AS I LAY DYING...

i, of course, chased my symptoms all over the internet, which led me, of course, to where that chase always leads. all alarmist paranoiac roads lead to hiv. and if the appearance of the canker sores wasn't an almost certain indication of autoimmune suppression, then at best they were the precursors to oral cancer. but when i finally gave myself over to the hysteria of self-diagnosis (i.e. gave in to the online machinations of the fly by night american medical establishment), i didn't even get tuberculosis. and for my (assuredly common) upper respiratory infection i didn't even get a prescription for any codeine cough syrup. my (admittedly effective) one hundred and three dollar placebo did, however, get me a bottle of something full of pseudoephedrine which, as has been generally indicated, can cause central nervous system depression in hyper-reactive individuals, and so even after i was finally up to a game i wasn't quite able to put together what the letters in front of me had to do with the scrabble board.