When someone threatened to turn me into a mare, I didn’t think they were actually serious. Mostly because, based on everything I knew about the world, everything I had experienced in my life up to that point, such a thing was impossible. Being in a different body, with no apparent gap in consciousness, was utterly outside the context of what I was able to understand.
One thing I’m proud of is that I’m calm in a crisis, a skill set I spent many years honing as a nurse. The first thing I noticed was that my body was the wrong shape. I tried to take a moment to ground myself, but as I took a breath, my lungs felt wrong; as I tensed and relaxed my muscles and tried to roll my shoulders, all of that was completely wrong too.
Panic gripped my chest, and I resisted the urge to breathe faster. I held the breath in my too-small lungs and counted to three, then exhaled with deliberate slowness, feeling the air pass over a painful lump in my too-long throat and leave my mouth that was the wrong shape. I kept my eyes open and focused on a nearby tree. I felt the soft earth beneath my too-many feet. So many parts of my mind screamed that something was very, very wrong.
I didn’t fight those thoughts. I accepted them, and then focused on my breathing, which I kept slow and even, and the ground, which was firm beneath me, and the tree, which was still just a tree.
“Okay,” I whispered with the breath I was slowly exhaling, my voice too small, too high-pitched.
I felt my wrongly placed heart beating too fast in my chest, maybe a hundred sixty beats per minute. I could feel my muscles tremble and relaxed as much as possible while standing on my too-many legs.
With my panic response under control, I could think.
“Okay, focus,” I muttered under my breath in my too-high voice.
Check for danger. I looked around, noting that with my much-wider field of vision I barely had to turn my head at all to see three-hundred-sixty degrees. I was in some type of forest; I didn’t see any movement from animals, or anything else immediately dangerous. I took a tentative step forward. I could move; I had no trouble breathing; I didn’t feel any injuries or pain.
Okay. I wasn’t going to die. I didn’t need to take any immediate action. I could take some time to think. I lay down on the ground, resting my head on my forelegs, a position that felt comfortable in my new form.
When you work with people suffering hallucinations and delusions, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll think about what it must be like to be -if we’re dispensing with tact- crazy. A common mistake some people make is thinking you can’t be crazy if you know you’re crazy. Someone can know full well that their hallucinations aren’t real and still see them just as vividly. Delusions and psychosis are different things entirely. It was scary to think you might one day be in such a vulnerable state, unable to perceive the world around you for what it was.
My mind felt clear. I could follow a train of thought, and nothing in my mind felt jumbled, but then again I had no idea what having a psychotic break felt like. What I’d decided on in the past was that if things just stopped making sense, I would try to remain calm, not do anything rash or violent, and listen carefully to what people around me were saying. Realistically there was no way that could have worked. Psychosis doesn’t work that way, but I did always like to have a plan. The applicability of that plan to the current situation seemed to confirm that it was indeed a silly plan.
If I was crazy, there wasn’t much I could do about it. There was no-one around to take directions from. I could lay here and do nothing to wait and see what happened, but eventually, I would get thirsty, and hungry, and need to use the bathroom... I shuddered to think where I might actually be when that happened if this forest was all in my head.
As a matter of practicality, I had to assume I wasn’t crazy. Whether this was a dream didn’t matter either. Either I was right about it not being a dream, or else it didn’t matter.
Alright. If I'm not crazy and I'm not dreaming, what do I know? I'm thinking, so I exist. I remember living as a human, and I also remember being a pony for the last couple of minutes. At least, I assume I'm a pony.
I looked down at my green, furry hooves, and then turned my head to look at my own back, something I hadn't been flexible enough to accomplish as a human. Yup. Definitely a pony. No cutie mark, but from the proportions and pastel green coat it was clear that I was not a regular pony, but a fictional, magical pony.
I felt my forehead and found a horn. I tried focusing on it, but nothing happened. Tapping on it with a hoof wasn't painful exactly, but intensely uncomfortable, like a funny bone attached to my skull. Which I guess it kinda was, unless it was all keratin like my hooves.
He threatened to turn me into a “mare.” Bracing myself for the inevitable, I stood up on all fours and took at look between my legs. Sure enough, my lower horn was gone.
Alright. Well, I could place that in the increasing list of things that I would worry about later. Right now, I was in an unfamiliar place, in an unfamiliar body, lost in the wilderness with no equipment and, presumably, no one looking for me.
Fortunately, I'd been a boy scout back in the day, so I knew, at least vaguely, how to find and purify drinking water, start a fire, hunt, fish, forage, and navigate.
Unfortunately, I didn't have any containers to boil water, or any water filters, or any chlorine. I didn't know how to start a fire with hooves; I didn't think this new body would appreciate me eating meat; I knew nothing about what local plants were edible, and I didn't have a map or compass. If my assumption about being in Equestria was right, then I wouldn't even be able to find North with the stars. I could die out here and no-one would ever know what happened to me.
I felt sick to my stomach and deliberately slowed my breathing again.
"Alright, alright," I muttered to myself in my too-high voice. "What's the plan?"
First step was communication. I didn't have any tech or reflective surfaces I could use to signal with, but I could maybe start a fire, and, in the unlikely event that someone actually was looking for me, I would leave markers to indicate where I'd gone.
Next was figuring out where I was. I would feel pretty silly building a survival shelter if it turned out there was a town within sight of here. I considered climbing a tree, but with hooves that was out of the question. I looked at my back and noted the lack of wings.
"From all of us together, together we're friends. With the marks of our destinies made one, there is magic without end," I intoned.
I looked back and determined I had not sprouted wings.
"Meh," I chuckled. "It was worth a shot."
I had two real options; I could either try for higher ground and look for somewhere I could get a view of the surrounding area, or I could look for lower ground and hope to find a river I could follow.
I decided to aim for the river. Hopefully, I could find some fast-flowing water that would be safe enough to drink. Taking time to arrange rocks into a crude arrow to show where I had gone, I started walking downhill.
When the threat of turning me into a mare had been made, I played along.
"So if I become a pony does that fix any medical conditions I have?" I had asked.
“Of course,” Came the reply. “You get a whole new body.”
"Well, sign me up then," I joked. "I've only got a couple years left before I have to worry about my meds damaging my liver."
As a human I suffered from chronic itch. That doesn't sound like the end of the world, right? Well, imagine an itch triggered by nothing at all, so powerful that you would continue to tear at your skin after it was already bleeding, across large areas of your body, keeping you from sleep for days at a time; and completely unresponsive to standard treatments.
Needless to say, without the more powerful drugs, my life was misery. The drugs are not kind to the body though. We use one of them in chemotherapy, albeit at higher dosages. The higher the dosages I took, the more the symptoms receded; and the faster I would damage my body. When my specialist informed me that my test results indicated I had maybe two years left until I would be forced to stop taking it? It was a blow.
I had reduced the medication as much as I could bear, trading discomfort for longevity, hoping desperately that the drug trials I was waiting for would come through in time.
If I'd known that becoming a pony was an actual option, I might still have said yes.
Having all my skin intact and free from discomfort was an amazing thing. I couldn't remember a time when I'd had that, even as a child and, according to my mother, even as an infant I had suffered.
Now I could feel a breeze across my skin and not have to ignore the itch it created; I could sweat and not have to ignore the burning tingle as it dripped across broken, irritated skin; I kept expecting to feel an itch from where dirt was sticking to my coat, and yet there was nothing.
Which left me to focus on this body's atrocious lack of physical conditioning.
I didn't have a watch, but I'd estimate I'd only been walking for a couple of hours and already my muscles were aching and my lungs were burning. I was glad I had chosen to walk downhill because in this body I didn't think I'd have the endurance for any type of climb.
Ignoring my aching muscles, thirst, and burning lungs I kept moving, if I went down far enough I knew that eventually, I would find water.
When I heard flowing water ahead of me I forgot my tiredness and broke into a run. Or I would have if I was still human, as a pony I promptly tripped over my own hooves, fell on my face and learned a couple of things.
The first was that while walking as an equine was fairly straightforward, it turned out that moving faster required moving into a trot, canter, or gallop, the rhythms of which were decidedly more complicated.
The second was that this body's pain tolerance was much lower than what I'd enjoyed as a human. A small graze on my cheek left me fighting back tears.
I took a breath into my aching, too-small lungs and exhaled it slowly, getting back to my hooves.
"I don't got time to bleed!" I joked to myself, laughing at the way it sounded with my small, high-pitched voice.
When I finally got to the river I didn't bother doing a full set of tests for drinkability, I just noted that it was flowing fast enough and put my mouth into it, gulping the cool water down greedily.
After drinking my fill I sat back on the river bank and finally relaxed for a bit. The graze on my cheek stung a bit, but I could ignore it easily enough. Despite still being lost I felt much better about my situation now that I'd found the river. Not only did I now have a source of drinking water, but, with any luck, I could follow this river downstream and find civilization.
Or maybe the population density in Equestria was much lower, and I was several months trek from anything. Heck, maybe I wasn't even in Equestria and when I found civilization I’d be abducted and experimented on as an alien.
I sighed and shook my head. No use dwelling on those thoughts when I had more immediate concerns.
One of them being that I was feeling a gnawing hunger in my stomach and I still had no idea what plants were safe for this body to eat. In my human body I knew I could easily go a day or two without food, but with this newer, seemingly more fragile body? I could only guess.
I couldn't remember the exact procedure for testing edibility, but I did the best I could with decade-old knowledge.
Ponies could eat grass right? I couldn't remember seeing any ponies eating straight grass in the show, but hay was apparently a staple for them. The reason humans can't digest grass and hay is that they can’t break down cellulose, so it stood to reason that, if ponies ate hay, they could at least theoretically eat grass.
I put my head down and smelled the grass. It smelled like grass, which was unfortunate, since that meant it probably also tasted like grass. If I still had my human sense of taste and smell the grass wouldn't be palatable. Or maybe magical ponies didn't like to eat grass either?
Regretting that I didn't have hands to break some grass off, I licked my lips and rubbed some grass between my lips, without taking any into my mouth. I didn't feel any immediate irritation on my lips. Now I needed to wait for... five minutes? Something like that. I didn't have a watch anyway.
"One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand," I counted, trying and failing to get used to the odd shape of my new mouth, "Four one thousand, five one thousand."
"Eh stuff it." I muttered under my breath.
Counting it out exactly was a waste of daylight. I should be working on fire or shelter. Neither of which I was looking forward to without hands. I started collecting any deadwood that looked dry enough in a pile. I had to carry them in my mouth, much like a dog playing fetch, and the mental image helped raise my spirits.
When I felt like enough time had passed and I still had no reaction to the grass on my lips, I returned to the patch of grass and carefully bit off a small amount. It tasted like grass, but it was actually pretty bland, neither the flavor nor the mouth feel was overly objectionable as I chewed on it (I couldn't remember whether there was supposed to be an extra step where I touched it to my tongue without chewing). My stomach grumbled in protest as I resisted the urge to swallow and instead spat out the glob of green goo.
I spent another few minutes gathering firewood. The real problem with fire was that I didn't have any matches or even flint. I didn't have any bootlaces to make a bow drill, or tinder to catch a spark, or a knife to feather the kindling. If I'd had fists, they would have been clenched in sheer frustration. A part of me wanted to give up on the idea of fire altogether. I took as much of a breath as those pathetic, irritating lungs would allow and after a moment, vented it out my nose with an equine snort.
Deciding that enough time had passed without any negative reaction to the grass I stomped back over to the grass I was testing and bit off a few blades, chewed, and swallowed them. My stomach ached with hunger after being teased with such a small amount of food, but I resisted the urge to grab a mouthful. Now I'd have to wait for at least half an hour to see if it made me sick.
I was tired, and my muscles ached, and my hooves hurt, and I was hungry and the food was right there! I could see that it was grass and, instead of eating it, here I was treating it like I was being tested for some stupid survival merit badge!
It didn't even taste bad anymore. In fact, it didn't taste like anything... oh. I ran my tongue over the inside of my mouth and it confirmed my fears; whatever this 'grass' was, it had made my whole mouth numb.
I shrieked.
I frantically rinsed my mouth with river water, but the numbness wouldn't go away. I had no idea how poisonous the grass might be. A lump formed in my throat... or was that my throat swelling shut? Was this new body allergic to this grass? No no no, if I went into anaphylactic shock out here I was dead!
Waves of nausea wracked my body but I couldn't tell if they were a reaction to poison or just anxiety over being poisoned. My coat had a sheen of cold sweat as I shivered and retched and sobbed, sitting back on my haunches. Everything felt so heavy, like I was fighting a weight pressing down as much on my consciousness as my corporeal body.
I tried to fight the shaking, but It just got worse. My lungs burned, I wasn't getting enough air. I focused on my breathing, sucking in a shuddering breath past the painful lump in my throat, and then out again. Pain lanced through my chest as my heart thundered away.
Think goddammit! You're going into shock.
What would you tell a patient in this situation?
I rolled onto my back, putting my legs above my heart.
Relax, breathe. You're going to get through this.
I breathed in and relaxing and allowing myself to shiver as I pulled air past the painful lump in my throat.
Now, what are your symptoms
Chest pain, cold, clammy skin, shivering, tightness in the throat, nausea, feeling faint, numbness in the mouth. You are in shock; blood pressure is too low; chest pain possible heart attack; more likely panic attack; numbness in the mouth likely exposure to unknown plant; tightness in throat unlikely to be anaphylaxis: lack of other symptoms (no heat, no itch, no rash or hives, no facial swelling during or after edibility tests).
I had no way to test for a heart attack, or to treat one, and the presentation was much more consistent with a panic attack. The next step would have been comforting the patient and assuring them that a panic attack was nothing to be ashamed of. I knew this. I knew this and yet all I felt was a terrible, bitter self-loathing.
I was weak. I was pitiful, worthless. I lay there and breathed, and shook, and waited for the symptoms to subside.