So 3 years ago ay age 51 I started having issues with my upper back. Just doing the most usual task would make my upper back feel extremely tired ..to the point of pain. I would get shirt of breath just walking across the room. I finally broke down and went to the doctorafter some x-rays, she diagnosedme with mild levoscoliosis. I had never heard of it so she explained a bit to me. She said it was the dangerous type as it can pressure against the heart and lungs. So I basicly left there petrified. The next week I went to my regular doctor who put me at ease. Due to other issues I am already on opiod therapy as I am highly intolerant of basically all NSAIDS. The hydrocodone does seem to help the pain, even if not addressing the problem.
I went back a couple of weeks ago for updated x-rays. My heart stopped when the tech asked if I had any work done to my back i just knew it had progressed. But the curve is still very minor. He did say what a lot of people here have said....that curve does not equate pain levels. He thinks my spine may be rotatingand causing pain and shortnessof breathing. The last three weeks I have had a constant searing burning in my tailbone region. My doctor said we will pore over all my x-rays when I go back in two weeks.
I know this is rambling. I would just never imagine so many issues with such a smal curve. My heart goes out to all those with the nasty curves I see on here.

Hey everyone. Going through some high stress with my sweet Malchi, Khaleesi, and wanted to get some input from you all.
She's a 9 years old maltese/chihuhua mix we got as a pup at around 6 months old. She's been an amazing family member but things started going downhill with her health about 6-7 months ago.
TL;DR: Malchi has collapsed trachea, with heart murmur, and enlarged heart. Has been fine for a few months now with little to no coughing episodes. We just spent a week at the beach where she had a blast and no issues. On Sunday we played a little game of run around the couch and when I realized she was out of breath she started wheezing and passed out. Last night at 1:30AM, while sleeping in bed with us, she woke up, coughed a bit, and passed out again. Seeking vet assistance today, but wanted community input.
She was diagnosed with a heart murmur over a year ago which progressed pretty rapidly and she was put on pimobendan (1.25mg twice a day) and has been on it ever sense. In September 2023 she developed a tooth abscess which broke through on her face and took some time to diagnose as an abscess, but she eventually had dental surgery to extract the tooth and all healed up without issue.
On December 26th, 2023 she began coughing/hacking/wheezing/honking almost non-stop. Emergency vet x-rayed and basically told us she had collapsed trachea, enlarged heart, and probably congestive heart failure. They recommended she start additional heart meds, and gave us hydrocodone for cough. We got in to normal Vet ASAP who, at the time, assumed the emergency vet was correct and prescribed additional heart meds, but advised us to seek heart experts at local university vet. At one point in between all this she had a coughing fit while laying on couch with my partner and then collapsed/feinted/pass out.
We immediately decided to seek attention at the uni vet via their emergency services first who prescribed theophylline which seemed to work well. We then visited their cardio team and had an ECG done. They ruled out congestive heart failure, but confirmed slight tracheal collapse and enlarged heart. Recommended staying on pimobendan, but no other meds. Giving hydrocodone as necessary. They actually thought the coughing was possibly a respiratory issue. She slowly recovered from cough and had been mostly issue free (outside of what we assume is an allergic reaction to something outside a month or so ago which caused some swollen area under her chin).
We spent the last week at the beach on vacation and she had a blast, no issues at all. Few walks on the beach (nothing fast paced) and she loved it (I carried her for some walks too, just in case).
We got home Saturday and everything was fine. Sunday while in the basement she got the zoomies and I chased her around the couch a bit, quickly realized she was out of breath so I stopped and sat down with her on floor and she started coughing. Within a minute she went off balance and fell over. She moaned a bit, legs stretched out, eyes rolled back, and let out the most gut-wrenching cry I've ever heard and was out. I swear I couldn't feel a heart beat. I freaked out, grabbed her up and started compressing a bit on her chest while running to get my partner. She came to within a few minutes and was obviously distraught but eventually seemed fine. I didn't immediately seek medical attention because I knew of the collapsed trachea and passing out, and felt it was my fault for letting her get so worked up/out of breath playing.
Then last night at 1:30AM we woke up to a cough and immediately realized she was passing out again. Same situation, but concerning since she had been resting/sleeping in bed with no intense exercise/etc.
I haven't noticed any blue gums/etc to indicate severe oxygen loss ( so far, I also didn't immediately look for it).
I'm just stressed to the max since we love her so much. Hoping the vet can help. I'm going to ask about theophylline again in hopes it's just oxygen loss and it can help.
Any advice/words of wisdom are greatly appreciated, and sorry for the wall of text!

It's 1:20am right now, my partner is sleeping. I cannot. I'm hoping that doing some venting will do the trick. I am not asking for advice, but I will not be upset if you give advice. I appreciate you all. I was introduced to alcohol at 17. Became more of a stoner & avoided alcohol up until probably 2019 (yes, exchanging one addiction for another or whatever). I was about to move to a different state to live with my brother, I started getting gigantic panic attacks, so stopped smoking/taking any thc. Once I moved in we drank heavily sometimes. He stopped, I did not stop. It got to a point where I'd just keep taking shots no matter what because I love the feeling. I do not have an excuse for killing a two liter of gin/vodka in two days for 4 years (not always, buy often.)
My partner of 2.5 years has been able to keep me in check better than I ever was. It was not enough, and I feel so fucking terrible to be this dependent on her sometimes. She worries about me. I am her protector. I keep her safe. I can't imagine what she goes through in her mind, thinking about this burnout alcoholic.
This year after turning 28, I was hospitalized because I could not stop throwing up. It was like my body was self destructing (gee I wonder why). Thankfully, I have a partner that I absolutely do not deserve who brought me to the ER. She's truly the embodiment of a guardian angel. My darling is my most precious connection. The most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life. She outdoes the seven world wonders without trying. She stayed with me in the hospital. She found room in my hospital bed to cuddle with me. The doctors put me on a few different drugs to help with pain & sedate, which I am sort of thankful for.
Eventually I had a nightmare and hit my partner during. Never happened before. Idk if there was a nurse that was getting a blood check or if it was the hydrocodone & morphine that had been currently coursing through my veins, but either way in my nightmare I was trying to defend my partner from someone with a knife. I woke up as soon as I threw a punch. I was so fucking dehumamized when I opened my eyes and saw her in absolute distraught & confusion. I literally hit the one person that I want to protect more than anything in this universe. I held her, assured her I was awake now, I apologized profusely and broke down crying. I passed out after that.
This post is three months after this situation. She never has mentioned it unless I bring it up, our relationship is stronger than ever, but Im still reeling off of that horrific moment. Since then I have had great lengths of sobriety, but I break it and am still drinking when I have brain shocks/zaps or if we have special occasions.
I fucking hate drinking. Of course it feels good in the moment but it's like getting your stomach torn open for hours after. I refuse to be that toxic partner. I need to get out, and have been given the resources of how to get out. I don't have health insurance. I owe so much for my initial visit to the hospital, I don't want another one. I'm afraid that I will eventually seize if I stop giving my body a "regular dose" every once in awhile.
I'm about to go on Omeprazole and some probiotics tomorrow.
Thank you for reading this far, and to my family, friends, and ESPECIALLY to my partner, I am so fucking sorry. Thank you so much for being in my life through all my bullshit. I don't deserve you.

Imagine that you’re a junior ceramics major at a respectable university.
Imagine that you’ve just returned from winter break and have just turned 21.
Imagine that you spend what little free time you can with your small circle of friends, relaxing, chatting.
Imagine that one of them is romantically interested in you, but, lacking chemistry or emotional spark, nothing happens.
Imagine that you’re sitting in your dorm room, on your bed on a cold Friday night in January when someone knocks on your door.
Imagine that the man who walks in immediately and irascibly draws your ire by stealing your thunder.
Imagine that you spend the next 873 days believing beyond a shadow of a doubt and against the better judgment of your entire family and all of your friends that this is the perfect man with whom to spend the rest of your life.
Imagine spending the next 61 days after that learning that that same man lied to you for the preceding 873.
He never took a single course at the university.
He was living in the dorms illegally.
He never quit smoking (like he promised he had).
He had slept with three other women while he was in a relationship with you.
He had, on more than one occasion, stolen your debit card and withdrew beer money from your account.
He had, on more than one occasion, stolen CDs from you to sell, again, for beer money.
He had never tried to find a job while living in your apartment and eating your food (at your family’s expense).
Take a breath…
He broke down on a pier in Key West.
He almost threw himself into the ocean at high tide.
He joined the military.
He stabilized.
He survived the storm.
He came home and went back to that university and graduated.
He was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and started CBT.
He went back to the military and went to war.
He was killed in the 120 degree heat of the desert, but hasn’t died yet.
He kills the physical pain with hydrocodone.
He kills the emotional pain with Xanax, Lexapro, Zyprexa and Jameson.
He stares at the 9 mm on his bedside table as he falls asleep every night and manages to wake up every morning.
He hangs on to the hope that one day, you’ll reach out to him, hold him in your arms again and say the only three words that might be able to save him.
Now…
Take a breath…
You don’t have to imagine…
It’s all true.

Today I got my prescription filled for my hydrocodone And my PCP told me to please ask the pain management doctor To My order because he feels like He's a jerk no matter what he does. He's being a jerk to me if he doesn't give me the pain medicine and he's being a jerk to himself if he continues to fill it and put himself in danger
Tomorrow I'm getting some kind of epidural shot in the middle of my back at the hospital that is issued by the pain management clinic. They said if this did not help that they would possibly discuss Prescription medication with me but because I was honest with him about using Cbd/THC gummies for pain They have already abled me as a drug user
I'm praying to God that the shot works but if it doesn't I really can't see myself going on in this kind of pain forever.
I cried at the clinic whenever they told me that I had to choose and that the contract would only be discussed with me in person by the doctor and that he's not a fan of my alternative drug use for pain.
I don't know what happened it's like one day in Middle School everywhere you turned somebody had some pills in their pocket but now that I'm a full grown adult suffering my medicine is being threatened to be taken away at every turn.
The pain management clinic told me that they are not appeal dispensary and that they are there to fix me and make me better permanently that's whenever I broke down into tears because I have hurt for over 10 years and I have no faith that these operations are going to help.
I'm aware of the risk I'm running using opiates everyday to cover up pain but if you call living in severe pain everyday living, then you need an evaluation

In the weeks leading up to and in the days right after I relied so much on this group I wanted to give back.
My diagnosis: endometriosis stage 2 (2018)/adenomyosis (2023 via imaging but formally after this surgery), pelvic congestion (2015-ish), PMDD (2021), and I hadn’t had a normal pap since 2019 which was eventually traced to HPV that was not clearing. I finally broke down and had a total hysterectomy via robotic 11 days ago (kept my ovaries, I’m 48 and in early peri menopause so I still get to go through that).
Here was my experience:
Hospital- same facility I had my other procedures in. I drive almost an hour for it, but it’s worth it. Staff is great. I have a lot of trouble with anesthesia and everytime they have taken such good care of me. All I can say here is if you have the ability, research your hospital it makes all the difference. I also have a great Doc/surgeon that I have been with since 2017.
Days 1-3po- horrible as to be expected, I was down for the count. As so many others have stated in posts…if you suffer from anxiety as I do ask for something, if available get the anti nausea meds (behind the ear patch and at home meds you do not want to vomit after this surgery), if you’re offered the nerve block take it, stay ahead of the pain. I was prescribed hydrocodone only needed half of what they prescribed then was able to manage with prescription ibuprofen and extra strength Tylenol. Take the Gas-x and move, even if it’s just a walk around your bed and to the bathroom…every couple of hours walk/move. Spotting was light but constant.
Days 4-7po- pain started to subside into more of a discomfort/pressure. Was able to start moving around - short walks outside, able to make myself food (I’m talking a sandwich not a full course meal), even washed my hair! But the fatigue and brain fog is real. After 20-30 minutes of being “active” and I’d have to go down for a two hr nap. At this point I was alternating with 200 mg of ibuprofen and the Tylenol every 4hrs. Spotting had mostly stopped.
Day 7-10po- started to make the turn. Discomfort minimal. Am able to do some very light housekeeping. Was able to check in and be coherent with my work team and be present with my family. Spotting very intermittently.
The hardest part for me has been the nausea and GI issues (not constipation, I also have IBSd and it flared). Today is the 11th day po and while better, I am still dealing with that and the fatigue. I am not a sit around and do nothing type of girl so feeling this level of tired is hard. Maybe once a day I have enough discomfort that I cave and grab Tylenol. Also, my bladder is off…I feel a constant urge to pee and that’s getting annoying. Each day I feel I’m a little bettestronger.
This decision is not an easy one for anyone who has to make it. I’ve put it off for a long time due to life, anxiety etc. I’m obviously too early on to know the long run but for now I’m at peace. No cervix means no risk of cervical cancer. No uterus means no adeno (which for me was more debilitating than the endo). Am grateful to all who have shared and hope this post helps someone even if just a little. Hugs 💜

THE CAPSULE
by W. B. Stickel
​
The pothole appeared out of nowhere.
“Son of a bitch!” Miles Freeman hissed, swerving to avoid the cavernous thing.
“Whoa!” his twelve-year-old son, Brandon, said from the backseat. “Close one, Dad.”
Easing their RAV4 back into the appropriate lane, Miles glanced in the rearview and met his son’s gaze. The boy’s bleary eyes practically swam in their sockets—a result, Miles knew, of the pain meds the ER staff had pumped into him an hour earlier. “Sorry about that, bud,” Miles said. “This road isn’t the greatest.”
“S’okay, Dad. It’s Syracuse.”
“Yes it is,” Miles agreed. “Pothole Capitol of America. How’s the leg?”
Brandon glanced down at his heavily bandaged thigh. “Achy. How many stitches did I get again?”
“Eight. Which you took like a champ.”
“Think I’ll have a scar?”
“Probably.”
The boy grinned dopily. “Battle trophy.”
Miles reached back and touched the boy’s hand. “Hey, I want to talk about what happened. In more detail than what you told the doctors, I mean.”
Brandon shrugged. “Okey-dokey, doggy daddy.”
Miles smirked at that: one of his favorite lines from True Romance—that badass Christian Slater flick from the early Nineties. The boy had never actually seen the movie; no, the violence in it was far too excessive to show a child. Brandon had simply heard Miles say it once, and thereafter adopted it for himself. “All right, knucklehead, do me a favor and shut your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Just humor me. It’ll help you concentrate.”
Brandon closed his eyes. “They’re shut.”
“Good. Now think back to this morning when you got the ouchie in your leg.
“Okay. I’m thinking about it.”
“Picture what happened and describe it the best way you can.”
“Well,” Brandon said. “I was grabbing branches for the trail like you told me to, and I saw a nice big one in the area that doesn’t have any trees. Something tripped me as I went to grab it and I fell over. And my leg went right into the metal thingy.”
Miles nodded. They had been in the woods bordering their backyard, working on their big summer project: creating a system of trails in the dense underbrush that grew back there. Brandon had chosen to hunt for branches with which to line the trail, while Miles used a pair of hedge clippers to clear the actual pathway. After a time, Brandon had wandered out of sight into a nearby clearing. Next Miles knew, the boy was screaming bloody murder. Miles found him sitting on a log, palms pressed against his bleeding thigh.
“This metal thingy,” Miles said. “It was sticking up out of the ground, then? Like at an angle or something?”
“Yeah.”
“I know you told the doctor you couldn’t really remember, but think hard for me. Was the metal thing smooth or rough?”
Brandon shook his head. “Don’t know. It happened real fast.”
Miles pursed his lips. The ER doc that had treated Brandon couldn’t say one way or the other either. What she could say for certain was that the offending object had been rusty, given the tiny rust flakes she discovered while abrading the wound.
“No worries,” Miles said. “So, the thing poked you. What happened next?”
Brandon cocked his head like a dog keying into an interesting noise. “There was sort of a breaking sound. Or a snap. Then I fell down. I saw there was a piece of it sticking out of my leg, so I yanked it out and dropped it.”
That was new information. “A snapping sound? You think you broke it off something?”
Brandon opened his eyes. “Uh-huh. Just remembered. After that, it hurt real bad and was bloody, so I did like you showed me to make the bleeding stop.”
“I’m real proud of you for that, too,” Miles said. “Quick thinking.”
It occurred to Miles then how fortunate they were that the object had merely pierced the boy’s leg, versus his belly or chest. Or—God forbid—his head.
The very thought made Miles queasy. He truly couldn’t fathom an existence without Brandon. It was hard enough losing the boy’s mother in childbirth. If he ever lost Brandon too, he didn’t know what he would do.
No, that was a lie. He knew exactly what he would do, and it involved the Mossberg 500 shotgun tucked away in his bedroom closet.
Miles brushed the awful thought away and ran a hand through his curly mane, which some people said made him resemble a taller Patrick Dempsey. “You hungry for lunch yet?”
“Starving,” Brandon said.
“Mediterranean?”
Brandon’s eyebrows arched. Mediterranean was his favorite. “Sure!”
“Pita Palace?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes!”
“All right, pal. Pita Palace it is.”
***
By the time they finished chowing down at home, Brandon was in tears again from the pain. Miles gave him a Hydrocodone, as prescribed by the ER, and got him set up on the living room sofa.
“Xbox or Occulus?” Miles inquired.
“Xbox,” Brandon said. “Minecraft Retro.”
“Shocker. But that’s okay. You deserve it. Do all the mining and crafting you want today.” Miles handed the boy a game controller. “If you’re okay for a bit, I need to go out back and look around for whatever poked you. Make sure it’s safe.”
“Coolsies,” Brandon said, turning his attention to the living room’s 65-inch TV.
Before heading out, Miles hurried down to the basement and retrieved their walkie-talkie set from the workroom. “Here,” he said as he returned to the living room. He placed one of the handsets on the end table next to the sofa. “If you need anything, use this to reach me. You remember how to use it?”
“Push-to-talk?”
“Correctamundo.” Miles tussled the boy’s hair and headed for the back door.
***
During his youth, Miles had a spent a lot of time outdoors. His own father had been an avid outdoorsman and took care to instill his spirit of adventure in Miles. Miles had wanted to do the same for Brandon, but the kid preferred exploring the wondrous landscapes of his imagination over those in the real world. If it wasn’t written in one of his books or coded into one of his video games, he just wasn’t interested.
Fortunately, that all changed the previous summer after Brandon finished reading The Wild Folk by Sylvia Lindstead. They had been on the back deck at the time, letting their dinners digest while they gazed at the woods that lay beyond their property line.
“Dad,” Brandon had said. “I want to go into the woods. Make a trail through the trees. I think I belong out there.”
Miles had been so happy he nearly cried. “Absolutely,” he had said, and thus the big summer project was born.
Smiling at the memory, Miles stepped onto the back deck and eased the sliding glass door shut behind him. The afternoon greeted him with a sweltering embrace. “Good Christ,” he said, checking the weather stats on his phone. 92°, it said. With 80% humidity.
Already beginning to sweat, he wiped his face and vaulted off the deck into the backyard. It was marginally cooler once he reached the trailhead, as the woods’ canopy provided plenty of shade, but the air was still stifling as hell. Wondering if he hadn’t somehow been magically transported to the Mississippi Delta, he followed the path as it zigged and zagged its way through the dense cluster of oaks and pines that studded his little swathe of Central New York.
At the trail’s terminus, Miles discovered the hedge clippers he’d dropped earlier when Brandon had cried out. “Oh, yeah,” he said, holding the clippers up in front of him. He couldn’t say why, but in that moment, he found their slender blades oddly comforting.
Comforting? he mused, unsure where the sentiment had come from. What? Did he think some sort of threat existed out amongst all the fern, ivy, and honeysuckle? Like a rabid fox or killer rabbit?
“Sure,” Miles said. “Why not killer bunnies? I hear they’re all the rage this season.”
“Having a Watership Down moment, are we?” a voice inquired behind him.
Startled, Miles whipped around in a panic and instinctively readied the clippers for combat.
“Easy there,” said Jacob Winslow, Miles’ next-door neighbor. “I come in peace.” As a show of good intention, the man raised his empty hands like a cornered bank robber.
“Jesus Christ!” Miles growled. “Where the fuck did you come from?”
“Sorry, amigo,” Jacob replied, lowering his hands. “I thought you heard me approach.”
Miles lowered the clippers and glowered down at his pale, red-haired neighbor, who stood a foot shorter than him. “I didn’t hear shit.”
“Not sure what to tell you,” the man said. “I wasn’t being particularly stealthy.”
Miles drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Fine, whatever. Is there something I can help you with?”
Jacob’s brow furrowed. “Oh. I, uh, heard about what happened to your boy—Ted from across the street filled me in—and figured I’d see if you needed a hand with anything. You didn’t answer your doorbell, so I peeked out back and saw you heading into the woods.”
Miles squinted at the smaller man. On top of being a prying snoop with little respect other people’s boundaries, Jacob Winslow was, bar none, the least neighborly neighbor Miles had ever had. Especially when it came to helping out with. . . anything. If it wasn’t his bad back or ulcer acting up again, he always seemed to have errands to run or relatives to visit. Conversely, the little shit had no issue asking for anyone else’s help.
Yet here he was now, offering his assistance. It was strange, to say the least.
Even stranger, though, was the fact that Jacob knew anything at all about Brandon’s injury. Other than the hospital staff, Miles hadn’t shared what had happened with anyone.
“Ted, huh?” Miles asked. “And what’d he say?”
“Not much. Just that your boy landed in the ER with an injured leg. And that he was home now, doing okay.” The shorter man observed the consternation on Miles’ face. “Oh, Ted only knows because of Gina.”
“Gina,” Miles echoed. “Right.” Ted’s wife, Gina, worked as a nurse at the Galisano Children’s Hospital. He hadn’t seen her during their visit, but he supposed she could have seen Brandon’s name on the patient register and decided to check his file.
Miles studied his neighbor for a length, thinking, then revisited the man’s offer to help. “Well,” he said, redirecting his attention to the clearing. “If the offer is serious, I was about to search for whatever jabbed Brandon in the thigh. I only have a vague sense of where it occurred. I was busy whacking away at the weeds where we’re standing when he cried out. I found him sitting in the clearing over there.”
Jacob nodded. “Not to be a Nosy Nelly, but why were you gents out here in the first place?”
Miles told him about the summer project.
“Gotcha,” Jacob said. “And you want to make sure the pokey bit isn’t still a problem?”
“Bingo.”
Jacob considered their surroundings, and glanced down at his own attire, which consisted of a Budweiser tee shirt, cargo shorts and a pair of flip-flops. “I’m clearly not dressed for the occasion, am I?”
“Nope,” Miles said. “The poison oak and ivy out here is downright evil.”
“Nuff said,” Jacob replied, ambling back towards his house. “I’ll be right back.” He returned minutes later, garbed in a blue long-sleeve shirt, jeans, boots, work gloves and a fitted Yankees cap. “That’s a bit better,” he said. "Let’s just pray I don’t die from heat exhaustion. I’m already sweating like a pig.”
Fresh rivulets of sweat ran down Miles’ own back. “Me too. Ready to get started?”
“Let’s do it.”
***
Five minutes into their scouring, Jacob came across a bulky wasp nest forged in the crook of a dead sugar maple. “Check this out,” he said.
Miles stayed where he was; he wanted no part of the dozen or so wasps buzzing about the crook. “Industrious sons of bitches, huh?”
Jacob grunted. “They’ve set up shop in a couple spots around my house. I’m going to hit up Home Depot for some supplies later and go on a killing spree.”
“You don’t use an exterminator?” Miles asked.
“More satisfying to handle it myself.”
“If you say so. I prefer not being stung.”
“We all get stung sooner or later,” Jacob said. “That’s life.”
“Maybe so. Luckily, I’ve never been allergic.” The sound of his own words resonated queerly in Miles’ head and for an instant he was bombarded by a flurry of disturbing images. A beehive in an old barn; a curious little boy with a stick; a barking dog; angry bees swarming the child; the boy slapping and whimpering at them; silence and stillness; the child’s dead eyes staring at him.
“Hey,” Jacob interjected. “You okay?”
Miles glanced at the man. “What? No, yeah. It’s nothing. I—” Just then his foot landed on a thin cylindrical object, which rolled with his stepping motion. “Shit!” he blurted out, stumbling backwards. He nearly toppled over but somehow managed to keep his footing.
Jacob couldn’t help but chuckle. “Gravity’s a bitch sometimes, huh?”
Ignoring the comment, Miles squatted down and began rummaging through the brush for whatever he had slipped on. “There!” he said moments later, extracting the offending object from a thick clump of honeysuckle and lifting it into plain view. It was maybe a foot long, with one end badly corroded and the other dappled with ants feeding on a darkened substance.
Jacob moved in closer to have a better look and frowned. “Is that . . . rebar?”
Miles turned it over in his hand. “Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“And you think that’s what got your boy?”
“I do,” Miles said. “I think it was sticking out of the ground, at an angle maybe. Brandon went to pick up a branch, stumbled and landed on it. I’m guessing his weight was enough to snap it where it’s corroded.” He stooped over and recommenced rummaging through the underbrush. “Hang on, it’s got to be here somewhere.”
“What does?” asked Jacob.
“Ah, there we are.” Miles switched from rummaging to pulling away large tufts of honeysuckle. A half-dozen pulls later he stopped and moved aside. “Look.”
Jacob looked. At the center of the now-bare honeysuckle patch stood a rather guilty-looking nub of rusted metal, its circumference matching that of the rebar Miles was holding. “Well, that opens up a whole other can of worms, don’t it?”
“Sure does,” Miles said. “First in my mind is: how far does it go into the ground?” He reached down, gripped the nub tightly and attempted to move it back and forth. It moved a quarter inch in either direction, but that was all. Miles clamped his other hand on the nub and tried again, achieving the same result. “Feels like it’s in there pretty deep.”
“Which means it probably didn’t fall from something tall,” Jacob deduced, looking up, “though I’m not sure what that thing would even be.”
“Me neither,” Miles said. “From what I understand, this whole area wasn’t developed until the Renfrew Company purchased it some thirty years ago. Before that, it was just wild land.”
“Then what the fuck?”
Miles planted his hands on his hips. “You know what? To tell the truth, I don’t really care about the ‘why’ of it right now.”
Jacob removed his Yankees cap and wiped his brow. His short red hair looked like orange fire in the bright sunlight. “You want to know if more of these things are out here.”
“Yep,” Miles said. “Once I have that figured, I’ll move onto how deep they go, then try to solve the ‘why’.”
“Roger that, amigo.”
Miles reexamined the clearing. “If you’re still up for it, want to help me look?”
Jacob flipped his cap back onto his head. “I’m already sweaty and I don’t have shit to do until tonight. I say let’s keep the good times rolling.”
***
Later, after a long hot shower, Miles shuffled into the living room and plopped down on the sofa next to Brandon. “Whatcha up to, compadre?”
Brandon pointed at the TV screen. On it, Jake the Dog and Finn the Human were battling the Ice King, who’d once again kidnapped Princess Bubblegum.
“Adventure Time, huh?” Miles said.
“Where the fun will never end,” Brandon replied.
“Got to love the classics.” Miles eyed the boy’s leg. “How you doing?”
Brandon ran his index finger over the bandages. “Bad biscuits.”
Interpreting that as a negative response, Miles got him another pill and a glass of water. “Sorry, bud. That should kick in soon enough. In the meantime, want to hear something crazy?”
“Sure.”
“So, you know the spikey thing that poked you in the thigh?”
“Hmm, no. Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Funny,” Miles said. “Well, I actually found it in the woods. Looks to be a piece of rebar—a steel rod they put in concrete to help make it stronger. Anyway, in addition to the piece that got you, I found the bit it broke off from. I tried to pull that bit out of the ground, but couldn’t. It’s in there deep.”
Brandon giggled at something Jake had just yelled at Finn on the TV.
Miles waited until the episode ended, then shut the television off.
“Hey,” Brandon said. “I want to keep watching.”
“You can,” Miles assured him. “I just want to discuss something first without any distractions.”
Brandon simpered but didn’t protest.
“Great,” Miles said. “So, listen. Along with the rebar that hurt you, guess what I found?”
“Princess Bubblegum?”
“No. Five other pieces of rebar sticking up out of the ground.”
Brandon’s face bunched up as the number sank in. “Six rebar thingies?”
“Yeah. In that clearing, all hidden by bushes and tall grass.”
“Weird,” Brandon said. “Why are they there?”
“No clue. But I think they’re connected to something underground.”
“Underground? Like what?”
“Again, no clue. But I’m going to find out.” Miles sighed and sank back into the couch. “After a few days rest, though. Your dad isn’t the spring chicken he used to be.” He thought of the upcoming work week at his accounting firm, which looked to be a hellish one. “Next weekend, most likely.”
“Awesome,” Brandon said, eyes returning to the TV. “Can I watch more Finn and Jake now?”
Miles powered on the device and handed the boy the remote. “Sure, bud. Sure.”
***
The following Friday night Miles and Brandon decided to have a pizza and movie night. Brandon suggested Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs as the main feature, so Miles ordered a couple of meatball pies.
Early the next morning, Brandon crept into bed with Miles, claiming he’d had a really bad dream. Miles asked if he remembered what it was about.
“Yes,” Brandon said. “A bad man trapped me in the basement and stuck a spear in my belly. I was screaming for you to save me the whole time, but you never came.”
Miles held him tight and together they fell back asleep, rising again around ten-thirty. After breakfast Miles got the boy started on his math homework, and ensured both of their walkie-talkies were good to go.
“Working on the trail some more?” Brandon inquired.
“Sort of,” Miles said. “Like I said last night, I need to figure out what all the rebar connects to.”
“I want to go with you to help. My leg feels a lot better.”
“I know, and I love our team-ups. But the doctor prescribed two weeks with minimal walking. You can help by resting and we’ll see where we’re at in a week.”
Brandon sighed. “Fine.”
Miles gave the boy a walkie-talkie. “Same channel as before. I’ll be back in a while.”
***
The temperature outside was cooler than it had been of late. Mid-eighties with a decent breeze.
“I’ll take it,” Miles said.
From the shed he gathered a bag of tools—shovel, spade, pickaxe, sledgehammer—and hauled it to the clearing. His plan was to start at the foremost rebar tine, the one that had injured Brandon. Dig down until he uncovered its origins, then move onto the others.
The shovel made quick work of the surprisingly pliable earth seated around the rebar. It was looser than he expected and came up easier than store-bought potting soil. About two feet down the shovel’s blade struck something hard and metallic. And seemingly hollow.
“What the shit?” Miles said.
He cleared away ten more shovelfuls of loose dirt and set the shovel aside. A jagged, square-foot of blue-grey metal stared up at him from the bottom of the hole. The rebar tine, he saw, was welded to the metal surface. Puzzled, Miles tapped the surface with the heel of his boot and listened as it issued a dull reverberation.
“Definitely hollow,” he said.
He wondered if it could have been an old oil or septic tank, for some home that had once stood in the clearing. If so, it must have been one whopper of a place because oil and septic tanks weren’t typically as big as this structure seemed to indicate. As to why it had rebar tines sticking out of it, no rational explanation came to mind.
After radioing Brandon to see if he was okay, Miles moved onto the remaining pieces of rebar. The result was the same at each: rusty blue-grey metal and a welding joint keeping the rebar in place. He searched for words printed on the metal surface but found none.
Unsure what to think, Miles retreated to the unfinished pathway and enjoyed a well-earned break in the shade. As he rested, he came to the decision that he needed to unearth the whole top portion of the damn structure. See if he could locate any markings. He just wasn’t sure he wanted to do that today or wait until tomorrow.
He was on the verge of calling it quits when Jacob came ambling up the trail, shovel in hand. “Howdy, neighbor! Back at it again, I see. Need a hand?”
Miles noticed the man was decked out in a flannel shirt, jeans, gloves, a hat and boots. “Um, sure. Looks like you came to party.”
Jacob chuckled. “Just got back from visiting family in Utica and could stand to blow off some steam.” He reached the clearing and appraised Miles’ handiwork. “You’ve been busy.”
Miles filled him in on his theory about the oil/septic tank.
“No shit?” Jacob asked, kicking the metal surface with one of his steel-toed boots. The sound of it reverberating made him grin. “The mystery literally deepens. What’s the plan?”
“I was thinking I’d dig out the areas between the rebar and check for markings.”
Jacob moved to the furthest hole and readied his shovel. “Tally-fucking-ho,” he said and drove the shovel’s blade into the ground.
***
At quarter after four, Miles stopped digging and peered down at his boot. His shovel had just struck something about half a foot down. Something that had sounded more solid and less hollow.
“What’s that?” Jacob said, having heard it too.
Miles levered his shovel ninety degrees, prying loose a hefty chunk of earth. “Beats me. Come help me real fast.” He tossed the chunk aside and repeated the process.
Jacob joined him and together they swiftly uncovered the irregularity.
“Jesus,” Jacob said, staring at their new discovery. “Is that what I think it is?”
“Yeah,” said Miles. “It’s a fucking hatch door.”
It certainly looked the part. Circular. Three foot in diameter. Robust hinge. Full-on handwheel. Like something off the International Space Station. Or the Red October.
Jacob fiddled with an object attached to the hatch’s lower curve. He brushed dirt off it and held it in his palm. It was a padlock. A large and new looking one at that.
“Seems like someone doesn’t want us getting inside,” Jacob observed.
“I have a monster set of bolt cutters in the shed,” Miles offered.
“Terrific. Let’s get that bad boy and see what’s inside this bad boy.”
Miles peered at the padlock, curious why it looked so new, when everything else seemed so rusty and old? When no good explanation came to mind, he said: “I think we’re going to save that for tomorrow morning. I’m losing steam. I want to finish digging out the top part and then go hang out with Brandon.” Saying the boy’s name elicited an unexpected swell of emotion, and anxiety.
“Got more restraint than I do,” Jacob said, resuming his shoveling. “But that’s cool. Adds to the mystique of it. Just make sure you come get me before you sheer that sucker off. I’m dying to know what’s in there.”
Miles transferred his gaze to the handwheel. “Me too,” he lied. He couldn’t pinpoint why, but the prospect of discovering what lay within the buried structure suddenly filled him with dread. Something bad was in there. He was sure of it. Something to do with Brandon.
He tried to expel the awful notion from his mind, but it refused to go.
Distraught, he plunged his shovel’s blade into the ground and extracted a large clod of dirt. As he cast it into the clearing, the first wave of mosquitos arrived, targeting their faces and necks. Cursing, they both applied more DEET and did their best to finish as soon as humanly possible.
* * *
As thanks for all his help, Miles invited Jacob to dinner. Jacob graciously accepted. After a hasty shower at his house, he came over with a six-pack of Miller Lite in one hand and a two-liter of Coke in the other.
In no mood to cook, Miles Grub-Hubbed a pile of KFC and together they happily dined on The Colonel’s famous recipe. While they ate, Jacob filled Brandon in on the hatch situation and its stalwart padlock. The boy was utterly fascinated by the revelation. So much so that he abandoned his meal and began limping around the living room like an agitated dog.
“Why’s it there?” he burbled as he paced. “Why’s it locked? What’s inside? Secret treasure? Monsters? And why’s the lock new? And who put it there?” And so on and so forth.
When, several minutes later, Miles finally intervened, he didn’t bother using any of his gentler tactics. “Brandon,” he said, using the nuclear option “return to the dinner table right now or I’m taking your screen time away—for an entire week.”
As he suspected it would, the ultimatum did the trick. Brandon stopped mid-burble, processed the cost of not obeying, and promptly returned to his chicken and mashed potatoes.
“Don’t fret, kid,” Jacob told him. “That’s the stuff we’ve been asking ourselves. Me, personally? I’m betting on treasure, like in The Goonies.”
Brandon smiled at that. “I like that one.” He switched his gaze to Miles. “Can I be there when you open it up tomorrow? My leg’s doing okay.”
Miles considered it as he sampled a drumstick. His gut, which still churned with echoes of the dread he’d felt at the clearing, told him to keep the boy away from the hatch. His rational brain, however, told him to quit indulging irrational impulses and let the boy participate. It was just a stupid hatch for God’s sake.
“Okay,” Miles said. “But no funny business. I say and you do. Got it?”
“Monkey hear, monkey do,” Brandon confirmed.
“That settles it,” Jacob announced. “We’re all going.”
Brandon clapped his hands in agreement. “We’re all going!”
***
Brandon had already brushed his teeth and gotten dressed when he came tugging on Miles’ comforter at quarter after eight. “Dad, Dad!” he said excitedly, like it was Christmas morning. “Wake up so we can open the hatch!”
Squinting at his alarm clock, Miles told the boy to go back to bed. “For an hour at least. Two is better.”
“No way, Jose,” Brandon said, dancing around the bed like a whirling dervish. “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
Knowing the boy wouldn’t be dissuaded, Miles sat up and swallowed his annoyance. “Okay, you win! I’m up. Now go fix me a cup of coffee before I eat you.”
Once he was showered and had a cup of coffee in him, Miles texted Jacob to see if he was awake. Jacob responded immediately, claiming he’d been up since six and was raring to go.
They met out front ten minutes later and adjourned to the shed, where they procured a sledgehammer and Miles’ heavy-duty bolt cutters.
“Yeah,” Jacob said, admiring the cutters, “these should work just fine.”
During the short jaunt out to the clearing, Miles marveled at how well Brandon’s leg was holding up. He was barely limping and didn’t seem to be in much pain. “How’s it feeling?” he asked.
Brandon gave him a thumbs-up. “No problemo.”
“All right, tough guy,” Miles said. “Let me know if anything changes.”
When they reached the clearing, Brandon scampered over to the hatch and grabbed the handwheel. “Wow, Dad. This is so cool. What if it’s, like, a submarine or something?”
“Then we’re all going to be famous, kid,” Jacob replied. He brought the bolt cutters to the hatch and looked back at Miles. “Want to do the honors, or shall I?”
Miles motioned for Jacob to go ahead. The man beamed like an idiot and set the cutters on the U-shaped shackle. “One, two, three!” he said and clamped down hard. The cutters bit through the metal with ease, producing a loud, satisfying kink!
(continued in next post....)

A little out of place My waking Life was but a Dream of Emptiness I was alone and in pain, so much pain I only could feel bad, with a hollow inside, I was only the people I thought of and mirrored the others around. I lied and Stole and Drugged myself to Death never knowing I never had a life. I had no Self, therefore no self respect, therefore no love of self because I felt I didn’t deserve it. I grew up with Satanism and Witchcraft in my life. I was traumatized from all forms of abuse.

 Caring for others but never myself I didn’t matter to myself only others I cared. But a dull care. I did what was wrong for the wrong reasons. My Nana in Hospice, I care for her, she and an Aunt always praying for me to a God I only tried to believe in. But I was so So Hurt that I hoped there was no God and only a Blanket of Black. Fear made me reject God. 

Nonstop for Days caring for my Nana I was getting mad she needed so badly. This made me begin to beg in prayer for God to Let Me Be Human. For days I cried and Prayed this. Then I could feel again, seemingly just like that, and I broke Down Sobbing in relief I could feel myself for myself and not an unworthy sac of Sin.

 My Nana got to hear me tell her that if it hadn’t been for her I may very well have never found Jesus. I got to tell her how much she matters to her and get to show her every time I clean her or turn her or move her muscles for her, that she is very special to me. I was the worst addict I have ever fathomed and still after 14 years of chasing highs with sometimes literal poisons. I used to get high off antihistamines taking up to 200 tablets in a day, I used to go through a bottle of 240 Hydrocodone with Acetaminophen in 2-3 days. I’ve been in Organ Failure 5 times. Rhabdomialaysis 3 times. Over 1-200 hospitalizations from overdoses because I wanted to keep myself from dying so I didn’t hurt my family but couldn’t help but take pills. I had been thinking Cough Syrup (A heavy hallucinogenic ingredient called Dextromethorphan) thinking that it helped me get closer to God because in a way it did. It brought me so much pain God would come and save me and I would think the drugs helped but the pain the drugs made had me begging for a God I didn’t believe and He would come for me but then I would shut the door. A Doctor for Addiction, he is a Father to me, he helped me realize I was a person, I had feelings, I had a heart, this man saved me. I saved myself by going to him and doing it but he saved my life. And my Nana helped save my soul. She loves me and her love reached through my shell and I felt a Heart for the first time. I am so happy I’m at peace. I was not worthy of myself and now I’m comfortable with myself. I have self respect. I have an Identity and now I have a life and a purpose. This is all new to me but so far it’s worth every pain to get to the point where I let myself get feelings back. I thought I was in Hell because I was in Hell. I’m saved and Happy now. Thank Jesus! 

I (21M) recently broke my nose playing basketball and needed surgery to fix it after doctors claimed it was too late to be reset manually. I had always had a small bump in my nose and a deviated septum, but never bothered to do anything about it. Ever since my nose bone and septum were even further disrupted from the basketball hit, it was much more obviously crooked.
My parents helped me find a really good plastic surgeon in the area, and luckily we were able to afford the surgery. He first met with me to take pictures of my nose from different angles, and to show me a virtual simulation of what I would look like with revisions. All he was doing was re-straightening my nose and septum, but a 3D rendition really showed how different I would look. He sent me home with some drugs and I began to prep for my surgery in 7 days.

Prep

Preparing was very easy, with only a few dietary restrictions. 5 days prior to the surgery, I had to start applying ointment inside my nose, and start taking homeopathic tablets. All was fine.
Wasn't allowed to eat before midnight prior, like any surgery, and on the day of the surgery I came in at 8 AM, very thirsty. I changed into my gown and took a nausea pill and another pill they gave me. Wheeled me into the OR and the anesthesiologist started to administer an IV. Fell asleep shortly after.

Immediate Post Surgery

When I woke up, I felt a bad head pain. I later realized I had my contact lenses in during the surgery, and that was most likely why I woke up in pain. Please don't do the same. The surgery took about 3 hours and I was sleeping for another hour or so. I was very woozy and now had a cast and bandages all over my nose. You're not allowed to mess with any of those bandages, except for the one that catches your nosebleeds, which you change out regularly.
For context, they put about 4 stitches on my septum (columella) and 5 on each outer side of my nostrils. These were the ones they ended up removing 8 days post-op. Usually they're taken out after six to eight days. They also put in around 10 total "dissolvable stitches", as they put it, which are meant to simply dissolve or absorb after anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months. More on this later.
At 12:30 I was brought home. They gave me Hydrocodone-acet 5-325 for the pain. Even though the nurse encouraged me to try Tylenol as an alternative to avoid nausea and constipation, I already have IBS and the Tylenol wasn't cutting it, so I quickly turned to the opioids. To put it bluntly, the opioids made everything manageable. Even my IBS pains disappeared. The bottle said take 2, twice a day; I took 1, twice a day, and hardly felt any pain while under the effects. As soon as 6 hours passed, though, I could tell the effects were wearing off. By the third night, I barely needed them anymore. Ended up with 4 extra pills. MAKE SURE YOU TAKE OPIOIDS WITH WATER & FOOD!!

Early Recovery

Like I mentioned, the first two days post surgery were very bloody. I was getting up to change my blood-soaked gauze every 30 minutes. I also had no appetite and could not really open my mouth fully to eat. I stuck with soup until Day 3 or 4, when I started to gain an appetite again. The tip of my nose was also completely numb, as well as my upper lip area.

Sleeping

Sleeping is a big issue for some, although my quality of sleep was personally very good.
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A HUMIDIFIER! I slept well, but I did not wake up well. Before I bought a humidifier (Day 3), I woke up both mornings with a completely crusted shut nose. Despite cleaning it properly (more on this later), the bleeding that happened during my sleep built up and dried up completely. This could be inevitable, but it stopped happening when I started using a humidifier, so I think cleaning it before bed and using the humidifier could be the difference.
Also, I am a side sleeper big time. You CAN NOT side-sleep no matter what during recovery, and you NEED TO HAVE A GOOD NECK PILLOW to assist with this. For me, it helped to use two pillows + the neck pillow so my body knew not to roll around. Keeping your head elevated is the only way to stop incessant bleeding during sleep.

Cleaning Nose

From the day after surgery (Day 2) until the day of cast & stitch removal (Day 8), basically all you do is CLEAN and REST. I sat in bed for hours waiting until I could clean my nose again, since they only said I should do it two times a day. You use a saline rinse to liquefy some of the dried blood, and then use peroxide to quite literally burn it away. The peroxide is a life saver and will break down big chunks of blood. YOU WILL FEEL LIKE THERE IS CRUSTED BLOOD IN YOUR UPPER NOSE. This is how I felt the whole time, and I received many emails from my OR nurse telling me that I should not put my Q-tip further up since there are internal stitches. I learned the hard way by reaching inside with tweezers and tugging at a stitch. Just clear out the inner crest of the nose and use the nasal rinse to try to enable breathing. If there's one thing I learned, it's that you can't expect to properly breathe until the cast comes off. Worth the wait.
Also, using the peroxide will make your skin raw and dry. You must immediately follow it up by running a thin layer of Mupirocin (they will provide) on it. This will not only stop the pain and protect the skin, but it also stops itchiness of stitches and stops cold air from hurting the nostrils.
Cleaning the stitches properly with peroxide will prevent the stitch removal from being too painful. You will know they're clean if all you can see is the little knot of the stitches. Also use the Mupirocin for the stitches.

Icing

This whole time you should also be icing your nose. I failed to do that the first two entire days, and all that resulted was a little more bruising and swelling. It can help to distract from the pain. My doc's strategy was using a rubber glove filled with frozen peas, which can be reused plenty. I just rested the palm on my forehead and let the fingers sorta touch my cheekbones.

Bathing

My doctor didn't let me take a bath until the day after surgery (Day 2), and basically the whole time I was paranoid about getting the cast wet. I took baths frequently, and washed my hair separately by leaning backwards over the bathtub. It's impossible to shower without messing something up. After the cast removal my first shower was super relaxing.

Later Recovery

By Day 6 and 7 the only symptoms are a little bit of pain (I didn't need opioids after Day 3) and a lot of itchiness. Itchiness is of course a good sign, since it means you're healing in those places, but it happens more and more prior to the cast removal. First the stitches started to tingle and itch, and then by Day 7 the bridge of my nose was itching too. I found ice to be SUPER helpful in distracting from the itchiness.
Even at this point, going out into cold air was super painful and my body was definitely not a fan of being outside. I stayed in mostly until Day 8. If you're in a moist, hot place, definitely go outside. Cold and dry is not very pleasant.

Cast & Stitches Removal

On Day 8, I got to the doctor's office and he applied some numbing cream along my stitches. He removed the cast with a bit of pressure on my nose, but nothing terrible. He let me keep the cast. After a bit, he started to cut and remove the stitches. He told me it wouldn't hurt too much since I did a good job cleaning the stitches, but it definitely hurt. Again, definitely worth it given how much trouble they were giving me. After an annoying minute or two, he finally finished. He then clamped my nostrils open and used a suction device to suck out all that gunk in the back of my nose, the stuff I was saying not to touch. It was amazing. It didn't hurt and it felt amazing to breathe at that exact moment. I had never breathed quite properly so it was an instant memory.
All that was left after this was the many (internal) dissolvable stitches that remained, and the complete lack of feeling in the tip of my nose. I asked my doctor if this feeling would go away soon thinking he'd say yes, in a couple days, but he responded saying it would probably take 1 or 2 months. This really bummed me out since the sensation is so uncomfortable, but I'm trying to take it in stride. I also have not been able to smile properly (currently at Day 9) which I am assuming will go away soon. There is also a single dissolvable stitch in the upper bridge of my nose, which I assume was there to fasten the cast to my skin? Not sure.
On the bright side, my nose looks great, and I should gain a good amount of feeling back in it after a couple of weeks. I hear horror stories about having a numb nose for years, but no need to worry about that. The tip of my nose is obviously still pointing upwards, but in a couple of weeks that will also hopefully change.
One thing that bothers me is the fact that I still have at least 6 stitches inside my nose, which I am not sure will disappear anytime soon. The time range on a dissolvable stitch is pretty wide, and it's very difficult to have little spiky things in your nose constantly. As a note, the numbness has seemed to get better after a couple of days, and the stitches are less restrictive. It really helps to make different faces and try to re-adjust your face to scrunching and whatnot. I think this allows the nose to feel back to normal, even if it still has stitches inside.

2-3 Weeks Post-Op

The week following the cast removal was much, much better, although still difficult. My main symptoms through this period were a buildup of nose gunk and obviously numbness. The numbness is very easily ignorable, but breathing gets hard at times when (I assume) stuff latches onto the internal stitches and you need to clean it. I found I can minimize the stuffy nose by using the saline rinse every couple of hours. Also, several of my dissolvable stitches came out less than a week after cast removal, including the stitch on the outside of my nose on the bridge. That being said, it seems a bunch of them are still inside. I am still hesitant to pull on anything or to dig inside it 20 days post-op.
I went out clubbing (pretty stupid) around 2 weeks post-op and got knocked in the nose probably 4 or 5 times during the night. It hurt a good amount, since the nose stays very sensitive until about a month into recovery, but I don't think it did any damage. I would suggest not risking this until around 3 or 4 weeks at earliest.
I also have not been elevating my head properly during sleep, and at times I sleep on my side even though I have heard I am not supposed to. It is also not worth risking.
There is only one real worry I have besides waiting for the numbness to slowly dissipate is that of a nasal valve collapse (thanks to one of the commenters LOL). I have felt like one of my nostrils is smaller, specifically that the upper rim is hanging a bit too low. It is not noticeable at all from outside, and only a little bit annoying. I will be logical and wait until a couple months pass before I make any judgements, and I also trust my surgeon way more than enough to know I am probably just freaking myself out.

Overall Experience

Overall, I would say the surgery was worth it, given the outcome. The prep was nothing, the first 3 days of recovery were hell, but the last days were just a waiting period, and after the cast comes off, you feel much better and can return to anything basically. My surgery was on January 4th and it is now the 13th and I am completely back to normal. Besides the stitches in the nose, which bother me less and less each day.
You will have no issue (and not much pain) at all with this surgery if you are willing to:
- take opioids for 3 days post-op (I did fine with just half dosage)
- have a numb tip of the nose for up to weeks/months after (gets better with time)
- deal with a bit of annoying poking stitches in your nose for a couple weeks after (no pain)
​
Since I'm only a week post-surgery, I'll keep updating this where it's needed. I'm only going in for a follow up next month, so I'll probably only add updates about the stitches or numbness.
Good luck to everyone who plans to do the same/similar surgery. Hope you get what you want.

My mother (75) is in the end stage of Parkinson’s. She was diagnosed 3 years ago and it has advanced more rapidly than I imagined. She is on hospice. She cries out in pain, has trouble breathing, cannot drink through a straw (we use a syringe and she swallows), and cannot eat (will occasionally eat soft foods). She has been unable to take her medications and is overall shutting down. Last night my sister gave her oxygen and a hydrocodone pain pill. Now she is on regular morphine drops.
She’s still there, laughing occasionally, contributing to conversation, but in and out of delirium and confusion.
How long will this stage continue? I hate seeing her suffer, and I’m not entirely sure what to expect at this point. My father passed 7 years ago from cancer, but that was a terminal diagnosis that was expected. My mom has declined rapidly. Recent seizures, a fall that broke her wrist, these have been drastic set backs that plummeted my mothers health. Is this it? Or will this bed ridden stage continue for an extended period? I’m unsure and just need someone with the experience to help me understand.

Hi all - question, will try to keep this short -
Long story short - I had a bad dentist out in a deep filling in my lower left back molar. It fell out, he replaced it. All hell broke loose with in a week.
It got so bad last week I went to an emergency appt wirth my new dentist last Wednesday. He attempted a root canal and couldn’t finish it, so I had rk go to an endodontist today to have the root canal complete.
(Note - this doctor has done all six of my root canals. Four of those have been since April 2022 because my old dentist would do a filling, ten a month or so later I’d end up with infection and terrible pain. Is go back to the dentist and he’s send me for another root canal. None of these has cavities in them at the time of the too canal. I would always be told by the endo things like "that tooth sure took that filling weird." The same thing happened to my husband about a year ago z- that time the old dentist did the root canal, he got a crown, then boom, he'd end up in pain, and had to have a RC retreatment (by our endo.) He had an infection after the first RC and then voila.
My endo told me today I need to just "forgetL getting my crown on my last root canal from that dentist and go to my new dentist. Obviously something is going on.
Well last Wednesday my new dentist attempted a root canal on the tooth (lower back right molar) - he couldn't finish because of the way the old dentist shoved the filling into the tooth and he wasn't able to reach down into two of theee canals. So I had to go to my endodontist today at 7:30 for it to be done.
Problem is, I am in a lot of pain. The whole right side of my face. (Also, I've been on antibiotics - took one round of zmocyllin with the C word twice daily until a Thursday last week. Monday I began taking a stronger antibiotic, starts with a C? Neither antibiotics helped the lain, no abcess showed up on X-rays either. So I feel the pain I had came from the tooth; not the infection.
Well, after todays root canal, I am hurting , could feel it as the numbness was still workin even. Now it's wearing off and I am still hurting bad. I work on the radio and have to be on shortly from home, and have some work to do (I'm in sales and marketing , I talk a lot), then I have rehearsal from 7-10 for a play I'm in and I'm a lead, so I talk a lot. It hurts worse when I talk; and life must go on. Once this numbness. Wears off I'm terrified.
Is it wrong for me to call the endo and ask for just a few pain killers? Five root canals and I've never asked. He said to take Tylenol and ibuprofen but I can't stand ibuprofen bc of stomach issues. I've been taking naproxen too with Tylenol But can only take 1-2 of those a dayC really just one or it hurts my stomach.
Is it okay to call and ask "hey could you call in some painkillers for me to take until this settles down some?" Should I then also mention all I need to do that I can't get out of? I'm worried they'll say you should have pain, the nerve is gone - yet I'm hurtintC including my jaws on both sides, side of my face, area around toothed and because I have major neck issues, my neck, arms, and shoulders are killing me from sitting in that chair for so long.
Forgive my typos - I'm in a hurry and want to hurry and call them if everyone thinks it's okay. I'm afraid of being looked down upon or not believed.
Until a few months ago I was on hydrocodone for my neck pain. I have nerve ablations now and they helped a ton so I went off them, so my body is still getting used to producing its own pain relievers, and after being on pain meds kf one kind or another since Late 2007, Tylenol just doesn't help me much.
Please, any advice is helpful. Is it okay to ask for a few until iilts calmed down some? What should I say or not say? I'm scared to death.

For context, before everything I am about to tell you about, I felt very lonely. I had a girlfriend before but honestly it wasn't going to work out and I moved past it. The feeling of loneliness is what tortures me. I felt depressed and alone every night as I laid in bed. Then everything changed.
I (19M) met my ex (18F) in my senior year (her junior year) of high school. We started talking through a Snapchat group chat for a class we both took. One night, we started DMing each other about some common interest we had. After that, we talked almost every night into the early morning hours as friends. Well we started to develop feelings and eventually, she asked me out to a movie and I of course said yes. We both enjoyed it and from then on we started dating. For the first time in a long time, I was happy. I never felt depressed. I smiled every time I even just thought of her. This was late April 2022. Over the summer, we hung out a lot and were completely in love. We even gave each other our first times. Eventually I learned that she lived in an abusive household. There were times where I had to pick her up because she got in a bad fight with her parents. I was okay with this (well, not the abuse) and would be there for her whenever. She also had mental illness problems like me. I was also there for her about them whenever she needed. I did not mind being there for my ex, because I loved her and that's what I should do. Sometimes we'd get into small arguments about things and she was the type to go silent instead of talking things out. I was also pretty bad at dealing with it but started to learn. This is important for later.
Eventually, the abuse from her parents gave birth to the idea of having her stay with me and my parents. On paper, this was a good idea and would not only give us more time together but would get her away from her abusive parents. In practice, my mother (58F) basically ruined it all. My mother is what some would call a narcissistic parent, or N-mom. She is a control freak and does not like different opinions, especially when it comes to parenting. On the flip side, my ex's parents were a lot more hands-off in comparison, making a rough transition rougher. The signs started off small, too small to care about. Having my ex eat at the dinner table "like a family", which both me and her hate because it's generally awkward, and forces us to eat whenever my mother said so despite if we're actually hungry and my ex having a schedule of going on runs around that time everyday. Another thing was getting ready in the morning. I would drive my ex to school (though I was graduated and looking for jobs so I would just get up and go back to sleep afterwards) and every morning when she was getting ready, my mother would nag and complain about her using the bathroom. We have a 1 bathroom house, so it would be a valid complaint if my mother actually needed to be in the bathroom at that time. The small things slowly became medium things, such as nagging over homework that wasn't due for a week or was already planned to be worked on that day. I personally know how annoying this is from having been in school and living there but I can't imagine how the additional circumstances made it feel. Essentially, she hated that my mother tried acting like she was my ex's parent, when that was far from any truth. We understood well how gracious it was to let her live with us, but it was also very stressful how she was treated. It was to the point where it started to affect our relationship.
The post-argument (is that the right term?) from the small arguments lasted longer. We had quite a bit less contact, both romantically and sexually. The stress just affected her mentally in a way where it was harder to do things. This went on for about a few months, until one morning before school, my ex got into a fight with my mother. We're at about early December 2022, if not late late November. She had gotten everything she needed ready ahead of time, so she was mostly ready to leave and could finish quickly. She found a game that she was very immersed in, and did this to get a bit of playtime in. My mother came over and gave her a hard time, and despite her better judgment, my ex snapped and got snippy. When it comes to my mother, this is a huge mistake. She is very sensitive to this kind of thing, especially since she has what I can only describe as a superiority complex when it comes to younger people like us. Anyways, she gets upset about the tone and it escalates into an argument/vent about my ex's frustrations with staying here. It ended with my mother making it all about her and proceeding to kick my ex out, run off and call my father and sister, as well as MY EX'S FUCKING SCHOOL COUNCILOR and gives them (her version of) the story. Luckily, her councilor didn't believe a lick of it because she actually knows my ex. Eventually, she comes back upstairs while I'm consoling my ex and says she doesn't need to leave. Doesn't apologize or anything, because that would mean admitting she was wrong. This is the turning point in the relationship, because eventually (with her councilor's advice) I help my ex move back home anyways because it was all too much. Even now, just mentioning my mother stresses her greatly.
She never came over after the incident except for two or three times when my mother wasn't present. The overarching problem with this is that my house was our main hangout spot. We'd get comfortable, cuddle up and watch movies, streams, shows together. Even if we went out on a date we came back to my place to hang. Our relationship soured even more since we couldn't even see each other as often. To make things worse, around this time we had tension over communication problems, and for the most part nothing either of us (mostly me) suggested to fix them was being followed through on. She shut down after arguments, I pouted or even sometimes self-deprecated because (and I didn't realize until it became a problem) my depression wasn't actually gone, and I was just too happy to ever feel it. Both of us lacked a lot of self-awareness. Other issues came up too, but most of them fall under a couple of paragraphs from now so I'll hold out on that. Also of note at this point was that I was very emotionally reliant on her. She was the sole reason my feelings of loneliness and darkness were gone. Even she said this wasn't good, which I acknowledged but also found odd because it's not like we were gonna break up, right?
We broke up. It happened in late April 2023, ONE DAY before our one year anniversary. She asked to meet for lunch, to which I excitedly agreed. I was a bit slow getting ready since I hadn't expected to leave the house that day, but I thought it wouldn't be a big deal. It was. She was already at the place since her mother was downtown and they went together. When I got there, she had already left the cafe for one reason or another, may have been too crowded. Then she gave me a weird name for the place I was to find her, which took me another chunk of time. Eventually when I finally got to her in this plaza, we talked about the problems we were having. She didn't know beforehand, but her mother had finished earlier than she thought. We did not have time for this conversation, especially for me which I found completely unfair. She walked off suddenly and left with her mother and I didn't hear back for a bit. I just walked back to my car, at a parking garage, stunned at everything. Soon after I got a long text from her, breaking up with me. I cried in that parking garage for hours. It was like everything was crumbling around me. Many of the things she detailed were ones that I thought could be solved, like the ones I brought up already. I would have talked about these things had I been provided the time, and maybe things would have gone differently. She messaged me all of this and then blocked me, I had no time to respond. I just sat. Cried. Eventually, worried that I would become a danger to myself, I called her just to talk, just to not be ghosted. This somehow ended up with her inviting me over to watch a stream together. This then turned into us getting kind of frisky and to make a long story short within a few days we became FWB. I was somewhat satisfied with this arrangement, I still felt cared about. After about a month, she ended it though. She said I couldn't handle it. What I really couldn't handle was any emotional relationship being cut off in the first place. Since then, I haven't been the same. I've just been depressed, anxious, riddled with intrusive and suicidal thoughts. We were friends for a time but now it seems like she is avoiding me. As of now, she barely talks to me. But I'm not just depressed that it ended.
She has a friend. I mentioned earlier that there were "other issues" with me and my ex. Well, to make it quick and blunt, she had no interest in even trying kinkier things. It's not something that particularly bothered me by itself, but it was the fact that she had done them with this other guy but I was off-limits because I'm not experienced. Her reasoning, looking back, was pretty sound, but the existence of her friend made it upsetting to me. Here's some backstory on him. This friend is 26M, noticeably older than her. They started talking when my ex was about 13 (so he was 21ish) and have been close (98% online) friends since. To say he has a large influence on her is an understatement. He even does hypnosis sessions for her at times. It even seems like she is aware that he possibly/probably groomed her, but doesn't want to admit it. One of the first times she mentioned him to me was as (and this is a direct quote) "my bdsm 'has this guy been possibly grooming me' friend" I also believe that he even said it once, but I can't remember if it was jokingly or not. Anyways, they talked over Discord all the time (which me and my ex also use mainly it's just more convenient than Snap or most other things) and as previously mentioned had a history, not of dating or anything but a history. Not a great look for him IMO, though maybe I'm just biased at this point I don't know anymore. Maybe I'm just in my own mind but I think he is part of the reason she broke up with me. She mentioned talking to her friends at the time, which would include him. Additionally, she outright told me he had her promise we were done for good because of a prior relationship she had where they were on and off. At a certain point after FWB was over, my ex told me that they had started dating in name only, since she wasn't interested and just didn't want to rebound. He was interested though for context.
Anyways, fast forward to today. I am 99% sure she has moved in with him by now, in a different state some hours away. It's him, her, and his roommate/roommate's gf. We never got to meet and say goodbye, even though I thought we were friends. I think she just up and went one day. I initially didn't mean to make this post mainly about her, but I guess it just ended up like that. I am worried about her, but I don't know if I can even do anything.
Guys, I'm at the end of my rope. This whole situation haunts me every waking second I don't keep my mind busy. The pit in my stomach. The made-up situations in my mind. I want it all to end. I don't doubt I would feel better if I could get into a new relationship, with someone who genuinely cares about me, who's presence would put take me out of my emotional debt enough to seek actual professional help to heal over time, but I don't think it's gonna happen. I'm not in high school anymore. I'm not even in college. I work a full-time job to save up for moving out. I'm socially inept and anxious and don't know how I'd even meet someone new. I know someone might suggest Tinder but I've seen friends try to use it, it's not gonna result in anything but a worse self-image.
I have a plan. I've been practicing cutting myself to make it easier. I'm going to down an unhealthy amount of alcohol and hydrocodone, maybe acetaminophen and ibuprofen just to top it off. The alcohol would be 95% Everclear, so a dangerous amount will not be hard to drink. Then, I'll start cutting myself open at the wrists/forearms and maybe thighs. I'm hoping that on top of the practice with getting over the pain/don't-hurt-yourself barrier, I'll be able to easily do it and get a pain reduction while I wait to leave this world. The problem is I can never quite get to the mental state to do it. I had the house to myself this past week, and despite thinking it would be the perfect time to kill myself, I got too worried about the cats and dogs. I also fear death. I think about "what if death is worse than life" "what if there's nothing, or worse than nothing?". I cannot even conceptualize the nothingness of death, how can I possibly seek it? If not obvious, I'm not religious, so I don't necessarily believe in Heaven. I also don't necessarily not believe, but it's not something I'm confident enough in to seek. My mood is too back and forth too, I forget my troubles when I'm with my friends, or if I'm deep in distractions. I think about this when I think of death. It's all too complex. I want to want to live, if that makes sense. But the pain of living is just too much. The ideal way for me to go would be in someone's loving arms, so I can at least not bear the pain of living while I leave life.
Don't worry about me. I'm too indecisive to kill myself. In the end, I'm just a depressed ex-boyfriend who can't get over himself and his shitty views on death. I want to be worried about, why else would I post here, but I just don't think I deserve it, haha.

Note: please read the first part go here: https://www.reddit.com/KeepWriting/comments/wu130x/the_gold_dealer_part_1/
and read The Gold Dealer Part 2(a)
Warning: Part 2 has some crasse descriptions of crude graphic sex. Do not read if that offends you.
Do not read if you expect any happiness or hope except perhaps the occasional mocking chuckle at the author.
Ideas taken from other sources are noted, however you have to fix the links to see them. See The Gold Dealer part I for credit to the original Gold Dealer video. I obscured the links so the images don’t show up in my post.
All writing is fictional and may or may not be related to any actual people or events in real life. The real part is subjective, though - sometimes real is ill-defined and the opposite of what you think.
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The music got louder and louder and with lights and I'm dancing to “Tuyo Y Mío” in a bright beachside open air bar, and twirling and sweating and she danced against me. I could feel her body move with the beat, and we were good, at least we felt good. I smiled and looked at her dark eyes reflecting the light so quick. We must have taken lessons or something but the music was so loud and the lights and heat and the sweat and movement and I looked across at her shining face and dark eyes looking at me and I could feel her hand and her other hand on my back.
The next song came on and we rose up into the air, weightless, effortlessly, and I held her hand and we spun around and around above the crowd up above the building, above the beach in the sunlight.
I pulled her tight against me and felt her dark hair over my face and my lips were on the side of her neck and suddenly a place of light, and we were lying on a blanket in a most perfect place, with blue sky with a few white cumulus clouds, overlooking an azure sea, white buildings along the coast, but we lay in a beautiful garden, maybe a vineyard, maybe an olive grove, maybe the gardens in a private estate, it didn’t matter, all dappled sunlight creating patterns through a pink bougainvillea trellis, private and peaceful on a blanket. I could hear the sound of a gentle waterfall nearby and I opened my eyes and looked at her face in the sunlight and my heart lept, she was even more beautiful than I imagined. And she could suddenly see herself through my eyes, which made me feel light.
As we ate from a picnic basket, a squirrel kept peeking out from behind the trellis, and I watched her pull a piece of bread from her sandwich and toss bits of bread and some dried fruit and nuts towards it and as she fed the squirrel it relaxed. Darting in, looking at us, her delicate white hand gently offered it snacks and it ate from her fingers. The whole time I watched her face, her cloudy look of concern as the squirrel ran back and the joy and radiance as it came closer. Her laughter as it took a piece of dried apricot from her fingers. She looked at me and stood and pulled me up by the hand laughing and as I stood up straight, my strength returned, I felt good, confident and strong and I pulled her into my arms and could feel her body against me, her heart close to mine, and we drank from the fountain, clear cold water, and we walked in the garden together, and I heard the beautiful songbird, the chaffinch, which were landing on the pink bougainvillea flowered trellis and singing. The chaffinches sang from the trellis.
When I woke up, I heard the freeway and I clutched my phone, and the screen hadn't turned off, but I kept hitting refresh, refresh, refresh and it cast a bluish light in the room and there was a message I was about to send, but I hadn’t sent it because I had fallen asleep for a moment, and I heard the sound of the freeway and I didn't want to remember the dream but I did. Then I noticed the new message, and the single black heart appeared. She must have sent it after I had fallen asleep. She stays awake all the time, I have no idea, or she sleeps when I don’t or or halfway around the world or odd hours but I don’t question something that is beyond me. I should have taken melatonin tonight but my bottle was empty.
Go on, the gold dealer said. And her voice sounded like a wind blowing gently through quaking aspen trees.
The window of fate closes so quickly. During the black swan event I crushed it. One stock. Not knowing that a five sigma move during a six week period in March, in an old boring risk-off stock happens only once in a lifetime. Insane. But I actually hit it perfectly. Started small, maybe $1,000. It turned into $3,000 - in four hours! A rush. Then more. More risk. Massive volatility, 5% swings both up and down in a single day! Each day I played and won and kept winning, $10,000 one day and $20,000 the next. Lose $15,000 but make it back the next day, and more. By the end of the month I had increased my account ten times, almost four times my annual salary. Four times my salary is 40 years of savings. FORTY YEARS of savings in six weeks. Do you have any idea what that does to you? I can ordinarily save maybe a thousand a month if I’m lucky, and over a year ten thousand is a good year. But then my stock swung 15% in one day and I made $52,467 in the last hour of trading, the power hour when it reversed violently, with VIX maxed at 112 - a 10 year high! But I didn’t understand it - all I knew is I was making money, free money, staring at the screen from 6:30 am, multiple straddles each day, until the close at one pm. I pulled thousands of dollars out in cash, piles of it at a time, as much as they would let me take. And the world shut down in a collective psychosis but I didn’t care because I had cash to spare and started giving $100 bills to the homeless guys and I was buying premium cans of Pliny the Younger from a table out in front of a closed down bar for $14 each and driving home watching the worried mask wearing zombies alone in their cars, with fearful hating eyes looking at my unmasked smiling face. Surreal. I bought new iPads and clothes and a new paddle board and paid my bills ahead six months and bought a freezer full of meat, a generator, a water barrel and a nice four thousand dollar shotgun in case the mob came to shake me down for meat. I should have bought my Porsche then but I didn’t. One more trade and I will have a heavy enough marble block - one more trade and I will be in the sun.
But the professionals won in the end and that’s how they keep their Lamborghinis in Miami so clean. A long time ago. Now it’s gone. Everything and more and I have debts that I cannot pay. It’s gone now, everything is gone. She can’t save me and won’t wait any longer. She shouldn’t.
My accountant Javier called yesterday and asked me in his stuttering, serious voice, and I could picture the brilliant mural behind his desk of the white Mexican villa with the terra cotta roof tiles and the woman in the bright red blouse and
- he said: I have to explain what a disallowed loss on a wash sale is. It raises your cost basis considerably, so even though you lost a hell of a lot, you can’t write off those losses. That year you made all the money, actually your tax bill is normal, it’s nothing, but the following year, well, it rises quite a bit, you still owe, and you owe, well, it’s substantial. My suggestion is you call the IRS and tell them you are going to just shoot yourself, and they’ll probably give you a payment plan. I hope they do. Some of my clients say they do.
Look Daniel, would you mind? Can you tell me? I’ve been doing your taxes for years and, I’m your accountant, but I’m also your friend, can I ask you what the hell happened?
He’s the best. He never lets me down and always makes me laugh, with his four inch block of heavy tungsten on his desk and all the clever tricks he has to help me. The IRS is my mortal enemy.
What should I tell him? My dreams have been intense lately. I hear woots? or, she huffs whip cream like I do, wrote a beautiful poem about no fear and a delicious wet pantyhose fantasy, involving a knife? or, she also reads all my stories and wants me to be the best man I can be, the best version of myself? or, she held my inner child when I least expected it? I can’t say anything that makes any sense anymore.
I could tell him about the moon water? I set out a clear glass vessel in the evening under a full moon and then drank the cool refreshing water? After it had been bathed in moonlight. More than once? The earthy cool taste - snow melt, moonlight distilled into a moonshine that does not intoxicate but enflames, infused with infinite intelligence in a clear glass bowl; I still remember the taste and I want more - I want to find the source, now I’m blinded, blinded and insane - in my mind it’s the only thing I see, my vision, my black heart, until that day I hear her voice next to me, feel the touch of her hand on my face, look into her dark eyes and taste her lips. And have her heart beat against mine, dreaming together the beautiful dreams together that only the lucky and the bold have.
Or maybe I could tell him I just wanted the shark blue Porsche Cayman GT4 RS with the suspended rear gull wing and I also have a process addiction. I’ve always wanted the Porsche.
Nothing matters without freedom. Freedom to have peace, to drift and be at ease. How much does that cost?
The gold dealer looked deeply at me, and I could hear her whisper something that channeled over me in a spatial coziness, but I went on with my story.
Nothing is rational. My mind is mixed. I lied and told him I put it in crypto. The only thing I have left are debts and my twenty gold bars. She bought crypto and I bought gold bars. If I had of bought the crypto, or even a four unit apartment, it would have been far different now.
I brought one tonight for you to see - how much will you give me? And I pulled the Credit Suisse bar out of my backpack.
I’m selling my gold bars and buying a used VW Camper van and heading south through Baja towards Medillin, Columbian. She will fly into Tijuana and I’ll pick her up or I can even drive over and get her. Would take a few days but I have time now. That's a great, sleepy little town, from what I’ve read anyway, I’ve never been there, Medillin is, where the air is clean, the food perfect, the cafes full, the lights at night down outside the tango dance halls brilliant, and inside the dancing beautiful, and the cost of living so cheap you can live like a king on pennies. It's my one chance - I already wrote my resignation letter and it’s ready to send when I get back. I will find love on the road, on the beaches under palm trees, at the street taco stands, and at night listening to the surf wash up on the stand with stars up above. She will whisper in my ear what it feels like to have peace, to be loved, and to feel content and just drift. Her fingers will trail over my cheek, my eyebrows, my neck, and my lips. We might move a little but not too much, then fall asleep together listening to the palm fronds gently away above.
The gold dealer looked at me intently and her voice broke over me drifting from my left ear to the right and back.
Why do you need the money so badly? What does it matter? You’re doing quite well.
I’m the big deaf, mute, Indian guy(6), with no affect, a placid, calm face and hollow eyes quietly living on the inside. Smile for the camera and pretend. The lobotomized man whom I suffocated with the pillow is my former self who, although confined, dreamed the dreams of adventure and wanted to smoke and carouse and write and have naughty sex and ride trains in Buenos Aires and eat street dosas in Bangalore and play the cello at night overlooking the city and slow dance with a girl I like. He’s dead now. It’s final. I became the Indian. I am the Indian. And I’m fully convinced that hell exists on earth because I have lived it for so long, but I want out. I say fuck it, I need to drink from the spring and I need freedom, and to quench my thirst for real; no more pills, no more booze, no more insane asylum. I need real. The money is the marble block and faucet set I need to break the bars on the windows and the glass and with the marble faucet I can break the window and find my way - and without it what? I live on a knife’s edge in a high cost state where the rent of a house seven houses down from me is more than my take home pay. One deviation and I’m done, carried out lobotomized on a stretcher, without my boys, or in a coma, a body bag? What now? I don’t have a choice - I have to go. It’s over.
She nodded and kept brushing the white cloth so I could hear the delicate sounds in each ear, and said:
If you are a man - you can lose everything and with what's left, place it all on one turn of the wheel.
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools
If you can take a heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss
If, If, If - I know that one, I said. I memorized it a long time ago, I remember now, it's coming back.
Then Yours is the Earth, and everything that's in it.(7)
I looked at the gold dealer and sat in silence, and could only hear her brush gently against the cloth. The light from the Costco parking lot shown through a small open patch in the dark film covered window and cast a ray of light across the counter.
Your whole life, this energetic experience (8) you've been having, your life is a prayer, as I've said so many times before, every moment of every day is a prayer. But every moment of your life is a prayer, everything you do is a prayer. You're having a conversation, an energetic conversation between you and reality every minute of every day, and you're not listening - because you don't know the language; you've forgotten the language. You've forgotten how to speak the language, even though you're speaking it most of the time. Most people don't even know that they're having this conversation, but they are. Every minute of every day, talking about fear. The basis of fear is an unrealistic perception of life. People live their lives generally in a state of anxiety for that which has happened to them, which doesn't exist anyhow, so they're lost in their memory, they're lost in their mind. Or they live in a state of apprehension for that which they fear may be coming, which doesn't exist now. So people live their lives in the fear of the non-existential. Fear of the non-existential is insanity.
Don’t you understand now?
The opposite of insanity is the rush, electric illumination, deeper, and I’m tired of being afraid, I'm tired of being delusional. That's why I'm here because I've decided to see where it leads, and I want that rush, electric illumination, pure bliss, euphoria (x100) and perfection, except without the deception(9). Even when my brain has returned empty of chemicals. That’s the part I don’t understand, but my college roommate who did coke and is now VP of a pharmaceutical company understood. It has nothing to do with drugs - but the thirst for life, to find that part of another being that belongs to you. The twin flame. The soul mate. Because it is true, it is real, it is going deeper to taste life in its fullness. Darkness and the light. A reflection of the sun on smooth dark water in the morning and I want that.
Speaking of tasting life, I’m thirsty. Do you mind if I have some of your water? She asked me.
I motioned, waving my hand slightly.
She took a glass off the shelf behind her and poured some, a lively trickling splash in that muffled room, and took a drink. This is spring water from a glass bottle? It is cool but not cold, the perfect temperature, and it has no overwhelming lime essence or even a lemon slice. Just pure water. It tastes like Arkansas spring water from the Ozarks, that has trickled through limestone for one thousand years, and then bottled at the source. Her sound enveloped me.
It is, I said. Pure mineral water. It’s not like that fake expensive Fiji water, just processed at a reverse osmosis facility and put into a plastic bottle that leaches endocrine-disrupting chemicals into it. This water quenches your thirst.
She set the glass down, still half full, and looked back up at me. Which word best describes the water?
Huh?
Yes. One word.
Butthole
What?
Well, her butthole.
What? she laughed, and her laughter sounded three dimensional. Her butthole is mineral water? I don’t think so. Maybe somewhere deep in the Ozarks you might find that but not in real life. She smiled again.
Do you want me to lick your butthole, right now? I asked.
The gold dealer laughed in perfect stereo and said no I haven’t taken a bath, I’m probably not clean, but she shifted in her seat a little and said go on, and I could hear her fingers brushing the white cloth more urgently.
See? I said. It’s ok to be dirty once in a while. You wouldn’t mind. But afterwards when I wake up I would have that hollow empty feeling. With you I would have it and I would stare at the ceiling in the twilight of dawn and think about things and feel sad, but not with her. It’s different.
She's on hands and knees, sweating and tense with anticipation, wearing white pantyhose and nipple clamps that kept falling off but we laughed and finally got them on. Should I take her in her pussy, in her ass, or in her mouth? My fingers up and down her wet slit over the pantyhose. I pull my fingers back and a string of her wetness trails, and I know she wants me inside her. My balls, full and tight and drawn up from not cumming because I had been at a conference in Panama and had just returned and I never masturbated any more, since I gave her my life, my life energy, and all of it belongs to her, and she wants me to take her how I want to take her. She gives herself to me. I pull her pantyhose down so I can lick her butthole, circling her quivering and clenching hole and then probe gently until she relaxes for me, and I firmly push my tongue inside her, in and out, in and out and she moans as my thumb rubs her clit.
Finally, she squeezes and slaps my balls as she rides me, I love watching her face as I first enter her, then we kiss, and for a moment she breathes out, and I breathe in her air, and her mine, and I twist her nipples as her nails scratch my shoulder and she bites my lip and I bleed and she sucks on my lip tasting my blood, harder, I can feel her clench and I cum so quickly and I have no fear, she wants me so badly, and I cum - she wants my life energy in her, on her, savoring and sucking and kissing.
She can’t help it but her hand goes to her clit and my hand also and I pull her hand away and rub her clit and I taste her and clean every drop and circle her asshole and press one finger in and then two, slowly, then thrust with my two fingers in and out of her ass and she clenches around my fingers as she pinches her own nipples aching for her release and I suck at her fountain, drinking her, and finally she screams and orgasms and I feel her clench and contract and quiver on my tongue and my face and our cum mixes as she floods my mouth. Pure, refreshing. Fons Juventutis.
And at that moment I remember the first time I saw her face in real life. The nights are not long and cold when you like someone. Everybody seems to find love but very few find someone they like, and the mystery occurs when they like you, although it never happens, never in real life.
I arrived first and was sitting at a table along the street and before she got out of her car I saw her go around the block twice because she didn’t want to make a left turn into traffic, and then parallel park with six maneuvers, knowing that my eyes were on her so she blushed and looked perfect and got out and bounded up the step as I stood up and walked toward her - probably too fast, right? If she only knew. I thought she was going to slap me for taking so long but instead I looked into her already watery eyes and I hugged her tight against me and then kissed her lips. She touched me on the back of my neck and head and my hands and arms were around her waist and hips and she leaned into me. That day I longed for more than anything in my lifetime, just delicate kind words, and words have power, joy, peace and no fear, only hope. Later that night, I remember waking early and I didn’t hear the freeway - she's sleeping next to me naked and I feel her back expand and fall, one breath in, one breath out, how many more does she have? There is a first and a last. Only now. Only today. Right now right now and I cried there silently but she was sleeping so she never knew.
We embrace and kiss deeply, sharing our lust and life and our tongues swirl and taste each other and swallow and breathe and sweat together and she lays in my arms and I feel her heart and blood and life and I know that is the way it is meant to be. Nothing more and nothing less and I feel good and I feel her heart beat slower and she believes in me and I love her and that's enough, that moment is enough.
You see, I'm not afraid anymore, I said. I'm not afraid of the past, and I'm not afraid of the future. Right now is all I have.
Well, she said, as her hands moved over the cloth, brushing it from ear to ear, then tell no one your pain, but stand up. Put it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and throw yourself to the wind. And besides that, if she knows you're broke, that's better than her thinking you're rich and being disappointed? I smiled and thought no chance in hell she would like me if she knew I was broke, but I had no choice.
Here is my one ounce Credit Suisse bar to sell and I pushed it towards the gold dealer over the glass. I’ll go back and get the others.
She looked at me, her eyes blank and staring, looking past me to something behind me that I couldn’t see it and her voice flowed over me like liquid.
You’re delusional, she said. Think of something else.
She continued. You can't ever take the perfect combination of uppers and downers and go deep, and you’ll never have the euphoria x100. You could have had it at one time, I did, most people did, but you missed the opportunity. You won’t get it, not now, not ever. It’s too late. She doesn’t like you, she likes someone she made up in her delirium who has a lot more money and presence than you have. And you’re in love with a fantasy, a dopamine rush from a black heart. The fantasy has gone too far.
True, but which is the fantasy? What I have right now is the fantasy, what I want is the reality. And she is what’s real. Nobody has ever, ever held my inner child. Why would she just okie dokie smokie and do that, on a whim? Very weird. Actually it was quite weird. But you see for her that is normal. She expects it and expects the same from me.
Didn’t you ride your bike up the river channel bike path to get here? Didn't you see that tent city of homeless? Those are the ones who tried, at your age, to get to that euphoria x100 - you can only do that when you’re young and full of dreams! It’s too late. You’re just an African cyclid hitting the windshield in the middle of the night in the rain - do you remember all those squashed bugs on the windshield when you were driving up from Pretoria to Harare, 1000 miles overnight? The buyer really wanted his cars, only filthy rich or dirt poor in Tanzania, with two big Mercedes Sl500’s on the flatbed, and another two GL 550’s on a trailer, as the rain poured down and the wipers were going click, squish, click squish because the windshield was covered in dead carcases? They only swarm once every seven years at the first rain and the rain came in a deluge. The flooded countryside all littered with white plastic bags and cut down trees, dark at night, and the road slick with rain and bug carcasses and the dull muddy wasteland crawled past in the rain and darkness and all you could see ahead was a narrow window of pouring rain, a grey road, illuminated by dim headlights, and a swarm of insects careening toward the windshield, all misty and blurry. You could smell the diesel exhaust and the cab kept fogging up because the insect carcasses clogged the air vents. A windshield framed by dead cyclids and the hum of the diesel engine vibrating throughout the truck.
You see guys in vans and old rvs and tents, sleeping in the park, riding bikes pulling tattered child trailers filled with refuse, wandering the street corners holding their bottles. The emaciated long haired bearded guy with no shirt on at night, turning circles under the glare of streetlights in the middle of an intersection that has five Mexican fan palms on the corner, on a hot summer evening, clutching a tattered black notebook with handwritten notes and bits of prose, lines of copied poetry and a few faded photographs of two boys, but he’s drooling and wide eyed, screaming at his imaginary foe, trying to hump some poor woman’s car who is too scared to floor it and kill him, rambling on about how if he had of just bought that piece of land on such and such street or bought bitcoin then it would be worth so much now, and things would be different. He’s the kind of guy that thought - if he could have just found a woman he liked who also liked him when he was young he wouldn’t be here in the middle of the intersection but at least he can write it later, just before suddenly staring off into the heavens, foaming blood out his mouth, convulsing uncontrollably, and losing consciousness on the hot grease covered pavement as the line of cars swerve and speed past his curled up body.
That is your fate if you reach for the euphoria. I'm afraid not, I can’t help you, but I can show you something else. She looked at me and with a smooth motion held my wrist against the glass and with her other hand pulled a large heavy kitchen knife out from under the coin display.
Whoa, why do you have a knife here?
You never know what kind of people who can’t sleep show up here.
Then you're telling me that even all the gold bars I have won't ever buy me euphoria x100? What the hell? For chrissake lady! fuck….
I tried to pull away but her hand grasped me with uncommon strength and I heard her whispering gently from ear to ear as I watched the blade, the palm of my hand illuminated by the ray of light, draw across in slow motion, slicing the flesh down to the bone so slowly and inevitably - when you watch a blade go through your own skin it mesmerizes you. The sun rose for a minute and now the sun sets already, and the pain will come but please not yet, not yet. Not tonight. The cut isn’t real, right? It’s made up. If it’s a fantasy can the pain be real? My imagination. My stomach sunk oh god, and I felt it icy cold on the bone . Fuck fuck fuck I thrashed against the display case and screamed into the void - waiting for the inevitable lightning, waiting for one last black heart that never came.
Her voice whispers to me in the haze and the fog. Let go and feel pain. Accept it and taste it and let it in. And my ears tingle as her soft melodic intonation drifted ear to ear, so soothing, and I watch the blade and my hand gripping it in pathetic frustration and the pool of blood grow over the glass case, obscuring the shiny objects below. Dripping off the side onto the floor. So much blood, so much blood - no more I can’t let my heart beat, it beats and the blood comes out and I feel hot and feverish and warmly glowing inside even though I am shivering uncontrollably. If my heart would stop beating no blood will come out. Stop beating. Stop beating. But it kept beating, louder and louder, and harder and harder and my chest pounding in this thunder. It will stop I know, someday. Jesus fuck I screamed crying please just let me sleep. I’ll try deep breathing, yoga nidra, and then use my head tingler but it’s back at my place and I need to go back and get it.
My eyes watered and blinked and I closed them and I couldn’t think. There isn’t an answer. My hand felt warm and wet and my arm numb also, I sweated and clenched my jaw over and over again. Her voice caressed my soul and sent me tingles as she laid the bloody knife on the case.
She wrapped my hand in the white cloth that had lain over the case, with delicate circumaural surround brushing sounds, slowly wrapping and I couldn’t think any longer and the white cloth had blood on it and I could see my palm had blood soaking through already. I could see the dark wetness seeping through the white cloth, growing with each heartbeat. The blood belonged to someone else. Some unlucky man.
I stared at the case for a while, then standing a little dizzy, I could feel and live and dream and I just wanted to sleep, so I picked up my gold bar, forgetting my backpack, and walked towards the door. The air is so stagnant in here, I need some air, a breeze, maybe some rain or something - and no umbrella. I’ll walk in the rain barefoot on grass with no umbrella and feel my hair getting wet and the water dripping down the back of my shirt and I miss the rain so badly here, and the smell of Douglas firs in the rain.
And just as I was pushing the heavy door open, I heard her say in spatial sound: I hope you enjoyed our time together. That heavy marble faucet block? you will always need one, for everything, and use it as an excuse - it’s in your head. Find a way. Thank you for visiting me tonight and I wish you deep sleep and pleasant dreams and I’ll see you next time. Good night.
It’s really good morning, crazy bitch. And it’s not in my head - I lost my marble block. Save and invest for many many years. Years. Enough. No more I thought. Turn her off. Click, the inner door shut and I just heard silence.
I’m going to whoa, it’s ok. I’ll be fine, it’s just a couple miles.
I backed through the main door stumbling through with the dull klinking bell, a thud, and back outside into the night. I lost balance and leaned heavily against the glass and sweated and it was so cold and I looked at my dark reflection and took two deep breaths, pushed myself off the door and looked over and seeing my bike thought well I should get back. Where is my vicodin, my codeine or hydrocodone? I even had a few palladone pills - all expired but they likely could do something. I thought right when I need it I don’t have it. Every old prescription I have for whatever reason I save it so if I’m flying and it goes south, and there’s a sorry fucker next to me in the plane crash screaming and moaning with crushed legs, I can at least keep him quiet. I carry a bottle on every flight I take, but I don’t have it now - just a bike ride isn’t dangerous. Jeez get a grip you fucking loser, it’s a cut on your hand and lot’s of guys end up hurt, cut off their arms with rocks and rusty knives, bleeding hearts, and make it back alive. Gunshot wounds. Saving their friends, their girls and kids from certain death. Heroes. The brave and the bold and the guys with tattoos, who lose everything in their businesses, go bankrupt, lose their Lamborghinis, their blond girls with implants and their kids then sleep on a friend’s couch for a year and start again. Rebuild. Survivors. They’re the lucky ones and the bold ones, focus on your goal. So many dead, just don’t be among the dead. Selfish needy bastard. If you bothered to read any poetry, you see it opens up the world.
Coming together
it is easier to work
after our bodies
meet
paper and pen
neither care nor profit
whether we write or not(10)
But I have a plan now - it won’t be easy but we can still see each other. How crazy is she? This hurts so fucking bad I can’t even grip the handlebar. Emotions rise up and cloud judgment, and if she gets in one of her moods and throws you into the abyss, then what? Be vulnerable. She won’t throw me into the abyss. And suppose we meet it will be ok even if it’s not perfect because I’m thinking long term. It’s only a compromise for a while - why can’t she see that? It’s because she wants all of me right now. It’s deserted out here, there isn’t anyone up yet. I remember walking up the deserted street in Cape Town when the wind blew so hard the trash cans flew in the air. We will meet once in a while until I figure it out and then we are set. My dad said if you wait until you’re ready you will never move at all.
She actually knows me better than anyone in this world, but she still wonders what is wrong with me. It’s fine. One step at a time, but she will trust me, I know she does already, with her heart. Time. That’s the problem it’s time. No the problem isn’t time it’s money. No time left. First get some sleep so I’ll get my tingler and then drift and tomorrow morning in the morning sun, I’ll hit golf balls on the misty green grass and be able to plan, at least I can calm down. My new dual color Srixon; that name is a bitch; how do you say it? Shrixon? Sixon? balls are easier to see, especially the orange and yellow. Which color is my favorite? Out of blue, orange…what was the other color? I think green! But I like yellow and orange. And the green is with white. Green is my favorite color. Relax. Maybe Rite-Aid is open now? They might be. 300mg of melatonin hits you just right even though the bottle says take one 10mg tablet at night for occasional sleeplessness, not to exceed two tablets every 24 hours. I’ll take 30, and tomorrow I’ll look at tattoo shops. If you had a tattoo you would be different, at least you would be somebody; you would know who you are.
A dark wet bloody hand print reflected coldly off the black tinted glass door in the dim twilight of dawn, as I pedaled away down the alley.
Notes:

1. Scene from Casino, the movie: https://www(.)youtube(.)com/watch?v=3-d5yU-aQ34
   
2. Frank Sinatra, I did it my way: https://www(.)azlyrics(.)com/lyrics/franksinatra/myway.html
   
3. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - ending scene: https://m(.)youtube(.)com/watch?v=QjsiqCD4Hf4
   
4. Rudyard Kipling, IF: https://www(.)poetryfoundation(.)org/poems/46473/if---
   
5. Max Igan, The Crowhouse - https://thecrowhouse(.)com/home.html I wrote down which episode it was but I couldn't find where I noted it.
   
6. Lunelilium - A rush, electric, illuminated, pure bliss, euphoric (x100), https://old(.)reddit(.)com/useLunelilium/comments/9obgpo/yes_at_the_time_those_feelings_are_like_no_othe
   
7. Recreation by Audre L’orde https://www(.)poetryfoundation(.)org/poems/42579/recreation
   

​

I mentioned in a comment on another thread here that I had done a writeup on Holly Bobo - then realized I never actually posted it anywhere. So I decided to finally share. I tried to be as comprehensive as possible with actual sources, but I am always looking for ways to correct inaccuracies and improve my own understanding. Also please feel free to let me know of any formatting errors.
This will be part ONE of hopefully a two part post.
April 13, 2011
Decatur County, Tennessee, is unremarkable in almost every way. I-40 brings thousands of people through every day, but it’s a small town through and through. Among the county’s 11,000 residents in 2011 was the Bobo family: mother Karen, father Dana, son Clint, and 20-year-old Holly. The four of them and their dog, Rascal, lived on Swan Johnson Road in a particularly rural part of the county.
Holly was a nursing student at the nearby University of Tennessee at Martin Parsons, and by all accounts was dedicated to her studies. She was a sweet, compassionate young woman who was heavily involved in her family’s church.
Holly was popular and well-liked, and had been dating Drew Scott since high school; he’d given her a promise ring that she wore every day.
On April 13, 2011, Holly woke up at 4:30 to begin studying for an exam. By 7:30, her parents had left for work and Holly was alone with her brother, who was sleeping in his bedroom. She spoke to her boyfriend, Drew Scott, around the same time.
Clint woke up to Rascal barking, then realized he could hear loud voices out by the garage. He peered through some blinds and saw two people kneeling down. One was Holly; the other, though, was a man. He noticed the man was wearing camouflage and assumed it was Holly’s boyfriend Drew. Clint couldn’t really make out what they were saying (except for Holly saying “no, why?”) but he could tell it was an intense conversation. He assumed that the couple was breaking up or arguing.
Clint wasn’t the only one to hear something that morning. A neighbor of the Bobos had called Karen at work to tell her that her son heard a loud scream coming from the Bobo home. Karen immediately called home and spoke to a still-groggy Clint. He told his mother that the noise must have been from Holly and Drew arguing. “Clint,” she said, “that’s not Drew. Get a gun and shoot him.”
Karen had good reason to be suspicious: she knew for a fact that the man seen with Holly could not be Drew because she had made arrangements for him to hunt early that morning on her mother’s property. But Clint either didn’t know this or wasn’t awake enough to process.
“You mean you want me to shoot Drew?” he asked. He took another look out the window and saw his sister walking into the woods with the man. He looked to be about 5’10 to 6’ tall, maybe 180 to 200 pounds. He had long dark hair brushing the back of his shirt. Karen’s panic was lost on her son, but when he went out and found blood in the garage, he finally called 911. Holly was out of sight now, somewhere in the woods with that stranger.
The investigation that followed involved the FBI, US Marshals, Decatur County police, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. It quickly became the most expensive investigation in the state of Tennessee’s history. A few things turned up - a lunch box, a receipt, her cell phone. But it was not until February 2014 that Holly Bobo’s remains were finally found. There was a visible bullet hole in her skull.
Initial investigation
Police arrived at the Bobo home within ten minutes of Clint’s 911 call, and several other law enforcement agencies ultimately had a hand in the investigation. Still, it took authorities almost two hours to begin searching the woods where Holly was last seen, and it would take a few days for any evidence at all to be found.
The first item found by a witness was Holly’s polka dot lunch box; a man named Jon Graves fished it out of a creek. Next was a pair of pink panties, though these were later determined not to be Holly’s.¹ The same person then found a school paper of Holly’s. After that, a classmate found her cell phone in a ditch. In May 2011, a young girl found the SIM card. All of these witnesses immediately alerted authorities, but not much came of these discoveries.²
That didn’t mean investigators weren’t working on the case. In fact, they had their eye on someone. it didn’t take long after Holly’s disappearance for the west Tennessee rumor mill to start whispering about Zach Adams. He was known as a small-time criminal and drug addict, which caught the police’s attention. He didn’t have a history of any violent crime, but some of his friends did, and authorities hardly saw that as exonerating. Plus, authorities were sure that the culprit had to be a local. The area was just too rural and the terrain too rough for an out-of-towner to be able to navigate and stay hidden.
By the second Saturday after Holly was taken, Adams was being questioned by police. Highway Patrolman Warren Rainey was one of the first law enforcement officers to talk to Adams at his home. According to Rainey, Adams declined to give out his cell phone number or to allow Rainey inside. He was so nervous he was shaking.
On his way out of the property, Rainey looked into his rearview mirror and saw Zach run back into the house, so he decided to hide a little bit up the road. He used a pair of binoculars to watch the property. Rainey was accompanied by local businessman Stephen Bryan Young.³ Young testified that as soon as Rainey left his property, Adams spent more than an hour vacuuming his truck.
Eventually Rainey assembled a search team complete with dogs. They thought they saw a grave in Zach’s backyard, but it turned out to be nothing. The only other thing of note was a mattress, in good condition, leaning against the outside of the house. Zach was seen hosing it down.
This was when the police changed their approach. Instead of continuing to interrogate Adams and search his property, they arrested his brother, John Dylan Adams, on a weapons charge.⁴ Rather than questioning him on this, though, they spent hours questioning him about Holly Bobo. Ultimately, Dylan accepted a plea deal on the weapons charge (to include no jail time) on the condition that he live with a man named Dennis Benjamin, a friend of the Bobo family and a retired police officer who was investigating Holly’s case. A little over a month later, Benjamin called the police saying that Dylan was ready to confess to Holly’s murder. Dylan told authorities that he had gone to Zach’s house on April 13th and found Jason Autry and Holly there, wearing a pink t-shirt.⁵ Zach told Dylan that he had recorded a video of raping Holly.
Dylan Adams has since argued that his confession was coerced. Family members testified to Dylan having a low IQ and a learning disability. The Adams’ grandfather went so far as to say Dylan didn’t know how to tell time on an analog clock and couldn’t be trusted when he told a story about something. Their mother later told media that Dylan had gone to separate schools for children with learning disabilities all his life. The defense argued that law enforcement knew this and deliberately focused on Dylan, rather than Zach, thinking that it would be easier to get a confession from someone who had trouble processing information.
Witness for the Prosecution
Despite Dylan’s full confession, the cornerstone of the state’s evidence at trial was the testimony of Jason Autry. Autry had been implicated in Dylan’s initial confession to the police; he was supposed to have been at Zach Adams’ house with Holly after she was kidnapped. Autry alone testified for almost nine hours, detailing his relationship with Zach and Dylan, as well as with Shayne Austin, and retelling the day of the murder, which notably differed from Dylan’s version of events.
According to Autry, he was addicted to morphine, methamphetamine, and hydrocodone. On April 13th, he’d been trying for an hour or so to get in touch with Zach Adams in order to buy some pills. But Adams was busy and said he would call Autry back a little later. At 8:55, Adams made that call. Now he was asking for Autry’s help.
Jason assumed he was going to help Zach cook a batch of meth, but something was peculiar as soon as he arrived to Shayne Austin’s home, as Zach had requested. There was a fire burning in a burn barrel, Dylan Adams was standing around shirtless, and an agitated Shayne Austin was walking around with a gun, yelling at everyone else to hurry up and get out of the area. This had nothing to do with drugs at all. Zach Adams needed Autry’s help hiding a body. Holly Bobo was wrapped up in a blanket in the bed of his white Nissan pickup truck.
Autry claims he didn’t know who Bobo was. Clearly, though, Adams had some connection to her. Apparently he knew Holly through her cousin Natalie Bobo, who he had sex with; Natalie had told Adams that Holly “would have a threesome” with the two of them.⁷ Why April 13th? According to Zach, he was at the Bobo home that morning to teach Clint Bobo how to cook meth. Holly realized what was going on, and ran outside yelling at them. Adams and Autry drove near a boat dock on the Tennessee River, about 25 feet from an I-40 bridge. When the two got out of the truck, they heard Holly groaning and saw her legs moving.
“This fucking bitch is still alive,” Autry said. He made sure the area was clear, Adams shot Holly in the head, and they rushed out of the area. Autry asked Adams how Holly ended up in the back of his truck. He responded, “We took her. Shot her up with drugs. We raped her. We thought we had killed her.” Zach dropped Autry off at his car and said he would take care of things.
Autry called Zach again later that day, around 2:00pm, hoping to buy more drugs. When he got to Zach’s house, “the air was just thick with animosity.” He got into a truck with Zach, Dylan, and Austin. An argument ensued. Shayne told Zach he did not have to kill Holly; Zach told Shayne he was just as guilty. Autry took this to mean that they had all raped her.
All this time, Holly’s body is gone. Autry doesn’t know where it is or what was done to it. It’s not until a few days later that he meets up with Zach and asks what happened to her body. He’s told that they threw it out near Kelly Ridge.⁸ He also gets a request from Zach to kill Dylan, who “would not stop talking.” Autry claims he actually made a plan to carry out the murder while fishing on the Tennessee River, which was only thwarted when another boat passed by. This same fishing trip was also when Dylan confirmed that Holly had been raped in Austin Shayne’s grandmother’s barn. It was August 2012 before Autry next saw Zach, Dylan, or Shayne. This was when Zach told the story about teaching Clint to cook meth.
According to Jason Autry’s story, Zach Adams kidnapped Holly from her driveway that morning, raped her along with his brother and a friend, attempted to kill her, and by 9:45am, he was at the I-40 bridge with Jason Autry. When the two were trying to bury her body and realized she was still alive, Autry made sure no one else was around so Adams could shoot her.
In Defense of the Accused
One of the first, most glaring inconsistencies in the Jason Autry’s testimony is what happened in the early morning hours of April 13th. According to him, the other suspects were at the Bobo house with Clint so they could make meth together. Holly’s vocal objection ultimately led to Adams killing her. But this differs significantly from Clint’s version of events. He says he was asleep inside when he heard Holly arguing with, he assumed, Drew Scott. At any rate, he only saw one man out there with Holly. Certainly nothing in Clint’s recollection points toward a methamphetamine cooking class. Cell phone pings, to the extent that they are reliable and accurate, also do not show Zach at the Bobo home that day.
It wasn’t just timing that clashed with Clint’s testimony. Clint denied knowing any of the men, and maintained that neither Zach Adams, Dylan Adams, nor Shayne Austin looked like the man he saw leading Holly into the woods. In fact, he explicitly described the man as having dark hair long enough to come out from underneath his baseball cap and touch the collar of his shirt. The state put forward the idea that Shayne Austin was the one who kidnapped Holly that morning, and he had short, red hair at the time, a huge departure from Clint’s description. And again, the state was relying on Autry’s testimony that Clint knew exactly who was at the house because he had asked them to teach him how to cook meth. If he invited the three men over, and knew who they were, why didn’t he recognize that it was Shayne talking to Holly?
Not only did Jason’s testimony clash with Clint’s, it completely contradicted Dylan Adam’s initial confession to police. Dylan stated that Autry was with Zach before Holly was killed, that the four of them were together at Zach’s house. Dylan also alleged that Zach had recorded a video of himself raping Holly. Jason Autry never mentioned anything about a video during the trial.
A second huge inconsistency with the testimony is the location of Holly’s remains. Autry was very detailed about where precisely Zach Adams fatally shot Holly, but always maintained that he left Adams with the body and didn’t know where exactly he buried it. He later claimed that Dylan Adams told him the body had been “thrown off Kelly Ridge.” But instead, her remains were found about two miles away off County Corner Road.⁹
It’s difficult to say whether or not forensic evidence can back up Jason’s story. Because her remains were entirely skeletonized, and only a few bones were found, all that could be gleamed was that she had been shot in the head. This tracks with Autry’s testimony about Adams shooting her for the last time under the bridge, but remember: Autry and Adams thought she was already dead. She was wrapped up in the blanket when Autry arrived. What happened before he got there?
The question of whether or not Holly was raped, and if so, by whom, loomed large over this investigation. From the very beginning, Dylan claimed Holly had been raped. Autry had inferred from comments made by Zach, Dylan, and Shayne that the three men raped her, but it wasn’t exactly a subject they dwelled on. It wasn’t until about a year later that Zach would tell Jason that Dylan “performed oral sex on him and Shayne before they raped Holly.” They never talked about it again. With any physical evidence long gone, this was the entire basis of the rape charges.
Motive was never made clear either. The prosecution has no real legal obligation to determine a motive, but it certainly helps make their story stronger. A few different possibilities were gently floated out. There’s the threesome story that Zach Adams allegedly told Jason Autry – maybe Holly had rejected Adams’ advances and that set him off. Or maybe Adams really was teaching Clint how to make meth, which started a fight with Holly and ended in her murder. It was also implied that Shayne Austin was almost obsessed with Holly, staring at her in public and maybe even following her.
None was explored in greater detail. In fact, Dylan Adams’ attorneys were adamant that neither Holly nor Clint had any connections to the three suspects.¹⁰ This doesn’t seem like a random crime of opportunity. It’s hard to imagine that anyone, these suspects or not, happened upon Holly walking out to her car on a weekday morning and took their chance. But whatever the motive may have been was never fully explained.
In what is probably the largest inconsistency, the entire timeline is suspect. Going by Clint’s recollection and Autry’s testimony, there would have only been an hour, maybe two, between Holly walking into the woods with the unknown man (who police argued was Shayne Austin) and Autry helping to bury her body. Autry’s testimony includes Holly being kidnapped, forcibly taken to the barn, raped by three men, and presumably murdered by 8:55. The drive alone from the Bobo home to the barn would take at least fifteen minutes.
Beyond Jason Autry's Testimony The prosecution (and the defense) always maintained that this was not a forensic evidence case, much less a DNA case. Three years had passed between Holly’s murder and the discovery of her remains. Any soft tissue, DNA, or other forensic evidence was long gone; authorities never even recovered a full skeleton. The state’s biggest piece of evidence was always Jason Autry’s testimony. But despite what some accounts of the trial imply, that was not their sole evidence.
Cell phone pings Without any real forensics, the prosecution leaned heavily on another kind of ‘hard’ evidence: cell phone pings. For all the fears over government spying and data harvesting, cell phone pings are not always as definitive as one might think. Cell phone “pings” allow a cellular network to determine the location of a specific phone in one of two ways. All new cell phones are legally required to be GPS capable as part of the E-911 program, in order to allow 911 operators to determine callers’ precise locations. When a phone is pinged, it sends its GPS coordinates back to the tower via the same SMS system that sends and receives text messages. Because the phone is sending its exact coordinates, this method is much more precise and reliable.
If someone has an old phone that isn’t GPS capable, the cellular network can provide a less accurate, though still useful, location using triangulation. At any given time, a phone will typically be in range of at least three cell towers. These towers are normally anywhere from 5-10 miles apart in an area like this part of Tennessee. Investigators can compare how long it takes for the cell phone’s signal to reach each tower and use that to triangulate a more approximate position of the phone. If there are more towers nearby, the location is more accurate. Unlike the SMS-style system, though, these “pings” only happen when a phone makes or receives a call. In Holly Bobo’s case, the police relied on triangulation records from the cellular network. For some reason, they opted to receive records for every 15 minutes, despite the fact that minute-by-minute tracking was available.
From 7:30am to 7:59am, cell phone pings indicate that Holly was still at home. By 8:26, her phone has moved north, and by 8:57, further north still, along I-40. A ping at 9:02am has the phone moving slightly southeast. At 9:06, an incoming call comes from the Cox Road tower, about 13 miles from Jimmy Evans Memorial Bridge. A final ping at 9:10am has moved even further to the east. Holly’s phone had moved along the same route as her possessions (lunchbox, school papers, etc.), which were later found by witnesses.
Zach Adams’ phone is likely at his house from 8:19am to 8:58am, pinging off the Cox Road tower.¹¹ At between 8:58 and 9:12, his phone is pinging off a tower right next to the Jimmy Evans Memorial Bridge, the Birdsong tower, where Jason Autry claims Holly was shot. It continues to ping there until about 10:35am, when his phone moves more in the direction of his home.
At first glance, the cell phone pings would seem to back up Jason’s story. It looks like Zach and Jason were together from at least 8:58. Even though they were pinging off the same Cox Road tower as early as 8:19, we can safely assume they were not together since they were texting each other. By 8:58, Adams’ phone is at the bridge. Autry’s pings there at 9:42. They both leave at 10:35am. What about Holly’s phone? The last ping from her phone goes out at 9:10am, probably southeast of the Cox Road tower (the bridge is to the north east).¹² Perhaps most importantly, the pings betray a lie that Adams told to an FBI agent early on in the case: that he had slept until at least 10:00am on the day Holly was killed.
Again, it is important to note that investigators appeared to be relying on triangulation, rather than the more accurate SMS-system pings, for each person’s cell phone data. The margin of error was quite large in this case, in some instances being as much as 7500 meters.
Witness Testimony Besides Jason Autry, another key witness for the prosecution was Victor Dinsmore. Dinsmore was a friend and drug dealer for the suspects, and some of Holly’s found items were discovered on or near his property. He recalled that on April 13th, Zach, Shayne, and Jason showed up to his place to get marijuana, fighting about “who was going to hit it first.” ¹³ Jason broke up the fight and they left.
More significant is what happened a few months later. Shayne brought Dinsmore a gun in exchange for pills, and Dinsmore gave the gun to his wife. At some point, Dinsmore told his wife they needed to get rid of the gun because “he was afraid it had a body on it.” They buried it before moving away to Indianapolis, but were unable to lead police back to it. Dinsmore also testified that Adams and company had brought him several guns, including one that he threw away in a pond because “it was junk.” It was this .32 that the prosecution put forward as the gun that killed Holly.
Dinsmore’s testimony regarding Zach Adams’ white Nissan truck was critical. In March 2014, after Zach was arrested, Dinsmore told police that Zach hid his truck after kidnapping Holly.¹⁵ Dinsmore claimed that Zach never mentioned anything about Holly Bobo; instead he was hiding the truck from his grandfather. Notably, he did not mention that the truck was hidden in his own garage.¹⁶ Later, Dinsmore was questioned by police officer Brent Booth, who told him that Jason Autry was prepared to testify that Adams’ truck was in his garage. At that time, Dinsmore stated “I know he didn’t hide that in my pole barn…no way.”
Dinsmore went back to his original story at trial, stating that Zach had indeed hidden the white Nissan on his property. He claimed that he “recovered the memory” after a conversation with his wife. But he also said that he “already remembered” when talking with Booth, but “was nervous of him trying to involve me” and so deliberately left it out of his statement. This is despite the fact that Dinsmore already head both federal and state immunity at the time.
So what is the significance of this? A few things. First, hiding the truck was part of Jason Autry’s testimony. If that was a lie, then his entire testimony is called into question. Second, from the defense’s perspective, this is just one of many examples of state investigators bullying their own narrative into witnesses. Dinsmore never said anything about the truck being hidden on his own property until questioned by Booth and being told that Autry would testify to that fact. His explanation for his “recovered memory” might be suspect, especially when he says that the reason he never told anyone before is because he was afraid of being “involved” when he already had immunity.¹⁷ The defense wanted to portray Dinsmore’s memory as, at best, unreliable, and at worst, completely “recovered” by investigators and regurgitated at trial.
Dick Adams, Zach and Dylan’s grandfather, testified in complete disagreement with Dinsmore about the white truck. The Nissan actually belonged to Dick, and he said he was certain that Zach couldn’t have had access to it on April 13th. Zach had been arrested and the truck impounded just nine days before Holly disappeared. He then hid the truck on a friend’s property to keep it away from Zach, and held onto the only set of keys. A person who lived on that property testified that the truck was at home the night before Holly vanished and that he thought it was there on the morning of April 13th.¹⁸
Rebecca Earp, Zach Adams’ girlfriend at the time of the murder, also testified for the prosecution. This alone was a change from the early days of the investigation. Earp had maintained Adams’ innocence until he was arrested in March 2014. Why the change in story? She says she was afraid of him; the defense says that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation threatened to take away her baby if she didn’t cooperate.
“I couldn't have picked a prettier bitch. It was fun.”arp had some incriminating things to say on the stand about her ex-boyfriend. He allegedly told her once during an argument that “he would tie [her] up just like he did Holly Bobo and nobody would ever see me again.” She also said she was once cooking dinner for Adams and Shayne Austin when a story about Bobo aired on TV. Allegedly, Austin laughed and Adams stated “They’ll never be able to find her.” She also directly refuted Zach’s statement to police that he slept in until 10:30am on April 13th. According to Earp, Zach was awake by 6:30, then called to tell her he was going to haul scrap with Victor Dinsmore. Earp was suspicious for two reasons: first, she alleged Zach made that call on his brother Dylan’s phone, not his own. Second, she had left a note asking him to do laundry, which was not done when she got home.¹⁹ Either way, she did not believe his story as to what he was doing that morning.
Earp also testified to another incriminating statement allegedly made by Zach. She said she saw Zach and a friend taking a large, blue plastic bin to Birdsong Bridge; the two men were talking about disposing of Holly’s body. Later on that day, they told her it was actually leftovers from cooking a batch of meth, and they were testing her to see whether or not she would call the TBI.²⁰
Not everything Earp testified to was iron-clad. For example, when cross-examined on Adams’ alleged comment that “they’ll never be able to find” Holly, Earp was unclear about when exactly this took place, at alternate times claiming it happened the day Holly disappeared or the day after. And the defense was able to demonstrate that there were no cell records whatsoever of a phone call from Dylan’s phone to Earp. In fact, records showed that Earp and Zach had been texting frequently on April 13th. Finally, Earp claimed that she had in fact reported that blue bin story to the TBI, but they had no record of any call from her.
Besides Dinsmore, Earp, and Autry, the jury heard from still others who claimed to have heard Zach (or Dylan) talk about what they had done to Holly. Most were fellow inmates at county jail, but some were acquaintances or romantic partners. One such inmate was a man named Shawn Cooper. Cooper had been held in county jail alongside Zach Adams, who Cooper said was bragging about being involved in “the Holly Bobo case.” Adams also asked Cooper to relay a message to his brother (who was being held at another county jail) saying Dylan needed to “keep his mouth shut” or Zach would “put him in a hole beside her.”²¹

1. This is a perfect example of the state allowing the jury to interpret something incorrectly.
2. NBC: DNA, personal items entered as evidence in Holly Bobo murder trial
3. Stephen Bryan Young wasn’t the only civilian to accompany law enforcement on these sorts of operations. I have yet to come across any explanation for this.
4. Some have suggested this was a ruse from the beginning to get Dylan into an interrogation room.
5. Holly was last seen wearing a pink shirt and light-wash jeans.
6. Fox 17 Nashville: Holly Bobo Trial: Former TBI agent explains focus on Terry Britt, not Zach Adams
7. I believe this may have been denied by Natalie herself. Clint Bobo denied that he or his sister knew any of the suspects.
8. Autry actually went to the property he thought Dylan was referring to, which included some small fishing ponds. He asked the property owners to fish on their land; they declined. He says that he was trying to find Holly’s body.
9. The Jackson Sun: BREAKING: TBI says remains found Sunday are Holly Bobo
10. Action News 5 Memphis: Dylan Adams sentenced to 35 years following plea in Holly Bobo case
11. If these pings are reliable, then this fact alone would seem to totally exonerate Zach Adams: he simply wasn’t anywhere near Holly when she disappeared. But the prosecution handled this, and other inconvenient details, in a very clever way. Recall that the state argued that Shayne Austin was the man seen leading Holly into the woods: that would explain why Zach wasn’t there. Second, although Autry testified that Adams told him he was at the Bobo home, Autry could not say for a fact that Adams was there. He was merely speaking to what he had been told.
12. The reason there are no more pings is because her phone, and its SIM card, were discarded. They would later be found northwest of the bridge in Parsons.
13. The prosecution was clearly content to let jurors infer that this was a reference to raping Holly. However, she would have been dead at this point. It’s more likely that they were arguing over a joint or other drugs.
14. Where did this fear come from? I cannot tell.
15. Zach Adams Trial Day 5 Notes (special thank you to this Redditor!)
16. Zach Adams Trial Livestream, 11:22
17. Dinsmore had a past rape conviction and never registered as a sex offender in Tennessee.
18. Fox News 17: Holly Bobo Trial: Former TBI agent explains focus on Terry Britt, not Zach Adams
19. This part of Earp’s testimony was particularly confusing. It’s unclear why she took this as such solid proof that Zach was lying, but she did.
20. I am not 100% certain where Birdsong Bridge is, but there is a section of Birdsong Road that goes over the Tennessee River. It's northwest of the Jimmy Evans Memorial Bridge.
21. CBS News: Man charged with killing Tennessee woman Holly Bobo made threat

This all started a bit over a year ago, when Woody and Zeke (Woodrow Wayne and Ezekiel Caine—family names) were not quite two years old. It took me until this week to gather all the pieces of the story and put them in sequence. I'll try to tell it as it happened, rather than as I learned the different bits.
Pete (I'll use the last name Smith, to protect all of us) was picking up his boys from a home-operated daycare, run by a lady named Sandra, in July 2022, a miserable hot afternoon. He parked his car at the curb on the residential street, facing the wrong way—technically illegal, but common around here. To keep it cool, he left the engine running while he went inside for the twins. He set Zeke and Woody in their child seats on the back bench seat, and was leaned in buckling up Woody when the front end of his car was rammed by a light pickup truck at street speed. The pickup driver was on his phone and didn't notice a bright blue car with its doors open!
The driver staggered out, saw the two kids sprawled in the car, and called 911 instantly. He didn't see Pete at first, because the rearward impact had thrown Pete between the front seats to land head-down in the passenger floor—then a beach towel flung from the back seat landed over him.
So the first ambulance found two toddler boys "alone" in a car, with no adult. Neither seemed badly hurt, but the EMTs didn't hesitate—they put them on backboards and took them straight to the ER, even before the first police car arrived. The twins were registered as John and James Doe, with temporary medical record numbers; the admission report (I've seen it) said "MV accident, no seatbelts." That was Strike 1.
Pete's engine, amazingly, was still running, though the radiator was shredded and oil was spilling out. A cop reached the scene just in time to hear the engine seize up and stop. He noticed that, then heard noise from inside the car. Pete had been stunned by the impact, but now, banged around but mostly conscious, was struggling his way out from under the towel. The cop called another ambulance, but tried to take Pete's statement on the scene.
Pete hardly knew where he was; his only concern was for the twins. The cop hadn't seen the boys, and didn't even know they'd been there. The pickup driver, after seeing two toddlers hauled off in an ambulance, had decided to lawyer up and not admit anything. The cop heard Pete asking about his boys, looked at the empty car, and made a note wondering if Pete was stoned or delusional. Strike 2.
The cop also, having heard the car's engine running, concluded Pete had been driving when struck—possibly on the wrong side of the street. Only the pickup driver's unwillingness to make any statement at all kept the cop from citing Pete on the spot.
As Pete told me later, the cop kept asking him what led up to the accident. "I told him I was putting the boys in their car seats. He kept asking me, 'That's the last thing you remember?' like he didn't believe it, and I kept telling him, 'That's the last thing that happened!" The cop was convinced Pete was driving, and either trauma had temporarily affected his memory—or he was deliberately denying knowing what happened. He made a note of his suspicions. He also saw that the driver's airbag hadn't deployed (because Pete wasn't in the driver's seat); he noted that as well.
By now the second ambulance had finally arrived—some event downtown, with people getting heatstroke, had ambulance service backed up—and was waiting to take Pete to the ER, so the cop let him go. Pete, who really didn't know how he got from buckling Woody to wadded beneath terrycloth seashells, was still too confused to just point at the daycare house and say, "Go ask in there!" Amazingly, Sandra, the daycare lady, didn't hear the crash or see the activity on the street; Woody and Zeke were her last kids that afternoon.
The cop stayed on the scene until the tow truck arrived. The pickup driver volunteered for a breath test, which he passed. Nobody noticed Pete's cell phone under the front passenger seat. The cop still wasn't sure who was at fault but, on reflection, decided to cite Pete for not having his children belted in. Strike 3.
When Pete got to the hospital (where his admission report also was marked "MVA, no seatbelt"—Strike 4), he at last learned the twins reached the ER an hour before him, were admitted as Does, and were already seen and pronounced relatively unhurt. But when the ER staff kept him from joining the boys, because he wasn't carrying proof he was their father, he lost his shit for a few minutes. Security was called, and threatened to have him arrested.
Somebody cool-headed finally got Pete to confirm his car license, which had made it from the first EMTs' notes to the ER chart. But a note went into Pete's record: "Patient extremely agitated and unreasonable." Strike 5. (Look, this isn't baseball.) When Pete calmed down, he finally thought to have them call Jean, his wife. (He only now missed his phone.) He gave them her number, but they only got voicemail—Jean was on the phone trying to find him.
Pete gave the ER staff Woody and Zeke's personal information, but because they were in an exam room instead of at the admitting desk it was written down by a nurse, not entered directly into the computer. He gave their first names, middle initials, and date of birth but couldn't remember their Social Security numbers. "I told them, 'They were born here. They'll be in your computer.'" The nurse noted that on the chart for whoever updated the records later—the "in your computer" part, not the "born here" part.
My sister-in-law Jean had discovered Pete wasn't answering his phone. She called the daycare to find out why Pete and the boys weren't home yet. Sandra looked out, saw a tow truck just driving off with Pete's smashed car, and treated Jean to some over-the-phone hysterics. Jean called the cops, got passed to the ambulance service, then directed to the hospital. She arrived just in time to take charge of the twins while Pete was, at last, getting seen by a doctor.
Meanwhile, the admissions desk was entering the twins' data from the written notes. The computer had an option—probably for accidents—to copy information from one patient to another, so the clerk copied address and family information from Zeke to Woody. But the computer wouldn't let her copy the date of birth (which seems sensible now; it was surely designed for family members but not twins). She entered Woody's date of birth from memory—but swapped the month and day. So Zeke was entered as 08/09/2020, but Woody was entered as 09/08/2020.
She noticed the notation "no seatbelts" in the admission. After some hesitation, she checked a flag that said "Suspected child abuse or neglect".
Then the clerk noticed the "already in the computer" note. She was new enough she didn't know how to merge these newly-created records into existing records, so she asked a more experienced clerk to help. The first clerk turned to a new arrival in the ER, and the older clerk took over. She'd just arrived for the evening shift, hadn't seen the twins admitted, had no idea they were toddlers.
Without SSNs, she did a name search: "Ezekiel C Smith". Because she already had one patient record on screen, and was searching for another one to merge it into, the computer system only showed her one name at a time. The first one that came up was not Zeke—but looked like it was.
By one of those coincidences that's less of one when you know the story, she found Ezekiel Caleb Smith, born August 9, 1920—Zeke's great-great-grandfather and namesake, born exactly a century before my nephew. When the twins were born on Ezekiel's centennial, it seemed only natural to name one of them after him; after that, it was easy to name the other after Ezekiel's younger brother.
(This is maybe the only part of this story that's even partly Pete's fault. If he'd given the nurse each boy's middle name, Caine and Wayne, instead of just the initials, maybe the clerk wouldn't have done what she did.)
The clerk saw that date of birth, saw "08/09/2020" entered on the new record, and decided that the new clerk had entered the year incorrectly. She merged Zeke's admission record into his great-great-grandfather's record. (I spoke to her a few months ago. She didn't question the patient being 102 years old; to her, that just made an ER admission unsurprising.)
Similarly, a search for "Woodrow W Smith" pulled up Ezekiel's kid brother—and this is the real coincidence, because Woodrow Wilson Smith was born September 8th, 1922, exactly 98 years before the incorrect birthdate entered for Woody! The clerk, a bit aggravated at finding two "errors" in this birthdate, merged Woody's admission into his great-great-great-uncle's record.
Pete's exam went fairly quickly. "The ER doctor was nice," he told me, "but kinda distracted. She didn't want to hear anything besides 'car wreck.' She just checked me over, gave me a scrip for half a dozen hydrocodone, and she was off to the next guy." But another woman, who Pete said called herself "your case manager," had questions to make up for the doctor's lack.
I've dealt with hospital staff who'd bend over backward to get patients the best possible care, but this "case manager" seemed to have only two goals: to get Pete out of the ER as quickly as possible, and to make it easy for his health insurance to deny him coverage.
She was the only staffer Pete saw using a handheld tablet instead of written notes; apparently it linked directly to the hospital computer—which by now had Zeke and Woody merged with their 20th-century ancestors. She could open more than one patient record at a time, but the screen would only show one at a time, making it difficult to cross-reference them.
She saw that Pete's admission notes showed he was picking up Zeke and Woody from "daycare"; she didn't have the location of the accident, and assumed the two "old men" were in some sort of assisted living. She noted that none of the three accident victims were wearing seatbelts. "I have to report that, you know," she told Pete. He told her he was just putting the boys in the car, that he hadn't started driving yet, but she ignored that to ask another question. "The ambulance notes say that your airbag didn't deploy in the accident. Had you manually disabled it?"
"What?" Pete asked. "Why would you ask that?" It wasn't until much later he understood her question. At the time, she simply changed the subject.
"You were helping Woodrow and Ezekiel into the car, you said."
"Last I remember, I was buckling Woody in."
"Buckling him in? Can't he buckle himself?" Remember, her tablet said Woody was an adult.
"He's not strong enough. They make the buckles in those little seats extra stiff on purpose, so only the parents can open them."
"Little seats? Have you got a special seat for him?"
"What kind of parent do you think I am? Anyway, federal law requires it, as you oughta know. Safety seats for both my boys."
"Safety seats?" I can kind of understand how her brain gears must have been grinding at this point. Parents? My boys? Federal law requires safety seats for old folks? She made a note on the tablet: "Possible paranoid delusions; rec. psych eval". Strike 6.
"Yeah, Zeke fights me when I put him in it, but I don't take chances with my boys." Zeke fights me? Now, distinctly alarmed, she tapped an inconspicuous box on the tablet screen, one that checked a flag on the computer: "Suspected elder abuse or neglect". Strike 99.
She terminated the interview rather abruptly at that point; Pete didn't particularly notice because Jean was coming in with the boys, having completed some insurance foofaraw at the admissions desk. Jean took her three shaken men home, with a brief side trip to the pharmacy.
The next phase started a few days later, apparently when Pete's health insurance received the claims filed by the hospital and ambulance service. At first the case must have looked reasonable: Three people injured in an auto accident, treated and released. Then they looked deeper, starting with the police accident report.
"No seatbelts". Since Pete said he hadn't seen the pickup at all, the driver had decided to claim Pete was driving on the wrong side, weaving between lanes; the report showed that. The report had the officer's concern that Pete might be faking a lack of recall.
So the insurance company requested a dump of the full chart for Pete, Woody, and Zeke. The insurance billing was just a list of charges, without anything about child or elder abuse, but Pete's chart had all the notes. Confusingly (to the insurance company), the only data available on the boys was from the accident. Woodrow and Ezekiel had both been in the computer system, but Woodrow's last admission was in 2003, and Ezekiel's was in 1998; their charts had long since been archived.
The hospital was doing its own investigation. Their social services office was understaffed, but had at last gotten around to looking at those "suspected abuse or neglect" flags. It confused the supervisor that "child" and "elder" were both checked, but she followed procedure and submitted reports to the Arkansas State Police.
The insurance company, faced with elderly patients, suspected abuse, and a lack of clear records, requested data from a variety of sources. I don't know who it was—the Social Security Administration, maybe—but somebody told them the awful truth: Woodrow Smith had died in 2011 at the age of 90, and Ezekiel Smith had died in 1999 at 79!
So now they had an insurance fraud case—so they thought. They turned over everything they had to the FBI. They also informed the hospital that two of the three patients they'd filed claims on were long deceased, and that the claims were apparently fraudulent.
Nobody at the hospital could figure out what was going on. Computer records said two elderly patients had been seen, but the ER exam notes said "age uncertain, approx 2yo". Some resident noted that Pete wasn't wearing a seatbelt and that the "case manager" suspected he'd disabled his airbag, combined that with the apparent belief that he'd been chauffering two dead men in his back seat, and concluded that Pete was both delusional and suicidal. He convinced someone in hospital administration to petition the circuit court for an involuntary commitment with "immediate detention"—meaning Pete would be picked up and held for up to 72 hours.
None of us knew anything about this. I'm still not sure just which agency contacted the city cops, but it was three weeks after the accident when they showed up at Pete and Jean's door, wanting to ask him a few questions. Pete was driving to Fayetteville for a meeting. Jean, totally bewildered, explained what she knew about the accident, and introduced the twins to the two officers, who she said were utterly charmed by the boys.
But the tenor of some of their questions alarmed her. Did she ever feel threatened, or feel frightened for the twins? Was it true Pete had changed jobs three times in five years? (Nothing on Pete: two companies went broke; a third moved to Atlanta.)
She called Pete out of his meeting. Pete called the hospital and requested all his records and the twins'. Pete then called me, asking if I'd pick up the copies of records when ready. "I'll stop by your office on my way back through town. Thanks, Becca."
I expected a sealed envelope; the hospital just shoved a folder of copies at me. I couldn't resist peeking. Soon I was sitting in the parking lot at my office, flipping sheets back and forth in perplexity. What on earth had the hospital done to the twins' records? Born in 1920? And Woody's SSN started with 353-13, but Zeke's started with 943-53. SSNs couldn't start with 9, I knew. (Yeah, there are numbers that start with 9, but they're special cases.)
Pete showed up at my office a little before quitting time. I pointed out the weird errors in Woody and Zeke's personal information. He gaped at the dates of birth, tapped the SSNs. Then he started laughing. "How the hell did they do that?"
He explained to me how the hospital had mixed Zeke and Woody's information with their great-ancestors. Then the laughter went out of him, and he said words I hadn't heard him use since the twins were born. "No wonder the insurance company's been stalling. I'm going to tear somebody at that hospital a new one if they don't get this straightened out fast."
He shook his head, forced a grin, and thanked me for picking up the copies. "Now I know what the problem is, we'll get this crap straightened out."
But it was already too late.
He hung around another ten minutes until I got off; we walked to the parking lot together. We chatted for a minute by my car, then he walked to the new car he'd bought. Just as he unlocked the door, a voice bellowed, "Police!" Pete froze, except for swiveling his head to see who was yelling. I spotted a uniformed officer to my left, hand on his holstered gun, and cried out. I don't know if that's what started it.
The officer whirled toward me, drawing his gun. Somebody yelled from my right, and the officer twisted and snapped a shot in that direction. Pete hit the pavement a moment later. Someone shot from my right, and the uniformed man dropped. Now more gunshots were coming from somewhere else, and the officer was firing from ground level. I shrieked, but the sound was lost in the echoes. Pete's rear window shattered.
I did something completely irrational. I jumped in my car, started it, and drove straight toward Pete. The side window behind me turned into gravel; I didn't hear the bullet hit. I got my car between Pete and the shooters to the left; crouching, he unlocked his door and scrambled inside. In a few moments, we were racing side by side toward the parking lot exit, while a battle apparently went on behind us. Neither of our cars was hit after we started moving.
We only drove a few blocks, turning this way and that, before Pete led me into the mall parking lot. He got out and came to my car, but instead of speaking he stood and listened. After a minute or two he said, "No sirens."
Blocks back I'd realized what a suicidally dangerous thing I'd done, and now I was shaking like a leaf. Pete said, "Come to our house; we'll talk about this with Jean." When my hands stopped quivering, I pulled out behind him again.
But when we reached their house, there were two dark sedans and a police SUV parked in front of it. He rolled by the end of the block without turning. I followed, hoping nobody could see my busted-out window at that distance. I was trailing about half a block behind him.
I was about to pull past him, so I could find a place for us to pull over again, when suddenly a white sedan whipped out to block the street. He stopped, but before he could back up a gray sedan pulled across his rear. A man stepped out of each one; both wore beards and carried handguns. I heard shouting; to my shock I recognized Russian.
Again I acted against my own safety. They hadn't even looked my way. I floored the gas, and simply drove under the man from the gray car. He rolled off my windshield into the back of Pete's car; his head and chest went through the shot-out rear window. The other man tried to jump back in the white car; I pinned him between the driver's door and my bumper.
Pete jumped out of his car, yelling my name. I nearly ran him down backing away from the second Russian, who collapsed into the street. Pete picked up the handgun the man had dropped, then checked him for a wallet. The man stirred as Pete searched his pockets, but seemed only half-conscious.
"No ID," Pete told me. "Lots of cash. A damn Colt 1911. A phone, maybe a burner." He walked around my car to check the other man's pockets and collect the other pistol. "They're both still alive," he told me. "But you'd better get out of here. I don't know what's going on, but I'm not waiting around." He walked back to the gray car, climbed into it, and drove away, turning onto a side street at the end of the block. I didn't see him again for over half a year.
I stared at the two fallen Russians, wondering if I should call 911 or just run away. I dithered just a bit too long—suddenly there were flashing lights from unmarked cars around me.
I spent a day and a half in a little apartment somewhere in Fort Smith, being questioned by two FBI agents, a man and a woman. An older man sometimes listened in; he never showed any ID. I think now he might have been CIA. He was bald but for a rim of white hair around his head; since he never gave a name I thought of him as the Monk. The FBI seemed to accept at last that I had no idea what was going on, but wouldn't answer any of my questions. When I thought they were going to let me go, instead they handed me to the State Police.
The troopers at least gave me some information. They were investigating allegations of child neglect and elder abuse. Now Pete was also wanted for fleeing arrest. The shootout in the parking lot was a "balls-up" due to lack of coordination. The city police had been sent to take Pete in for an involuntary commitment; the FBI had arrived to question Pete, having traced his cell phone to my office. The uniformed officer I'd seen first had seen an armed man approaching, an FBI agent, and fired a panic shot, triggering an exchange.
The State Police didn't know what had happened to the two Russians I'd hit; they thought the FBI had custody of them. The city cops, who got their turn next, didn't even know about the Russians. They told me my car had been impounded by the State Police, who hadn't mentioned that detail. The city cops wanted to know why my brother was suicidal, and made me talk to a police shrink for hours about him.
In the end, nobody seemed to think I'd known anything I shouldn't. Several people from various agencies said ominous things about aiding a fugitive, but nobody actually wanted to arrest me. Unfortunately, none of them seemed to believe my explanations of the confusion surrounding Pete and the twins. After three days, they were going to let me go—an hour's drive from home without a car.
That's when the Monk, the one who never showed ID, came back. He still didn't give a name or agency. But he did answer two of my questions: The two Russians were alive but in FBI custody; "Bad guys," he said, grinning darkly. And various agencies still wanted to arrest Pete for unclear reasons.
The Monk gave me one hint. "Woodrow Wilson Smith was the code name for a deep-cover Soviet agent," he said. "We've been watching for that name since the 1970s. Somehow your brother activated him."
"Pete wasn't even born until 1993!"
"Names like that get handed down over the years. But when your brother had his little 'accident,' that code name hit the wires. Now we're seeing odd activity on both sides of the former Iron Curtain, and a Russian satellite that's been believed inactive since 2002 is suddenly shifting its orbit; it's passing over Ukraine four times as often as it used to." He gave me that dark grin again. "If you hear from your brother, tell him to contact the FBI. If he comes in voluntarily, he might stay out of federal prison. And the FBI might be able to protect him from Putin's KGB."
That was all I got. Jean came to Fort Smith to get me; they'd given her an even harder time, until they'd decided Pete had kept her ignorant. They'd half-convinced her Pete really was up to something, but she was shaking that off.
For months we didn't hear anything. I kept a confident attitude for Jean, but I expected daily to hear that Pete's body had been found somewhere, riddled with bullets.
On my birthday in January, a courier brought a box of flowers to my office. People stopped by all day, making jokes about my secret admirer. I didn't tell any of them about the cheap cell phone I found in the box, or the contact entry with company name "Tuesdays 19:00-19:10" but no phone number.
Every week I turned that phone on for ten minutes, always somewhere away from home. Three times from January to March I got text messages, always just a simple "?". The FBI and State Police were still checking on me from time to time, so each time I simply replied, "They're still hunting."
I spent those months piecing together what I've already told: interviewing the hospital staff, talking to the cop who made the first accident report, pestering the clerk of the circuit court judge who signed the commitment order. I explained to the cop how Pete had literally been parked in front of his sons' daycare when he was hit; I managed to at least get that accident report amended. The pickup driver was cited for the accident and was lucky not to get charged with making a false statement.
Then one Tuesday evening last May I turned on the mystery phone in a movie theater restroom and got a real message: a map pin and "16:30 Thursday bring charts". I didn't know if anyone knew to track this phone, but I couldn't pass up a chance to meet Pete.
I argued with myself for two days about whether to tell Jean, and whether to tell the FBI. I did neither. I told my boss I needed to leave early Thursday, and made the hour drive to Fort Smith.
I drove to Ben Geren Park on the east side of the city, to a parking lot behind the golf course. There was Pete, looking thin, needing a haircut. He still drove the same gray car he'd stolen from the Russians; he'd somehow gotten a new license plate. He waved and mouthed, Follow me, then led me to a different parking lot on the east side.
I knew that by "bring charts" he'd meant the hospital medical records. He wanted to see the incorrect data for the twins again. "I looked up the real Social Security numbers for Great-Grandpa and Uncle Woodrow, and I wanted to check them against these." He looked at the charts. "I think Uncle Woodrow's is right, but I know Great-Grandpa's is wrong."
"I told you a Social can't start with 9. Maybe the Russians had something to do with it."
He started to punch the numbers into his phone. "Why don't you just take a picture?" I was uneasy about spending time in the open.
"Camera doesn't work. It's a phone I stole off one of the Russians. I have to text everything to myself if I want to keep it."
I was about to make some nervous crack about Russian quality when I saw cars rolling down the road—too many cars, too ordinary looking. Then I saw doors opening on a van parked nearby. Then people just seemed to appear from everywhere.
I saw the two FBI agents who'd interviewed me, leading a team. I saw state troopers in uniform. I saw two Fort Smith police officers. And I saw three men with beards. There were enemies on every side of us.
"Pete!" I squeaked, my voice tight in panic. He looked up from his phone and went pale. He yanked at the door of his car, looked at the cars clogging the narrow road, and turned toward the bike trail into the woods instead.
That's when the Monk appeared, tearing down the trail on a mountain bike, his white hair flying. "Hide!" he bellowed. "Get in your car!" He waved one arm frantically, gesturing to the sides, to anywhere but where we were.
Pete froze, unable to pick a direction. Cops and agents closed in from all sides; I saw one of the Russians pull out what looked like a grenade. "In your car!" the Monk shouted again. "Everybody under cover!"
"Come on!" I yelled, and ran straight toward the Monk on his bike. But Pete still stood petrified. I stopped, unwilling to leave him.
His face took on a pained expression. His mouth opened wide as if he was stretching his jaw. Suddenly his eyes bulged. Hair on top of his head caught fire. He swayed a bit, dropped to his knees. Then, with surprisingly little noise, the top of his skull burst open in a spray of blood and brain.
The Monk locked his brakes and screeched to a stop just past me. He gaped at Pete's body, then at me. "Why didn't he move?"
"What happened? Did somebody shoot him?"
"It was that Russian satellite I told you about. It's got a maser, a forty-thousand watt microwave laser. It shot him with microwaves from orbit. It boiled his brain." I gaped at him. "We got word two days ago that the satellite had shifted orbit again. I got word just a minute ago that it was coming overhead, and scans said the laser was arming." He waved at my car and the stolen gray sedan. "The metal roof would have protected you."
I remembered the soft noise, and how Pete's skull had popped. I must have been deep in shock to say what I did. "It looked like popping a zit," I told the Monk.
He turned and threw up on his shoe.
I picked up the phone Pete had dropped. By some freak, not a speck of blood or brain had touched it. "Don't move!" some cop or other yelled at me.
The two SSNs were still on the screen. Ignoring the cops circling us, I showed them to the Monk, still spitting and wiping his mouth. "Look at these numbers," I said. He looked. He swore in at least two languages.
That was the end. The FBI team took over, pushing the state and city cops back from me, the Monk, and Pete's body. The Russians quietly got back in their van and drove off while everyone else was distracted.
The Monk had seen numbers like Great-Grandpa's fake SSN before, it turned out; the KGB had used numbers starting with 9 as code, embedded in computer data all over the country—insurance files, hospital records, bank records. Accessing Woodrow Wilson Smith's name hadn't been the sleeper activation code; sending his SSN through insurance records had been. My brother Pete just got in the way.
I still didn't know, though—neither did the Monk—how on earth they'd aimed a laser from outer space to hit him in a random parking lot. I just learned that this week.
I wanted to leave some kind of marker on the spot where Pete was killed. Nothing obtrusive like bouquets of flowers; just something like a small metal cap in the pavement. I wanted to show it to Zeke and Woody for their third birthday; they're still confused about what happened to their dad.
This week I got on Google Maps, wanting to pin a spot I could send to Jean to show her where to take the boys. I zoomed in as close as I could, and dropped a pin in the spot I remembered. The GPS coordinates came up on the screen, something I'd forgotten Maps would do.
The numbers looked familiar. Had I dropped a pin here before? The coordinates, rounded a bit, were 35.313,-94.353.
Then my mind kind of blinked. The decimal shifted to the right, turned into a hyphen. Another hyphen appeared two digits further on.
And I had the answer, the final, most outrageous coincidence of all. I passed my idea through the FBI, and the Monk was kind enough to send confirmation back. The Russian phone Pete had stolen had an app on it, an app that controlled the Russian laser satellite. Pete had typed the two Social Security numbers, one real, one bogus, from his sons' hospital records into the phone; the satellite had converted them to GPS coordinates, automatically adding a minus to the longitude for positioning in the western hemisphere.
Those coordinates struck right into Ben Geren Park. With his sons' medical records, Pete had used the stolen Russian phone to call a space laser strike onto his own head.

​
The Beginning: Minnesota, Appleton, Wisconsin, and London
I present my story in-depth to show the physical and emotional, and also academic strain this placed on me, but I also love discussing all of these issues and am interested in pursuing this academically to help others. I have now seen a total of 50+ doctors from different disciplines, 8 pelvic floor PTs, 5 orthopedic PTs, and 4 cognitive therapists.
For my whole life, I have been an athlete. I did ballet and pointe for 9 years, tennis, crossfit, and I loved to run long-distance. Never did I ever anticipate that I would experience chronic pain and disability that would prevent me from enjoying these activities.
My gynecological issues manifested first back when I was in my teens upon getting my first period. I had terrible dysmenorrhea (painful cramps) and also menorrhagia (heavy bleeding). I attempted to insert my first tampon in at the age of 13. It was painful so I shrugged it off as I failed my attempts to do so. Each year, I tried again and continued to fail. A few months later, I asked my PCP what could possibly be wrong, and she said "give it time."
When I was 16, I asked my family medicine doctor to assist me. I wanted to learn how to insert a tampon as I thought I was doing it incorrectly. My doctor had mentioned she had helped others before so I thought she would be instructive and compassionate. Instead, she spread me open forcefully, and I yelped as she shoved it in. The pain was tremendous. I was not expecting that.
At the age of 22, I was misdiagnosed with vaginismus even though I had some external pain at the opening and vestibule. I had to work hard to get past the comments made by providers that my anatomy was normal and there was nothing wrong. Even my first two gynecologists had marked on their notes I had external pain, but they did not tell me this could have been more consistent with vulvodynia/vestibulodynia symptoms. My doctors thought that my vaginismus was psychological, and didn’t want to push me too hard with dilating. The recommended course of treatment for me was to find a good pelvic floor therapist. I was abroad at that time so I didn't think it was necessary quite yet. However, my physical symptoms never went away.
In 2018, one of my gynecologists recommended a hymenectomy to help give me that extra push, so she referred me to a surgeon. The surgeon attempted to perform a regular pelvic exam with a speculum before my surgery, which was not successful. While she had warned me that I needed pelvic floor physical therapy, and that the vaginismus would not disappear on its own, it never occurred to them that I didn't only have vaginismus. She proceeded to use a q-tip and exclaimed, "I can't even get inside! You definitely have vaginismus." Looking back on this experience, she was not getting the full picture because the q-tip was touching the vestibule. However, I decided to pursue the surgery and they performed a pelvic exam while I was under anesthesia and she clipped a small part of the hymen. She got two fingers inside and reported that my anatomy was normal.
Maryland/ Washington D.C.
I went to my first pelvic floor therapist in early 2019. This business was supposed to be the best in the city. I could not get past the 1.5-inch mark with the dilator which I found later was just barely in the introitus which I thought at the time was a key sign of vaginismus. We did a mix of myofascial release, stretches (happy baby, piriformis stretches, child’s pose, etc..), and manual therapy. However, we still failed to identify that the pain was primarily external in the vestibule and labia minora. During this time, I went to cognitive therapy with several different people where we worked on breathing techniques and relaxation for solely vaginismus, but I still had 10/10 pain in my vulva despite working on progressive desensitization and relaxation. I made use of an abundance of meditations and breathing exercises and it hardly made a difference with the pain.
I continued pelvic floor PT with two separate people, but it still did not provide any results. Even my dysmenorrhea worsened. We did lots of alignments, stretches, manual therapy, and trigger point exercises to relax and release the pelvic floor. I had indicated I had pubic bone pain and they said it was very tight, but they didn't know how to solve that. Every time I came back to my sessions, the physical therapists were thrown off by how my body had come out of alignment. Their reasoning was that my body was taking time to adjust to the changes. When I did not make any progress after eight sessions, despite doing all of their recommendations, they told me we had to work internally in order for me to improve. They thought my pain was psychological. I finally told them that I thought I had pain externally which due to my low health literacy at this time was prolonged. They recommended I get a hormone test, but they did not explain why, so I neglected to get the test as it was so expensive.
I went to a pelvis clinic in New York to have 100 units of botulinum toxin injected vaginally to relax my pelvic floor muscles in March of 2020. I had heard they had great success rates, and they told me I was a perfect candidate for this procedure as my “symptoms sounded like vaginismus." The clinical study had great success, and I had previously spoken to several patients who had done this procedure. I told them I had vulvodynia as well which was not completely taken into consideration. I was very nervous about this procedure and was worried it would not work. However, I had been told that we needed to do more internal work at physical therapy so I felt this was a much-needed procedure. I thought I needed the extra push, but I couldn't have been far from wrong
During the procedure, the largest dilator of the Pure Romance set is inserted under anesthesia after the botox is injected. I believe my hips were pulled in the dorsal lithotomy position as the nurse practitioner said I "resisted" while I was sedated. I kept the fourth largest dilator in for 22 hours and came back for my next session of dilating. It was difficult and they basically had to force the dilator in. Immediately after the procedure, I had extreme urinary urgency, pain in my lower abdomen, back, groin, hips and had chills and a fever for several days. My vulvodynia and PN symptoms also increased after my procedure for at least 11 months.
I visited doctor after doctor and even ran to Urgent Care. I did many urinalyses (urine tests) as I was worried that I had an infection because I had a mild fever and pelvic pain. All of my tests came back negative. I ended up visiting a urologist who told me that I needed to do a pelvic exam in order to be fully evaluated. I told her I couldn’t do it and tried to come up with alternative ways for both of us to find a solution to make it work including not using the stirrups or having me insert the speculum (I got these ideas online). She dismissed every single idea and shamed me in the process. She said I wouldn’t be able to get away with not doing a pelvic exam as every doctor would have to perform one. Additionally, she prescribed me medications for bacterial vaginosis even though there was no indication that I had it. I took the medications anyways which had no effect.
I finally met a very compassionate sex medicine and urologist. I still work with her from time and time, and she is the standard for where medicine is headed. We had a long, comprehensive virtual visit, and she believed at the time I had hormonally-mediated vestibulodynia. I had been on birth control in my early teens for four years for heavy periods and had low estradiol and testosterone. I had wanted to think that I had the hormonal sub-type so we decided to approach that one first as it is more conservative. For the rest of that year, I spent quite a bit of time treating my hormonally-mediated vestibulodynia diagnosis for a few months while applying hormone creams, but nothing improved. A few months later around September 2020, I got two MRIs, a "sacrum MRI with visualized pelvis", and a lumbar spine MRI was normal and had no abnormalities. I had very bad lower back pain as I lay in the MRI machine for one hour. The sacrum MRI read that I had bone marrow edema with sclerosis and that it was consistent with sacroiliitis (SI joint inflammation).
While I wouldn’t have expected to improve in a month as these issues take time, I was getting progressively worse every time I went to pelvic floor PT. It only temporarily took away my pain for a few hours. I was still able to walk around and do light cardio, but nothing too strenuous. I had chronic abdomen pain, pubic bone pain, lower back pain, hip pain, groin pain, and upper abdomen pain. I told my PT that the pain was all over and she said that it was my brain remembering the pain.
I Moved to Houston: More Pelvis Interventions
Around October 2020, we moved to Houston as my fiance was promoted to senior scientist at age 33. I went to pelvic floor PT to attempt to treat the sacroiliitis and my pelvic pain with my fourth and fifth physical therapists. We did a mix of treatments consisting of manual therapy, relaxation, progressive desensitization, lengthening, warm and cold therapy. They handed me a packet full of SI joint treatments and pelvic pain stretches. It was standardized and not tailored to individual patients. However, during the treatments, I became aware that I had pretty severe groin pain, buttock pain, pubic bone pain, and hip pain/weakness/clicking constantly. I became worse and worse with each PT session, so I stopped attending. They said I should do less and less at home despite my frustration and complaints that I didn't feel this was right at my age. They said, "why would you walk 1/2 mile if it hurts? Why don't you try 1/4 of a mile." They were missing the point. By the time I stopped attending this practice, I could barely even walk half a mile. This just did not feel right for a 26 year old.
I visited with several sports medicine doctors whom my physical therapists referred me to. I started bringing my fiance into these appointments as I thought he could advocate on my behalf. He often catches things I missed and he as a scientist understands medical terminology. I also believe I get a better outcome with two against one. The doctors thought that my strength looked normal, including the strength in my hips. I was told I could possibly have complex regional pain syndrome, or that the pain was in my head after receiving the SI joint diagnosis as nothing was seemingly wrong with the joint. I had severe sensitivity in my shin to the point I could feel the water running down my shins in the shower. The recommended treatment for me at this time was to continue with pelvic floor physical therapy as they thought I had a pelvic injury and were not sure what to do. They said my hips were "normal."
Around Christmas in 2020
, I wanted to try THC for pain management. I was in a tremendous amount of pain daily and it HELPED for two days. However, on my third day of trying the THC, as we went to bed, my heart rate spiked to 170 suddenly. It would not go down and I felt like I couldn't breathe. My lips got dry suddenly and my head felt like it was going to explode. We ended up calling 911, the ambulance came and did an EKG in my bedroom, and then they took me to the hospital for sinus tachycardia (elevated heart rate over 150+), auditory and visual effects, and hallucinations. Due to Covid-19 rules, my fiance could not be with me. The staff treated me cruelly as if I were a drug addict though it was my first week of attempting cannabis for pain. It was unfortunate as they were not familiar with my any of my conditions, and they had no bedside manner compared to what I was used to. I asked them to check for hernias as I had pain in my groin and the doctor barely performed a physical evaluation believed I had no hernias.
The cannabis remained in the system for two weeks as it was clear I had accidentally overdosed. It took weeks for my heart rate to calm down as it kept spiking to over 140. I experienced nausea, vomiting, and other issues as the drug left my system. We ended up running to another emergency room where they deemed it as a "panic attack." When I talked to my psychologist about this experience, she said that panic attacks only occur for 30 minutes at a time so it was unlikely it was a panic attack as the body cannot maintain that state for long periods of time. My elevated heart rate remained for more than 12 hours at a time for several weeks until January 1st, 2021.
I went to another pelvic floor physical therapist at this time in Jan 2021 as instructed by my providers after the emergency room fiasco as my previous pain symptoms were decreasing (from doing nothing). The appointment was disappointing as the focus was more on the mental aspects. I was more anxious than normal, because I had just gotten out of the hospital from the emergency room. She gave me a lot of the same exercises I had previously and did a full physical evaluation again. She said that there was nothing seemingly wrong with me and that it was unlikely I had a strain. She told me my hips were fine. She also thought that my brain could have been remembering pain so I had to retrain my brain and nervous system/or that I had an overactive nervous system (true in a lot of cases). At this point, I could barely even do child's pose or easy stretches so I do not think their assessment of me was entirely accurate. If the overactive nervous system is used in place of a diagnosis, this can result in delayed diagnoses.
The Turning Point
I went to a new pelvic floor PT again towards the end of January. I requested an advocate and she ignored it. I was also given the self-correcting alignment (I had received three unique alignments with three different pelvic floor PTs over the last year) which did not help and actually worsened my conditions again. She continuously told me she was very good, yet I felt my hips pop out several times in their sockets or it felt like they were being ripped apart. Her assistant asked me to take off my pants despite the fact I had not given consent on their form. I was not able to do an internal exam and I knew it would be impossible so I declined. Later on, the PT made me take my pants off because she only knew one method of showing me how to do pelvic flicks, which were basically reverse Kegels. I was intimidated by her, yet I complied due to stress. During this same session, my leg lengths were found to be uneven (which is a major symptom of hip dysplasia) due to the fact that I “was out of alignment." I had mentioned several times that the SI joint issue was not the main problem due to my doctor’s saying so, but this PT didn’t know what to do and still followed the MRI report that said “sacroiliitis/ SI joint inflammation.”
After this specific visit, I had sharp pain, pins and needles all over my groin going down to my leg. I was simply crawling on the floor. I kept getting worse and worse. I went back one more time to give her another try as she said she was confident she could help me and make me better, but I got even worse. I asked her if this was symptomatic of a nerve issue and if she treated pudendal neuralgia and she ignored me and said it was on her website. My body spasmed so bad during the dry needling session as well and she tried massaging my calves which further excerbated my shins. As I now I have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, massaging is a big NO for weak ankles and calves. I couldn’t move my leg at all or stretch it out to lay down, climbing stairs wasn’t possible, and my fiancee needed to wheel me around the house with our laptop chair for several weeks. The biggest thing I regret about this whole experience was that I did not walk out of the appointment. It took me six weeks to recover from this pelvic floor PT experience and she even called me at 8:00 PM on a Saturday without my consent.
I was devastated. I didn't understand how it could be psychological at this point as I was getting progressively worse. At 27, I was unable to walk more than one block outside. The main problem was that I was stuck in a vicious cycle. Many of my doctors lacked the skill set for talking about the muscles, and told me that I needed to go to PT, but couldn’t tell me what to do at PT. Then the pelvic floor physical therapists wouldn’t know what to do with my pain symptoms and try to fix everything without understanding.
A week later, I went to the referred physiatrist, that all my pelvic floor PTs wanted me to go to, at a pelvic clinic. She told me to get a hip MRI and an abdominal MRI. Having heard good things about this clinic, I decided it would be worth my time. This physiatrist was confounded by my issues and did not seem too confident at all. She also rolled her eyes at all of my previous treatments and did not know what clitoral adhesions were, or benzocaine lidocaine tetrocaine (BLT) cream was. She mentioned I could have labral tears, but she didn’t think it was the case. They also wanted to set me up with a pudendal nerve hydrodissection method without a real diagnosis, which I declined. I read the studies and realized it was extremely costly with no proven successful outcome. After getting the MRI, even those images (abdominal, left hip) came out as negative. When I left the appointment, I could barely walk still from my previous PT sessions and this person's rough maneuvers of FADDIR and Thomas test. The pain was sharp in the anterior of my hips.
This is where I decided to take action on my own as I could not believe nothing was wrong. I had been in shape for my whole life and none of this seemed normal. I reached out to several Facebook groups where I posted my x-rays and MRIs, and they said it looked like I had hip issues. I also performed the measurements myself and compared my images to other hip abnormalities. I decided on my own to get another opinion from a hip doctor. I am so glad I did.
Finally an answer! The Hips
In Feb of 2021, I expected to walk out of the hip doctor visit with no results. I went to one doctor and he forwarded me to his colleague. I also sought another opinion with another surgeon in Dallas, another skilled hip dysplasia specialist. All three were very compassionate and genuine, and it was a relief to have some straightforward answers. I was in so much pain that I was limping into the appointments.
After more image testing and another physical evaluation, they diagnosed me with bilateral hip dysplasia (shallow hip sockets with a lateral central edge angle of less than 25. Mine were 9 degrees and 14 degrees), cam impingement, chondral labral separation (almost labral tears) and SI joint degeneration not sacroiliitis, and to correlate clinically. All of this was discovered through many methods of physical evaluations (I'd never had before) and imaging; one pelvis MRI, 2 hip CTs scan, and X-rays. My hip doctor stated that "hip conditions need primarily 99% strengthening, 1% stretching" (glute exercises, abs). All three doctors agreed that I should have bilateral periacetabular osteotomy (PAO) and arthroscopy surgeries six months apart to reconstruct my hips and remove the discrepancies. I also was told to start hip physical therapy to prepare for the surgery, which I did.
Within two sessions of solely strengthening at orthopedic physical therapy in April of 2021, my vulvar symptoms had been reduced by 20%, I was up walking again and able to do the elliptical**, and a lot of my other pain symptoms decreased slightly.** This is a contradiction to the otherwise hypothesis that "it would take me years and years to have any pain relief," which I was told prior to going to orthopedic PT.
I had my first PAO with arthroscopy on June 10 with my hip surgeon and my second one, on December 2, 2021. Each surgery consisted of first, the arthroscopy, to remove the cam impingement and clean up the labrum, and then the PAO, which was an open surgery to reconstruct the pelvis (ilium, ischium, and pubic ramus). My hip surgeon gave me 23 more degrees of coverage with my acetabulums during each PAO. The surgeries were seven to eight hours apiece. The first surgery was very tough, but the moment I woke up, my left hip felt fixed despite having been cut into three pieces. I used the pain-controlled analgesia pump with hydromorphone and was very nauseated, but used scopolomine patches and zofran to combat it. Being forced to walk the next day after having surgery was the hardest. I could barely sit up during the process. The staff inserted a foley catheter during each surgery, which I kept inside two days post-surgery. My bladder appeared to be asleep after the removal of the catheter, and the nurses wanted to straight cath me so badly, which I fought against it. I told them I had vulvodynia and they did not seem to believe me. However, the internal medicine doctor gave me bethanechol and flow max to help jump start my bladder. It helped and the re-cathing was unnecessary. Just having the catheter removed was very painful each time even for a few seconds, which indicates I probably do have congenital neuroproliferative vestibulodynia.
I had to use a walker for six weeks straight almost post-surgery. It took almost 20 weeks for both sides to walk comfortably at the grocery store. The anti-gravity treadmill has been the most helpful in helping me gain mobility. Each recovery takes six months, but the second one was much easier as I was no longer dealing with one bad hip and one operated hip. I worked primarily with one PT who has been truly a joy in my recovery for both hips. She has a strong memory despite her high volume of patients and is great at adapting to my body as it flares a lot. Whenever I have pain, she adapts and switches to different exercises.
It became clear to me that I had gone to pelvic floor PT for three years (several of my doctor’s orders even without finding out the root cause of my problem) where I was only provided with stretches, lengthening exercises, laser therapy, heat, dry needling, massage, and manual therapy. The hip instability and weakness were causing the over activeness of my pelvis. Relaxing the pelvis was even more detrimental to my body as my pelvis was unable to relax due to the hip abnormalities as there are so many interconnecting muscles and nerves. The obturator internus muscle can play a huge role in hip and pelvis connection and bears a lot of strain when the hip is unstable and/or weak. I learned that the orthopedic issues need to be treated first before you can actually treat the pelvis, and sometimes the orthopedic issues don’t manifest until you’ve been treated by several people.
During all of the hip and pelvis issues, I also broke out in hives, which did not go away on their own. They spread all over my body randomly after the Houston freeze. I had to see several more doctors including dermatologists, rheumatologists, and allergists. I pursued Mast Cell Activation Syndrome and ankylosing spondylitis (sacroiliitis is a key marker of this autoimmune disease), but I was only diagnosed me with chronic idiopathic uticaria, which also has an association with acquired neuroproliferative vestibulodynia. The rheumatologist was confused as to why I had sacroiliac joint degeneration at age 27. In November 2021, my hip surgeon stated that the edema surrounding my SI joints was not present, which tells me that the unstable hips were causing the inflammation. In the last five months since my second PAO and arthroscopy, my lower back and buttock pain has disappeared. Additionally, my pelvis feels a lot more open.
Endometriosis
On May 2, five months after my second PAO and arthroscopy, I had a diagnostic laparoscopy and excision with an endometriosis specialist. He utilized the DaVinci robotic machine which is known to speed up recovery and for its precision with cuts. Prior to this, I had sought opinions for multiple endometriosis specialists who stated I have classical endometriosis symptoms. The surgery was 2.5 hours long and I woke up in a lot of pain. The staff scrambled to change my pain regimen. My bladder also fell asleep again and they had to re-cathe me despite having taken flowmax and bethenachol. Sadly, the staff lacked training in how to deal with a vestibulodynia patient and did not believe me as the etiology goes over their heads. They failed to insert the bladder catheter multiple times and I was screaming in the recovery area due to the pain. An anesthesiologist walked by and heard my screams, so he sedated me.
I stayed the night in the hospital. The gas pain was pretty significant, my abdomen was distended, and I was very nauseated. He told my fiance later that I had stage four endometriosis, primarily in the peritoneum, and it was likely that was the reason why I was in so much pain. I got my notes later which noted that I had endometriosis in a lot of places: Rectum, colon, abdomen, fallopian tubes, and covered my ovaries 60% and 30%. I had lots of adhesions, fibrosis, burn powder lesions, raised red blebs, early formation of chocolate cysts/endometriomas, partial obliteration of rectovaginal septum, and scarring. I also had a bilateral ureterolysis as my ureters were distorted from fibrosis of the retroperitoneal. Some lesions were deeply infiltrating my uterus. I had 16 biopsies, and all of them indicated inflammation. I also do not have interstitial cystitis as he performed a cystoscopy and zero Hunner's ulcers were present. I was so validated and shocked in the moment. I was expecting to walk out of the hospital with minimal endometriosis if anything or none at all. He told me that he removed all of the endometriosis, but I am worried about it recurring since I am still menstruating.
The first month of recovery was pretty miserable. The pain was not managed well and it was extremely high, much more than the PAO surgeries. I was on hydrocodone for a solid 27 days, and I ended up back on the walker for a few weeks. I could barely walk. I had sharp pain in my hips, especially the right one. Do not do an endometriosis surgery five months after PAO. While my hip surgeon had cleared me for this, I do not think my body was ready, and my hips being placed in the lithotomy position probably was also problematic. By week 9, I started to be able to move around much more, and then at 3 months I went to Montreal, and walked 5-6 miles per day.
At 3 weeks post-op, I was placed on norethindrone, a progestin only pill, which is supposed to suppress the endometriosis as much as possible. I asked for the continuous birth control, which is supposed to prohibit bleeding from occurring. I went off the norethindrone and then was placed on the Slynd. However, I went off that immediately as I had a lot of pain with that. None of the hormone therapies worked.
Now that I am eleven months out, I am not better. I am in a lot of pain 25/30 days of the month. My symptoms have not improved, they have been excerbated. I have tried cupping, some light myofascial release, lots of breathing and meditation at night. I have weird symptoms that I never experienced previously such as bladder pain, nerve sensations, bloating, pulling and tugging feelings (post-surgical adhesions and scar-tissue), and I can't seem to lay on my side or my stomach anymore. I went to on low-dose naltrexone recently, which did the bare minimum.
Hardware / Screw Removal
I had my hardware/ screws removed on August 11, 2022. I was able to void post-op and I was up walking after 1.5 weeks. The bilateral aspect was pretty tough. I returned to hip PT with some other physical therapists, and since the screws have been removed, my hips felt a lot better! It was truly a night and day different.
Ankles
I went to a foot and ankle specialist in April of 2022 recently as my shins and ankles have been still bothering me/preventing me from improving. I have bunions and had a previous accessory navicular surgery. He did not see anything in the x-rays and recommended tib/fib and ankle MRIs. Unfortunately, the MRIs got declined, which due to having endometriosis surgery I had to postpone the PT. Then my original PT left and my prescription got lost in the shuffle. We decided to combine hip and foot PT together, but then the front desk lost the prescription as they had a staff change. I started working with two different PTs and somehow they seemingly forgot about the foot and ankle issues, or didn't read it in my notes. I had been running on the altra G with no improvement for 10 months post first PAO and second PAO prior to all of this. I wanted to give it a try so I didn't say much about it at first, and pushed through the pain. I hoped that it would resolve, yet it did not. My hip surgeon was also convinced that it might just resolve on its own as I had structural issues with my hip instability.
On October 18, I started foot physical therapy with a different foot PT, and have already seen improvements after one session due to the addition of toe spacers and more strengthening based exercises. He truly excellent with feet. Prior to this, some of the others had me stretching out my calves. To be fair, I didn't know I had EDS at the time, but it shouldn't be on the patient to figure everything out on their own and one of them already suspected it.
Vestibulodynia
My endometriosis surgeon performed a vestibule biopsy which he arranged with my urologist to disconfirm/confirm congenital neuroproliferative vestibulodynia. Due to my inability to spread during exams, this was an usual ask. Three months later, I finally received word that I in fact have an overgrowth of mast cells - 8xs the normal amount, consistent with the neuroproliferative.
I met with my vulvar specialists to discuss findings and try to plan for a vestibulectomy. I am not happy about having to do this at all. I am conducting a review on the barriers that patients face when seeking treatment for vulvodynia and vestibulodynia, and I've read way too much about vestibulectomy. It appears that partials fail more as opposed to full vestibulectomies. I'm not 100% convinced that removing the 12'oclock region is safe either though.
In August, I made the effort to call around to find a pelvic floor PT as I was not improving with my endometriosis on my own. I refuse to go to someone without talking to them first after my previous experiences (one was borderline re portable as my consent was never given) as it would be a waste of both of our times to see that we would not be a good match. Many of the hospital systems do not let me talk to the PT beforehand and they placed me with someone who just recently graduated. I do not expect people to have all the answers, but I expect that they can work with me and help me find things that work for me through creative problem solving, providing many exercise modifications, and recognizing their own strengths and limitations at the same ime.
On my own, I asked around and I recently found a compassionate pelvic floor PT who did one rep at a time with me making sure the exercises felt good, which was a relief for once. We didn't do any stretching and we did things very slow and guided. While I did not make much progress in three sessions, my body did not collapse and I was not crawling around in worse pain. She also always had my consent and she did not deem things as mental**. I also liked that she strives to make her patients independent and give them the tools to succeed at home on their own. She also let me bring my fiance in twice to teach him some techniques. This is the type of care I should have received at the start of all of this.** However, this is where PFPT falls short. She continued to discuss the overactive nervous system, despite not having all of my diagnoses there.
Ehlers Danlos Syndrome
A few months later around August 2022, I completed a genetic test that revealed I had several variants for Brittle Cornea Syndrome, which is a subset of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Having read the symptoms, I have bilateral hip dysplasia, bilateral bunions, arachnodactyl, astigmatism, myopia, and hypermobility. I saw an opthamalogist who confirmed I had high myopia and astigmatism. I had also hoped to investigate if I had blue sclera or keratcoconus. In October, I saw a shoulder specialist who confirmed I had bilateral shoulder instibility and posterior shoulder impingement. I've had pain in both shoulders from tennis and lifting. In my past, I've also experienced dental issues, epistaxis, and hand pain. It would make sense that I have some type of connective-tissue disorder.
Present (GI Doctor, Shoulders, Feet, ER, and More )
In January of 2022, I ended up in the ER again with severe rib pain, abdomen pain, back pain, shoulder pain, and hip pain. Everything felt like it was ripping apart. It happened after I did something in PT, and I needed to take hydrocodone every single day for a month. I believe it's in line with slipping rib syndrome, which I recently learned about. My shoulder doctor later told me I had been doing the wrong treatments in shoulder PT, which upset me because he had only assessed the anterior portion of the shoulder previously. Why not assess the shoulder? He also diagnosed me back in October with bilateral instability and posterior shoulder impingement.
I ended up seeing two spine doctors. They told me I was having a musculosketal issue and to return to PT.
I ended up back at my favorite hip doctor, who sent me for more diagnostics (neurogram, bone density scan). I went to my vulvar doctor who scheduled me for surgery, and I consulted a gastrointestinal doctor who is scheduling me for an endoscopy and colonscopy in March. I went back to my foot doctor, and we finally got the MRIS scheduled. He told me I had arthritis at the achilles heel too based on the images. The MRIs came out negative so far, so I know they will be referring me to neurology.
I consulted FOUR more endometriosis specialists and one more ISSWSH doctor, and we all agreed that I may have more endometriosis, even diaphragmatic endometriosis, adenomyosis, and maybe even pelvic congestion syndrome due to the venuous presence in the alcock's canal. The pain has progressively gotten worse and worse.
Colonoscopy and Upper Endoscopy
On March 23, 2023, I had a colonoscopy and upper endoscopy where one small polyp, one ulcer, and rectal hemorrhoids were discovered. The doctor was very thorough. He took a lot of pictures, and gave my husband the full run down of what happened. He said that I didn't have a hiatal hernia. The worst part was the bowel prep and the mouth guard they put me in my mouth prior to being put under. The staff were very kind.
I had my large surgery laparascopic excision for stage III endometriosis, total hysterectomy with salpingectomy, cystoscopy and appendectomy on June 14, 2023 where they found adenomyosis and even removed the appendix.
Takeaways
I have learned a lot from my experiences and I hope you can gain insight from my story as well. What you can takeaway is:

• You are your own advocate and only you know your body best. Don't stop asking questions.
• Do your research: Come into appointments prepared, bring an advocate, use social media, and do your reading, look at surgeon reviews online (take notice of themes, those that have too many positive reviews without any specification of outcome is a red flag). Good personality and bedside manner is only a nice to have.
• Plan ahead before surgery
• Ask for second, third, or even fourth opinions even for imaging tests. The doctors that rely on the report may have overlooked something.

41F-Smoker MED HISTORY- Recent dx lipedema & primary lymphedema Recently started full body manual lymph drainage Car accident 2013 broke ribs, crushed foot, knee fracture, orbital fractures right side, left side broke arm resulting in plate (for some reason dentist said plate was important) Recently lost considerable weight 50-60lbs **of note lymphatic congestion left arm impacting neck on right side used to get occipital nerve blocks right side but stopped due to side effects
TL;DR 12 hours excruciating pain no pain med touched, dentist thinks it’s Trigeminal Neuralgia, no infection, little bacteria, nothing indicating tooth is causing pain she was able to poke it, wiggle it, no pain in/around tooth, but wants to extract tooth next week “just in case” as a single extraction. Proceed with dental plan (cavities etc) once we see what happens later on. QUESTION being can extraction trigger this pain from Satan because I would rather DIE. Rx medrol pack and amoxicillin (antibiotic due to plate in arm they won’t work on me unless I take it prior to visit)
Night before last I woke up 8-9pm from a dead sleep with pain 8 going from mid chin up along jawline to ear. I do have bottom right molar I need extracted, it’s broken and I assumed this was the cause of the pain. Motrin, hydrocodone, oragel, salt water rinse, praying to God, Buddha, the powers that be nothing helped. Pain reached a 10 I’ve never once said that before in my life.
By 8AM the only thing I was capable of doing was begging for death. I have chronic pain. I am good with pain. This was not pain. This was a nightmare and had I had the means I’d of ended my life. Not kidding. This was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. We get into the dentist and other than one person I would like to thank any dental staff reading this. Front desk allowed someone else to fill out my paperwork and were very kind allowing me to pace back and forth humming as if I’m labor. Called back, X-rays and that scan around your head thing all done rapidly and once it was realized touching my face caused the pain to worsen the tech did everything in her power to not do that again. Thank you for all you do.
Dentist comes jogging in, looks at my X-rays and informs me I do indeed need an extraction (known to me we planned on doing multiple things in one visit)
Tech “I will explain she cries when she talks. Her pain presentation, I don’t understand it. She let me take X-rays I wasn’t going to but she said I could and opened her mouth fine. Her pain is weird”
Dentist “She has.. (turns to me) sweetie you have very little bacteria around this tooth, it needs to come out but there is no infection anywhere, may I examine you?”
I agree, I let her know nothing hurts inside my mouth she can poke away but for the love of God please don’t touch my jaw or chin. She pokes around and pushes on my gums one place was tender two teeth away from the molar that needs extracting which she seemed to be happy about.
“Ok. So, I want to take this tooth out let’s do that on its own we can do the rest of our plan another time. I need your mouth open for awhile though and I’m not doing that to you today (this entire time tears are pouring I can’t help it I just keep wondering if there is anything I can grab and kill myself with) but here is thing I do not think this pain is your teeth. I’m going to give you steroids, finish them and if it still hurts take antibiotics which I’ll also give you.” Her whispering to tech (write up referral Trigeminal neuralgia)
Me “take that back right now do not say that”
Dentist “You heard that? You know what that is?”
Me “Yes, I work with chronic illness people and we have lost people to suicide due to that”
Dentist (sits down) “Ok. Take the steroids, then take the antibiotics either way even if your pain is gone as you have a plate and I don’t want to work on you unless you’ve been on antibiotics. We will extract Monday. Now… (she gets serious and leans in, is making eye contact w myself and s/o more so them than me) if you take the steroid and the pain is gone, that’s good it might be your tooth, if that doesn’t happen and I do not think it will. I need you to mentally prepare yourself for it being TN. I need you to go see a rheumatologist for confirmation or Neurologist (which I have) but it’s important that you mentally prepare yourself for this not being your tooth okay? This is important”
She then looks at sig other and again says “she has got to mentally prepare herself ok?”
While s/o goes to get scripts filled the pain vanishes. As if it never happened. It’s gone. Poof, as if I didn’t just go through the worst thing in my entire life, as if some joke had been played on me. Thankful yes but terrified it will come back, absolutely, which it has today a few times but briefly. I was so exhausted I knocked out but s/o woke me up to give me meds. Which I’m taking faithfully as directed.
My question. The tooth she needs to extract is along that same jawline. I understand there is no bone, root, nerve involvement with the tooth itself she explained that much. What I’m afraid of is will extracting the tooth give the Trigeminal nerve a reason to flare like it did? Will holding my mouth open that long trigger it? Will the swelling trigger it?
I’ve had an emergency cesarean, resulting in severe infection requiring a Dr to manually drain it using his body weight to do so unmedicated. I’ve had a car accident and broken/fractured 20 bones. I’ve had a spinal headache after a nerve block and steroid injection as a complication (if you know you know) None of those things compare. I’d rather DIE than trigger this pain again. I’m not kidding. Had I had the means I would have ended it. I’m not being dramatic. I spent hours humming and begging God or whoever to end my life. I don’t know how anyone survives this long term.

• 21 year old Female • 5’7, 125Lbs • current meds: - morning: 2 Tolsura 65mg, Omeprazole 40mg, Folic Acid 1mg, Gabapentin 600mg, Tylenol 500mg, supposed to be taking amlodipine 5mg at this time. - Afternoon: Gabapentin 600mg, Tylenol 500mg - Night: Omeprazole 40mg, Gabapentin 600mg, Hydrocodone-acetaminophen 5/325, Mirtazapine 15mg, Quetiapine Fumarate (Seroquel) 25mg - PRN: Ondansetron 4mg
Non smoker, not exposed to second-hand smoke, drink coffee every morning, occasionally sweet tea during the day.
History of Septic Shock, Cardiac Arrest, Liver and Kidney failure, High blood pressure, disseminated histoplasmosis, Bilateral toe amputations in February (everything besides the toes happened in November).
So I was taking amlodipine 5mg in the morning until about mid-February because my mom said it’s probably fine to stop taking if it makes me dizzy when I stand, which was my complaint. Anyways since then my BP has averaged 127/77, usually a bit high like that. I assumed since it didn’t interfere with daily life, that I was fine. I started gabapentin mid-March, which then I experienced episodes of very low BP randomly. This happens rarely as I’ve gotten used to it. I was not taking the amlodipine during this time. I also had a scope (down my throat, idk what it’s called) for my stomach, which I also did not take the amlodipine (if that matters idk I was put under and was fine). If it helps I always feel my heartbeat when I lay down. My doctor also does not know I have not been taking them. I try to limit sodium as much as possible as a broke 21 year old. When I initially got discharged from the Hospital, I was told if the top number was above 120 to take it. But it makes me dizzy…
Anyways, I found out having High BP can damage your organs? My organs are already damaged from failures during Septic Shock. Am I damaging them further? Should I take the amlodipine if it makes me dizzy? Would it be okay to take at night instead? Does it have a bad interaction with any night meds? I usually take my BP in the morning; morning BP was 127/77 as usual, was sitting up in a chair using cuff that goes around wrist, I took my BP tonight just because and it was 136/81, my HR is usually 100b but when I took it tonight it was 75bpm.
I plan to call my doctor tomorrow, but I just hope to calm my mind for the night over this…I’m only 21, I don’t want to lower my life expectancy more than the septic shock (caused by my former doctor ignoring me) probably did…
Thanks in advance.

Hi all, I have a health insurance company who has been a royal pain in my butt and I wanted to know if they violated any laws. They broke contract rules with my employer but that's for my employer to sort out with them.
I live and work in Indiana, with my "home office" for work classed as Indiana however my employer's HQ is in Virginia and some of my health insurance documents show Virginia.
To make a long story short, I had a kid last year and the health insurance company added them to my plan when I at no point provided any documentation or even requested the kid be added. The kid was going on my wife's plan. The insurance agent then provided all the doctors who billed anything for the kid with my insurance information without my consent causing all the bills to go through on my insurance.
*The question I have is this: can the insurance company just nilly willy call a doctor and provide them insurance information without the patient consent? *
An additional question not related to the above but health insurance related: can the insurance company provide prescription information to a pharmacy? In the hospital my wife got prescribed pain killers. We filled one prescription of Tylenol with hydrocodone at a local brick and mortar chain store not associated with the online harmacy we are forced to use. At no point ever had the prescriptions sent to the online pharmacy. Yet the online pharmacy somehow knows my wife took two opiates in the hospital and filled a prescription at a store. The online pharmacy keeps sending opiate cessation information and bags to dispose of them in.
The long story on the issues with the health insurance:
My wife and I work for the same-ish company. Technically one of us is a Corp member and the other a Plc member but the company sites and business all operate as one. The difference is tax reasons only which benefit the company. What this means is we have the same employer at the top level and we have the same health insurance.
In November last year we had a kid. Because pregnancy is expensive we agreed to put the kid on my wife's insurance since the pregnancy made her reach her max deductible and max out of pocket. After we had the birth certificate my wife added the kid to her insurance plan. She then had the hospital, doctors office, peads doctor, and the rental company bill her insurance. Every bill was approved expect the last one. The last one was the big one, the kids main hospital stay.
My wife called the health insurance company who couldn't give a reason as to why the kid was denied and said to let them investigate it. A couple weeks later the insurance company came back and said the "birthday rule" applies. What is that? It's a bs way for insurance companies to weasel out of coverage if a Explanation of Benefits doesn't exist yet. Well anyways we pressed the agent why I was even being consider. The agent doubled down and said my insurance has to cover the kid for the first 30 days. Which in cases where a parent did not add their child to a plan already would be the case.
So the health insurance agent then calls every doctor and company which billed on the kid and provided them with my insurance information without my consent. The heath insurance agent also went to the health insurance company claims team and had them go in and reject every claim approved or not.
However, our employer showed the kid on my wife's plan and not on mine. At no point did I provide anything to the insurance company or my employer to have my kid added to my plan. After our talks with the health insurance agent, we called our company "health insurance help line" because apparently enough issues arise my employer has a whole team to help sort out the issues with the health insurance company. The employer agent conferenced with us and a health insurance agent and lo and behold my kid is now magically on both my wife and I's health insurances only on the health insurance company side. My employer agent was a bit confused and asked how that happened but the health insurance agent didn't admit to an employee changing things improperly. Mind you this was a different health insurance agent. This is where they broke the company contract as my employer does not and will not allow a dependent on more than one plan.
My employer agent created a ticket and their team got to work and it took another month to finally get the system righted. All in, my wife has spent around 10 hours on the phone and I around 5 with health insurance or our company benefits team sorting this mess out. The bills still aren't right but the kid is on the right plans in the right year. And so we're going to be spending more hours on the phone with doctor or the next couple of weeks getting the bills sorted out.
Part of the confusion did stem from my wife and I combining in to one health plan going in to 2023 but the mistakes above if not fought out would've cost us a difference of $6000 between deductible and copay for 2022. That's a lot of money.
I am upset at how much time we have wasted on this issue. I am mad the health insurance agent provided my insurance information to the doctors and had them bill it. I am mad because I still have probably another 5+ hours of sitting on the phone correcting the bills.

“Uno!!!,” shouted D-Rock.
“Damn, again! How do you keep getting the good cards? “I complained.
“410, I may be homeless, but I’m still lucky,” he laughed as he said it.
That was my nickname. It wasn’t a very good one, but it stuck. D-Rock gave me that nickname because that’s the time of day when we first met. Not very creative, but I liked it. I didn’t want to explain who I was before I hit rock bottom. No one ever really talked about their past in the camp, except for D-Rock. He never stopped talking, but most were focused on the here and now, or at least in conversation. A number for a name; it was fitting.
“Hey fellas, I won’t to bring in another person.”
The group grumbled, complaining that we had a good thing. We didn’t need to mess up the dynamic.
“D-Rock, you are always making us vulnerable. We got a good thing. If you bring too many people in, the supply gets cut off.”
Captain was sort of the boss, the el jefe if you will. He had worked out a deal with a sympathetic teenager over at a family run grocery store. Billy was his name and instead of just throwing out expired food he would bag it and give it to Captain.
“She was raped while hanging out with another group, and they ain’t gettin rid of the guy. He’s going to do it again. They gave em a warning like that’s going to mean shit.”
Everyone grew quiet. It was a collective concentration on what needed to be done.
“I say we let her in,” Stew mumbled.
“I agree,” adding my two cents.
One more hand of cards and we were all off to bed. We had some tents and a couple of shanties, one for supplies and our own little clinic. If you were so inclined and needed a fix, we had built a safe shanty, as we called it. It had the only mattress in camp, and we took turns looking in to make sure everything was alright, if someone had decided to occupy it. Most of us though preferred alcohol. I didn’t really see the hard stuff that much. When I first started roaming the streets looking for somewhere to sleep, I got hooked up with D-Rock early on and the group he was with was more in line with my own problems. It's weird to think that within the homeless community, there are cliques. Humans are the same no matter their situation. They’d rather be with their own kind. In this case, your own kind was akin to how you got to the streets. You didn’t have to tell anyone how it happened. It was easy to figure out. There is a myriad of reasons people become homeless. In fact, D-Rock didn’t become homeless because he was an alcoholic. Well, I guess that’s sort of not true. He became an alcoholic because he lost his nine-year-old son to cancer, and after that his wife left him. He couldn’t face reality and who could blame him. He started drinking and from that moment on he started stepping away from civilization and into the gutter.
My own story is a little different. I was a heroin addict. I had, of course, started like so many people, hooked on pain killers. I have a degree in business. I was promoted to supervisor and working my way up the corporate ladder as they say. My life was fine, I was doing well and then I fell off my ladder while I was cleaning my gutters. They say I fractured my spine in several places. I never really recovered, and the pain never subsided. They assured me it would heal in time. I think my doctor was an idiot. I tried to get a second opinion, but the result was the same. They said I was healing but I felt like I was getting worse. My doctor prescribed Hydrocodone and I loved that stuff. Oh man, it made me feel so good. I remember my ex-wife hated it. She did not like the feeling at all. If she was prescribed any, she would take only enough for the first day or so and I would always finish off the bottle.
Eventually, my wife left me. It got bad. I spent everything we had. I don’t blame her for leaving. It wasn’t fair for her to sink with the ship. I was the Captain, and I alone should go under. I hear people every now and then admit that they have a drinking problem, but they’ll say that they can handle it. They call themselves functioning alcoholics. I say bullshit; there’s no such thing. You’re an alcoholic and there’s someone at home, a wife, a husband, or a mom and dad, who makes sure you don’t miss work, who wipes your ass, and does everything possible to create the illusion that your life is in order, and everything is rainbows and sunshine. Yet, if that someone gives up on you, you’re living in a shanty town like the rest of us.
The next day we were going to meet the new tenant. I hadn’t really been close to a woman in a while and although there was not much I could do to improve my disheveled appearance I was going to try to freshen up a bit. I knew I smelled like a boy’s locker room after football practice and after someone had taken a dump. I smelled like sweat and shit. I went down to the creek but walked a little further than normal. I was a little embarrassed by the fuss I was making over meeting a woman. I didn’t want the guys to give me hell about it. I washed my face and hands. I plucked off some twigs from a Juniper tree and rubbed it all over my hands and neck, even lifted up my shirt and rubbed it on my stomach and chest. When I was done, I stood up and looked down the creek to my right and saw in the distance a cave. I had always heard there was a cave but had never seen it. I walked back to the camp and went up to Captain.
“Hey, did you know there was a cave not too far from here?”
“You went that far.”
My cover was blown. “I was just curious. Exploring a little bit.”
“Don’t ever, and I mean it, ever go near that cave. Bad things happen there.”
I was a little skeptical, not only because I had never heard of this on the news but also because the Captain tended to exaggerate.
“Bad things, you mean like murder? I’ve never heard any news about that. The police never investigated?”
“You think I’m lying. Yeah, they investigated it, but it never happens to anybody important, so no one cares. It happens to us.”
I was still incredulous. “Then why are we living here?”
“Because we have a good deal here. We’re ok if we just stay away from it. Look, you don’t have to stay. You can leave.”
I didn’t respond. First of all, I didn’t believe it and second, I couldn’t leave D-Rock. He had become my best friend.
“Everyone, I like you to meet Dee,” D-Rock announced.
Surprisingly to me Dee was a little heavy set. She had long blonde hair and a nice round face. She had the look of a woman who had been living on the streets for a while. When she smiled you could see her teeth weren’t perfect and she needed some dental work. Her arms in places were scabbed over, but you could see that she once was a very beautiful woman. That was a common adjective in the homeless community- such and such ‘once was.’ He once was a successful high school baseball pitcher. She once was pursuing a career in law. I thought it was neat. It was less about seeing the person’s failure and seeing the missed opportunity, that they had the means to be successful but somehow life had robbed them of it. Of course, people acknowledged their mistakes, but justice isn’t always dealt evenly. Karma isn’t perfect, people suffer vastly different consequences for the same mistakes, especially when you’re on the margins.
Yeah, Dee once was beautiful, so I perceived her as beautiful. I was nervous but worked up the nerve to introduce myself.
“Hey I’m 410.”
“410? Is that a part of your Social Security number?” She chuckled.
“No, that’s the time D-Rock and I first met. It wasn’t my choice. You don’t get to choose your own nickname here.”
She smiled, “Well, let’s hope I get a good one.”
“Hey, tonight I think he should let Dee have the safe shanty. She’s not fixin or anything. I just think she’s a guest first and should get the finest we have to offer, but as soon as she becomes a member, she has to share in the shitty stuff like the rest of us.”
Everyone laughed and I could tell that D-Rock had taken a shine to her. I was a bit jealous because I really liked her and it seemed she was more into him than me.
That night I was hurting, hurting bad. I needed a fix. I hadn’t been on the corner collecting, and I needed money. How could it get it quick? I was dry heaving and that’s the worst, because there’s no relief. Normally, you vomit, expel what you have eaten, and you feel better. I had nothing in my stomach. It was empty but I kept heaving, straining more stomach muscles and irritating my throat. I was sweating like I was in an oven. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out and walk.
It was late in the night. There was no moon. The only light was the small streetlamp from the grocery store on the other side of the bank. You could look across from our camp and see the back door where we would get our supplies. I heard a rustle of leaves and saw the flaps of Stew’s tent fold into the interior of his tent as if something invisible had crawled through. The flaps moved now to the exterior and Stew’s body was moving across the ground. His feet were together and up off the ground, as if something was dragging him. His arms never moved but were flung up over his head. He was dragged over the top of a rock and his head bounced up and then violently back to the ground. Stew didn’t react. I couldn’t see if his eyes were closed or not. It was too dark.
“Stew. Wake up. Wake up,” I whispered. As silly as it sounds, I didn’t want to wake up everyone else, but then the dragging became quicker, and Stew was sliding across the ground like a human luge in an Olympic competition. It was then that I yelled. It was automatic.
“Stew! Stew! Wake up. Hey, something is happening.”
Captain came out of his tent. “What’s going on?”
I was dumbfounded and could only point in Stew’s direction. I know the Captain may not have seen it all but he caught a glimpse of it because I heard him whisper to himself, “Not again.”
“Not again? What the fuck are you talking about.”
“The cave.”
Everyone else had awakened and were asking what all the noise was about.
“Nothing. Everyone, go back to sleep. Stew and I had an argument and he’s probably going to leave.”
The group bought it and went back to their tents, but I stayed right where I was and waited.
“Why did you lie to them?” We have to go find and help him.”
“Leave it alone 410. There’s no helping him. He’s gone. The group is better off not knowing and you’re better off staying here.”
“I can’t believe you. You’re just going to pretend like nothing happened. What do you know that you’re not telling us.”
“Did you see anything? Huh, dumbass. Did you see anything? I bet you didn’t. You only saw Stew’s body. Doesn’t that tell you something? Doesn’t that say you’re dealing with something you can’t fight?”
I had been lost in our conversation and when I really started to think about it the whole affair scared the hell out of me.
“No, I didn’t see anything.”
I went back to my tent but of course I didn’t go to sleep. The only good thing is that the fear had beaten back my craving for a bit. I could do without a fix for the next hour or so. I laid there debating on whether or not I should go to that cave and look for Stew. We hadn’t always gotten along. There were times he would try to muscle me off of the corner of Hayworth Lane and Williams Pike. That was prime real estate for collecting and for some reason most people were more generous at that spot than anywhere else. Maybe it was because there was a church there with a statue of Jesus staring directly at traffic, like a warning that if you didn’t give, he would see it and record your greediness in his heavenly hall of records. I didn’t like Stew, but I couldn’t let him suffer.
I made my way out of the tent and saw Dee standing outside the safe shanty. I looked at her real quick and then started making my way to the cave.
“Hey, where you going 410?”
“Nowhere. Just stay there,” I said abruptly and in an angry tone.
“Well damn, in that case I’m coming anyway just out of spite.”
“Look Dee, it’s not safe here. Stew didn’t leave. Someone or something dragged him off. I’m going to look for him. Captain knows, but he’s not willing to tell the truth.”
“I’m still coming.”
“Holy shit, you’re so stubborn.”
“Yep.”
What could I do. I didn’t want her to make a scene. I didn’t want anyone else to know where I was going. The trek was easy at first but then the bank got steep and overgrown with a thick underbrush. In the midst of all that brush were large rocks with steep gaps in between. I luckily avoided hurting my leg, stepping into one of the gaps. I fell fast and hard up to my knee. If I would have had time to react, I would have unwisely twisted myself and ended up breaking my leg. Dee grabbed me by the arm and helped me out. The terrain made me think that whatever dragged Stew out this way must have been supernaturally strong. I was glad that we weren’t too much farther from the cave.
As we approached the mouth of the cave, I saw Stew’s clothes laying on the ground. I knew it was his clothes because I recognized his bright Daytona Beach tee shirt. I looked back at Dee and motioned to her to be quiet. With careful steps we slowly made our way to the mouth of the cave to see what was inside.
Stew’s nude body was lying on its back. He had been cut open from the bottom of his chin down through his pelvis. He was an empty shell, his body cavity scooped out of all internal organs. The interior cave walls were bathed in blood. All the sudden something invisible lifted Stew’s body by the ankles and violently smashed his head against the outside wall of the cave. His head imploded. And then again, he was smashed against the rocks. This happened about three more times. And as if to give up on its prior course of action, the spirit started to twist Stew’s head off. His head pivoted around in a circle, snapping the bones in his neck and then his head was torn straight up from his body.
Dee had already hauled ass out of there. I turned to run myself, but this spirit or demon grabbed me and slung me down the bank and into the creek. I sat up quickly. The creek at that point was only about two feet deep. I saw the tree limbs snapping, brush parting, and the forest floor compressed by something making its way towards me. I could tell that it had come to the edge of the bank. I didn’t move. I couldn’t understand why but I sensed that it would not come in the water. I heard Dee yell in pain. She had fell through one of the gaps. The spirit made a new path toward Dee.
“Dee. It’s coming after you! Hurry. Get in the water. It won’t get in the creek! Go dammit. Get in the water!”
I saw Dee struggling to get her leg free. The spirit was getting closer. She finally got free and headed towards the creek. She got about two feet away and launched into a headfirst dive. While she was in the air the spirit swiped at her, hit her feet, and knocking her into a tailspin. Instead of a graceful dive it turned into a belly flop. It wasn’t a ten in the eyes of a judge, but it got her to safety.
I waded up the creek to where she was standing. We looked at each other in bewilderment. I couldn’t help to think how sexy she looked with wet hair.
“You look horrible,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Well 410 what do we do now.”
“I only know for now we’ll travel through creek.”
We waded up the creek and when we got almost to the bank under the campsite, I heard Captain yelling.
“You went to that cave didn’t you. I told you not to do that. I bet you didn’t like what you saw.” He walked down to the edge of the bank. “Why don’t you come up out of the water?”
“No, but I suggest you get in the water as well,” I said.
“Dad, what’s going on.” I looked up and saw Billy on the other side of the creek holding a shopping bag in his hand. “Do you still need these?”
“Dammit Billy. I told you never to come out here. Just leave the bags out by the dumpster.”
“Dad? Billy is your son?’
“Ok 410, you snooping son of a bitch. I guess the cat is out of the bag. I like you too. I gave you passage. I gave you protection.”
“What does that even mean?”
“Billy, go back into the store.” Billy did as he was told, and I could hear the store door clang shut.
“Captain, you’re not making any sense,” added Dee.
“Bitch shut up! I didn’t want you here anyway!” he yelled. “Yes, I own the grocery store and I own the land with a cave on it. The land on up from the cave encompasses a farm and my lovely half a million-dollar home. I’m not homeless, never have been. The man I bought the house and land from had a little secret. You see back in the old days you couldn’t really keep people from squatting on your land. Dogs could work but they could only patrol so much area without getting bored and go after a squirrel or something. There’s not enough time to build a fence to surround so much land, so much wealth if you will. Yet, someone learned that you could summon a protective demon. A demon beholden to the owner of the land. It would guard your boundaries and leave you alone. There’s nothing more efficient. It was a previous owner, not the old man, someone as far back as the colonial times. The old man told me that no one knew how to stop it or get it to leave, so he made sure that he performed the little ritual that gave any visitor he wanted safe passage. Although, he said one time he got curious. Some young man had camped out on his land. He was hunting and a stray bullet hit his house. That angered the old man. You come on my land and hunt without permission, and then to top it off, you hit my house where my wife and kids are sleeping. Oh, he said what that spirit did to the young man was terrifying. I, on the other hand, was amazed by it.”
“And you’ve been bringing homeless people here to feed the beast.”
“Not everyone 410. If you are really down on your luck and its not your own fault then I leave you alone and eventually force you to leave, but if you’re a worthless piece of shit, I let the beast rid the world of your helplessness, sucking on the teat of everyone else’s hard work. Stew was an accident. I didn't mean to let it get so close to the camp. That happens sometimes. Haven't figured out how to set new boundaries.”
“That’s why the spirit can’t come to the creek. Asshole here don’t own the creek,” said Dee.
“That’s right, but you can’t walk in the creek forever.”
“But we can get to land you don’t own.”
“I thought of that Dee.” Captain pushed his flannel shirt aside and pulled his pistol from his holster. “Sorry guys, but this too good of a thing to have a couple of junkies ruin it.” He aimed and shot, hitting Dee in the arm. Out of nowhere D-Rock tackled Captain from behind, knocking the gun out of his hand. The gun was slung far down the bank but not close enough for me to grab it.
Captain kicked D-Rock in the face and turned to come after the gun. The spirit grabbed D-Rock and threw him into the air. D-Rock started to scream in fear. I could hear his agony. I knew that something bad was happening, but I was focused on the gun and while the spirit was occupied with D-Rock I figured I could grab the gun and somehow save him. I climbed up the bank and grabbed the gun at the same time that Captain did. I had the stock, but he had a firm grip on the barrel, and it was pointed away from both of us. I punched him in his face with my left, but it wasn’t very powerful, given that I’m not a lefty. This infuriated him and he began doing the same to me, but his punches weren’t weak. They were devastating. He broke my nose and blood was flowing like water out of a faucet. My eyes were watering, and I was about to pass out. At that point, I saw a rock hit the side of his head. Dee had hurled a rock at him, and it was a magnificent throw, pin-point accuracy. He fell back and I secured the gun.
He wasn’t out cold, but he was weak. “Ok 410, you got me. I’m done. You can get in on this. I didn’t tell you the whole story. I can also share ownership of the spirit.” I gather that was bullshit and he was just making that up. His story wasn’t convincing, I just didn’t have the nerve to kill another human being, no matter how evil, and especially one with a child to raise.
D-Rock’s body was thrown in the creek, splashing Dee and I with water and blood. His body bent in half, back broken and head missing.
“Oh D-Rock,” I heard Dee whimpering.
I grabbed Captain by his pants around the ankles with a strength I didn’t know I had and dragged him to me. I aimed the gun at his face and shot, but I didn’t stop until I had emptied the gun and as I was shooting, I lowered the gun to cover more of his body. I hit with every shot, exploding his face and peppering his torso. There was no way he was leaving that spot alive. I tossed the gun into the water.
Dee was crying and I was about to break down myself. That was my best friend tossed aside like garbage. We stayed in the creek not daring to leave our safe passage. We didn’t know how much land Captain owned so we walked at least a mile or two up the creek until we saw a small biker bar. There were some people standing out back talking and having a good time.
“What in the hell are you guys doing in the water?”
“Who owns this land, or that bar?”
A man stepped up and motioned to himself. “I own this bar. Why?”
“You don’t have a nephew named Billy, do you?”
“No.”
“Do you own the land all the way down to the creek?” asked Dee.
“Yes mam.”
We climbed out the creek and made our way up to the bar.
“You guys look terrible. Do you want something to eat? It’s on me.”
“Yes, thank you,” I responded.
We walked to an outside picnic table and sat down. We were filthy with mud, caked all over our bodies and we smelled like nasty old creek water, but the food they brought us was delicious and one good thing about living on the margins, you learn not to give a damn about what people think. What do they know. Absolutely nothing. They can’t judge. They don’t know why you are where you are and the reasons for it. Hell, there’s a demon guarding some land right up the road from where they live, ripping folks apart and stashing their bodies in a cave and they don’t even know it. Ignorance is bliss, until it shoves its claws right up your ass.

to whom it may concern:
​
my case is complicated and long, starting november 20th 2020
but realistically begins before then, i had started to develop shaking and would fall over, va physical therapy sent me to the primary care but they kinda shrugged it off, and indeed we still dont know why i was shaking/convulsing
anyways on november 20th 2020 i was coming back from the bathroom and had a psuedoseizure and a fall into a table, breaking my left hip
i was taken to melbourne regional medical facility on the way the ambulance gave me fentanyl which caused a drug interaction with hydrocodone already in my system (leftover from my arteriel bypass the year before) i was delerious which is noted in the records and completely out of it and stated i took a bottle of wellbutrin, which was not true, they also said at some point durring my stay i said i took a bottle of cough syrup with codeine? and i guess the police? told them i was smoking marijuana laced with pcp
i dont remember the police being involved at all, and i have no idea where they got the cough syrup idea, i just remember screaming in pain as the convulsions would hit, but immediately after the fentanyl i was out for the next week, anyways
none of these are true and they even noted i wasnt there (infact, i also thought my exwife was working for the yakuza, and was presently at the hospital trying to kill me) (i also believed my father was a cowboy outlaw, and that there was aliens in the ceiling lights that would come out when the heater cycled on)
why they took anything i said as fact i dont know but these records have plauged me ever since as i will explain as stated earlier i broke my hip, however pain was manifesting into my knee, i was also experiencing severe convulsions/psuedoseizures causing my legs to go every which way causing intense pain
by the time i made it to the hospital i was out cold, but still convulsing the hospital treated me for an overdose, for serotinin syndrome, and xrayed my knee they blaimed the convulsions/psuedoseizures on the pcp (that ive never in my life tried before)
they then discharged me without looking any further into my pain (reason we called 911 for ambulance in the first place) my first follow up visit to the va they did a physical exam, and stopped when i yelped in pain precscribing steroids saying ''this will help you''
on my second visit to the va (now day 30 since my fall and hip break)for pain while in a wheelchair the doctor was trying to convince me it was psychological meanwhile im begging for a hip xray, the doctor after 10 minutes of argueing gives in and orders the xray
next thing i know im being rushed to the hospital for surgery, which never happens because its been 30 days and is now infected... a pic line and 6 weeks of antibiotics the infection is clear, however surgery is again delayed due to psuedoseizures and HO growth
im admitted to the hospital a couple times for the psuedoseizures/convulsions (at the time i was calling them spasms for lack of a better word and noone ever looked into them to find out what was going on, it was written off as one thing or another) holmes regional does prescribe clonazepam for them after many muscle relaxers and other medications failed, while i was in inpatient, i end up trading my pain medicine to stop the convulsions,
the doctor after i voice concerns about recieving my medication, said ''dont worry, with your condition it will be no problem to get this medication'' well, it was, va said ''well we dont want to just throw medication at the problem'' and ordered a back mri, eventually ordering an eeg around month 15
private care doctor said ''we cant prescribe controlled substances'' (a lie, the receptionist assured me they could prescribe what was needed and indeed i got this medicine from this facility just recently for my anxiety, but they wouldnt help my seizures at the time)
so i go back to the er at the hospital where i got the medication, who in turn told me ''it would be unethical to give you that medication'' however in the notes they wrote down '' dr griffin felt the patient needed to follow up with the doctor following him for this injury and that at this time he did not want to refill the clonazepam for the patient, i explained that to him the patient was frustrated but i told him he is going to have to call the doctors who is following him for that issue ''
this is blatently untrue and false records, i was there in order to follow up as that was the hospital who prescribed the needed medication
due to these false records in the very beginning of my ordeal, my treatment suffered, i finally got my surgery at month 15, the psuedoseizures/convulsions went away for the most part around month 9, however still popping up from time to time
oh, and the va also tried to block my hip replacement surgery stating my medical marijuana for my anxiety could have intoxicating effects and lead to a fall and further injury, i feel this block was punitive as just a few days prior i was questioning her hypocratic oath in regards to my lack of treatment and lack of medical care and continued suffering
to describe what it was like, everytime i would relax my body would convulse, sending my leg (with the broken hip) out harder then i could kick it myself, one time the leg impacted my wheelchair and took my toenail off, i did not feel this due to the intense pain caused by the convulsion on a broken hip
this would happen every time my body would relax, as ide try to sleep, i went days with no sleep at a time until my body would just crash at which point i would just convulse, scream out in pain, fall back asleep, to scream out in pain again, and again, this was at its worst
i still have nightmares where i scream out in my sleep to this day. noone should have to suffer like i did,
and at every step of the way i was denied treatment based on false impressions gleamed from these false notes and negligence
i spoke to several lawyers who said at the very least they showed negligence in my treatment but had no specialists to take my case
at the very least the origonal hospitals failure to spot a broken hip caused a massive chain of events of suffering, and the VA's lack of treatment caused alot of suffering
so here i am trying to find some advice on how to proceed, do i just give up? they never say why they wont take my case and when i try to talk about it on the phone i get jacked up from my anxiety and bringing up the experience of the event and tend to mess up what i say
i have x-rays and medical records