today is the day that i've quit smoking. i know it's been long overdue. it's become really awful though, and i can really feel the addiction now more than i ever had before. i started smoking maybe 2 years ago, but off and on. last winter, i got caught on school grounds with cigarettes, a few lighters, and a knife, and had to go to a 8 hour tobacco seminar. after that i quit for 2 months. 2 whole months tobacco free. then somehow i started up again. in the few months after i started smoking again, i had numerous health issues pop up. my severe acid reflux came back full force, i thought that i had gotten asthma. there was even a point when my legs would fall asleep without warning. now, i'm probably one of the biggest hypochondriacs that you'll ever meet in your entire life, so none of these were life threatening. but i got freaked out nonetheless. throughout the past 6 - 10 months i was probably in the doctors office at least twice a month. i had to get blood drawn 3 times in the past 4 months. once because of my legs, once because i thought that i had menengitis, and once because they thought i had a thyroid condition. of course, nothing was wrong with me. the time when they thought i had menengitis i was on vacation in North Carolina. the second day that we got there i got some awful illness. i was having cold sweats, incredibly swollen glands, couldn't eat.. it was horrible. i eventually had to go to the emergency clinic. i couldn't even sit inside the building because i was so cold. even going outside in the 95 degree weather i was still shivering. the doctor came in and asked me a bunch of questions that i was second guessing myself on. things like "have you been doing this" or "does this hurt". i hate when they do that because i always feel like i'm giving the wrong answer, and i start thinking well maybe i don't really feel that way.. and i think about it too much and get confused and it's just bad. after they drew my blood, the doctor spent 5 minutes pressing on my stomach and asking if it hurt. i wasn't really sure what kind of pain he meant, i mean yeah it hurt when he was pressing on my stomach because well, he was pressing on my stomach. then he started talking about how i might need an appendicitis and all this shit, and i started freaking out. i was with Wesley at the beach, and he had to get his appendix taken out maybe 6 months before that. he said it was probably the worst pain that he's ever felt, and that i'd know if i needed to get it taken out. clearly i wasn't in that much pain, so i doubted that i'd need an appendicitis.
i guess the moral of that whole schpeal was that i'm a huge hypochondriac and think that i'm dying of some uncurable illness every 20 minutes. and that's really not an exaggeration. when i started coughing about a week ago, i started thinking that i had aquired lung cancer because of all the smoking that i was doing. so i went on my favorite website: www.webmd.com, and looked up the symptoms of lung cancer. i don't know how many of you have been on webmd, but it's pretty fucking awesome. they have this thing where you can put in all of your symptoms and they'll tell you all the things you could possibly have. it's a hypochondriacs dream. when i put in "swollen glands", "coughing", "trouble breathing" and everything else that i had, there were a few things that came up. but the one that really jumped out at me was "Black Plague".
...
what the hell. i know. so now besides worrying about having lung cancer, i had to worry about having the fucking plague. awesome.
this computer is making me incredibly hot. and i feel like i've been writing for a long time. and i'm not really sure about what. i'm going to stop soon. but i know you all need a Wesley update. i got two letters from him today. he got this really sweet new PX Army paper. it's pretty vicious. it's got the Army seal on it and everything. fancyyyyy. anyways, he pretty much wrote about everything we talked on the phone about. he told me that one of the guys that he's gotten close to over the past weeks was on the phone with his girlfriend the other day while Wesley was talking to me. the guy asked his girlfriend if she was still going to come down for his graduation. she told him no because they needed to break up. Wesley said that he was glad to have me, and that he knew i'd never do that to him. he also said the guy was so depressed and upset, it was awful. that girl clearly has no heart whatsoever. but i told katie that today, and she's right, that probably happens all the time. i can't imagine ever doing that to Wesley, or anyone. that's just horrible. he's having a hard enough time being away from his family and his girlfriend and ugh. it's just mean.
other than that he says basic is really good. he had to go into the range (camping in the woods essentially) and do all this stupid shit like set up the Drill Sergeants tents. he got bit by tons of fire ants and got sunburned and had to sleep in a hole that he dug in the ground. depressing.
alright i've been writing for a longgggg time. it's time for me to go to sleep.