noise in the world had become faded and dead.
“Yeah, I’ve been having a little trouble sleeping,” I said, slinging my shotgun around my shoulder. “What are you doing anyway?”
“Just a little hunting, you know,” he said, giving me a sly wink. “Animals are always most active around dusk and dawn, it seems. That’s when I always have the best luck, anyway.” He stepped close to me, staring me in the eyes. “You do look like shit. Those bags under your eyes are big enough to carry groceries in.”
“Yeah, trust me, I know… Hey, this might sound a little weird, but did you know the previous owner of this cabin?” I asked. Steve’s wrinkled, old face fell into a scowl. His expression immediately became guarded and distant.
“Sure, sure, we met,” he exclaimed bluntly. He seemed to be searching my face for something, but I didn’t know what. His reaction left me feeling off-balance and nervous.
“Is he still around?” I said. Steve’s scowl deepened.
“Buddy, I don’t know what this is about, but he’s dead. He’s been dead. He died in that cabin, actually.” He pointed a finger at my home accusingly. With those words, my heart seemed to drop into my stomach. Waves of dread flowed through my body like water.
“How… how did he die? Like a heart attack or something?” I asked. Steve’s gaze turned downwards. He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Do you know that Alaska has the highest missing persons rate in the entire United States? It’s not even close. In fact, for the population size, we have far more people who go missing and never get found than anywhere else. They even have a name for it: the Alaska Triangle,” Steve said. “And we’re square in the middle of it.” I stared blankly at him, wondering where he was going with this. It seemed like a way to avoid answering my question.
“No, I didn’t know that…” I responded. Steve nodded, raising his head again. He heaved a deep sigh.
“Look, the thing with the last owner and his wife… it’s somewhat disturbing. If you really want to know, I’ll tell you, but it’s certainly not going to help your peace of mind. And it definitely isn’t going to help you get some sleep.”
“I want to know,” I insisted instantly. The wind started to whip past us. Flakes of ice and snow flew sideways in the sudden currents.
“Let’s go back to your cabin then,” Steve said, pulling his heavy fur-lined hood off and shaking out his long, black hair behind him. “I could use a bit of whiskey to warm up.”
***
We sat down with a bottle of Johnny Walker and two shot glasses. I wasn’t much of a drinker, but Steve certainly was. He chugged three shots in the span of a minute. I sipped at mine, drinking half and putting it back down on the coffee table with a thunk. Steve grunted, hissing through his open mouth for a moment.
“Ugh, that’s the good stuff,” he said, slamming his chest as the burning liquor worked its way down. Steve looked up at me with a new sparkle in his eyes. “Huh, so you want to know about what happened to Will Lenning. Well, I’ll tell you that no one really knows the whole story. I used to see him occasionally, come down and have a drink and talk. We all know each other around here, obviously.” I nodded, motioning him on. “He seemed like a normal, upstanding guy. He kinda reminded me of you, actually. A young guy trying to escape the hustle and bustle of the city life, the cancer of the American Dream.
“Well, he was here for maybe a couple months, I don’t know. Everything seemed fine. We used to go skeet shooting occasionally, have a beer, you know. We’d get together with a couple other hunters who live closer to town and sometimes play some poker. I never saw anything odd about Will. I never could have predicted what happened to him.” He heaved a long sigh at this, looking out the window at the sharp mountains with an expression of nostalgia.
“Well, what happened to him?” I asked, encouraging him to go on.
“He started talking about seeing someone peering in through his window at night. He talked about hearing sounds from under his bed while he was laying there in the dark- sounds like diseased breathing and shuffling. He started keeping all the lights on in his cabin twenty-four hours a day.” Steve leaned close to me. A glimmer of fear rippled across his pale, wrinkled face. “He started to lose his mind. Started digging holes all over the place, looking for something. Even in the middle of snowstorms, I would occasionally see him outside, digging. It seemed like he never slept anymore. It was classic cabin fever if I ever saw it.
“It was only a few weeks later that I came over here, concerned. I hadn’t heard from him in a few days, which was fairly unusual. I found the door hanging wide open. Propped up in a chair in the exact spot where you now sit, Will lay with a blast hole showing clear through his skull, a shotgun laying at his feet.
“And next to him, I found a blood-stained diary opened to the middle page. The last entry was stained with blood spatter, but still visible. I remember leaning down and reading it. It was only a few sentences long.” I glanced over at the bookshelf with the same diary, saying nothing.
“It said something like, ‘I see now what’s going on. The Twisted Man is leading me to the truth. Today, I will finally find it.’”
“And that was his suicide note?” I asked, my heart hammering in my chest. He nodded.
“Yeah. I went into town and got some rangers to come check it out. Eventually, they got cops and CSI there. They took all the stuff as evidence, including the diary,” he said. “Good riddance, I say. Reading something like that is never beneficial. Sometimes delusions spread like a virus, you know what I mean?” I did, but I said nothing. I glanced back at the diary, its black leather cover gleaming like a crouching snake.
And I wondered- if the police took the diary as evidence, how did it get back here?
***
“You said he had a wife living here with him, too?” I asked.
“Yeah… she went missing around the same time,” he said. “Pretty bizarre. The cops thought maybe she just moved away, but…” He shook his head grimly. “As far as I know, she was never seen again. It was like she had evaporated into thin air.”
After Steve left, I walked stiffly over to the bookshelf, taking down the diary. I flipped open through the pages. In the middle, I found the last entry. Spatters of old, darkened blood were scattered over the page like raindrops. I found the suicide note and read the date.
“January 27th, 2015,” it read. Will Lenning had not lived long after he started seeing the Twisted Man. I wondered if my fate would be the same.
The Sun had started to set outside as I sat with the diary at the small circular kitchen table, eating some stewed venison and rice as I read through the entries. At the end, Will Lenning said the Twisted Man had been trying to guide him somewhere, that, in fact, the Twisted Man had been trying to protect him from some great evil, rather than being the source of it.
I scoffed, feeling a flash of anger at his stupidity. His naivety obviously led to his death. But then a flash of insight struck me like lightning.
What if I was committing the same kind of stupidity? Perhaps I should just grab my gun and valuables and leave. I could take off on the snowmobile and be in town within a couple hours.
But, in my heart, I knew I would not. Something about the mystery of all this beckoned me to stay. Like a siren leading sailors to destruction, my curiosity called out to me, and I knew I would not be leaving that night. I needed answers.
And, sadly, I would find them.
***
I had fallen asleep with an empty bottle of beer in my hand. I sat in front of the TV, which only got satellite reception. There were, of course, no cable or phone lines threading their way through the forest. All of my power came from stored solar energy. Since I rarely watched TV and really only used it to cook or heat up water for bathing, the energy produced was sufficient even in winter. Tonight, though, I needed its sound, its mindless flashing of light and colors and canned laughter. It seemed to drive away the creeping, suffocating presence like a candle.
I woke suddenly. The TV flashed with static. The repetitive hissing of the white noise spit from the speakers like thousands of snakes. I glanced up at the clock. 3:33 AM. I looked around the dark cabin, confused for a long moment. I didn’t understand what had woken me so abruptly. The satellite had never gone out before, either, even with the howling winds and freezing hail of the Alaskan winter.
The TV started flickering as if the static were rising upwards. Black lines traced their way horizontally across the screen. The hissing deepened into a gurgle, and for a second, I thought I heard faint words behind the white noise. I thought I heard breathing, slow and diseased, like the death gasp of a drowning man.
A black line rose across the TV and an image came into view. The cabin was suddenly plunged into silence, except for the shrieking, wintry wind outside. I leaned close to the screen, confused at what I was looking at. It looked like a live camera feed of a room. As I took in the details, I realized it was my cabin. I saw myself in the chair, leaning close to the screen. I raised my hand, and the miniature version of me on the screen did likewise. Ice water seemed to drip down my spine as waves of dread coursed through my body.
“What the fuck is this?” I whispered, looking back to where the camera should be. It was just a coarse wooden ceiling in that corner. I turned back to the screen and nearly screamed.
The TV showed a pale, naked man crouching directly behind my chair now. With jerky movements, he rose, his broken spine twisting and shivering. A hissing voice rang out from the speakers. It spoke as if it had dirt and writhing maggots in its throat.
“He is a killer. The shadow of death,” it gurgled. “Many have fallen. Many lie buried across this forest. You will be next. He is watching you…”
Long, broken fingers with blackened nails reached out to touch my shoulders. I jumped out of the chair, stumbling back as I spun around in terror. My back smashed into the TV, and it fell to the floor with a shattering of glass and an explosion of light.
In those few moments before the darkness descended on me like a blanket, I thought I glimpsed a pale, sunken face with rotted, blackened eyes peeking out from behind the chair.
***
I turned on every light in the cabin, but there was no sign of the Twisted Man now. I knew I had to get out of there, though. I thought about the warning that the voice had spoken. If the creature wanted to attack me, then why hadn’t it just killed me while I was sleeping? None of it made sense. Who was watching me? The Twisted Man? And if he was, why warn me? Perhaps it was psychological warfare, I thought to myself. Perhaps the Twisted Man simply liked to play with his food before he ate it.
Thoughts raced through my head at a thousand miles an hour as I threw on snow pants and a couple heavy sweaters and coats. I covered up my entire body as much as I could to try to prevent frostbite. I had made up my mind to flee. There was no snowstorm tonight, though the entire landscape was blanketed in it and I knew the wind chill would be like an ice blade whipping against my skin. It was extremely dangerous to travel in the middle of the night like this in temperatures that might reach negative thirty degrees. Steve had been right, after all- Alaska had the highest missing persons rate of any state, and many of them were never found, their bodies likely frozen solid in the deep snow dozens of miles from the nearest town.
I grabbed my shotgun, jumped on my snowmobile and started heading to Steve’s cabin. I hoped I could wait there until the sunrise and then figure out what to do next.
But fate would take the decision out of my hands.
***
I felt like there were eyes watching me as I drove along the narrow, winding deer trail. The boughs of the evergreens reached into the path like greedy hands, grabbing at my coat and legs. More than a couple times, I thought I saw a pale, naked figure standing in the snow, but it had always gone when I turned to look.
I gave a sigh of relief when Steve’s place appeared in the distance. I could see the lights twinkling through the small windows of his log cabin. I pulled up next to his door, looking down. I saw two pairs of footprints there, one much smaller than the other. I found it odd, but shrugged it off. The snowmobile cut out with a sucking gurgle.
I knocked on the door hard a few times. Steve appeared after a few moments, groggy and half-dressed. He blinked slowly as he looked me up and down. His wrinkled face fell into a frown.
“Steve, I need a favor,” I said quickly. “Something weird is happening in my cabin. Can I stay here until morning, until maybe I can go to town or something? I can’t stay at my place tonight. I just can’t.” He nodded, yawning and motioning me in.
“You can sleep on the couch, I guess,” Steve said. “Put that shotgun somewhere safe, though, boy.” He had a partitioned bedroom in his cabin. It was significantly larger than my little one-room cabin, though it was basically still just a joint kitchen-living room, a small bedroom and a bathroom. He pointed to a well-worn couch in the corner and gave me an apathetic wave as he stumbled back into his bedroom, slamming the door.
I couldn’t sleep, though. I tiptoed around the room, looking at Steve’s bookshelf. He had a rather strange taste in books- lots of Anne Rule and true crime there. I saw dozens of books about Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Chase, Herbert Mullin, Jeffrey Dahmer and Richard Ramirez among the collection. At the end, a large, black binder stood, unlabeled and worn-looking. It reminded me of the look of that leather-bound diary for a second, and my heart dropped. But logically, I knew this was just a coincidence. Yet, still, I pulled out the binder, my curiosity piqued.
What I found inside filled me with dread and horror.
Countless news clippings covered the length of it. The first clipping was from nearly twenty years earlier, about a woman who went missing in the Alaskan forest while hiking. A later one confirmed that her body was never found, and that her family was still hoping that she might turn up alive somewhere. A reward was offered for any information, it said.
And every page after that was more of the same: missing woman, murdered prostitute, missing man, no leads. I kept flipping through until I found clippings about Will Lenning’s suicide and the sudden disappearance of his wife. On the article about the suicide, Steve had used red marker to scrawl, “HA HA!” next to it.
I heard the click of a gun being cocked from behind me. I froze as Steve’s voice traveled across the room like a whisper.
“How do you like my work, friend?” he asked, his tone jovial and mocking.
***
I still held the binder of horrors tightly in my hands as I stared open-mouthed at this man I thought I knew.
“It’s you? What, you killed Will Lenning and his wife? And a lot of other women, apparently.” Everything felt unreal, as if I were stuck in a dream. Steve’s grin spread across his face, but his blue eyes stayed cold and dead.
“Yes, well, she was cheating on him with me anyway. Just another whore, you know. They always get what’s coming to them in the end,” he hissed with hatred oozing from his voice. “It’s too bad, really. I just killed another slut tonight. I was planning on saving you for later. The urge isn’t too bad yet right now, after all. It comes in cycles, you see. It comes in waves…” I saw a glimmer of pale, naked flesh writhing behind Steve. With jerky movements, the Twisted Man came up behind him. I said nothing, just watching with wide-eyed horror and amazement.
“You need help, man,” I whispered. Steve laughed.
“Help? The only help they give people like me is a needle in the arm. You know that. That’s why it’s important to always cover your tracks…” The Twisted Man ran a long, broken finger across Steve’s neck. Steve gave a strangled cry and jumped. He spun around, screaming. I glanced over at my shotgun next to the couch.
I jumped for it as Steve turned back to me, firing his pistol twice. The first bullet soared high above me, raining wood splinters down on my head, but the second ripped into my leg. A cold, burning pain ran like fire up my shin. I screamed in agony and battle fury as I gripped the shotgun, spinning and firing.
Steve’s head exploded as the slug ripped through his brain. His forehead collapsed like a smashed melon as bone splinters and blood sprayed the wall behind him.
The Twisted Man stood there, hunched over, grinning up at me. I felt warm blood gushing from my leg as I stared back at him, breathing hard. I wondered if I was dying.
“You… you weren’t after me at all, were you?” I asked. “You were after… Steve.” But the Twisted Man said nothing. After a long moment, he slinked back into the shadows of the bedroom and disappeared.
***
As night crawled its way toward morning, I thought back to the words the Twisted Man had spoken through the TV, suddenly understanding everything.
“He is a killer. The shadow of death. Many have fallen. Many lie buried across this forest. You will be next. He is watching you…”
He hadn’t been trying to hurt me at all. He had been trying to warn me. He had probably tried to warn Will Lenning and his wife, too.
I wrapped my leg in gauze, gritting my teeth. The wound looked puckered and deep, but I could still move my foot, and the bullet had gone clean through the flesh. I poured alcohol on it, screaming in pain as it burned its way through my skin. After rummaging through Steve’s bathroom, I found some prescription painkillers and swallowed a handful of them with a beer. I knew I would need the opiate high to get through the pain of riding into town with a mutilated leg.
As the Sun finally rose, I made my way outside the blood-stained floors of the cabin to my snowmobile. Before I left, I glanced back at that horrid place, the scene of so much torment and death.
In the open doorway, the Twisted Man stood, his back hunched, his rotted lips grinning at me. His hand lifted up into the air with jerky movements and waved.
I waved back as I started the engine and headed into town.

Is it possible to have fluey flares that cause hyperthyroidism…
29F, TPO 363 (February) 50mcg Synthroid
Recently had a “flare” of something (maybe autoimmune, docs haven’t figured it out yet) but here are the symptoms.

• Joint aches
• Sore swollen throat
• Knee pain/back pain
• Sensation of knives playing bumper cars with my organs in my stomach cavity
• Headache
• Exhaustion
• Overheating skin sensation
• Overall flu feeling
• Growing pains in bones
• Ear ache

Since day 3 of fluey symptoms I’ve had sky high anxiety with heart palpitations and just feeling like I’ve had a ton of caffeine despite not drinking any or eating anything with caffeine ingredients.
Then today I woke up with multiple heart palpitations, short of breath, and anxious. Like now 100% certain it’s not just emotional anxiety but something physically driving the heart palpitations, breathing, and restlessness sensation.
My question is: Is it possible to have swung hyper and that these symptoms could have been a flare causing my body to dump too much hormone into my system ontop of the 50mcg Synthroid dose and that is why I’m suddenly having soooo many heart palpitations after a week of not even one? I know y’all can’t diagnosis so I guess a better way to frame this would be to ask: has anyone else experienced similar “flares” and symptoms following the flares? All flu symptoms are gone now but I’m so anxious I could crawl up a wall and my heart palpitations are still hanging around with the shortness of breath.
Thanks! 🙏

Humans are persistence hunters.
Strange, bipedal creatures, they, with their strong legs and sharpened branches, give chase and know not to stop for as long as they can see their prey.
We run from the prairie to the woods, weaving between the trees in an elaborate dance that will determine which of us survives, the man ducking down to avoid the low-hanging branches as they strike my antlers, I feel each impact in my skull, leaves raining down in a fleeting trail for him to track, my hooves kicking up loose dirt and grass. I look back, we lock eyes for a moment. I see hunger in his eyes. I fix my eyes back on the path ahead, hear the man yelp, glance back again, see him stumble, having cut his foot on a rock. I hasten.
The humans, despite their strength of flesh and will, know that they cannot match their prey in agility. They aim not to catch up to them, but to pursue endlessly, for hours, days on end, not allowing rest or respite until their prey collapses.
I lie in the shade, one eye open as I watch the sun wash over the land and the sky, resting in the precious few moments I have gained. He emerges from the foliage. We run again.
They chase until the weary hide roasts in the sun, the aching bones refuse to carry on, the blood pumps futilely to sustain useless, weak, nutritious flesh, only once the prey can't in any way defend itself do they strike.
My legs tremble, then give out. I lie in a clearing, dragging myself forward with two hooves as the human stumbles closer, chest rising and sinking with each pained gasp for air, one bruised hand clutching the spear, the shoulders and face red, drenched in sweat, flinching with each step forward, one foot stepping sideways, infected. I look up. We lock eyes again. I see hunger. I see myself. Joints twist and bend, bones shift, crack, mend, reshape, the ribcage exposes itself, the antlers extend, tearing the skin from the skull, eyes melt away, yet I see him, the jaw unhinges, teeth multiply, flesh hisses and croaks as it expands, pressure released, the form growing six, seven, eightfold in size, I stand on new legs, front hooves sprouting claws of bone, held together by sinew.
Humans are persistence hunters, but so am I.

Hello everyone. I’ve got diagnosed with Crohn’s about 10 years ago and recently started reminiscing on how it happened.
I was 16 years old at that time, completely healthy. (Though I had some abdomen pains as a child 2 or 3 times but they went away on their own) Few days before having Crohn’s related symptoms I had my first panic attack and it was the worst. I had no idea what the hell was happening to me, I literally thought that I was about to die. My heart was racing, I was sweating, trembling, and pacing around the room. Few weeks after later, the first symptoms started to appear. Fatigue, skin problems like dermatitis, my gums started to bleed, my joints started to ache, I would get tired more easily etc. It was funny though because my bowels didn’t bother me at all and I couldn’t believe that It was actually Crohn’s.
So my question is: Can panic attacks be the first symptom of Crohn’s? Because I NEVER had them before and right after it happened I’ve started getting my first actual autoimmune disease symptoms.

I have been experiencing extreme tiredness, weight loss and hunger for around a year. Last July blood tests came back normal for everything. More recently, I ache so much which isn’t normal for my age (37,f) and I have lost a lot of muscle strength. This week, I have noticed that my thyroid is slightly visible and I can definitely feel it just by running my fingers down my neck. Several family members have thyroid issues so they have mentioned I should get checked again. But I have been to my doctor so many times about the symptoms and get told everything is fine. However, I now have a sore throat and wondering if that could be what’s making my thyroid more prominent? I appreciate anyone’s help as my blood tests have always been securely in the normal ranges that I’m wondering whether it even is something to worry about.

ADRIFT
He actually felt awake that morning. Unsmeared by sleep, the world sparkled as the fresh morning light shone from every surface. The road was wet with the rain that had ceased even before he woke and reflected the traffic lights more dully than it had the night before. As he opened the door of his generic silver Toyota, his shoes scraped on the grit covering the pavement. The air was still moist, and though the clouds overhead were moving quickly, some of them were still dark. John sat and closed the sedan’s door. The engine grumbled into life, and he pulled through the parking lot onto the road.
He hated hotels. The thought of other people sharing a wall with him as he slept made him uneasy. There was also the speculation of how many couples had used the bed in which he lay for something other than sleep.
Last night had been different, though. It had been the grand opening of this Motel 6, and though he had skipped the complementary continental breakfast, he had been able to request the corner room, with no one adjacent.
Traffic was easy along the highway, and the promising clouds sprinkled his windshield as he moved further northeast. High mesas rose from the plain, red rock stained darker by the rain. Windshield-wipers swished, pushing the water from before his face as he sped down the road.
At eight o’clock that evening, his stomach began to ache, so he pulled into a gas station to buy supper. The lights in the overhead above the gas pumps glared down into the night; the air smelled of gasoline, and oil spots clustered in dried-up puddles before each vacant terminal. John locked his car and walked to the convenience store. The cold felt welcome on his skin, and he could now detect a hint of cigarette smoke in the air.
A security camera warning greeted him in red on the clear glass door and a bell rang tinnily as he pulled it open. The lights mirrored the glare of those outside. The floors were white, and short shelves of ill-aligned candy and snacks filled the center of the room in evenly disheveled rows. To his right, the checkout counter stood empty.
John walked between the shelves of junk food to the row of fogged refrigerated cabinets set into the far wall. He selected a ham and croissant sandwich and a bottle of Mountain Dew and walked to the register.
The little bell rang again, and the cashier came in. He was wearing a blue vest, and the scent of tobacco hung about his hair and clothes. He monotoned a greeting and rang up the food, and John returned to his car.
The Mountain Dew tingled against the inside of his lips. He ate as he drove.
His car was a bullet of warmth that shot through the cold, dark night, the windshield clearer now than it had been all day; it brought the world before him into sharp focus, making the soft black of the night stop abruptly where the small white dots that distinguished the lanes sat huddled like little rocks in that vast, hard stream.
The next morning he pulled into a rest stop and shut down his engine. The sun was just peeking over the trees that jumbled along the side of the road. After using the restroom, John bought a granola bar from the vending machine with the quarters that had been his change the night before. He munched it as he reclined his driver’s chair as far as it would go, and tried to keep the crumbs from falling on his shirt. The bar tasted oddly of dried banana, though there was no fruit in it, and it stuck to his teeth and throat.
He awoke when another car entered the cul-de-sac of pavement and parked beside him. It was already after noon. He managed to stretch two minutes into half an hour more of imagined dream time before the children that clambered out of the new car and clamored for bathroom priority drove back the waves of sleep that lapped at the edges of his brain.
Michigan was drawing nearer. He was finally nearing the destination he had avoided for so long. But though it didn’t really matter to him when he arrived, and it wasn’t as though anyone was expecting him, he knew he could not keep driving forever. He had to get somewhere sometime.
John spent the next night at a motel – a mom-and-pop kind of place with hand-knitted blankets and carpet from the eighties. The shelf above the bed was lined with potpourri in little vases – almost a graveyard of flowers, but he appreciated the attempt at hominess. What little sleep he got was sporadic and brief.
The belt of “I” states passed in a blur; soon he was turning due north, threading his way into the mitten state like a small blood cell in the wrist of the world. Fall was in full swing here much more so than in the west. Every tree was highlighted in gold, umber, or scarlet, except for the evergreens, which clung resolutely to their stately dark firs. The warm colors threw themselves into the sky with every gust of wind, and little drifts of fallen leaves gathered protectively about the bases of chilly buildings. Wind-whipped grey coated the sky, mimicking the concrete of the freeway below.
After an interchange or two, his exit came, and he stopped at a little diner to admire the waitresses and the toast before moving on. The squeaky vinyl seat of his booth matched the teal skirt of his server. Even with a plate of hash browns and two eggs sunny-side-up to fortify his pitching stomach, he stalled, nursing his coffee until it was tepid and undrinkable. He left it and a generous tip on the table.
He pulled off the road before entering town, and parked in a small clearing behind the graveyard at the edge of the woods. He could, at least, delay his arrival a little longer. He had come here often as a teen, lured partially by the mystique and partially by the loneliness.
The sun was starting to come out as it set, sinking below the layer of cloud. John leaned against his car and looked up at the pearly patterns now gilded by the sunset. It felt good to be back, despite his ambivalence.
There was a little tower on one side of the cemetery – a bell tower. John had always supposed that it may have once been a barn, for it was made of wood, and still had a large double door in the front of it, though it had been boarded shut.
He opened his trunk and retrieved a dreadlock-fringed plaid blanket. Without difficulty, he unlatched the small door in the side of the building and began to climb the stair that wound along the interior walls of the tower. In the loft hung the bell; it was more weathered than he remembered, just as he also must be. The room was full of shifting shadows and gleaming patches of light flung there by the setting sun. Pigeons and dust filtered through the air to rest on the beams. He laid out the blanket and sat with his face to the sunset.

Hello everyone, I’ve recently been having symptoms that I have never had together and would like to get general health bloodwork done. I’ve seen Ulta Labs recommendations which fits in my budget however when looking at the options they provide I have not the slightest idea of what bloodwork would be the one to take for overall general health. What do you guys recommend/which blood work would cover that?
My symptoms are body aches and fatigue, headache, and generally bad back pain more lower at times. At times eyes feel a bit swollen connected to my headache. Usually when I’ve had the flu i get the same symptoms but it comes with cough and sore throat which I do not have. Anything would help. Thank you.

Apologies for the delay, as promised, continuing with the story! Link to previous act: VII

The night wore on. The people in the street thinned, then vanished.
The last Samurai left the geisha house, weaving drunkenly.
And then, two shadowy figures emerged from a side door in the geisha house and headed away.
I followed.
I caught a whiff of opium, so I was able to keep after them without exposing myself much.
They stopped in a deserted alleyway.
The coal from a pipe lit up one of the figures faces.
Tatsuki.
What did you want, anyway?
Tatsuki san, you were so cruel to Satsume today.
So? Samurai are nothing but trouble! Get em drunk, do a dance, take their money, that's it.
Anyone hoping some rich pretty boy will buy their contract is a fool, and anyone who goes out of their way to get their attention even more so.
They'll kill you for looking at them sideways!
I can't say you're wrong, Tatsuki. But, you shouldn't have spoken up when you did.
Those jade magistrates might just wonder if you had some connection to the murders.
What d'ya mean, murders? They just went missing, it's not like we know they're dead or anything.
I was already moving at that point.
Oh but I do know.
I got between the two just as the knife flashed.
It scraped me, and I returned the favor with my tetsubo.
Catching the Geisha in the side, I pulled my blow so I wouldn't kill her. I just wanted to take her off her feet. I had questions.
To my surprise, she not only seemed untroubled by my attack, she kept her feet.
Okay, that's just not right.
Tatsuki. Run to the inn. Get my companions and bring them here.
Tatsuki just stared, slack jawed. Her pipe fallen to ground.
MOVE PEASANT!
She ran.
The not really a geisha moved to give chase, but I blocked her path.
Your fight is with me.
In the dim light of the red paper lanterns, I could just make out the dark stain spreading across her side.
So I did hurt her.
As I advanced, preparing to strike again, she swung her knife. Not at me, but at the string of lanterns.

Most fell harmlessly into the road, but enough did drift into the outer walls of the nearby buildings that I had to rush over and put them out, lest they start a fire.
She used those precious few seconds to break from me and run.
I finished stomping out the lanterns and stood there cursing until Tatsuki came back with my friends. Mantis and Monkey weren't with them of course, still investigating.
Damn bitch is tough. More than simple geisha!
I wounded her though, think you can follow a blood trail this late at night, Kitsuki-san?
Ishigaki.
Toshiro had knelt to examine the blood.
This blood, it's far too dark.
Kitsuki-san leaned in, brought his lantern in closer.
You're right.
Humans breathe in Air, it mixes with our Water, making our blood bright red. As our water passes its strength on to our Earth, our bodies, it becomes darker.
This blood is black.
Toshiro looked up at me.
Just like a corpse that has not taken in any Air for a long time.
Bog Hag?!
I think so, yes.
Kitsuki-san blinked.
I thought you said your technique disrupted the taint of your enemies?
It does, but it's a reflex. I use it when I am struck; it's not as if I would know it's working. Only my opponent would know... ah.
No wonder it was not eager to fight you.
Toshiro and I locked eyes, the same thought running through our heads.
You three go find the Mantis! I'll get the Monkey!
Protocol!
I'll be fine, Toshiro! You're slow, Naomi is sick, and Kitsuki-san isn't much of a Yojimbo!
You three NEED to stay in a larger group!
I was already running, before any more protests could come up.
As I neared the docks I heard the sound of retching. Turning towards it, I found the Monkey.
He was leaning against a building, clutching the side of his neck. I could see him panting. As I came closer he leaned over and puked.
He saw me.
Ishigaki-san? I... I don't feel so good.
I picked him up. His skin was on fire with fever.

Some crazy bitch... She was clutching her side, I asked her what was wrong and as I got close she clawed the shit out of my neck!
Bog Hag talons carried disease in them. She had used the tanto on me because she did not wish to extend her claws through her fake skin.
I had no idea how severe the disease was, or how long it normally took to work, but obviously THIS one was working very, very fast.
I slung the Monkey over my shoulders and ran.
He didn't complain.
I got back to the Inn and stomped heavily as I ran up to our room,
I threw open the door.
Toshiro said hello by blasting both myself and the Monkey with a Jade Strike.
As the energy washed harmlessly over the two of us I set down the Monkey.
Hag got him. With her claws.
Shit.
Toshiro fished out a prayer to Jurojin. As I explained what that meant to the others.
Naomi added her own magic, and between the two the Monkey was saved.
Everyone was quickly brought up to speed.
The Mantis confirmed for us that the Yoriki I had encountered early that day was also the Bog Hag, as his failure to report in had caused a bit of shouting at the magistrate's.
Okay, now that we know what we're looking for, we only need to find one creature in a city of thousands that could change its appearance almost at will.
There was a reason Bog Hags were able to live in Rokugan for a long time should they just make it past the wall.

Hey, uh Toshiro-san?
I'm grateful and all for the magic healing... but why did you blast us both?
Won't hurt you if you aren't tainted. If it did hurt you I'd have blasted you again till you stopped twitching.
Oh.
I chuckled. Hitting one another in the face with that spell is a perfectly fine way to say hello among the Kuni. It has advantages, since a normal Jade test requires you to get close enough to poke someone first.
Couldn't you just hold up your own Jade?
Toshiro took that one.
Greenstone.
There's a mineral that is similar in appearance to Jade, but it's not. Hard to tell the difference at a distance.
Some fools have, from time to time, tried to pass it off as Jade to our Clan when our own stores were low.
Okay.
Now, how do we go about finding this monster?
Check the geisha. The madame, in particular.
It was the Mantis.
That Yoriki not reporting in for duty was a big deal. If the Hag was stepping into their daily lives, then there's an issue.
Geisha live in their house. They really aren't supposed to leave unless called out by a client, or to run errands.
Keeping up a double life like that would be hard.
What? don't judge me! You're the weird ones, being all lovey dovey.
Before we left we ground up jade and prepared powder. Bog hags were invulnerable. The blood was not the hag's, but from the skin she had been wearing.
It was unusual, but not unheard of for older, stronger and more cunning hags to be able to take more than just the surface skin.
This made the disguise even MORE difficult to spot.
Some even learned maho spells to preserve their skins.
We returned to the geisha house as dawn was nearing.
Toshiro placed a ward of flame upon the frame of the door.
We entered.
Tatsuki greeted us.
Oka-san is resting right now, should I go get her?
Please.
As the madame shuffled out, she greeted us warmly.
Hello great Samurai! I cannot thank you enough for what you did for our Tatsuki last night!
How may I help you?

I walked up to her, and held out the finger of Jade I wore.
Hold this a moment.
Oh great Samurai, this one is unworthy of such of a gift.
She was misunderstanding, going through the three refusals.
I heard the Monkey snicker.
No, I'm not giving this to you, I just want you to touch it.
Whatever for great samurai?
Some of the other girls had come out of their rooms to see us.
We just want to be sure.
The door to the front slid open.
Oka-san, I'm home! I have the-
As soon as the Geisha stepped across the threshold, she burst into flames.
Oh shit, which one was that?
Dammit, THEY KNOW!
Uh...
Oh dear, this is going to cause quite the ruckus.
We will have to leave this city now, no matter what happens.
Girls, listen up. The one who kills the big one gets the little girl's pretty skin.
All around us, geisha ripped their flesh off and revealed themselves to be Bog Hags.
Tatsuki fell to her knees, unable to comprehend her entire world shattering in an instant.
Including the madame, and the burned one, I counted six.
I once mentioned we Crabs had a code word for when the teahouse we're in is staffed by demons in disguise, they didn't know they'd been found out, and everyone should grab their weapons and meet out front.
We also had one that meant the same thing, expect that the demons know they've been found out, and you should fight way out.
Yasha.

Toshiro threw Jade fire as we powdered our weapons.
Energy rushed through my limbs as Naomi blessed me.
I was worried, there were a lot of Hags here, Toshiro and Naomi had both used magic earlier, and we were relying primarily on powder to injure them.
The burned one leapt onto Toshiro's back, clawing him
One went for the Mantis, one the Monkey. Two came at me.
The Mantis and Monkey both defended themselves, and I knocked aside the first to reach me, the second one got a claw in under my arm as I raised by tetsubo to block.
She cried out as she struck me, confused.
WHAT WAS THAT HUMAN WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME.
Calm down, that's why I told you to work together on him.
I know what he is doing; it won't harm you.
As the Geishags eyed me hatefully, Troka-san reached inside her kimono, and pulled out a scroll.
Oh shit.
She then clawed herself, quite deeply.
Oh that's a lot of blood...
And my chest burned. I fell to my knees hacking and coughing. Blood poured up from nose and mouth. My lungs ached.
So this is what it's like, to be Naomi...
I had to end that bitch, and I had to do it, now. Before she cast that spell again.
With the strength Naomi gave me, I slammed the haft of my tetsubo into the geishag that had clawed into me, knocking it down, while preserving my powder.
Then I rushed over it and attacked the head of this hag coven.
I saw surprise and fear in the creature’s eyes, it had hoped that spell would slow me down much more than it had.
I spun my tetsubo, two overhead strikes, sliding my hand down the haft to let the full momentum strike her.
She was still standing, but swaying about drunkenly.
I suspected she had overtaxed herself with that maho.
Behind me the Mantis, Monkey and Kitsuki all worked together. As the Kitsuki shoved his blade into one's stomach, the Monkey struck at the back of her neck.
Then the Mantis buried his kama into the top of her head.
The hag made an almost comical gurgle as it fell over, dead.

Toshiro was praying, hard. Another big one. then.
Naomi whispered another prayer and touched the Mantis.
Who then spun and struck the burning hag.
The other hags howled in fury and lunged at the Mantis, taken by surprise at the three on one, he went down under their claws.
Kitsuki-san grabbed the Mantis and dragged him back to Naomi.
She didn't waste any time, not even bothering with a scroll.
As the Mantis groggily got to his feet, Naomi teetered, sweating and panting hard.
For that matter, so was I.
I was still sucking in Air, a terrible panic rising in me at the feeling of not being able to breathe.
I crushed it ruthlessly. I knew I COULD breathe, even though my body was screaming I needed more.
Still, my vision was going dark at the edges.
What the hell did that monster do to me?
It lashed out with a claw, unable or unwilling to spill more of its own blood to work any more magic.
It's talons punched through my chest piece but only the very tips found my flesh.
And before she could draw back, I brought my tetsubo down on her head for a third time.
This time the thing's skull cracked open. Brains and fluid spattered to the floor. It stood there, head still bent from the impact of my strike, almost as if it was bowing before me.
Then it crumpled.

I turned. I needed to repowder my weapon.
Naomi was spent, or close to it.
Toshiro was praying, scroll in one hand, with his tetsubo held out in a warding stance. With that one hand grip he could not defend himself well.
Mantis was badly hurt, near death. Not even Naomi could heal someone so wounded that quickly.
And there were still four of the damn things standing. One hadn't even been hurt yet.
Well let's fix that.
Panting like a horse in heat (even killing the fucking thing hadn't fixed my lungs... was I going to be like this forever?) I charged at the unwounded Hag.
And into her.
She bit at my helmet and clawed at my back as I continued to run, taking her with me
And out the front door.
Through the ward.
When a bleeding Crab in full armor comes crashing through the door of a Geisha house, bearing with him a Bog Hag that is also on fire, people have a tendency to take notice.
One may then assume that, once their brains can fully register what their eyes have told them, they will scream and run about like chickens with their heads cut off.
The people in the streets lived up to my expectations. Spectacularly.
Good, that should bring some more bodies. If we have to we'll just pin them down with sheer numbers until we can bring up enough powder to bring them all down.
The Monkey lashed out at one of the hags, keeping the thing from attacking the Mantis.
The Kitsuki took a stance from the Dojo. I had seen the Shiba do that once, long ago.
The Mantis spun around slipping to one knee he scythed his blades through the legs of two of the hags, causing them both to fall.
Naomi drew another scroll from her satchel
And then Toshiro finished his spell.
The spell was an old one, in use for centuries.
It turned wrathful Earth Kami upon those it targeted, disrupting their own earth, weakening them considerably.
The Earth Kami were particularly incensed should they detect the presence of taint.

The spell had been made famous by one of the sons of the Emperor Toturi the First.
It was, in these days, known as the Wolf's Mercy.
Toshiro managed to get all four of the hags.
The wounded three died on the spot, their weakened bodies succumbing to the severe wounds they already bore.
Only the burning one was still alive.
Kitsuki-san struck it hard.
It trashed in my grip, but I managed to hold on, barely. The Mantis and then the Monkey were finally able to still the beast.
I felt life rush into me, and the pain in my chest eased up at last.
Just as Naomi began to cough once more. I caught her before she fell, and set her down gently.
Tatsuki. TATSUKI! My wife needs her medicine, we need a teapot, water, and a fire. QUICKLY!
My shouts galvanized her, and Tatsuki moved to comply.
Kitsuki-san saw to preparing her medicine.
Toshiro, panting hard looked at me and the Mantis.
Neither of you better get sick from those wounds. I've got nothing left.
And, far too late to be useful, the Crane showed up, Yoriki in tow.

Doji Goemon looked about with disgust, and more than a little fear.
What has happened here?
Naomi was panting hard, still giving little coughs.
She looked at me. Though her eyes were tight with pain, she gave me a nod to reassure me she would be alright soon enough.
So Toshiro, as the only other full-fledged Jade Magistrate in our group, had to explain the scene to the Magistrate's satisfaction.
You had a Bog Hag problem.
We took care of it for you.
You're welcome.
Bye.
Atta boy, Toshiro.
That won't cause any problems, I'm sure.
He then turned and began throwing salt all over.
Wait, just a minute!
No.
WHAT?
Toshiro spun and glared at the Doji.
I had watched Toshiro apply his face paint several times. He started out pure white. Black, all around his eyes, making them tiny pools of light in deep sea. Then, almost haphazardly dipped his four fingers into red, and pulled them across his face.
The visage he created looked like a man with deep black eyes that were far too large, and had been clawed from temple to chin by some great beast.
In other words, pretty damn scary.
And he used it to full effect as he glared at the Doji.
Bog Hags are tainted. They've been hiding in this geisha house for months. People have probably already been tainted. There might be infections even now.
And I HAVE to deal with that.
It's what Jade Magistrates do.
The first step is to Purify this place.
So shut up and let me do my job!
Or do you want to explain to your lord why half this city had to be burned down when the taint gets too deep?
He was bluffing. It was true there were probably people with the taint unknowingly spreading it around, but one geisha house? No way had it become such a crisis.
Toshiro just didn't want to deal with the Crane, and was using the fact that such knowledge was considered shameful in the rest of Rokugan to deceive him.
It worked.

The Doji salvaged his wounded pride by berating his Yoriki.
Don't just stand there! Get some monks, shugenja! And ETA!
The Mantis, meanwhile, discreetly moved Tatsuki out the back, we all knew from the attempt on her life she was innocent of any wrongdoing.
But we doubted Goemon would see it that way.
Several Monks, a small swarm of Eta, and even an Asahina showed up to help with the cleansing.
And all protests from Goemon stopped as the Eta began to bring up human skins from a secret basement Kitsuki-san found.
There were thirty two.
As well as a very large pile of bones. There was no telling how many people were there. There were only three skulls. Not nearly enough for all the bones.
I explained to Goemon.
Bog Hags don't kill just for skins.
They eat people.
Especially pretty women and children.
He excused himself, and hurried off.
I could hear him vomit.
I doubted it was compassion for the victims. Rather I suspected it was fear that such a thing had gone on for so long right under his nose.
I had no doubt he would have much explaining to do when his lord heard of this incident.
I didn't embarrass him further by looking.
Hey, Naomi?
Ha...hai Ishigaki-san?
Still a little sore.
Is he doing that right?
I jerked my head to Toshiro. He had just thrown a second handful of salt at a wall that particularly offended him.
It always seemed... messy to me, when Toshiro purified things.
Naomi nodded. sipped some water.
He lacks grace, I admit but it is fine the way he does it.
Huh.
Naomi advised Goemon on the Jade test, and the Monk in charge of the local Shrine assured us that, should anyone be found with the taint, he could guide them to a temple that specialized in treating those so afflicted.
Toshiro pressed him on the details, but was satisfied the temple in question wasn't one that took mercy too far.
We left, to chase after possible clients with the taint.

We were joined, of all people, by Tatsuki.
"What the fuck is this?" I asked to no one in particular, pointing at her.
Mine. Hands off.
I stared at the Mantis.
He pulled his clothes and produced a piece of paper.
I bought her contract.
From a dead bog hag?!
Yeah. Got a great price.
You just took that!
Look, I know you don't know shit about Geisha, loving your wife as much as you do (Naomi blushed), but the contract is the only thing separating a Geisha from a whore.
I had no idea if that was true or not.
Naomi, of course, wanted to know what the half-person thought of all this.
Naomi's Compassion could really get in the way of her sense of propriety at times.
I don't have any traveling papers, I can't stay there and I sure as hell didn't want to show my face to the magistrate to try and get some papers....
So this works. I mean, I could be a lot worse off right now, and you did save my life...several times over in fact.
Huh. That's very upfront. I wondered what is was that she sensed in us to put her so at ease.
And that's how the Mantis got a Geisha.
So, you gonna marry her?
Monkey, of course.
Naomi hid her smile behind her sleve and tittered.
The Mantis just glowered at the Monkey, but Tatsuki actually fidgeted a bit.
I shared a glance with Kitsuki-san and Naomi as we noted that.
And we headed out for the nearest town.
For a few weeks we spread word of a possible taint outbreak. Discreetly, to local lords. We told them how to check, got them in touch with temples to handle anyone found with the taint.
Naomi went through paper and ink quite quickly, writing letters back home.
I don't think either of them can read yet, Naomi.
The nanny will read the letters TO them Ishigaki-kun. Until we got home to see them again.
I understood. Not a day passed while I was standing on my post on the Wall that I didn't think of home.
When we arrived at the third city, the guard who checked our papers became very excited.

After 7 days of being ill (first fever, body aches, headache. Then mostly roughing, swallow difficulties, sore throat) I feel finally better. I wanted to eat salad, but guess what, I can't stand vinegar anymore. Loved it before, now it tastes completely different. Rest of my sensory seems just fine.
Is covid back?

I’ve suffered with depression and anxiety my whole life. I was finally diagnosed with BPD later in life and got the treatment I needed. I have been doing really great for a while and even started a successful business. Life has been really good.
This past month I have had multiple health issues and its just too much. I had to have breast biopsies from lumps I found. As soon as I got good news from that, I had to go to the dermatologist to get a spot on my face biopsied. I have a history of squamous skin cancer. While I wait to get those results back, I lost my voice from a sore throat. Im getting ready to go to urgent care now because its the weekend and I need to be well enough to return to work on Tuesday.
Just as soon as I started to stress about being well enought to return to work, I received my medical bill for almost $2,500! I have insurance through my husband’s job but it only covered a portion of my procedures.
If I receive bad news about my skin biopsy, I just dont know how I will deal with it. Im increasingly sad and scared. Im struggling with binge eating because the stress so too much.
I isolate a lot because I’m ashamed to be negative or burden people with my issues. So I feel like I have nobody to talk to. Also I cant even talk on the phone right now because I lost my voice from possibly having laryngitis.
If I can get off the couch, I’m going to go to urgent care and hopefully get some relief for my throat.

BF started feeling a sore throat and like he was getting a cold on Thursday night, I also had a slightly scratchy throat. He had been travelling for work from Tuesday to Wednesday via plane so we hadn’t seen each other apart from Thursday day time.
As of yesterday, his symptoms got worse like a heavy cold so he tested and is positive.
I’m not feeling like this, but do have a weird head feeling, fizzy nose (like I’m getting a cold), some nausea which I think is anxiety related, weakness and some muscle aches.
I didn’t isolate away from him as assumed we both have it or perhaps picked it up at the same time when we were out together on Monday. However his line was super dark and now I’m thinking I was stupid not to stay away, I’ve slept in the same bed etc and accidentally drank his water so perhaps I’m doomed now anyway?
I’m testing negative still today and he’s strong positive. I’ve been around him whilst he’s symptomatic for 2 days.

Is this sexually transmitted or not likely? Why?
So I had engaged in oral a 3 days to 1 week before the symptoms appeared.
26-27 April: I was flying from tropical country to middle east, got body ache with nausea on aircraft then a sore throat that developed into tonsillitis the next day without any white patches (seemed viral or allergic). No fever, only headaches and some fatigue,, thought it was due to new weather and flight jet lag and lack of sleep during vacation.
1 April: Tonsils cleared out and came back to normal.
18 May: started having Nausea and minor cramps with headaches which were starting to get more intense and I thought to be my PMS symptoms.
20 May: symtpoms persisted until this day, only difference I got the period on this day and realized that I had fever low grade one of 38.3°C. No sore throat nothing, I was just nausious and had a pulsing tightband headache, some sinus and body and muscle ache all over my body which is managed by paracetamol and ibuprofen. Chills at night due to fever which comes while I sleep probably. A stomach pain was developing and loss of appetite is evident.
27 May: last day with a recorded fever, this day my stomach pain was not tolerable at all, burning sensation and pulsing in the center right under my chest bone with nausea feeling.
29 May: Burning sensation kept on coming and going when food is consumed but on this day I wasnt aplble to eat anymore and went into the toilet and threw up bile that was yellow to feel better, then a short while after on an empty stomach started having the same nauseous feeling again and threw up bile again. Was admitted to ER and diagnosed with severe gastritis due to NSAID and Emifinac use on empty stomach during my sickness.
1 June: I am able to eat solid food again today after treatment, had to travel back to my country which is colder to get my gastritis treatment but I just woke up to reqlize I got tonsillitis again with white patches.
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