At around 2AM this morning I very literally nearly died of asphyxiation. 2, maybe 3 months ago, a child slammed a Nerf ball (golf ball sized) into my mouth and I inhaled it from sheer surprise that he did it. I thought I had swallowed it, but it turns out that it has been in my lung this entire time. Something I ate last night didn’t agree with me and I threw up. Violently. In the process, the Nerf ball decided to come out of my lung. It lodged in my throat and wouldn’t come out. I was gasping for breath, and then I couldn’t gasp anymore. Pressure started to increase. It became hard to think. I ran into the wall by accident. I started punching myself very hard in the abdomen, and finally the little styrofoam devil came out. Good thing those are non-toxic. The EMS workers looked at me and said I was very lucky — just a few more seconds and I wouldn’t have made it. I was in the emergency room for four hours. They said that there’s a chance that parts of my brain could have possibly suffered permanent damage. So far, that hasn’t manifested itself. I hope things get better soon.

The Nerf being in there for so long started doing something to my lung called “calcification”. I’m on an antibiotic called doxycycline to prevent infection. Hopefully I can avoid pneumonia.