I went to PAX East today. It was awesome, and maybe I’ll write about it more later, but some pain just subsided and I want to sleep now.
During my teens I had a few years where I dealt with severe abdominal pain pretty much daily. It was the least favorite time of my life and it’s the symptom I’m most afraid of returning. Almost all of my memories of taking the train into Boston were during these years, I saw a stomach doctor in Mass General for a while and spent a lot of time on that train in awful pain. Since feeling a bit better, I’ve been replacing memories of things I associate with bad moments with new, good memories. Part of why I wanted to go to PAX was to do just that since I took the train in. It was all going according to plan, until…
My stomach was a bit off when I woke up, and a little more off after a churro and pretzel at PAX. The group decided to stop off at a sushi place afterwards and I had been meaning to try sushi at some point anyway, so I took this opportunity to do just that. Big mistake! When I got home, the pain really started, and it felt a lot like it used to during those years. I had a few types of pain back then, one felt like food was grinding against ulcers in my intestines (doctors claimed they couldn’t find ulcers, but oh well), and another felt like my intestines were filling up with gas to the point where they were stretching so much they were treating. That’s the type of pain I got tonight. It started about 5 hours ago and I’m just now finally farting out the rest of the tension. I vomited a bit earlier that helped as well.
Luckily, my sick sense of humor finds the irony here funny. As long as I don’t get this kind of pain again any time soon, I’m good with this. PAX was still amazing, and I don’t even regret trying the sushi. Now if someone asks if I’ve tried it and I say I didn’t like it, if they try to argue with me I can tell them it caused this stomach pain! I plan on taking a trip into Boston soon to see an old friend, too, so that can be my opportunity to finally replace those bad “train into Boston” memories with some good memories.
Shaking Off the Chains 