Three-quarters of the way through the dinner after my grandfather's funeral, eating the fish, I felt the first pains. Like I had eaten too much, heart-burn, bad gas. I burped, it hurt. I kept trying to burp it away, it wouldn't stop. Dessert came, I tried to keep eating but it felt like I was too full, like I was hurting myself by putting more into me.

It still hurt when we left the restaurant, when we went to my Uncle's. I tried to walk it off. Then the pattern set in: a resting ache (pain level 3) and every five minutes a spike (pain level 6). I drove around Long Island on errands for my Uncle, punching the empty seat next to me every time it spiked. I slept on a couch with little-enough discomfort to fall asleep for long periods.

The Wednesday before I'd had some minor food-poisoning in the night. The pain started on Friday afternoon. Saturday we went back to Boston, and my parents and I decided we'd go to the hospital if I woke up with pain Sunday. I forced myself to eat normally through the pain, small bites, keep my insides going long enough to pass whatever this was.

On Sunday the pain woke woke me at 8 AM, so we went to the hospital. Jackie, Danny's girlfriend was working, she said hi. They admitted me to the ER, and because I had mentioned "chest pains," they did an EKG first. Normal results.

They gave me a bed and tried four times to get an IV started, the last try hurt more than my stomach. She was digging through my muscle to hit it. They took blood samples, then gave me something to numb my esophagus, take the pain away. I lost feeling in my throat, but the pain stayed.

My blood tests came back, my bilirubin levels were slightly elevated. This indicated something was wrong with my liver/pancreas/gallbladder. The doctor (a beautiful woman, immediately fell in love with her) ordered an ultrasound and a chest x-ray. She injected me with something Motrin-like to kill the pain, after I told her I didn't want any morphine.

I felt like I knew exactly where my pain was: where my esophagus meets my stomach. All these tests were not where the pain was. You can't tell the doctor to just chalk your upper-GI and then x-ray it, you're just along for the ride until they figure it out. The normal chest x-ray was clear.

The ultrasound tech knew my mother from various consults. She asked if I had eaten shellfish. I had, I said, Clams, during the dinner. They carried Hep A, sometimes, she said, but don't tell the doctor I said that. She even checked my left side, where the pain was, even though the doctor told her to only do the upper right.

The Ultrasounds looked clear, But don't tell them I said so, the tech said.

They moved me out of my room and into the hall (Room 8.5). My father left before the ultrasound, and my mother came to see me afterwards. She waited with me until a doctor looked at my ultrasound and discharged me.

Gastritis v Peptic Ulcer was the diagnosis. Take an antacid, follow up with your primary within 1-2 days. I went home in less pain because of the Motrin injection, and I ate dinner. For the first time in years I didn't finish what was on my plate.

The next day I called my primary. He was busy, but would I like to see Kathy instead? Yes, she was an old friend of my mother's, a good doctor. My father brought me to the office, the waiting room looked like a geriatric ward.

The cup they asked me to pee in wouldn't open. I had to ask the gorgeous secretary that was my age how to do it. She opened it with minimal exertion.

After jumping around exam rooms, Kathy came in. She asked me about myself, which I took as a test to judge my condition. While she asked questions the spikes of pain kept coming. I'd be talking about my touring, J.Noonz, the music school and then hold my stomach when the pain spiked, while she scribbled on her paper without looking.

She did a few physical tests. She checked my rectum for blood, first time for everything...Just details. No definitive diagnosis, most likely an ulcer, Have you been under a lot of stress lately? I hadn't. Kathy sent me down to the lab to get a test for heliobacter pylori a bacteria that we have in our stomach. They burrow into the mucus lining to get away from the acid. When there's too many of them, they cause ulcers and gastritis. I thought that maybe I'd swallowed too much water at the quarry.

Take two antacids a day, she said. She was so unbelievably nice. She scheduled me for a meeting with Dr. D, a GI specialist who would stick a camera into my stomach to try and spot what was wrong.

I went down to the lab, got my blood drawn. The nurse got it two sticks.

My father was with me, he started causing a scene, almost raising his voice past waiting room levels. The secretary who was supposed to schedule my appointment was at lunch, no one could find her. You're not leaving until you make the appointment, he said, even though I trusted Kathy would follow through with her word.

In the ER the day before, the nurse who took care of me mentioned to Jackie that it didn't seem like my father and I "were fond of each other." By this point in the year he'd been off his anti-depressant for a few months and was back to the manic part of his bipolar disorder. He was a control freak in the doctor's offices that he accompanied me to, and I was a stubborn should-be adult.

The secretary called later on in the day and scheduled me for Wednesday at 3:30 PM. I would have to wait a day.

After my visit to the primary, I tried to eat dinner, but left most of it in my plate. Still believing that I had some long-term food poisoning, I worked on the broccoli for an hour, thinking the more vegetables the better.

There was an article on Esophageal Hernias on the cover of my mother's Physician's Assistant Journal. It looked like when the esophagus gets puffy and starts bending in bad ways. But all of these diagnoses, the ulcer, gastritis, h pylori, hernia, all had nausea as a common symptom. I hadn't thrown up once, except when I dry heaved that night of the food-poisoning. Did that tear my esophagus? It wasn't that violent, so I thought not.

I called up K, like I did every night. She said she thought I was choking on a chicken bone. I hadn't eaten chicken.

That night was the worst the pain got, I woke my mother up at 1 AM and I cried, I cried because it hurt so much. I don't cry.

We figured that my only options were (1) to make it through the night and call the next morning to demand my upper-endoscopy be moved a day earlier, or (2) go to the ER right then, where they'd put me on morphine until they could get a specialist to come in. We made it to the dining room, ready to leave.

But I chose the first one, it felt right. No morphine, no after-effects of it. I kept repeating that I just wanted to know what was wrong with me, so that I could make sure it didn't happen again. I spent the rest of the night finding less-painful positions in which to fall asleep, woke up every two hours.

At 6:30 AM, I woke up again and walked around the house. My mother was at the computer, she showed me another diagnosis, pericarditis, or an inflammation of the tissue around the heart. I told her it wasn't my heart, it was my stomach. My father insisted that it was skeletal. Unless it's finance, he usually doesn't know what he's talking about.

My mother worked all morning to move my GI appointment. She called their office, and name dropped the practice she worked for. They said they'd see what they could do. Margie was the woman's name. She called my cell phone at 10:30 AM to tell me to not eat, they would do the procedure that day, Tuesday, at 1 PM. Be in the waiting room at noon.

While this was being orchestrated, I called Kathy to get the results of my H Pylori bloodtest. It came up negative: no bacteria colonizing my stomach.

When I got to the hospital, they tried to turn me away, because Margie, who bumped me from Tuesday to Wednesday, forgot to actually bump me.

Terri, a family friend, told us the only appointment made for me was my original, on Wednesday. She said she'd go investigate, I called my mother to see what had happened. All the while, my father was flirting with Terri, dragging out our conversations to include banter that kept her from walking away to check on the scheduling.

Margie had just forgotten to make the call to reception, and when she asked Dr. D, the GI specialist, he had also forgotten to mention it. In a half hour (during which I read the fiction section of an old New Yorker), they admitted me to the waiting room.

Again, when Terri came to call me, my father flirted with some jokes about what was going on, that this wasn't GI-related, it was skeletal, How long is this going to take? Two hours meant he was leaving.

Terri took me to a waiting room, she asked me if I was comfortable with her being my nurse, I said of course, she was a pro. And she was, she planted the IV on the first try in my right hand. A new record.

They wheeled me in to the procedure room. Dr. D was a small asian man in his 30s. He didn't smile, no emotion. A nurse who looked a little like the Trunchbull looked down at me on the stretcher and said Look at you, pushing buttons to get in here. I mumbled an apology, a shrug, and she said I know it wasn't all you. The staff was mad at me for being a walk-in, a change to the plan. A boy with a belly-ache who couldn't handle the pain. I felt like a yuppie who got by on his parents' name.

They told me I wasn't going to be totally asleep, but gone enough to not remember most of the procedure. They had me gargle Novocain to get rid of my gag reflex, then I lay on my right side. Trunchbull injected me with something. I was talking to them about something, but then I started to feel sleepy. She asked how I was. I said I was still here. She said she had more where that came from, and gave me another dose. I kept saying Thank you. Then I closed my eyes.

They put a ring in my mouth and told me to drool and breathe through my nose. I didn't feel anything, but through my light sleep I heard him say, What is that? I can...I can probably get it now. I could...I should wait.

I started coming back in the recovery room. I was blurry, Dr. D came up to me with papers. I couldn't see the pictures.

"Did you eat fish?" he asked.

I laughed and said through my haze, Tilapia, I ate tilapia the day of my grandfather's funeral. I saw the pictures, but whatever they had me on eroded the memories, I couldn't remember the clear picture. Just pink wall, and a big spike sticking out of it.

A fucking fishbone.

Dr. D said something about the OR, a CT scan, spend the night. He was gone, and I came out of it fully. Terri was there, and she and another nurse took me across the hospital to radiology.

I asked them to stop the gurney, I wanted to call K. I took my phone out of my plastic belongings bag and powered it up. She answered and said Can I call you back in 10 and I said No. She started talking and I said K, K, you were right. I'm choking on a bone, but it's not a chicken. I have to get surgery. She started screaming, for some reason between her accidental diagnosis and her fear. We said I love yous and I hung up and turned off the phone again.

The hand IV that Terri had landed earlier was no use for a CT, so another nurse planted another on my left arm, first try. I was blessed.

The CT Scanner looked like something out of Stargate (not that I've seen that movie/show). Some breathing instructions from the machine, and then an injection that made my mouth taste like metal, and my neck and bladder feel warm. And I think it's been making my pee smell funny for the last few days.

I wanted to pee in the bathroom before the scan, but apparently something awful had happened in there, and I needed to use a plastic jar. I had to pee again afterwards, but the bathroom was clean by then. The orderly that came to bring me to the OR waiting room was a guy my age. He knew about the bone, and I made him laugh with some joke about my inability to chew, not being able to function like a normal adult. I was witty, I'll give myself that. Moreso than I am on a daily basis.

While I was in the OR waiting room, the nurse talked to me about her Renaissance-Woman daughter and gave me socks. Both of my parents walked in, apparently Dr. D had briefed them already. I met the crew that would be operating on me, and we all had a good laugh about the situation, although I felt mostly stupid for not being able to eat like a normal adult.

Dr. D told me that he wanted to take it out earlier, but after evaluating the risks involved, the bone scratching things on its way up or down, losing it in my small intestine or my windpipe, he decided a formal surgery with full anesthesia would be safer. The wound was pussing, too, and he didn't know how much would erupt when he removed the bone.

What was going to happen was he was going to give me a breathing tube into my trachea, that way if he slipped with the bone on the way up, it wouldn't fatally interfere with my breathing. He was going to yank the bone, drop it into my stomach, and then play the crane game up my esophagus, along with Operation, where he'd avoid the walls of the pipe so as not to scrape them. He said if he lost the bone in my intestine, he'd let it go and it would probably pass on its own.

One the anesthesia nurses, a tall man, introduced himself. He gave me an injection and when I asked he said it was a relaxant. He seemed genuinely interested in my music degree, but when the gurney started rolling he stopped asking questions. As we hit the OR, the relaxant was hitting me and I just started talking. I said Honestly, this must be the silliest procedure you've ever seen. Whatever relaxant they gave me degraded these memories, because I was awake when I asked that, but now his response sounds clouded. They all laughed, the anesthesia nurse said not the silliest, But it's definitely a 9 on the silly scale. I felt a little bad then, but I don't remember the feeling that well.

They gave me a mask, I don't know anything that was said. He might have asked me to count. I lost faces. I saw someone injecting me with something, it burned a little bit, but I remembered it from my wisdom teeth operation, it was normal. I said Thank you before I fell asleep.

The first thing I remember was saying the name of Ben's band when the nurses asked if I was in a band. I meant that I toured with them, but words just came out. I woke up in a yellow room. The effects of the anesthesia were so degrading to my memory. I woke up so quickly, but everything that happened afterwards wasn't stored probably. Files lost in transit.

Somehow I got to a room. My mother was waiting. Dr. D had already given her my prescription, and the fucking fishbone. He got it out in one piece. An older man, walked out from behind the curtain, stared at me and said, Hi roommate. I said Hi, roommate. I'm Mike. He told me his name, I forgot it, but then remembered it later when i saw it written on his plastic pee cup in the bathroom.

The pain was gone, for the most part. I was still tender, but no knife stabbing me every five minutes. I was free.

My brother and Jackie visited, Dan drew a penis on the white board in Crayola permanent marker, right as the nurse was walking in. He scrambled to erase it. Those two and my mother left together. I had my phone. I texted Ben, I texted K, I texted Julia. Called K, ate some Jell-O. Red was the best flavor. My throat was sore from all of the tubes. They started me on antibiotics, I was scared of air bubbles in my IV. I took off the leg circulation inflators.

I couldn't sleep well, so I just tweeted the whole night. Finished titling each day of my illness in reference to each Star Wars film. Nurses took my vitals throughout the night. In the morning, the light from my open door changed from fluorescent to sunrise.

My roommate was discharged a few hours before me. He said he was leaving, he was sorry we didn't talk, it wasn't anything I said or did, it was just him. I overheard him say to his doctors at 6 AM that he never goes to the hospital, he doesn't trust doctors and never listens to them, but he respected the ones he had this visit, and he thanked them and said he would do what they said.

Dr. D's instructions were to watch for infection. Watch for fever, sweating, nausea, anything to indicate my condition was getting worse. Clear-liquid diet for three days. You can sneak a milkshake, I suppose, he said. He was trying to be nice, but it was humorless.

My father came to get me around noon in my mother's car. He said he got drunk in Salem the night I spent in the hospital, and he left my car there. We went together, and I drove my car home alone.

I've tried playing a video game, reading, sitting outside to watch a thunderstorm, watching TV, drinking all different juices. I can't shake the feeling that I'm off. I'm walking on a different plane of existence. My body is heavy and slow to me, now. It still hurts when I breathe. The doctor says it will stop, but it still hurts. I haven't slept decently in two nights.

It's all here, now.