I AM NOT AN ANIMAL!

So this is new.

I had just finished eating my lunch yesterday -- the same exact type of sandwich I eat most every day -- when my jaw felt a little funny. I reached up to touch it and I hit beard a full inch and a half before I expected to.

"Hmmmm," I thought to myself. "I certainly don't remember having a goiter."

But suddenly I did. The entire left side of my jaw and part of my neck was swollen and strangely numb. My jaw felt funny when I closed it, like my teeth didn't line up correctly any more. I wasn't having any trouble swallowing, and I've never been allergic to a thing in my entire life.

Other possibilities ran through my mind: Was I a late-blooming shape shifter? Was my recessive lycanthrope gene rearing its ugly head again? I had no idea. I grabbed a mirror to see what sort of transformation was occurring, and I was not disappointed. I immediately saw that the left side of my face was looking extremely Leno-esque.

I called my GP, and said "I ate lunth and my fathe swelled up." Then I realized I sounded exactly like Edgar Stiles on 24, so I added "Mithster Buchanan, Jack Bauer ith on the phone."

They said, "Um, yeah. You'd better go to the emergency room."

I hung up and decided to wait a bit to see if it got better.

While I was waiting, I drove my ass to the drugstore and choked down a few handfuls of Benedryl while standing in the cold and flu aisle. The first box I picked up was the chewable version, and since my teeth didn't line up anymore, I had to hunt around for something else. I had no idea there were so many different kinds. All of them are as dry as desert dust, by the way.

I approached the register with the open box, and I must have scared the clerk with the proto-Leno look I had going on, because he said, "Are you all right?" I tried to cough up the Benedryl that was jammed sideways in my esophogus, then said, "Yeth, I think thoe. Juth need to pay." He backed up like I had Ebola or something. I am not sure, but I may or may not have been drooling.

I got back to the office, and an hour later, everything was back to normal.

WTF? Can faces spontaneously inflate? Just half of them?

Apparently the answer to that question is, "Yes, Johnny. Yes, they can."