My throat is killing me today. For the past few weeks it's been very scratchy and on the verge of worsening. But today when I woke up, it felt like someone had sewn a razorblade into each of my throat glands, and every time I swallow, they slice a little deeper into my raw gullet. As much as this hurts, it got me remembering a time in my life when I had a chronic sore throat...permanent tonsilitis. Not fun, to say the least. But the sore throat wasn't the worst of the symptoms. My tonsils had become so gnarled and sick that there were little caverns for bacteria to grow, and I started coughing up these little white chunks that had been festering in the crevasses of my diseased tonsils. The chunks looked like the curds of cottage cheese, and they smelled like...butt. It was disgusting. I used to just get one chunk every once in a while, but then they started appearing more and more, and when I would look at my tonsils, they were just covered with the toxic cottage cheese. We went to the doctor, and he sent me to a specialist who had terrible bedside manner. He told me to open up and say "ahh" and then he pushed on my tonsil with a tonge depresser and a big chunk came soaring out and hit him in the face. Served him right. Anyways, he decided that my tonsils needed to come out. What ensued was a very painful recovery from surgery and severe dehydration. It was ugly. But worth it. Gone are the days of cottage cheese cultures blooming in my throat.

So this sore throat that I've got today, yeah, I can handle it.