one-day flu & search for a swimsuit

I’ve been getting the flu shot for years, and I sorta thought that I wasn’t being exposed to the flu, when I didn’t get sick. Well…this year, a bumper crop of people with the flu decided to come to work, and I caught it. The amazing thing was, I only had it for a day. Yesterday, I woke up feeling like the achiest pile of bones on Earth, wondering what the hell had happened to me, and I went back to sleep. By noon or so, I had a temperature of 101, and still hurt like hell, so decided to doze the rest of the day. Woke up this morning, still feeling like I’d been beaten or something, and didn’t go to work, but it’s 10pm now, and I feel…ok, really. Weird. Guess that shot works, in other words. My immune system had something to go on.

I’m bummed, though, that I lost another personal day to sickness…I was out Friday (as was at least half the company) because of the snow. Then, I really had to sit down and think about it: if the last year & a half have been about cancer, this year and some months will have to be devoted to getting well again, and vacation days might just have to wait until I actually am healthier.

A getting-ready-for-summer rant:

Do they even MAKE a swimsuit without a bra in it? I’m sure they do, but I haven’t found one. The best I can do is the soft shelf liner, rather than the stupid cups that will do nothing for me.  I spent some time tonight looking for a bathing suit-ish thing that will look ok on me. The problem with this year’s crop of tankinis is that they mostly seem to plunge mightily towards the cleavage area (which wouldn’t be a problem, if I had cleavage), or to cost $300. I found something from Patagonia on Backcountry.com, that’s affordable and not too plunging on top, and looks like a tank top, so we’ll see. Mind you, I went to 10 different websites, and the pickings were slim.  I’m hoping the Patagonia one fits, because: 1)they have a great environmental policy (you can return your ready-for-the-trash synthetics to them for recycling into new clothing), and 2)I’m already tired of looking. (Yes, I know I’ve only been looking for one evening).

My mother asked “Anything for the one-boobed?” And the answer had to be “No.” Which is still ridiculous, and which is why the time is ripe for Rebel1in8 to start dressing her mothers and sisters!

murk!

Back from the endoscopy…it went pretty well, I suppose, except that I’m now on Prevacid for some ulcerations due to my hiatal hernia. They did a biopsy, too, so I’ll be waiting to hear about that sometime next week. I have a bit of a stomach ache now, 4 hours later, which I guess is par for the course.

The new dumb thing in my life is a hard little mystery lump that popped up just below my right ankle: I went to the GP, and he wants me to monitor it, since it might just be a cyst, or it might be a wayward lymph node.  He said, “I’m very glad you came in with this: this is exactly the kind of stuff people with your history are supposed to do.” If it changes in size at all, I have to come back in for a biopsy.

So, we net out at: “neither here nor there”.

like a bad hangover

Sheesh….I still feel like crap, and it’s days since that scary little event. We took my temp. last night, since I seem to still be cool to the touch at times, and it’s still not up to 98.6, even now. It’s close, but it’s not there yet. Who would have guessed you could even feel that? I would have thought that such tiny increments were something a person wouldn’t even notice…I guess I know better now.

Right now, the worst of it is profound muscular fatigue: I feel like my muscles are full of lactic acid, all the time, even if I barely move them. I wake up with my muscles feeling like I just spent a couple of hours in the weight-room, and the whole day goes on, like that. I’m just drinking lots of water, and taking green juice (wheatgrass, chlorella, etc.) supplements, and eating lots of veggies & fruit, to try to flush the poisons out.

But, I’m keeping the posts short…it’s just too taxing right now. More later, when we’re more firmly on the upside of all this.

still alive!

I’m still alive, so don’t worry. The hypothyroid beast is just kicking my ass, that’s all. I’m putting on a couple of pounds every DAY, even though I’m not eating all that much, and my face and hands are all swollen. It sucks, basically.

More later.

Ill

I am NOT pleased. I’m not even off the short-action thyroid medication yet, and I’m already getting significantly hypothyroid. This year, it is gonna SUCK. And I hate it.

I am so damn tired, it’s unbelievable. And nauseated: first, it was just when I was hungry, but now it’s all the time, whether I eat or not (from slower digestion & from acid reflux, a couple of common hypothyroid symptoms). The crazy dreams, the tinnitus, they’re back, too.

It still blows my mind that this treatment is the same, after 50 years of huge progress in other cancers.

I’ve still got two weeks of work ahead of me, and right now I can’t see how I’m gonna do it. Ulp!

Argh

…another insanely busy weekend. I’m trying to still accomplish mucho at the cottage, while not getting mucho lymphedema or other crappy things. Last night, I beetled home from work, cranked up the steam in the cottage bathroom and got 90% of the wallpaper mural down, so I can paint over it. Today, chest & arms are normal size…yay! A little puffy, but nothing evil.

Today, I had to assimilate the bed and the futon platform into one compact item, which nearly killed me, but is done. Also the requisite weekend mountain of laundry.

Tonight’s delightfully evil menu is fried sea bass with a heap of tartar sauce, to say goodbye to fish & mayonnaise for the next 3 weeks. 

I’m also impatiently waiting for 7:30, to see Jackie on TV! (My folks watch TV, so I have access to one, but I still avoid it most of the time)

Four days til hypothyroid. Yuck.

Lighting up the dark

Argh…one week til I start the LID. I bought (ack) rice cakes again, and plain puffed corn, and no salt peanut butter, and I feel nauseated already. Yech.

In other news, I’m scheduled for a colonoscopy & endoscopy, because of my cancer history, my mom’s cancer history, and my year of vivid episodes of reflux (thanks, I-131, ya bastard). Dang it. Just when you think you’ve been peeled open in enough places, they decide to look in a few more.

And can I just say, my gastroenterologist’s choice of BROWN scrubs leaves me wondering if he’s totally sane.

Musings and Frogsong

Frogsong

Well, the Great Frog Move of ‘07 finally happened yesterday, and Wootini (frog) has been singing ever since. It was difficult to sleep, since there’s a number of frog songs which include “yay, there’s food” “it’s hot”, “it’s cold”, “hello”, “stop trying to kill me” (sung to the cat on the event of his tank escape last May), etc. When he sings, I tend to wake up and cast a bleary eye on him, to make sure all is well. All was well: the frog was just auditioning for the neighborhood chorus of crickets, frogs, and other miscellaneous beasties of the fields & thickets.

Musing (just the one, really)

I was thinking about the stupidity of the thyroid cancer treatment protocol, which can be summed up as follows:

1. Deprive the patient of thyroid tissue & synthetic thyroid until her metabolic/mental processes are hindered to the point that simple acts like driving a car become a mysterious & complicated feat of mental wizardry.

2. Dose the patient with radiation & put them in charge of maintaining an hour-by-hour decontamination routine including isolation, showers, and sequestering of contaminated food/food containers.

I’m just sayin’, that’s all. I’m glad that things aren’t headed towards high-dose radiation again this year (well, not that I know about, anyway), because this time last year was…crap. This year, I get to be only mildly radioactive, and only for about 24 hours. Yippee.

I’ve still got work to do, that I haven’t started, and to move yet more crap out of the cottage. But at least the frog has gotten here safely, with his little croaky songs & all.

Foibles

I’m going bonkers.

I’ve worked every weekend for the last month, as well as some evenings, and combined with the move out of the cottage, I’ve been coasting into Meltdown City, pop. 1. On top of that, I brazenly pitched an article idea to Etsy’s new online magazine dept., and they said,”Sure! We’d like it for publication on Oct.1.”

Gulp. Ok, so I work at an agency, so I know how to churn, and I’m comfortably sure that my draft is competent and interesting enough to be submitted on Wednesday, but even so, I picked a weird-ass time to try and start writing anything other than opinionated blog posts. (As we all know, I ROCK the opinionated blog post. It’s just trying to be more journalistic that might kill me.)

In other news, all the apples are ripening, and I’m too busy to pick them, but I gotta; Wootini and his tank are at the cottage, wondering where the fuck everybody went*,  I was so busy that I didn’t have time to attend (or brain cells to remember) an 8 AM gastroenterologist’s appt. last week; there’s so much laundry to do that I could ski on the piles. Modern living. Fuck it.

[* if you've never moved a live (wet) 20-gallon aquarium and its residents before, let me tell you: for stress, muscle aches, and horror-thrills aplenty, there's little that can beat it.]