Paramedics are incredibly superstitious. It’s surprising how much people will argue with me about this simple fact. “Oh, definitely not. They’re too reasonable, too smart, too calm in a crisis to engage with something as irrational as superstitions.” Some will even fight with me about it, for an absurd amount of time. As if I wouldn’t know. Me! An EMT myself, four generations of emergency medical professionals in my family, with both of my parents working for decades as paramedics, and a long list of other relatives that work either in the hospital or in an ambulance. And they think I wouldn’t know! It’s never a matter of source, though. They don’t doubt for a second that I know what…

October 1st, 2024 I don’t know what’s happening to me. It started small—a little itch under the skin of my left arm. At first, I thought it was just a bug bite. But then the itching spread. Now, it feels like something’s moving underneath my flesh. I’ve started documenting it to make sense of it all. Maybe this is just a weird infection. Maybe I’m overreacting. October 3rd, 2024 The itching has gotten worse. I woke up last night to a searing pain in my arm. In the bathroom mirror, I saw it—something *pulsing* beneath the skin. It looked like a vein, but it was moving independently, wriggling just under the surface. I tried to ignore it, but my mind…

Paramedics are incredibly superstitious. It’s surprising how much people will argue with me about this simple fact. “Oh, definitely not. They’re too reasonable, too smart, too calm in a crisis to engage with something as irrational as superstitions.” Some will even fight with me about it, for an absurd amount of time. As if I wouldn’t know. Me! An EMT myself, four generations of emergency medical professionals in my family, with both of my parents working for decades as paramedics, and a long list of other relatives that work either in the hospital or in an ambulance. And they think I wouldn’t know! It’s never a matter of source, though. They don’t doubt for a second that I know what…

October 1st, 2024 I don’t know what’s happening to me. It started small—a little itch under the skin of my left arm. At first, I thought it was just a bug bite. But then the itching spread. Now, it feels like something’s moving underneath my flesh. I’ve started documenting it to make sense of it all. Maybe this is just a weird infection. Maybe I’m overreacting. October 3rd, 2024 The itching has gotten worse. I woke up last night to a searing pain in my arm. In the bathroom mirror, I saw it—something *pulsing* beneath the skin. It looked like a vein, but it was moving independently, wriggling just under the surface. I tried to ignore it, but my mind…

Paramedics are incredibly superstitious. It’s surprising how much people will argue with me about this simple fact. “Oh, definitely not. They’re too reasonable, too smart, too calm in a crisis to engage with something as irrational as superstitions.” Some will even fight with me about it, for an absurd amount of time. As if I wouldn’t know. Me! An EMT myself, four generations of emergency medical professionals in my family, with both of my parents working for decades as paramedics, and a long list of other relatives that work either in the hospital or in an ambulance. And they think I wouldn’t know! It’s never a matter of source, though. They don’t doubt for a second that I know what…

October 1st, 2024 I don’t know what’s happening to me. It started small—a little itch under the skin of my left arm. At first, I thought it was just a bug bite. But then the itching spread. Now, it feels like something’s moving underneath my flesh. I’ve started documenting it to make sense of it all. Maybe this is just a weird infection. Maybe I’m overreacting. October 3rd, 2024 The itching has gotten worse. I woke up last night to a searing pain in my arm. In the bathroom mirror, I saw it—something *pulsing* beneath the skin. It looked like a vein, but it was moving independently, wriggling just under the surface. I tried to ignore it, but my mind…