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every year, for the past three years, i've had a lump in my throat.

this doesn't mean the emotionally-associated lump. there is no anniversary attached to this lump, none that i'm aware of.

but it is all in my mind...

it feels like something is protruding into my throat. like a pill is stuck. a pea. a welt on the inside of the tube.

it doesn't really impede my swallowing, breathing, or normal functioning other than the fact that it annoys the shit out of me. it doesn't feel particularly nice to swallow, and it is always THERE.

when i finally went to the doctor with this (not my regular g.p. but at the school clinic) i was treated with quite a bit of hostility. i believe the doctors feel they are "slumming" working for a free clinic at a university. They are so obviously pissed at not having her own private practice somewhere in the country, or curing cancer in a lab at the mayo clinic, and they take it out on students with their exasperated diagnoses, and "no, i will *NOT* give you a note for missing that test. yes i know i just told you that you have mono. it's your own damn fault for being such a tramp." i have to admit, however, that my friend k8 sees them regularly and has had little problem with them. but then again, she's got hep C, so i think they take her seriously.

as for me and my lump?

the doctor felt up my throat, looked down the hatch, and said "it's all in your head. stop thinking about it."

thanks. thanks a lot. i'll try. considering that it is EVER-PRESENT.

part of me got excited at this brief brush with hysteria. my first psychosomatic illness or symptom, how thrilling! but i was also dismayed at my mind's choice of symptom. i mean, give me something GOOD like partial paralysis, not something ANNOYING and invisible, like a lump in the throat, that doesn't *really* affect my daily life.

so now i think the damn thing is back.

and i'm certainly not doing a very good job of not thinking about it, am i?