Student Chris Over had been drinking since noon the day he first felt a bit of soreness in his throat. Chasing scotch and water with swigs of Ancient Age whiskey; he’d also smoked about half a pack of cigarettes.

He retired to his absent roommate’s bed that night feeling as if he had a corn kernel lodged in his throat. Chalking the itchiness up to his day of “hard leisure,” he wasn’t too concerned.

Waking, the slight tickle had turned to major pain. Over’s tonsils were swollen to the point that he could not swallow. He also felt feverish.

Ben Steinert, his roommate, drove Over to the Sutter Memorial emergency room, where the doctor, who upon approaching Over said, “You have strep throat — I can smell it.”

The doctor then put on latex gloves and shuffled his fingers around in Over’s throat, examining. He noted that this case seemed extreme for strep, but treated it as such all the same. He prescribed penicillin for the bacterial infection and Vicodin for the pain.

Because Over was unemployed and under the poverty line, the state assisted him with payment for treatment, but not for prescriptions. Steinert footed the bill for the medications, which totaled $60.

Two nights later, Over joined some friends for a nightcap at Cheater’s, a favorite neighborhood watering hole. Having offered his ride a pill of Vicodin in lieu of gas money,

Over brought both bottles of medication with him on the outing. Already two sheets to the wind from a fifth of Ancient Age whiskey (on sale for $5 at Compton’s market), he carelessly tossed the bottles on the bar in front of him and ordered a Cutty and water. Somehow during the evening, he misplaced his penicillin. A month later, the bottle would turn up, inexplicably, in a flower pot at a friend’s home.

The infection leveled out, but did not get better. The swelling persisted, although, because of the Vicodin, Over was not in pain. After a week of this, he visited the emergency room again.

This time, a different doctor diagnosed Over with tonsillitis, and gave him more penicillin.

The treatment seemed to work, and the infection faded within a week’s time. It was a short reprieve.

In the fourth week since the initial flare up, Over’s right tonsil had swollen to the size of a golf ball. The tonsil was “out of control;” so inflamed that it caused the soft palate to collapse — he had almost no breathing passage.

On his third trip to the ER, Over was told that he had an abscess in his right tonsil. The doctor felt around in his throat with two fingers and concluded that he needed to cut it open and drain it.

The procedure was brief, but painful. With a scalpel, the doctor made two incisions in the roof of the mouth and one in the tonsil, but nothing came out. This meant it wasn’t an abscess. Just in case, though, the nurse squeezed the area with tongs.

Over remained silent as tears flowed down his cheeks. The nurse had expected a hard pustule to come out, but only blood gushed forth. The tissue was swollen with infection and nothing more.

Over received liquid Hydrocodone and more penicillin. These cost him $100, but he made some of the money back selling swigs of the codeine liquid to hipsters around town.

Over went back to his whiskey ways and smoked more than five cigarettes a day when he was “recreating,” which was all the time. The right tonsil returned to normal, but the left one grew tender. He chalked this up to his habit of smoking unfiltered roll-your-own cigarettes, but planned to get the tonsils removed anyway.

At a recent outing to the Townhouse, sipping a Bacardi on the rocks, Over showed no sign of illness. In fact, he found his throat to be well enough to deliver a heartbreaking rendition of Ace of Base’s 1993 hit, “Don’t Turn Around.”

Always taking a humorous view of serious matters — Over has a dotted line with scissors tattooed across his left wrist — he told people to just tell well-wishers that he died. And he nearly did.