I was sitting down, watching another Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World episode when, suddenly, pain.

And not normal pain. Not head pain, or ankle pain, or a sort of intestinal cramp thing that happens a little too often. This was new, and kinda scary. It was like something with claws had reached in and grabbed my right lung and started pulling and squeezing at the same time, and occasionally pausing to claw up the insides of my pleural cavity.

After a call to the nurse line resulted in ‘needs to be seen in one or two hours’, we inconvenienced the roommate with a request for a ride to the ER. Because an ambulance isn’t a reliable way to get to my hospital.

I did try to stop all that from happening, saying that it might be nothing, and maybe I could just go to sleep and it’d all be better when I wake up — I was suddenly really tired, and I didn’t want to bother anyone about it.
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