Johanna Huden

It was such a pitiful moment, and I felt like I'd totally been used.

They wanted me to write a piece.

I didn't see the copy before it went out.

and here i am on every corner of new york on every newsstand and on tv over and over and over again giving the finger to osama bin laden i mean you look up and see your photo and not only do you see your photo but you see yourself flipping the bird on the cover of the new york post

I haven't looked in this a while. It's crazy. Fighting words. It ends like this. I'll be okay. Am I quitting my job? Am I leaving town? Absolutely not. I've been kicking butt in this town for seven years, trying to make it as a journalist in the biggest and best city in the world. And I will. Too bad, Osama. I didn't write the last line.

I asked if my head was going to be in the picture, and they said no. They said my face wouldn't be in it. I thought it was some sort of close-up of my finger that had this cast on it. And then it was on the front page of the New York Post. And I was furious.

I literally thought that some jihadist was going to scale my fire escape and come and just like slice my throat. I'm not kidding.

I was terrified because I'd actually named my boyfriend at the time, who later became my husband.

I was this kind of minor player at this newspaper and then to see my face everywhere. I mean, this was supposed to be a stepping stone to like the New York Times or something like that. And here I am preserved forever. It'll follow me forever.

It was so strange. At first, it was just red and itchy. And then it started to look like white cauliflower.

I covered drink trends, nightlife trends. And I also sat next to the Cheap Eats restaurant critic. And we'd all get dishes and we'd all kind of share it because she had to try all of the dishes. So it was fun.

It was almost silent. It was so strange. And we would all just kind of look at each other and not a lot of phones were ringing.

People were dying. There was a photo editor in Florida that had dropped dead because of this. I did feel that journalists and reporters and editors even had a mark on their back.

It was like nothing I'd ever seen on a human being. And it had this texture to it with these ridges. And then that started to fill with fluid.

I was actually at a wedding out on Long Island. And all of a sudden it popped and like this white liquid oozed out all over my hand and the skirt I was wearing. And I thought, that's strange. You know, there's something going on here.

So a doctor came in to examine me. Again, looked at it quite a while, but didn't biopsy it or anything. And then he said he was going to remove it. And they didn't give me any anesthesia, I guess because it was necrotic. Yeah, they just took it right off.

You know, I had my back to the TV. You always have the TV going on in the newsroom. It wasn't until I was sitting in the newsroom... And the NBC case broke. I just slowly turned around and started watching, and my heart started pounding. I was like, that's exactly what I had.

And he's like, you know what? I think that spider bite you had was anthrax.

You know, my skin had turned black. So it just shifted everything I saw and everything I touched. And it was terrifying.

I ended up going to a 24-hour drain read in Midtown Manhattan to try to get Cipro.

It was going on and on. I was there for an hour. And finally, I was like, look, I have anthrax. I need Cipro. And it was like a real New York moment. People were like, give the girl the Cipro.

I mean, anthrax spores... I was worried that they would be in my house or in my hair or on my body or, God forbid, in my boyfriend's house. And it's just this absolutely warped reality where you're looking at your coffee table and you're wondering if it could kill you.