BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: JERSEY GIRL EDITION - MAY 17, 2017

Today was supposed to be much different than it turned out, but that's ok.

When planning the trip up here, I knew that there would be two days I'd basically be on my own. The first day (yesterday) went about like I thought it would.  I wanted to figure things out and find out how and where things were so I would be comfortable getting out and about. My original plan for today was to go into NYC by myself and wonder around, a plan that was not well received by anyone (save one person and I adore him for that.)  I found a train in town that would go directly into the city and I could take the subway anywhere else once I got there.  Ultimately, when I went to bed last night I wasn't 100% sure I was going to go.  Lots of people tried talking me out of it when I'd talked about it at home.  I'm sure I could have done it without any problems, but the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea.  Strangely enough, I wouldn't have been afraid to be in the city alone, but getting there was what worried me.  After not being able to cross the street without asking two people and losing my way three times yesterday, the idea of trying to navigate the New Jersey public transit system gave me the wiggins.  In the end, I decided I probably wouldn't go. I'm a bit ashamed that I punked out, but it was actually for the best in the end because I woke up sick this morning.  Well, let me rephrase, I woke up feeling ok and was fine for a while, but I dozed back off about half an hour after Steve left for work, and woke up again feeling very dizzy and all around yucky.  Nothing serious, I was sure, but my head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds and I had a slight case of vertigo.  Eh, walking straight is overrated anyway.  I lay there for a long time wondering which deity I had offended, but no answer came forth. I finally got up and made myself decent, as in, I put on pants, and since it was after 11 by the time I could drag myself around, I decided I should probably try to eat, so I went down to the rather elegant restaurant (thank God I put on pants) downstairs to get lunch.

An aside: I realized that when I was going through my clothes that everything I brought is either black or blue and it all pretty much looks the same. I didn't realize when I was packing. These hotel people are going to think I am wearing the same clothes all week! Heh.

After lunch I still wasn't feeling well, so I went back to the room and fell asleep for a looooooong time. Seriously, this is not how I wanted to spend my day, but I must have needed the rest.  I woke up feeling sicker than I had before, so I was glad that I'd not gone anywhere.  I am mad I wasted a day feeling sick, but after dosing myself with loads of medicine (I usually carry something for every ailment), I started feeling much better after a couple of hours. Thank goodness, because I didn't want to be sick the whole time we were on our trip. That would suck.

We had dinner with Steve's coworker again and walked around the mall for a while talking. He's a very funny guy and apparently a computer genius. I mean a legitimate computer genius and not in the hyperbolic sense, so he had a lot of interesting stories to tell. We had a great time. His wife is flying up here tonight and they are going to stay in the NYC over the weekend. What are the chances that we'll bump into them? Haha.

Tomorrow, Steve and I are going to travel into the city for the day and do some stuff! I hope I will be 100% better by then and that we will have a good time!

YOU CALL HIM DR. JONES, DOLL...

So...Saturday morning I woke up in a great amount of pain.  I won't elaborate too much, because when it comes to pain, elaboration isn't altogether necessary. Let's just say that it was somewhere in between "Wow, this is kind of bad" and "This is appendicitis and I need to go to the hospital."

I thought I could tough it out, honestly, because what are the chances that I'd wake up with appendicitis out of nowhere, really?  I figured that the pain would stop and I'd go about my day.  Only, it didn't stop.  It got a bit more bearable, but it didn't go away.  I think I've mentioned that I'm not the kind of person who goes to the emergency room for just anything (and the fact that I went to a walk-in clinic for what I thought was a heart attack should be proof enough) but this time I decided that I should probably go and get checked out.  I couldn't stand up straight and it felt like I was slowly being stabbed in my right side.  Granted, as the pain had lessened a bit, I knew I wasn't in immediate danger or anything, but if something inside of me is getting ready to explode, I thought it might be best to see about getting ahead of any unpleasantness.  I was determined to take a shower and put on clean clothes before going, so I (quickly) did that and we drove to the hospital.

We were taken back to a room impressively quickly, and I was immediately given an IV and had blood drawn.  Then I was given pain meds and everything got so shiny and bright.  They x-rayed me, gave me a CT scan, and then the doctor came in to talk to me.  The pain had quietened down a bit, so I wasn't in agony, but when the starting pressing down on my side, I felt like a water balloon on the brink of popping.  It was a weird feeling, but it wasn't terrible.  The doctor left us to wait until they could run tests and see what was going on, and that is how we were for several hours.  I kept thinking how embarrassed I was that I was at the hospital and wasn't hurting anymore, but Steve kept reminding me that I'd been given pain meds, so I shouldn't be hurting.

I have this fear, or if not a fear, a concern, that I'm going to end up being the kind of person who goes to the emergency room for absolutely no reason and waste everyone's time.  That is the main reason I always usually go to the walk-in clinic when something's wrong.  I know a lot of nurses, so I don't want to be an unnecessary burden on them in case someone who needs them more comes in.  I kept apologizing on the off chance that there was nothing wrong with me.  I'm sure they were annoyed, but they all assured me that it was better that I came in, just in case.  I just don't want to bother people.  That's pretty much the crux of the matter.

I'll be honest, though, I was expecting to be operated on that day.  Steve and I discussed all of the things that we might need to discuss in the event I needed surgery, my DNR preference, the go ahead to take out anything that needed to be taken out, and if I died, donate everything salvageable.  You know, the normal stuff.  I even gave him the info on how to implement my zombie apocalypse plan in case it happened while I was unconscious (I should have never watched the first episode of The Walking Dead. Also, pain meds are fun.)  We waited and waited, but no one came in to tell us anything.  We noticed that the ER doc who had seen me was Dr. Jones (unfortunately, his first name was not Indiana) and Steve started cracking Indiana Jones jokes that made me laugh, which didn't feel good, but it was good to laugh.  I'm not sure how long we were there, but the nurse came back in to tell me all of my tests were OK and I could leave.  They didn't explain the angry wolverine that had been trying to claw itself out of my abdomen earlier that day, which was disappointing.  I would have liked to know why that was happening.  They gave me  prescriptions for pain and anti-nausea medicine, I apologized again for any inconvenience, and we left.  So, I have no idea what happened to me Saturday morning, but I was pretty much OK by noon. I didn't hurt, but it felt like a balloon slowly inflating inside of me getting bigger and bigger. 

We went to Target to get the medicine, just in case, and I was still kind of high from the pain medicine they'd given me at the hospital. That was fun.  It wasn't too bad, because I think it had mostly worn off, but I know I texted a bit and maybe didn't make a lot of sense. I don't know, really.  Maybe no one else noticed!  I went home and slept a lot.  I didn't take a pain pill because I wasn't hurting, but I took one of the other ones.  Then I ate, which was a big mistake.  I spent the rest of the evening really, very unpleasantly.  I think it could have been a reaction to the medicine I'd taken, but I have no idea.

Sunday I woke up feeling like death on a stick, but I had to go to church and run the sound for the choir's Christmas cantata.  I was the only one who knew how to adjust the music, so I did that.  It wasn't terrible.  I wasn't in the same kind of pain I'd been in the day before, but mainly the "balloon" was still in there.  I decided that I wouldn't go to lunch with Steve and his dad, and instead went home where I slept for several more hours.  I'd even decided I wouldn't go back to church that night, because of the way I was feeling.  The balloon had been replaced by a feeling like I had been punched in the side and was having a pencil driven into me quite slowly, so I decided to take a pain pill.  I don't know what the pills are, but I know they aren't the really powerful ones.  I don't know what they are, but they WORK.  By the time Steve came home, I was not feeling any pain at all.  I also wasn't blinking, and with a bit of persuasion, I probably would have been convinced that I could have flown to church if I'd flapped my arms hard enough.  Apparently, I'm sensitive to this kind of stuff.  I told Steve that I was going to be fine, so he took me to church.

I don't think I have to tell you that I was only in the initial stages of feeling the effects of that pill when we got there.  I was cheerful, and not hurting, but I still wasn't blinking and the lights were so pretty.  I got steadily more "involved" with whatever I had taken as church went on.  I was running the sound and video system, which went OK at first, but the computer decided to switch off in the middle of things, and I slumped to the ground and scrabbled around with wires until I could make it work again. I had no idea what I was doing.  I also decided upgrading the computer to Windows 10 in the middle of service seemed like a great idea, even though I had no idea if our software was compatible.  By the time preaching got started, I was full on stoned.  I don't know how else to explain it.  All I could do is stare at the lights, and I had no idea what the pastor was talking about. I couldn't follow the music and I STILL wasn't blinking.  I got to the point where, had this been tequila instead of pain medicine, I would have had my top off and been sending rude Snapchats to everyone I knew.  I'm not kidding, I actually started thinking about doing just that, but thank the Lord and whatever pharmaceutical company that made my pills, it didn't disable my Jiminy Cricket voice.  That voice kept telling me "No, no, let's not do that, OK? This is neither the time nor the place."  I listened to that voice.

THANK GOD.

Today the balloon is back and it feels like I swallowed some staples, but I can't take anything until I get home because I have to drive.  I hope that I don't have to go back to the hospital.  Maybe not!  So that was my weekend!  Hope yours was as much fun! :)

HEART TO HEART

I was sick for a month and a half, but didn't know it!

Well, actually, I knew I didn't feel well, but I didn't know just how sick I was for weeks.  I'd gone to the doctor two days before Christmas and had to get shots and antibiotics because of my lungs.  The doctor never told me what was wrong.  I assumed it was a respiratory infection, but it wasn't terrible so I wasn't worried.  We went on our short vacation and I felt ok, so I figured I was over it, but apparently I wasn't.  In my posts about the Nutrisystem program we did, I talked a lot about how tired and weak I felt.  I still believe it's not a great program to be on, and I still believe the lack of food caused some of it, but I believe now that one of my main problems was that I had walking pneumonia again. I honestly had no idea because I wasn't coughing or anything.  I'm almost embarrassed to tell you how I found out I had pneumonia, but since we're friends here, I'll explain.

Let me preface my story with this: I'm not a hypochondriac. I hate going to the doctor and being on medication isn't fun.  I may complain about not feeling well, and I might whine if something hurts, but I don't spend a whole lot of time believing I've got some kind of incurable disease.  The only thing, health wise, that scares me stupid is that something might be wrong with my heart.  We all know I'm paranoid about my heart just...fritzing out.  After what happened to my dad, I worry about that sort of thing.  He'd never had heart problems until the day he had his heart attack and died, and my heart frequently does strange things, so I'm pretty sure my fears aren't unfounded.

Anyway.

Sunday morning, about a week after the diet debacle, I was sitting in church listening to a woman talk about her husband, who had just survived a massive, damaging heart attack.  Like, the kind of heart attack that killed some of the muscle in his heart.  It was scary, and the story spooked me.  It probably wouldn't have bothered me so much if I hadn't been having chest pains all morning and my left arm hadn't gone numb.  I'm not kidding.  I'd been sitting there trying to convince myself that I was fine, that I'd be in a lot more pain and distress if it was my heart (as I've learned to do), but it didn't work.  Against all attempts to keep calm, I went into one of the most insanely intense anxiety attacks I've had up to that point.  If you don't get anxiety attacks, let me explain something: This isn't just being nervous about something.  It isn't having a "bad feeling" that won't go away, this is an all over, absolute conviction something is wrong and it doesn't matter if you try and think rationally, it doesn't work.  I can only assume that it's some kind of out-of-whack chemical thing in your brain that does it, but it's very real and completely terrifying.  I didn't say anything, though.  Well, at least not until after lunch.  I couldn't calm down or breathe, my chest was still hurting and my arm was still numb.  I just jumped into the car and went to the doc-in-the-box.  I think I still had a bit of rationality left in me because a) I didn't ask Steve to come with me, b) I didn't go straight to the emergency room, and c) I managed to calm myself down enough to sit quietly in the waiting room until I was called back. Once I got into the exam room, though, I was so scared that I started to cry. I told them my chest hurt and my arm was numb (it totally was) and that my dad had died of heart problems and that I was scared, which got me fast tracked into all kinds of tests and being hooked up to things.  I happened to mention that I was pretty sure I was having a panic attack - mainly to explain the crying - and that's where things got confusing.  The doctor said "yes, I believe you've been here complaining about chest pains before." I have, but I never thought it was my heart. I'd been there 3 times over a period of five years, maybe, and only a couple of times it was some kind of upper respiratory thing, so I'm not sure what she was talking about. Then the doctor asked if I was stressed and told me that being stressed would damage my heart, even if nothing was currently wrong with it.  The EKG was fine, thank heavens, but the other tests showed I had pneumonia, which explained the pain in my chest. Still have no idea about my arm, though.  Also, because I'd been sick and hadn't been slowing down or getting treatment, it apparently affected me mentally, which happened the last time I'd gotten pneumonia; panic attacks and all. It's all very strange and tangled up, but I understand it better now than I did.  At any rate, she gave me prescriptions for the usual stuff and told me she was also going to give me something to help keep me calm that I needed to take every day. Here is where I am still really confused.  As I said, she seemed to remember, or at least think she remembered, me coming into the clinic a lot about chest pains, but she also seemed to think I'd been in a constant state of panic every time I'd been there.  I thought that was strange, but who knows? Maybe she remembered me and thought I was over-reacting every time.  So she gives me a prescription for something that I thought was like Xanax, or at least some kind of tranquilizer, because she was so worried about my anxiety levels.  Once I found out my heart was fine, I felt so much better. I was shaken, but no where near as afraid as I'd been before, so I didn't take one of those mystery pills until the next day.  I figured that I needed to try it out and make sure it didn't put me to sleep, but it really didn't seem to do anything at all. In fact, it wasn't until I woke up in the middle of the night thinking I was dying that I even thought to look at what I'd taken.

Imagine being dead asleep and suddenly bolting up, fully awake and in such a state of panic that you literally jump out of bed running.  That's what happened to me.  It made the panic attack I'd had the day before look like a case of the hiccups.  I'd asked Steve to sleep in the living room because I knew I was contagious, but I ran in there and shook him awake and told him I needed to go to the ER, that something was wrong and I didn't feel right.  My skin was crawling and my heart was beating so hard that my hair shook.  This wasn't just Crazy Town stuff, this was full on terror.  It's hard to explain, but I thought my chest was going to explode.  If you've ever been startled, imagine that feeling of being startled not going away and only getting stronger.  I grabbed the BP cuff we have and put it on, (that might have been some Crazy Town stuff) and my blood pressure was up higher than it had ever been before in my life.  Steve was trying to calm me down (bless him, his brain was on straighter than my own) he told me I needed to be still and figure out what was wrong.  I wasn't in the mood to be rational, though, and I probably would have jumped into the car and taken myself to the ER (sans pants) had I not woken up enough to realize that I wasn't in pain and I could breathe. I also remembered that I had taken a pill I knew nothing about, which I immediately looked up online.  It hadn't been a tranquilizer at all.  That doctor had given me a prescription for an antidepressant!  What?!

I'm not a doctor, but I do know that you need to know a little bit more about a patient than "Has Occasional Anxiety Attacks" before you put them on antidepressants.  Don't get me wrong, the doctor I see in the Walk-In clinic is a great doctor, but I don't see her on a regular basis. I might go there once a year, if even that, and it's for things like sprained ankles that don't heal on their own, or sinus infections or whatever. Antidepressants are no joke. I've been on them before and they did bad things to me, but I have no idea what made her think that was the right thing to put me on. I am convinced she had me confused with another patient. So I spent the rest of the day trying to keep calm and not scratch my skin off.  My blood pressure eventually went down and in the process of reading about the pills, I found out I'm not the only one that they affected that way. Apparently, you're supposed to keep taking them and just deal with the violent panic attacks until the medicine itself eventually drains you of feeling.  I'm paraphrasing WebMD, of course, but still. Screw that noise.

At any rate, I took my medicine and got over the pneumonia, only to have it replaced by another respiratory infection, and folks, let me tell you, I can't wait to be able to breathe normally again. Sucking on a inhaler is no fun.   So that's the story about how I thought my heart was killing me, when in fact, it was my lungs.  I'd really like it if we had indicator lights on our bodies that tell us exactly which organ groups are giving us trouble.  It'd save me a lot of anxiety.

PS: This took me a long time to write and I can't remember why I went into such a lot of detail.  Sorry about that. 

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1)  Did everyone have a wonderful holiday season? I did!  It was very busy, but I enjoyed it a great deal.  I did have to work a bit the week of Christmas, but that was OK.  There are things I do for church services that have to be done before the next Sunday, so I was very busy on the Monday before!  Bulletins aren't going to print themselves, am I right? :)  It was actually Steve's birthday, but he'd made plans to have dinner with a buddy of his.  Boo.  Oh well, what could I do? I had stuff to do anyways.  That was the night I baked Steve's birthday cake and made cookies*!  My mother had asked me to decorate some cookies to bring to her house on Christmas day, and I was determined to do it right. I bought a recipe and some tutorial videos online from a professional cookie lady (seriously, she's amazing) and got to work.  I will say this: making cookies her way was a pain in my ass.  You had to make the dough, then chill it for an hour.  Then you roll it out, and then chill it for a half hour.  Then you cut the cookies out, freeze them for 15 minutes, bake them, then you have to leave them alone until they were completely cooled.  I know that all of that was so that the shapes you cut out didn't spread out all over the cookie sheet when they baked, but dang.  Also, the cookies smelled really weird to me.  The recipe was for Vanilla Orange Spice cookies, and they had coriander in them, which I'd never used before, so they kind of smelled the way I think sausage smells.  They tasted OK, but they just smelled weird.  Oh well.  That was all I could do for the cookies that night. 

Tuesday, I worked for a couple of hours, and then I went home to get ready for our Christmas Eve dinner.  I also worked on the cookies again, which made a huge mess.  I've decorated cookies before, of course, but this was a whole new ballgame.  I got sugar, icing, and food dye all over me, in my hair, ugh...just everywhere!  However, for my first try, the cookies turned out pretty well, I think!  Mr. Lee was supposed to come over that night, so Steve and I finished cleaning the house and got everything ready.  Well, we almost had everything ready.  It had apparently been so long since we'd had anyone over for dinner that I'd forgotten how to set the table and completely forgot to get drinks! Steve and I don't drink soda or tea much anymore, but Mr. Lee does, and so I ended up making tea (one K cup at a time) to fill up a gallon pitcher.  That was really tedious!  Anyways, we ate, talked, and exchanged gifts.  Butler was very glad to see Mr. Lee, and he fell asleep with his head on Mr. Lee's shoes.  It was cute. :)  Since he (Mr. Lee, not Butler) was going to be joining us at my mom's the next day, he went home fairly early, and I cleaned up because for the first time ever, after years of being invited, I was going Waffling!  Waffling is kind of like wassailing, but with more butter and bacon. Hee!  Actually,  what it really means is that I met Kenny and Lauren at a local Waffle House to usher in Christmas Day!  They were going to be going to church late that evening, luckily near my neighborhood, and so we got to meet and hang out for a while!  I literally hadn't seen either of them in years, so I was thrilled to get to spend some time with them!  Not as much time as I would have liked, but they did have a long drive back and it was late. I thought it would be rude to shackle them to the car.  I can't speak for them, but I had a great time! :)

Wednesday was a lovely day altogether.  As usual, we spent Christmas day at my mom's house.  We ate and opened gifts, but the best part was just sitting around, talking and laughing.  I love my family!  My nephews, Logan and Seth, took me outside to show me how to shoot!  I realized that although I'd been around hunters and guns all of my life, I've never shot a real gun.  BB guns and pellet guns, yes, but bullet guns, no.  It was fun, but I don't think I'd ever want to kill anything.  I'm a terrible shot, though.  I also need to remember not to swing the gun around while I'm talking.  I think I need a course in gun safety!  I did manage to hit the edge of the paper that the target was drawn on, though, so it wasn't a complete fail.  I also walked through the woods a ways with them while they shot at stuff.  I liked it.  We stayed over at mom's for a long time, and then we left (taking a great deal of food with us, of course) and went over to Mr. Lee's house to open stockings and watch a movie with him.  Of course, I promptly fell asleep.  I'm such a party animal.  We finally went home and ended the day watching the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

Friday we actually got to spend time with Josh and Anthony!  I was so glad to see them!  Josh, of course, lives in Denver and Anthony has been working so much that we hadn't even talked to him in a long time - much less seen him.  While Josh was in town, we all got together and had dinner and hung out for a while!  It was like old times! Well, almost. A lot of our friends have scattered to the winds and I wish they could have been there, too. I also wish Geoff, Josh's husband, could have been there, but he had to work.  Boo.  But, having those two guys there was still great!

It was a really very wonderful, few days and I'm blessed beyond what I deserve to have these people in my life!

*After I wrote that, I remembered I did the cookie baking on Sunday and started decorating them on Monday.  Not an important detail, but one I wanted to mention. I also didn't want to go back and rewrite all of that.  Anyone who thinks I should have can suck it.

2)  Unfortunately, the happy times couldn't last for long.  Sunday afternoon, after lunch, I started feeling icky.  I thought it was just whatever I had eaten not settling well, but I drank some soda water and took a pill and soldiered on.  I was fine until that night after dinner, when I realized that whatever was wrong with me was not what I had for lunch.  I'll spare you the details (you're welcome) but suffice it to say that at one point, I actually thought I might die.  I'm saying that with no hyperbole at all, I literally didn't think I could feel the way I felt and still live to see morning.  When the best I felt was when I was lying on the bathroom floor, shivering and praying, it wasn't a stretch.   I couldn't even get up enough strength to entertain the idea of going to the emergency room.  It was miserable.  By morning, I was feeling, not so much better exactly, but the idea that death was fast approaching had faded.  I was exhausted, sore, nauseous, and dehydrated.  All I could do was lie still, like a slug surrounded by salt.  Steve brought me some Gatorade, which I managed to sip about a tablespoon at a time without getting sick again.  Pretty much other than that, I slept.

A friend of mind had been similarly sick a few weeks before, and because he didn't take the time to slowly reintroduce regular food into his diet, he ended up in the hospital.  I didn't want that to happen to me, so for three days, all I ate was broth, rice, lentils, and bread. It was all I could stand to think about eating.  I was an accidental vegetarian for almost a week because thinking about eating meat made me sick to my stomach. In fact, even though I feel a thousand percent better now, I still can't stand the thought of eating chicken or pork, and the only meat I've been able to eat without feeling ill is ground beef.  I mean, I do like hamburgers and all, but it's a little ridiculous.  As with all other things, it will pass.  At least I hope so.

I wound up having to go into work for an hour that Tuesday because I forgot that everyone needed to get paid. Since I'm the only one of our office staff that can sign checks, I had Steve drive me to work (I was too weak to do it myself) and I took care of that. I know I was still feeling bad because I went without makeup. I don't do that. Ever.  Also, one of my coworkers said (and I paraphrase because I can't remember his exact words) "This was really bad. We need to do something about this.  I mean, what would have happened if you'd wound up in the hospital or something? How would we get paid?" He wasn't trying to be funny.  If I'd had the energy, I would have given him the finger.  :)

3) Also, it got cold.  SO FREAKING COLD, you guys!  Actually, it wasn't the cold that bothered me.  I mean, I am lucky that I live in a technologically advanced enough society that I both work and live in climate controlled environments.  No, it bothered me that the cold did stuff to my environments!  It froze the pipes at our church. It froze them so solidly that we had no bathrooms that we could use consistently.  You could only use each stall once, and then there was no water in the tanks.  I'd forgotten how uncomfortable it was not to have reliable bathrooms.  You can't drink anything for fear that the urge would arise, and if you did give in and use one of the swiftly dwindling supply of toilets, you couldn't wash your hands. I know Purell is supposed to kill 99% of germs on contact, but it doesn't sterilize your state of mind about not being able to wash your hands!

I came home from work to see water running down my driveway.  When I opened the garage, I saw a pipe in the wall squirting all over the place.  On the bright side, it wasn't ruptured, but ice had forced a connecter-thing off of a pipe, and it was just spraying merry hell all over the place.  Steve was on travel, and I have no idea how to do anything plumbing related, so I called Mr. Lee to come and fix it.  I didn't even know how to turn off the water, so I Googled that (Thank God for the Internet) and had to dig through wet leaves and tangled grass to open the meter thing in the front yard.  I hadn't been able to find the T-shaped thing that turns off the water, but my neighbor came running with hers and turned it off for me!  (Thank God for neighbors!)  Poor Mr. Lee had to haul his cookies across town and then to two different hardware stores to find the right parts to cap the pipe.  It had stripped when the ice forced it off, so we couldn't just reconnect it.  (Thank God for Mr. Lee!)  I felt so bad that he had to come over and fix it.  I should know more about how to fix things.  :(

Also, Butler was being weird.  I had to keep him indoors during the day, which he hates, so every night before bed I'd let him out one last time to do whatever business he needed to do. The dang dog would run off and then just sit there and stare at me.  He wouldn't come back inside unless I ran out and chased him in!  He's 12! He sleeps all the time and has arthritic hips, but I still had to chase him. I guess he was determined that he was only going to go inside on HIS terms.  He's lucky I didn't shave him as a punishment!

PARTY DOWN! I REPEAT, THE PARTY IS DOWN!

Do you remember last year when one of Steve's more influential co-workers threw a Christmas party and I had a small, but powerful come-apart about being worried that I'd been strange and awkward the whole time?  No?  Well, you should follow that link and read about it. Geez.

Anyways, the man had another Christmas party this year, and believe it or not, I wasn't the least bit nervous about going.  Part of it was that I knew what a lovely couple the host and hostess were, and I guess the other part was that, at the time, I was still on medication for whatever mystery illness I was being treated for and it made me feel too terrible to think about all the things I could do wrong.  Who knew feeling like death was good for the self esteem?  The only thing that had been worrying me about this party was the fact that I wasn't sure if I'd done the right thing for a host/hostess gift.  See, I know I could have gone to that party empty handed and it would have been OK.  Had they been good friends of ours, I wouldn't have felt it necessary to give a gift, but it just seemed like good manners to take something to this party. 

Well, everything started off better than I could have expected.  I was feeling a bit better by the time we got there, and our gift was a huge hit.  Seriously, they weren't just being polite.  I mean, they seemed genuinely thrilled about the towels I'd embroidered the name of their farm on.  (Yeah, they live in a place with a frickin' name! Awesome, huh?)  So I relaxed and figured that the rest of the party would be a piece of cake!

That's when God punished me for my hubris.

The host gathered us all together, prayed over the food, and we filled our plates with various little nibbles. Steve and I found out of the way seats where he could tell me who everyone was without them hearing us talking about them.  Things were going well, and we were laughing and talking, when someone came over to tell us goodbye.  We were sitting and the man was standing in front of Steve.  He shook Steve's hand, and I leaned forward - plate in hand -  to say goodbye.  I didn't realize how close to Steve I'd apparently leaned, but when the man released Steve's hand, Steve's elbow went into my plate.  Hard.  It was like a wrestling move.  Almost in slow motion, a jumbo shrimp, covered in sauce, sailed across the room.  The rest of the sauce, which had puddled on my plate, immediately fell onto Steve's lap. Crumbs fell, napkins fluttered, Steve froze in place and the crunch of my plastic dinnerware hitting the floor echoed around the room.  Now, of course, it probably wasn't really like that. It all happened so fast, but it felt like time had slowed to a crawl.  Steve's face had a look of panic on it that I rarely see, and of course, I lost it.  I started laughing so hard all I could do was sit there as Steve retrieved the shrimp and started piling the trash into my plate.  The man who had been shaking Steve's hand made a "yikes" face and fled, and I still sat there laughing like a lunatic.  Apparently the medicine I was on made me not care how loud I was laughing either.  Poor Steve was so embarrassed, and he couldn't even stand up because of all the sauce on his pants!  One of the caterers (the one I hugged last year was back, and I'm fairly certain he recognized me) quickly walked over and took the plate from me.  I sat and snort-giggled until Steve was able to get up and find a bathroom to clean himself up in.

When he finally got back, I was calm enough to go back to the food and get some dessert.  Now, what they were serving were these tiny little chocolate shells filled with various and sundry flavors of whipped cream, or something like that.  I got two, and walked back to the seats.  I sat down, picked up my first little dessert thingie, when my plate - which was sitting on my knee - tilted sideways.  I managed to catch the plate before my food went into the floor, but not before almost crushing my chocolate thing.  It startled me into saying "SON OF A WHORE!" a little bit louder than I meant to.  Of course, that set me laughing again.  Then Steve started laughing, and we were like two little kids in church trying not to laugh too loudly.  Once again, the caterer was at my elbow, taking away the plate.  It was then that I knew they had noted the frequency of my messes and had targeted me so that they could keep everything around me clean!

At that point I felt that Steve and I should walk around and talk to some people, so that we wouldn't have to hold plates anymore.  While we were doing this, I started feeling very ill indeed, so I walked outside on the deck to get some air and there were the dogs!  Of course, I immediately started petting them and talking to them.  When I started feeling better, I was getting ready to go inside when I noticed the sweet dog faces looking at me.  I could tell that they really wanted to go inside, and dummy me thought I remembered that they were trained only to go as far as the screened in porch, so when they followed me back into that porch I didn't think anything of it. I walked back into the house, and the dogs followed me!!  I don't think this would have been a problem, had they been small dogs, but the 110 pound lab decided that not only should it visit as many people as possible, probably to see if they had food, she was also just the right height to pretty much stick her face into the chafing dishes.  Luckily, very luckily, I managed to stop her before she did that.  The woman caterer walked over to me and said "I don't think they're supposed to be in here!" and she chased out the smaller of the two dogs.  It took longer, but the man caterer managed to shoo the giant lab.  By that point, I was fairly sure the catering staff was very tired of me!

After getting the dog out, I somehow managed to lose Steve.  Now, this house is big, but not so big that I could lose my husband in, but I swear he just disappeared!  I stood in the middle of the room kind of non-plussed, looking towards all the different groups of people and not seeing him. I finally had to start asking people if they'd seen him.  Of course, no one knew where he was, and I had a very bad moment of wondering if I'd embarrassed him to the point of just leaving me at this party to find my own way home!  After some searching, and more than a few more moments of panic, I discovered him, wedged into a hidden corner of the living room (seriously, I hadn't found him that whole time because of a stupid bend in the room) talking to some of his coworkers.  Yeesh.  As I made my way over, I stopped at the bar to get a cup of apple cider.  It was in one of those silver, heated coffee dispensers that you have to press a black flipper thing on the spout on its front.  Since I'd pretty much spilled everything I'd had in my hands that night, I only planned to fill my cup half-way, and as I was doing that, the fricking catering lady jumped over to my elbow to make sure I was doing it right.  Seriously.  I was starting to feel stalked.  I got away and made it over to Steve without spilling it, so IN YOUR FACE, CATERING STAFF!

After sitting there for a while, the yuck feeling came back fairly badly.  I had to surreptitiously tug on Steve's sweater and let him know I was feeling bad again and wanted to leave.  Although I'm sure he would have liked to have stayed longer, he was gracious enough to realize I honestly didn't feel well, so we got up and made our goodbyes to the host.  I'd like to say that we managed to get away without any further embarrassment, but no.   Because of where we parked, and because people had pulled in behind us, we couldn't get out of the driveway without some fancy maneuvering.  In fact, in our attempt to figure out how to get out, we had to drive up and reverse pass a giant picture window that looked directly into the party about 37 times.  We had to drive past and reverse so many times that it got stupid and we started laughing again.  Big Ben...Parliament.   I had to get out and direct Steve in what was probably a 42 point turn, one in which he drove a tiny way into the flower garden and almost hit one the dogs.  We finally managed to get turned around and we left the party, our dignity in tatters and flaps, but everything else luckily all in one piece.

I think there's a part of me that would love to think that my antics (for want of a better word, I guess) were adorable and that possibly I could pull off being seen as sort of a poor man's (or in my case a very poor, homeless, and possibly meth addled) man's Zoe Deschanel: a precious, elfin creature that can't help but be awkward and freakishly cute while knocking things over and spilling everything, but I don't think that's the case. Instead, I'm fairly certain I'm more like that kid your mother made you invite to things and they were always the one to spill the red punch on the couch and break your new birthday toys. 

I wonder if we'll be invited back next year?

ROCKIN' PNEUMONIA AND THE BOOGIE WOOGIE MYSTERY ILLNESS

Well, it actually isn't pneumonia, either the walking or running kind, this time.  What is it?  I dunno.  Neither the doctor or her PA was very specific.

I suspect I've got the black lung, Pop. (koff koff)

Oh, wait...let me start at the beginning.

*flashback waves and harp sounds*

I'm fairly sure whatever I had got it's humble beginnings while we were in New Orleans.  If you read my story from the night after Sara's wedding, when we went down Bourbon Street and wound up with the funk of the ages all over us, you might remember that my eyes had apparently taken the brunt of whatever was in the air that night.  I'm certain that there is some kind of mold in the air down there that comes from an old-ass city constantly being flooded and dried out again.  Whatever it is, it really, really tried to blind me.

Ever since then, my eyes have been painful, itchy, burning, and crusty.  I know that's disgusting, but I don't care because I'm being CLINICAL here, you guys!  Anyway, I thought it might be pink-eye, but it wasn't the same as the last time I had pink-eye, and that is certainly something I'd remember *shudder.*  I'd mostly be fine, but my eyes would get cloudy and I'd constantly have to rub them, and then they'd get watery, and then I'd wake up the next morning and my eyes would be welded shut with...whatever the crusty stuff was.  It was unpleasant.  I had some antibacterial drops that I'd put in, but they didn't do anything except make the inside of my eyelids peel off.  (CLINICAL, y'all!)

Anyways, not long after that, I started feeling bad almost every night.  I'd be OK during the day, but every night around the same time I'd start running a low grade fever, had chills, and had to lay down and wrap up in a blanket until I felt better.  Every night.  It was weird.  I probably should have gone to the doctor then, but I didn't want to take the time to do it because it seemed like a dumb idea when I was feeling fine.  Pretty soon after that I was sure I had some kind of weird sinus thing going on.  It wasn't an infection, but maybe some kind of allergy to something.  It made my head and face hurt, my nose stop up, my neck and shoulders hurt, and face and head misery in general.  Basically I just felt so awful all the time that it started to seem normal.  Once again, I should have gone to the doctor, but I kept putting it off for one reason or another.

All this was going on until a week ago when I began to get sharp pains in my chest.  They weren't heart related or anything, it just hurt when I breathed.  It wasn't all the time, and since the pains went all the way through me from my chest to my back, I thought maybe I'd just pulled a muscle or something, and every so often I'd tweak it just the right way to make it hurt.  Then I noticed my back would hurt on the left, then on the right, and then my chest would hurt again, and it wasn't until I started having trouble breathing that I realized it wasn't my back after all, it was my lungs...and it felt exactly like two years ago when I got walking pneumonia.  Seriously, it took me a month and change to get rid of walking pneumonia, and I didn't have a job back then so I could take the awful medicine that made me trip balls and hear the neighbor's thoughts. I couldn't deal with it now.

Anyway...so after two days of huffing an expired inhaler, and suspecting that I had somehow grown sea sponges in my lungs, and feeling exponentially worse, I finally sucked it up and went to the doc-in-the-box.

I decided to go after work Monday, and it was packed in there.  By then I was feeling really terrible, my voice was almost completely gone (a new development since that morning) and the walk-in clinic had apparently just updated their database, which meant I needed to fill out new forms! Joy!  I was wheezing and glassy eyed, but why not?  When I went back to turn in my form, it turned out that I'd left my driver's license at home in the pocket of the jacket I wear to the gym.  She was nice enough to try and find the scans of my ID that they had on file, but since scanning it had obliterated my picture, she wouldn't accept my new form.  I completely understand the bull-crap bureaucracy of the whole thing, but by that point I was feeling so terrible that I almost cried when she told me I'd need to go home and get it.  Well, the crying feeling actually was secondary to wanting to reach across the counter and rip her arms out of their sockets, but THEN I felt like crying.  I didn't though.  Luckily, I don't live that far away, so it only took me about 30 minutes to go home, change out of my work clothes, grab my license and get back.  Of course I had to sign in, again, because "We can't hold spaces, ma'am."

I almost punched her.

I shoved my license and insurance card to her and pointed to the form that was still out on the counter (I didn't have a voice, remember) and she told me to go sit down until they called me.  It took a long time before they even called me to come up and pay the co-pay so I could get my license back.  By then, I'd gotten over wanting to kill them all because I realized that the whole day must've been hectic and busy, and they weren't just being evil.  They were just tired and ready to go home.  Since I've worked customer service, I have a soft spot for others in that position, so instead of bodily harm, I just made a few jokes and waited until they called me back to a room. Friggin' finally.

I told the nurse what was going on and she took my vitals.  Then the doctor came in and I told HER what was going on.  She listened to my lungs and asked me if I smoked.  Nice.  She said "Yes, it sounds pretty pitiful" and then she pulled out the bed extender and told me I could lie down if I wanted.  She also informed me I'd need some blood tests and a chest x-ray.  A new person, I'm guessing a tech of some kind, came in and took about 9 pints of blood from me and then took me in for a chest x-ray.  Again, I had to make the bra-less walk of shame from the exam room to the x-ray room, but luckily it didn't take long.

When I got back to the exam room, I sat for ages, waiting on my results.  I had a book, but I mostly just sat there staring at the walls.  At least the room I was in didn't have one of those "The Various Ways a Body Part Can Be Diseased" posters on the walls.  They are both disgusting and fascinating all at once.

Finally, the doctor came in and said "Well, you tested negative for everything."  I was all...OK...thinking she'd at least tell me what I was being tested for.  She did not.  So I asked her "So, I'm not contagious?"  She said, in her musical Indian accent "Oh, yes, you're contagious. You will be until you stop coughing."  I'm over there thinking WTF?  I haven't been coughing!  What does she mean?  What do I have?  She asked me how I felt about getting some shots, which I agreed to only because I wanted to get better much faster. I started to ask her what I was sick with, but she left before I could get my wits about me to ask.  Then the PA came in and had to calm me down when I saw the needles, but I took the shots to the *ahem* hips like a champ. When she was done I said "So, what...I have some kind of crud?"  Instead of clarifying, she just said "Yes" and left.  Ok, then! Fine!  I don't need to know what I have!  I'll just hope it isn't monkey pox or anything!  After that I was given my prescriptions and I left.

I had to stop by church, and by then the injection sites on my hips were sore and my kidneys were on fire.  Like, I could actually feel my individual kidneys sitting there, burning.  It was a weird sensation, and it scared me because I thought I was having a bad reaction to it, but that part didn't get any worse.  I stopped by McDonald's on my way home to pick up a quick dinner, and then I went home.  That's where things got fun!

Almost the second I'd finished eating, I started tripping hard core.  I hadn't put two and two together when the PA told me I was getting a shot of steroids, but that is the medicine that puts me into a complete loop.  I felt exactly as if I was drunk, albeit I didn't get the urge to email anyone.  I was stumbling around and babbling and everything seemed like it would be fun to touch.  I finally had to just lie down before I fell over and that is when my day ended!

I've had time to think on all of this, and I'm fairly certain that I had various kinds of illnesses going on in my body for a while.  After I got the shots, I felt hot and tingly all over, plus I felt like...well, have you ever seen the movie "Transformers" when two of the big robots start fighting and you can't tell who is who, and it's just a big, confusing tumble on the screen? I felt like that on the inside.  I also had high pitched sounds in my ears, like a bell that was almost out of hearing range, but just audible enough to nearly drive you crazy.  The various prescriptions I'm on are the same ones I was on when I had walking pneumonia, and one of them is a cortico-steroid (I think), which is the medicine that whacks me out.  I've been at work since yesterday dizzy and doped up, and I had to work A/V duty for a funeral while I was under the influence.  Fun, right?   The ringing in my ears is still there, and I'm still on antibiotics and steroids, but at least I'm not contagious anymore.

So that's my story!  It was too long, probably, but I'm currently taking my steroids and I'm feeling chatty.  Also, they make me not care at all about anything, so if it was too long...eh.  :)