Aesthetics Contest Discussion Thread

[VayneZ]

I had no idea you were going through all that ordeal my friend. Hope you overcome this all soon and come back stronger out of it!

[Sperwer]

Thanks guys!

Here's the update. They woke me up @ 6 this morning for my first round of treatment. More or less immobilized me in a chair with a tube with a mouthpiece fixed in my mouth and strapped around my head. What came next was a sort of controlled drowning. The volume of moisture they were forcing in was much more than enough to induce a gag reflex - sort of what you would experience while open-water swimming if a rogue wave got you in the face just as you were catching a breath. No way to gag though given they way they had me strapped up; just had to let it happen and trust they would yank it all out if it looked like I was going to pass out. Closest thing I could compare it to was the deep water breathing apparatus in The Deep, where your lungs get filled with water, but you can still breathe because of the super-saturated oxygen content (does that really exist?). Extremely unpleasant at first and then weirdly uncomfortable. After about 20 minutes of that, and a thirty minute rest, they rigged me up in the sort of treadmill that is used to test VO2 Max and cranked it up to a pace I could barely handle for 20 minutes. Then they handed me a barf bag and we all waited. Within a few minutes I began to hack up packets of phlegm containing tiny membraneous globules each containing a grain or two of coarse sand that my body had encased in the gel-like membrane as a protective measure. Had about 5-6 bouts of that. They then offered me breakfast, but I declined in favor of a lie-down - the stress of this whole process was utterly fatiguing. I'm writing this at lunch time, and I still feel pretty knackered after basically dozing all morning. Seems to be working, though. Not looking forward to tomorrow's session, but if this is what it takes to avoid a case of emphysema, I'll continue to cowboy up.