Youstress

Everybody reacts to stress differently.

Though we might not think it at first, I'm willing to bet that stress, what we generally think of as purely emotional, causes a whole host of physiological responses in your body. Ever get the volcanishits before a big test, or while you're in the waiting room before seeing the BIG BAD M.D.? WITH HIS BIG, BAD, BOWTIE?

GAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGH!!!!!!

Some people get those "tension headaches". I've never been a big fan of that term myself. "Tension headaches". It just doesn't seem necessary to me. Like "testicular torsion". What else could you be torsionizing besides your testicles? I mean, come on already.

Some folks get those sweaty palms, others get tingling sensations in their fingertips or their hands (or is that a heart attack?), and there are still others who pee, just a little, when they get all anxiety-ridden and out-of-sorts. Some people get klutzy, others have an insatiable urge to eat, drink, drug, or fuck. Some just can't stop listening to Stevie Nicks, and I don't know what that's all about.

Still, when you think about it, your physiological reaction to stress is probably, usually rather benign-- and I don't mean to minimize, because I hate it when people do that to me, but, generally speaking, you're probably not going to wind up in the doctor's office or the hospital because of a somatic manifestation of worry.

Enter: me.

(Wow-- good thing that colon was right there. And... that's what he said.)

I stress a lot-- so much so that you'd think I'd be quite good at it by now, and by "good at it" I mean that I would glide effortlessly into the seductive waters of worry without it having the slightest effect on me. Obviously, that's not the case or this wouldn't be much of a post.

My body reacts extraordinarily negatively to stress. Now, if you're a medical student or an actual doctor (do any doctors read this blog?-- besides Doctors of Musical Arts, thank you, Su-- because that would be both exciting and disturbing) you're probably going to write something pedantic and annoying in the comment section about how the diseases/syndromes about which I write are not triggered by stress but in fact by some weird sex I had at some point when I engaged in weird sex or because my paternal grandparents were blood-related (talk about weird sex, right?) but I'm going to pretend that they all had to do with stress, and there's not much you can do about it.

DOCK-TER!

The first time I can remmeber getting inordinately stressed out (you know, about something real) was when my wife had her head cut open to remove an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) on June 22, 2004 (whoa! Brainaversery coming up!) They broke open her melon and went digging around in there for a long time and, when my buddy woke up, her head and limbs were swollen up so much that she looked like a big baby and she smelled like antiseptic and blood and she could barely move her left arm and it made us all cry. I slept on the floor of the neurosurgery waiting room, developed a roaring sinus infection, got prescribed a whomper of a dose of antibiotics, and then...

I got thrush!

If you don't know what thrush is, that's great for you! I'm about to ruin your life. Thrush is basically a rapidly-producing fungal infection that occurs, of all awesome places, in your mouth! Plainly put: for days, my tongue looked like a polar bear's dick.

Then there was the time where Mrs. Apron and I moved, and I changed jobs and got a new car, all in the same month. The result? Shingles! You probably know what shingles are but, in case you don't have a crispy, elderly relative who's endured it, you might not. It's HERPES! But not the cock-cunt kind! And I got it on my back! ALL OVER MY BACK!

YAY!

It's the most painful thing in the fucking world. Every time I sat down in a chair or in my car, I felt like I was getting a massage from Edward Scissorhands.

Then, we decided to become Mr. & Mrs. Apron. I proposed to her at Mark Twain's house in Hartford, Connecticut. This spawned much happysex and stressful wedding planning. During which time, I developed,

say it with me now:

PITYRIASIS ROSEA!

What the fuck is that, right? It's a skin rash, and it was all over my stomach and my back, and it looked like this:



Ah, memories! At least I've never stressed out so much I've gotten a prolapsed rectum. Don't worry, I won't post a picture of that. I'm too scared, frankly, to Google Image that shit.

So, now that we know each other so much better now: what happens to you when you stress?