return from medical mountain

my doctor's appointment went well this morning.  she did recommend i go back to get some old fashioned talk therapy from a shrink, and i agreed,  it's been years since i've been to one, i'm sure i'm overdue for a tune-up of the mental variety.  i also had a few health issues that i was busy turning into cancer, which she nicely pointed out were NOT cancer and prescribed some medication to make the itchy parts of me less itchy. 

short work week thanks to thanksgiving, which we are spending at my mom's house this year.  well, most of us are.  the boychik has to work, which is unfortunate, but at 18 he's going to be annoyed if he has to go to big family dinner with us, or annoyed if he has to work, so he may as well get paid.  the only non-annoying thanksgiving i can think of for him right now involves his computer, a large pizza all to himself, and a house with no one in it.  he would have a lot to be thankful for if that were his thanksgiving. 

we're getting deluged out here, and this morning when my husband dropped me off at work i asked for clam chowder for dinner.  how much do i love that i have a partner i can ask that of? and not only that, he makes good chowder.  and when i say it "chow-dah" he only rolls his eyes a little.  hooray! maybe i'll have a midnight bowl of it and go back to bed.  you may have noticed, this post comes to you from the other side of 2 am.  my sleep schedule is undergoing some renovations. 

is hypochondria in the DSM?

because if it isn't, it should be.  i woke up at 1 in the morning, with a deep pain circling my ribs.  i thought maybe i was hungry, or maybe too full for a second; still half asleep and unsure why everything hurt so badly.  i got up and went to the bathroom, thinking that might help.  upon standing i realized how much it hurt to stand upright.  i thought maybe i needed to throw up, but that didn't seem to be it.  i tried everything to get comfortable, i walked all over the house, i sat up, i tried going back to bed, i got out a heating pad and tried applying that to my back.  about five minutes into that, the throwing up started.  whoo!  at this point, it didn't just hurt around my ribs, my back from the base on my neck to my tailbone felt like it was on fire.  so. much. pain.  the throwing up made me feel better for a minute, but then it was worse.  at this point, i woke up my husband with a "i think some thing's wrong."  i threw up a few more times after that, and about two hours into it, i had the realization, "this must be what spinal meningitis feels like."  so, then, of course, i got ready to go to the ER.

however, 20 mins before the last time i threw up, i remembered some pills that i was accidentally prescribed; ketorolac.  when i went to the urgent care clinic a few months with an ear infection, the doctor accidentally put my name on someone elses prescription. i  remember D coming home with it and thinking, "upper left abdominal pain? that's not me."  i thought about bringing them back, then spaced it.  last night i was like, "well, i'm having pain."  so i took one.  i didn't think it did anything, and then i threw up again, and made my move.  somehow, on the drive to the hospital, whatever part of the pill that i had absorbed started to kick in.  i think staying in one position for a while, sitting upright, also helped ease the pain in my back.  i drove through the parking lot of the hospital, then drove back home.  i felt ridiculous, because obviously, no spinal meningitis, but still shitty from the throwing up.  i couldn't sleep after that and so i took the day off.  which was a good idea, because i just tried to eat and that didn't go very well.  i kept that half a bagel down, but it is not having a good time in there.

i wonder what it was that happened.  i'm always amazed at how my imagination goes the worst place possible.  i was also happy that my husband didn't think i was too crazy, although he did giggle a bit when i told him my meningitis theory (after the fact, of course).  he's at work, but he's going to bring me home some ginger ale.  hooray! 

*edited to add: well shit! it is in the DSM, according to wikipedia.  i'm clinical! ha!

whoop whoop

i'm telling you, this blog is quickly become all about how shitty my immune system is and how irritated i am with it.  after the poop debacle, i caught something else.  it started in my lungs and i thought it was bronchitis because i am very good at catching bronchitis, but DAMN the coughing was something else.  i went to see the doctor and he was smug and annoying and told me that basically i was a big baby and he'd prescribe something but that he'd be judging me the whole time he did.  needless to say, i just continued feeling like shit for another two weeks, until i woke up with a major ear ache.  most of the time, when i get an ear ache i just spend some time with a heating pad and some cups of tea and it goes away.  this got worse, and was unlike any ear ache i'd had.  instead of a dull, throbbing pain that slowly built to an agonizing crescendo, this one felt like someone was randomly stabbing my eardrum with a knife, sometimes over and over, sometimes not for five minutes, then boom!  i never knew when it was coming, and it hurt so bad i spent most of time with one side of my face screwed up like popeye.  i kept apologizing for looking insane.  no amount of heating pad or ibuprofen did anything for it, and finally after spending a whole day at work plugged into a phone and a heating pad and with five cups of tea in varying stages of hotness surrounding me, i went to the urgent care clinic.

the thing about urgent care clinics is that they don't give a shit about you. they don't have to.  you aren't at risk of dying, if you were you'd be at an emergency room.  they know you probably have a "real" doctor out there that can't see you, or no insurance.  they know you're probably a bit annoyed and out of sorts, but you aren't going to become a regular.  overall, they have a casual disinterest in you as a person.  it's nothing personal, it's just that you know going into an urgent care clinic that the doctor doesn't have any vested interest in you, and that you are a symptom that needs some relief.  it's a weird situation, but i know when i go see an urgent care doctor, i'm just looking for something to make me feel better right this second.  which is why i was so surprised to hear the doctor say to me, "i think you've had pertussis."

yeah.  i had the whooping cough.  the whole time my doctor was shrugging me off and making me feel like a retard for (gasp!) seeking medical help for feeling like shit, i was actually sick with something pretty contagious and heinous.  i didn't stay home or take care of myself because i felt like such a dope for asking for help only to be told i sounded "fine," i completely ignored my own gut feeling because i'm not-so-secretly worried about being a hypochondriac, and the whole time i'm coughing hard enough to shake loose a filling.  i coughed hard enough to pee myself a little.  (again! with the bathroom talk!) i kept my whole family up nights with the hacking.  i probably gave it to the boychik, who came down with a fever and a beautiful, hacking cough like his stepmom's.  i know i exposed the nice lady who sits in front of me at work, and guess what? she's pregnant, making her at kind of a high risk of the whoop being deadly to her and her spawn.  then, because the whoop had been left untreated, i got a nice, old-fashioned inner ear infection.  that's why the heating pad didn't work, it was way down deep in that ear that was sick.  awesome!

this nice doctor at a clinic i thought would give me some pain pills or antibiotics and send me on my way actually took some time to talk to me, did some tests, and told me i really needed to take some time off work. she offered to write me a goddamn note for work if i needed it.  she explained what i could expect (three more weeks of coughing!) and what to look out for, and told me she was sorry i'd been sick for so long.  she was nice.  i felt like a dick for thinking she would treat me like a number, and angry that my own doctor made $97 just by being an asshole.  i vacillate between being annoyed with him, and for being annoyed with myself for not sticking up for myself.  my ear still hurts too, which is the dickness.  i'm getting better though, and if anything, i learned a lesson.  you need to listen to your body sometimes, even if it does have a habit of being a jerk.  hypochondriacs get sick for real too! 

i pooped my bed

let's just get that out of the way, shall we?  i went out last night to see a friend of mine who is doing an "internship" at a local pub (working on his bartending skills) had half a burger and the cream of asparagus soup.  i also played some bar trivia that was weak and for the first time i LOST by a lot. normally i kick trivia night's ass!  in any case, the soup wasn't that great, so i didn't eat a lot of it, and now i'm glad i didn't.  at 6 this morning i woke up in the fetal position, cramping and sweating.  after that, i lost approximately 12 pounds pooping.  i spent an hour in the bathroom. gross, right?  i took some pepto, rallied the troops, and went to work.  i spent most of my day hunched over my desk, answering calls and being less nice to the very few asswads who call, just to keep those calls short in case i had to run to the bathroom.  my sister was kind enough to lend me some of her extra-strength pregnant lady anti-nausea pills to help with the stomach cramping and i am proud to say that while it was not fun, i only left work an hour early, making me in charge and not my guts.  came home, took a nap, woke up, thought i had a fart in there, only to REALLY WAKE UP when i realized that said fart was awfully fluid.  dammit.  i remember being a kid and getting something like this and being totally freaked out by the amount of..stuff, coming out of my body.  i'm still kind of freaked out, but happy to say that this is the first time in years i've shat the bed, so that has to count for something.  avoid the cream of asparagus.  and stay at your own house, mine is ritually impure. 

being poor the day before payday

is always the worst, isn't it? you think about stuff you need to do, look over the grocery list (toilet paper, ramen, eggs, rice, hot sauce) and realize you can't go buy RAMEN and feel like a total jackass.  all of this is hopefully changing though, since a) i have a new job with new and improved paychecks and b) the husband and i are working on a budget and saving some money.  i've always been kind of carefree (read: moronic) with money, so this will be new.  i sparked my ING savings account back up, set it up for automatic deposits, and have been actively watching my money.  the reason i'm so poor right this second is that i went out with a friend the other night, which i always forget is soooo expensive, even in the not-too-exciting town i live in, and i owed D for the computer we bought the boychik for xmas.  i'm not neglecting-the-children poor, but definitely not-doing-anything-fun poor.

i'm also sick, which is annoying.  i took the day off work because i was so phlemy and my throat hurt, which is lame when you spend all day on the phone.  i slept, read, slept some more, and watched some stand up comedy on netflix, and then slept. i'm awake now which means i'll be up all night. oh, the horror.  maybe i'll take my laptop to bed and see what i can do about that.  (that sounded dirty but i didn't mean it dirty!) the nice thing about being sick is that the cat spends all day with me when i do nothing but lounge supreme.  i kept waking up to her licking me and kneading my blankets.  nothing makes a girl feel better than some serious cat time. oh, and ramen with an egg poached in it.  man, that always hits the spot.   

more talk of centipedes

it's awful, but i am the type of kid to tell my mother about something as gross as the human centipede.  while at her house on saturday, i told both her and my aunt about it, and while my aunt was aghast (because, duh) my mom went from being shocked to being seriously curious.  she wanted to know where she could rent it, and if i didn't know any better, i'd say there's a good chance that at some point my mother will view that movie all on her own. 

in other news, my mother is awesome.

my sinuses, however, not so awesome.  i actually took the day off work today to blow copious amounts of mucus out of my face and lay around moaning about how much my head hurts.  thanks to a handful of sudafed, my head feels better, albeit floating three feet above my neck.  i'm trying to make the house tidy (ha!), and getting ready for a walk over to the post office.  i sold some stuff on amazon this week to appease D, and to make some room.  for four people, there sure is a lot of stuff in this house, and most of it is mine.  no, that's not quite it.  about half of it is mine, and that's still too much! 

i missed the premiere of the walking dead this weekend, i'm not sure how that happened, so i'm going to try to hunt it down in re-runs or on the computer this week too.  the boychik and i need to see it.  i'm also going to play around with save-the-date ideas and using a printer with my mac.  i have an idea for a linocut too i want to mess around with.  days off are great for this sort of thing, even if it does come with snot and a headache.  

ka-boom!

i'm going to go to work and ask nicely for a lung transplant. the ones i have are obviously broken. case in point: the last cold i got moved right into my lungs. that's nothing new, i get bronchitis the way lindsay lohan gets drunk. OFTEN. after two weeks of all the hacking you could stand, it went away. it's been a few weeks now, and i've felt great, but woke up this morning feeling like midgets moved into my chest and are thrash-dancing. there's a pressure on my chest like someone sitting there, every cough hurts, and what's coming up is lemon-colored (although not lemon-scented). what the hell?! i don't smoke, no one smokes inside the house, i steer clear of crack cocaine and cigars, and this week i've eatedn a bushel of salad greens. what is going on? why do my lungs hurt like this? what did i do to piss off my body this way? i went over to every hypochondriacs favorite website, webmd, and there are a million different things i might have, and a million different pills i can take to fix them. awesome! i suppose if it doesn't clear up soon, i'll have to see a doctor. boo hiss.

please make it stop hurting

dear lord, my body aches. i have some sort of cold that is kicking my ass. it started monday night; right after we got home from getting my stuff out of storage (!!!). my back had been hurting me for a few days, and i thought maybe all the lifting and moving had just exacerbated it, until i got the wicked chills. for the past 24 hours it's felt like my body can't regulate its own body temp; for the first 12 or so hours i couldn't get warm. there i was on the couch, in sweatpants, with long socks, a t shirt and a hoodie sweatshirt on, laying on a heating pad and cuddling a hot water bottle, covered in three blankets, and i was still cold. yesterday afternoon that broke and i couldn't stop sweating for a few hours. a tepid bath helped calm that down, but now i'm at a point where i'm too hot if i'm under the covers, but if i so much as a poke a hand out i'm covered in goosepimples. what the fuck. my bones ache. the skin over my bones aches. i'm terribly thirsty. my sinuses are so packed with god-knows-what that if i tilt my head forward i get that lovely blinding pain behind my eyes. in short, i'm pretty sure i'm dying. it got so bad yesterday i actually called my coworker to see if he thought i should go to the ER. he didn't; evidently he had something a lot like this with more coughing a few weeks ago. ugh.

but you know, if any of these symptoms seems freaky to you and you have a different opinion, feel free to let me know.

in the meantime, i'm busy either sleeping on the couch or in bed. our living room is packed to the gills with all my stuff, which is now, once and for all, out of storage. mousies got into some of it, but i don't think the damage is too bad. if we all get the hanta virus, though, i'm going to be pissed. the kids have been having a grand old time going through my stufff; they think it's cool and have been showing it all to their friends. it's very sweet and touching. they've also been huggy and sweet to me; making sure i have jello and juice and asking me how i am every half hour. such nice kids. i got really lucky.

sitting up for almost an hour has drained me. i was hoping to go to work today, but i don't think it's going to happen. it's also my pop's birthday, and i wanted to go have dinner with my mom tonight as well. damn you cold. i guess i'll wait and see how i feel and go from there. i think right now, though, i need to be back on the couch with the cat.

cut it out

meet my mean pea. it's a ganglion cyst, formerly known as a bible cyst. it lives between the thumb and forefinger of my left hand. i've had it for a long time, although for a few years it was just a weird crease on my palm; it took a while for the cyst itself to work its way up to the surface. ganglion cysts aren't dangerous or cancerous, they're normally just annoying. you can smash them with something heavy and get rid of them (you know, like bibles!), you can wait to see if they go away (many do), or you can see a doctor and have them cut it out of you. either way, unless it affects your range of motion or causes a lot of pain, most doctors suggest just letting them be.

my mean pea is kind of a dick. it makes knitting for longer than half and hour hurt. it sometimes sends a shooting, burning pain from my thumb down to my wrist. if i bump it into anything it hurts like a mother-humper. my grip on that side, while never stellar since i'm a righty, has gotten weaker. i have a hard time opening up jars. i often tell the kids i need help because the pea is acting up. i can't write or type for long periods of time. it looks funny. in short, the mean pea and i are not very good friends.

since i've had it for so long, the doctor thinks it might be time to excise it. i have an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon on monday to take a look at it, and while part of me is all, "yay! cut the fucker out!" the part of me that worries just wants to know how much it will cost and whether or not it's even worth it. there's a good chance it'll just come back. of course, having my hand back would also rule, even if it doesn't last forever. before i get all mopey and "why bother" about it, i should probably just see the good doctor and see what they say. who knows, maybe it's not really a cyst, maybe it's a tooth and i can use my one free dental visit to have it removed.

good morning, sunshine

sure, it's the middle of the afternoon now, but i can't help that i still feel like morning. i think it's the cup of coffee in my hand and the fact that it hasn't brightened up all day. while i love the fall, and the leaves changing color and the chill that makes a day spent inside seem totally okay, i admit i could do without it getting darker. that's what made fall in colorado so awesome; cool enough to start hibernating, but not dark and dour outside.

this head cold i caught from the kids is making me miserable. it went right into my sinuses first, causing terrible head pain, and now it's in my lungs. awesome! it burns when i breathe. it hurts when i cough. i'm giving myself shaken baby syndrome with the coughing. at the moment, my dear man is out getting some goldenseal to help with the expectoration. i'm certain that everyone wanted to hear about my mucous today, sorry! i just feel lousy, and we all know i am a whiny baby when i don't feel good.

i felt bad enough to take two days off work (!!!), meaning i'm on day four of staying at home. it's like a vacation, albeit snottier. i wish i felt better and could do something more productive than sit on the couch whining or napping. although i did finish a book, introduce the boychild to his first zombie movie, watch a goth opera with him, carve pumpkins, and make a few quiches. i guess i haven't been entirely useless.

i'm also all about putting glitter on various gourds. good times. i suppose i should go take a shower or at least brush my teeth, and pretend to be a grown-up.

grrrrrr....

this is one of those days where i know i'll end it by saying, "i should have never gotten out of bed." the weather is crappy, i've been up for like an hour and have already gotten into a fight with my sister (who is being a total bitch! seriously!*), my cough is still here and still gross as ever, and i know it's irrational but i had a bad dream involving The Boy and now i'm irritated with him. um, hello, i'm crazy. maybe today is one of those cocktails at noon sort of days and i should give in, take a shower and settle in for the afternoon. i'm also toying with the idea of going to see a matinée; i can't decided between the dark knight (which i still haven't seen) or burn after reading. thoughts?

*this is the thing; i have pissed my father off royally. like he's going to be mad at me for months now, and molly has to hear about it every five seconds. i know what it's like to be on the other end of that, so i can sympathize with her crabbiness, but dude, she doesn't have to be a jerk right back at me.

whooo....hack...hack...coff....

i took a shower, got dressed in real clothes (bra included!) and went into town. all i did was go to the library and exchange some movies for new ones, but still. i left the house. and wasn't a total greasebag doing it.

i feel better today than yesterday, and hopefully this last night of sleep and heavy medication will kick what's left of my cold out of my lungs and life.

i really want a donut

but i don't think they're on the list of "things you should eat while sick." juice is on that list, and i bought a ton of it last night, much to my wallet's chagrin. juice is not cheap. i never buy it, so i didn't realize, but damn. orange growers must be living in mansions made of gold! either that, or they are scraping by like the rest of us, thanks to a shitty economy. there's no middle ground anymore, is there?

yesterday i was awake for four or five hours, max. today i'm hoping for longer. i was given the day off work today due to my delightfully mellifluous cough, so i don't even need to call in sick. then i get my two days off, making me out of work for four days straight, plus i only worked half a day on sunday. what sucks about this scenario though, is that i can't get sick pay because i wasn't out for three consecutive days; instead i have to use my vacation pay.

being sick makes me crabby and fussy and all i can do is think about how i have to quit my job, look at other job openings, and make sinister plans for the future. okay, maybe not sinister, per se, but i like the way that sounds.

called in sick to work

and all i've done today is SLEEP. well, i also talked to anne for about fifteen minutes, then went back to bed. now i'm drinking more tea, thinking hard about a shower and doing some knitting while watching cartoons on the internet. i will also cough up and dislodge the contents of my lungs about five hundred times, but that's neither here nor there.

someone get this midget off my chest

good lord, whatever it is i have is trying to kill me. what started as a mild sore throat, and a stuffy nose is now fully lodged in my chest. i feel like i'm being squeezed by a big old snake, or like someone small is sitting on my chest, occasionally stabbing it with something small and sharp. i have a bit of a cough, but it's more of a hack, and incredibly unpleasant. not bringing up a lot of mucus, not excruciating, but painful nonetheless.

The Boy came over and made me soup on his way home. he didn't stay, because he doesn't want to get sick and i have a tiny bed, but he did baby me a bit and make me a hot toddy. now my chest feels all warm and tight, and i'm sleepy again.

i felt lousy enough that i went home early, and will probably have to call out all day tomorrow. if the tightness in my chest doesn't ease up or my breathing get easier i'm also going to go into the urgent care clinic. or something. i feel like this can't be normal. while i don't have a fever, nothing i've done has helped ease up the pressure in my chest. hot baths, hot showers, hot toddys all felt better for a while, but once i'm done it back to shitsville.

bleh. The boy totally gets points for coming over, and making me soup and making me eat hot mustard (with chinese barbequed pork!) and drink juice. hopefully after a good night's sleep i'll feel better.

also, i totally have to get this off my chest, but i really fucking hate my roommate's current boyfriend situation. she's dating a total douchebag who totally fucking rubs me the wrong way. when i found out he was here this afternoon i really, seriously didn't want to get out of the bath. seeing him in my house pisses me off. i know she likes him, and she's always telling me he cracks her up and they have a good time, but he's a mean jerk and really, seriously not funny at all. he creeps me out. we have the same talk about him every time he's here, too, because she's always so fucking wasted she forgets we had it before. i need to find a new place to live. true story.

the one where i talk about being a spaz

a few months ago while talking to my new doctor i mentioned that the medication i was taking for my anxiety was working okay, but i wasn't totally in love with the side effects and would be open to trying something new. we decided i would try a different type of ssri, just to see if it was better or worse or what. since my very first diagnosis as someone with an anxiety disorder with a pinch of OCD (the boring counting kind, not the good holy-shit-you-can-eat-off-my-kitchen-floor kind) i've taken one, and only one, brand of ssri. there are a ton out there, and i thought it would be to my advantage to give another one a test run. you would think that just changing the brand of pill i take, not the kind, wouldn't matter much, but for some unknown reason, they all react differently to different folks.

i ended up spazzing out. pretty big time. shakes and insomnia and the overwhelming feeling that something was not quite right, that something was indeed, very, VERY wrong and just around the corner, waiting in ambush. it was not as bad as my last breakdown, but it's a slippery slope and thankfully i realized something wasn't right and went in and got everything re-adjusted.

when i was originally diagnosed i was younger, and my outlook was good. all the shrinks and doctors i saw thought i was just going through a rough patch and would only be on the medication for a few months to a year. they were hopeful that the ssri would help "re-wire" my brain to deal with stress, and that i would eventually taper off and go back to unmedicated life. it's been about eight years now, and all my doctors agree that i might be one of those people who takes the pills for life.

hearing that has been harder for me than the original diagnosis, which left me bereft and crying on the floor of my apartment for days. this has been a much more difficult thing to face. one the one hand, i understand that the medication makes my life more livable; without it i am a mess, unable to work and seriously lacking in social skills or grace. on the other, when they work sometimes they do it too well and i feel numb and sort of out of it. i worry that i'm not having authentic or meaningful interactions with other people. i worry that i'm unable to have long-term romantic relationships because i can't connect on a deeper level. i worry about becoming the crazy cat lady, or becoming a drunk, or freaking out in public. i never feel okay talking about this to anyone, and my closest friends, the people i love the most, often don't know what's going on until afterward. a part of me wants to keep this secret buried as far as it can go, covered in concrete then planted with daisies over the top. part of me thinks this is ridiculous and that i shouldn't be ashamed of my mental illness. i am, of course, and think i always will be. i understand, in a way, what my father goes through when people dismiss his cancer because he was a life-long smoker, i think there is a large group of folks out there who think that my anxiety is a by-product of a weak mind, that i'm just not tough enough to beat it back, that if i weren't such a drama queen or immature i would just buck up and deal with what life had to offer. i want to explain that i did try, and in some ways life without the drugs was awesome. i was thinner without trying. i felt happy in a sparkly way that is sometimes hard to recapture. sex was easier. i never had to worry about having enough medication, where i was going to get more, and finding a doctor who was (is) sympathetic and not judgmental. the downside was just that, down. when i could function i did so well, when i couldn't i was a hot mess.

i don't know what all this means, to be honest. i'm not trying to garner sympathy or get a whole lot "you're awesome!" comments. i think i'm trying to spell out what this has been like for me, to do what little i can to relieve some of the stigma around being one of the many people who takes some form of psychiatric medication. i've said this before many times, but i wish there was some test i could take that would prove that my brain is just wired in a way that isn't conducive to living a modern life. if they could show my brain's off reaction to seratonin, like a blood test can show diabetes or hepatitis, my life would be easier. i think i would feel less like a failure and try less hard to justify my choices.

the other night i was lying in bed, unable to sleep, freaking out about the coming day, the past day, and everything in between and i thought; if this life is all we have, if right here and right now are it-no afterlife, no pearly gate, nothing to look forward but worm food-then what the hell am i doing? do i want to live all jittery and unhappy and inside my own brain? the answer is no. i don't want to take the meds, but i also don't want to live a life where i worry it away without being able to enjoy it. i take a little pill every night before bed, and sometimes a happy blue one on very, very, rotten and horrible days. things could be worse.

ew, i got a cyst!

i went to see the doctor the other day because i thought my meds weren't working (true story: they weren't. i was all sorts of crazy, but now i'm better, and glad i have health insurance!), and while i was there spazzing out i added "and i have this weird lump in my hand!" i've had a funny crease on my palm for over a year now; it didn't hurt, exactly, but sometimes my hand would go numb and i'd have a hard time grasping stuff. now there's this crunchy little nugget below the surface, between my thumb and forefinger, about the size of a pea. when he felt he said, "ooh, cool." evidently it's a cyst, and it's been there for quite some time. it's either under or next to a tendon, which is why i have that crease in my palm. he was sad i didn't show it to him earlier, because now i have to go see a specialist for an outpatient surgery to remove it, and he wanted to do it. weird, huh? i got a cyst! it's gross feeling. i wish you could touch it, though. it's kind of creepy and therefore sort of fun. i made a whole lot of people touch it today, because i am that kid. i suspect i'll be the same way when i have stitches!

gack

the doctor confirmed what i'd been thinking; i do indeed have bronchitis. that hacking isn't your run of the mill cough! the nurse said i sounded "croup-y" which totally cracked me up. i don't know why, but i really like the sound of that. i'm croup-y! like a fussy baby! he prescribed a five day regiment of antibiotics, with today being double-dose day. normally antibiotics make me sicker than a dog, which is why i'm reluctant to take them, and today is no exception. hello, angry tummy. if they're going to make me sick, though, i'm glad it's only for five days. talked to my mom and evidently everyone is super sick; maggie, who gave me this isn't any better either, pop went to the emergency room today because he's coughing up blood and convinced this is the end, and my sister caught whatever plague we're carrying around. days like today i feel bad for my mom, who gets to listen to us all whine and demand her attention. she should have never been so nurturing to us as kids, now she's stuck with us for life.

before the meds kicked in, i ran some errands. paid part of the electric bill, got some quarters for laundry, and went to the library. and here is where i act like a pouty baby: i wanted to donate my second season of six feet under, and their reaction was pretty unimpressive. it's not like i wanted a standing ovation, but something more than, "thanks, next!" would have been nice. they were actually sort of rude about it, and all i wanted was to make sure that the dvds became part of the collection, not given to the friends of the library to sell. i tried to explain that, and the librarian totally blew me off. no one took my name or number, so in case the library wasn't going to keep them they could give me a call, nothing. it was weirdly anticlimactic. what redeemed my visit, though, was finding a copy of young frankenstein to watch. that gene wilder is awesome funny.

okay, i have to go lay on the couch and clutch my tummy and make moaning noises. maybe i'll make some coffee too. i can't tell if that's going to make me sicker or not, but i'm going to give it a try.

ick

i've been bitching about being sick but not doing anything about it, meaning i haven't gotten any better. i slept in this morning because i had the day off, got up for a few hours and watched a movie, at two mini bagels, then went back to bed and now it's seven at night. i kind of want to take a shower, but i kind of don't care. if you're grody and you know it, clap your hands. *clap, clap* i did some knitting this afternoon, and read part of a book, but that's about as productive as i've been. maybe i will take a shower and put on some clean pj's and do the dishes. the shower might help loosen up yet more mucus. aren't you glad i made sure to mention that?

early day

i came home sick from work. being in a deli with a hacking cough is one good way to get customers to glare at you, and i'd had enough. i was coughing so much i made myself dizzy and was pretty sure i was going to knock my brain loose. after i got home i slept for a good long time, and now i'm going to make some dinner and go back to bed.

good news! i snagged a library thing early review book! it's my first, and i'm super excited.