[19] in which i try to fix myself, but the world is the problem

"What is that white blur?" I asked, leaning forward. "Is it a problem?"

"That's your heart," the x-ray technician said. "In people like you, who are tall and thin" - side note: this guy is my favorite! person! ever! love him! - "the heart is low down and near the center of the chest."

I finally got around to going to a doctor for the fact that I feel like someone is sitting on my chest. The conversation went like this, "Well, it started right after I got back from Ethiopia, which also coincided with starting to work in an old building. And I've had bronchitis a few times. And I test positive for tb, and my friend in Liberia had it when we were little, but I took INH for nine months in 2002. Oh, and I had schistosomiasis, as of last year. And malaria. And I was treated five times for amoebas. And the only other time I've felt like this in my life is when the harmattan would - do you know the harmattan? It's when the sand from the Sahara gets caught up into the atmosphere and blows over Sub-Saharan Africa. I used to feel this way then, like I couldn't quite fill my lungs up." That would be par-tic-u-late matter, my friends. Dust.

Good news: nothing bad on the x-ray, and my lung capacity is above average for my age and height (yessssssssss - I have no idea how this happened. I've been boycotting exercise recently out of sheer laziness). Bad news: my chest is perfectly shaped for air-trapping, and apparently I'm allergic to Gone West. It's always convenient to be allergic to your new hometown.