I am not sick, I am just disgusting...

Whatever you have in your mouth, get rid of it. Whatever you have in your hands, put it down if you don’t want to drop it. What I am about to tell you is part grossness, and part hilarity. I probably couldn’t tell anyone about this in person, for fear of seeing their faces when they heard the news, but for you, my Internet friends, I can bare all on my blog. So, here goes!

A week or so ago, I had some popcorn for dinner with my sister. And you know how when you eat popcorn, you still find shells in the sink when you brush your teeth a few days later? Well, a few days ago, I thought one of those accursed remaining kernels was lodged in the back of my throat. I tried to cough it up, I tried to brush back there without gagging, I tried everything I could think of, all to no avail. I still had an annoying feeling in the back of my throat. Luckily, I am married to a man that is used to me asking him to aid me with gross things. So, I asked him to look in the back of my throat to see if he could find the source of my annoyance. Unfortunately, I heard the sound that I didn’t want to hear… eewww!!! Due to my husband’s profession, he can handle just about anything gross, so I was really worried when I heard him gasp. When I borrowed his flashlight, I found that in the back of my throat, next to my little dangle-down thing, was a very sizable lump with two big white spots on it. GROSS! My problem was that my throat didn’t hurt, I was just feeling annoyed. I didn’t think I was sick, but I’ve never had huge bumps in the back of my throat, either.

My sweet-yet-grossed-out husband told me that if it didn’t hurt, I should just try to gargle with salt water and if it didn’t go away, then go to the doctor. But, I think that gargling with salt water is disgusting, so I didn’t do it. And, it didn’t get any worse, but it wasn’t getting any better either. So, I looked up strep throat on the Internet, and found a description of the growth in the back of my throat. So, instead of worrying about if my child would be infected by my kisses, I made a doctor’s appointment.

You know how doctor’s offices are, they “squeeze you in” so that you can sit in the waiting room for half an hour, and then they put you in a room, where you sit there for a half an hour, and then the doc comes in (spending a total of five minutes in the room), looks in my mouth and tells me that I have a particle of food stuck to my tonsil and that it is making my tonsil enflamed. She told me that she didn’t have the right tools to do anything, and she didn’t want to use the wrongs ones because I could bleed to death (HOLY CRAP! BLEED FROM MY TONSILS!), but if I would just “gargle aggressively” for a few days, and then if it didn’t go away by next week then I should go to an ear, nose and throat doctor so that he could extract the particle with the right tools. Holy crap! EXTRACT IT! I guess I should have done one of two things… either gone to an ENT doc in the first place, or listened to my husband’s advice a couple of days ago. But since when is my husband allowed to be right about medical advice?

So, I have the proverbial good news, bad news situation… The good news is that I am not sick and do not have strep throat that I could infect my child with. The bad news is that I don’t know how to swallow all of my food correctly or something, which makes me disgusting.