Scarlett Letters

1. How's your health this week?
Middling. I was constantly tired and had very little energy for doing much.

2. What's the healthiest thing you've done recently?
Taken my meds regularly and eaten breakfast every day.

3. What do you look for in a doctor?
Someone who treats me like an adult and answers every question I ask, respecting the fact that I'm an intelligent being.

4. What was your most memorable childhood illness?
I used to get fevers upwards of 104 degrees F. I remember one time being so sick that I hallucinated that my bedroom was changing shape and the far ceiling corner was miles away.

5. What's your most interesting scar and how did you get it?
A curved scar on my right wrist. I was carrying my cat Spanky up a flight of stairs. I slipped and he put his claw into my arm. The original scratch reached from my hand to my elbow. The remaining scar is two inches long.

Woke up this morning and realized, based on how my head and body feel, that I forgot to take my meds yesterday. Maybe the day before, too. Meds taken. This f*cking pandemic. I'm reverting to all my very worst tendencies.

I'll start by saying I'm fine, I'm OK.

But I want to write about this because not talking about it has brought its own kind of stress and I need to write it out.

I've been smelling cigarette smoke. Every four or five breaths, when I breathe through my nose--and sometimes through my mouth--I smell cigarette smoke. Sometimes it's just a whiff; sometimes it's so strong it's like the air is thick with it. I smell it in my non-smoking apartment, in my climate controlled and smoke-free office, in the grocery store, as I walked around Green Lake, everywhere. I saw my primary care doctor about it a week ago Wednesday and she didn't really have much in the way of answers. She referred me to a neurologist. That was a little unsettling. I saw the neurologist on Friday and he did all the tests you might expect in an office visit; nothing unusual. He went down a whole list of illnesses that it might be and ticked them off one by one as things I definitely don't have. That left two possibilities, he said: the smell is somehow connected to my allergies or to a brain tumor. And no, he wasn't kidding.

So this morning, I had an MRI and some blood tests. You can imagine: today was stressful, to say the least. After the MRI, I went to work and then tonight I went to do art at Wayward. I came home to an email message from my doctor via the Polyclinic's secure portal. My MRI was clear, although they did discover that I have a sinus infection. Apparently it's pretty bad. The neurologist said that he doubted the olfactory phenomenon was connected to it but anything is possible, so he's referred me to an ENT to get looked at and we go from here.

I decided, as soon as the neurologist told me about the two extreme possibilities, that I was going to mention this whole thing to as few people as possible because I didn't want my whole circle worrying about me if it turned out to be nothing--and so it has. But, as you can imagine, since Monday the scenarios playing out in my head have been, well, unpleasant. I've thought about the friends who have died of brain tumors. I've thought about how I'd start seriously divesting myself of stuff, since I didn't want to saddle my brother with cleaning out my condo. I thought about possibly not saying anything to anyone about it until I had no choice in the matter. About making plans immediately to see as much of the world as I could before it became impossible for me to travel. Yeah, I took that whole unpleasant tour of consequence and mortality.

So now I know I'm not going to die any time real soon, at least not of this--and thank goodness. But in the meanwhile I still have this peculiar symptom to deal with. As noted above, I'll see an ENT and we'll see what happens next.

I want to spend the whole weekend sleeping. I want to drink lots of water, cuddle with my cats and not take care of anyone but myself the next few days. I want to work on my cretaive projects. I want to love my friends and family. I just want to be.

As you may be aware, in the wake of my illness and another incident, I began to lose my hair at an alarming rate. The second week of January, it looked like the hair loss had stopped. It turns out that I was right. It has stopped. Thank G-d.

So where we're at now is that my hair has started to grow again, and I am seeing, for the first time in years, its actual color. I forget sometimes that my natural hair color is the color of my eyebrows, a glossy black, rather than the rich red-dark brown that I've been coloring it. At this point, that black is highlighted with silver. I'm not completely silver, but rather salt and pepper. And all those silver hairs are shorter than the rest of my hair because, of course, they are new.

Today I had my hair trimmed. The longer hair was looking raggy and thin. The shorter hair was looking just, well, wild. My stylist trimmed the ragginess and shaped the hair a bit so it looks more presentable overall. I didn't color it; I'm concerned about applying chemicals to the newly-active follicles for fear that I'll mess with things. I figure the next time I see her, about six weeks from now, we'll color the hair again, when it's longer and it's been growing for a couple of months. Right now, I just want to rest my hair a bit.

I'm so glad that it looks like this episode is over. I began to cry every time I looked in the mirror. Now I feel so much better.

The to-do list: I made a "To do" list this morning. It has 16 things on it. I've done four. They were time-consuming, but they are done. I still, however, am staring 12 things to do in the face. I am comforted by the fact that some of these things are things I can't do on a Sunday. Some require leaving the house (I'm still in my nightshirt and sweats [see time stamp]). And apparently I needed an epic nap today (three hours). So of the things that require neither leaving the house nor doing on a Sunday, that leaves only eight things. I, um, ought to get right on those.

Halloween: Attended the one and only Halloween party to which I was invited last night. (Well, two, actually, but the first one was more of a stop-and-hop.) It was . . . not quite what I expected, but that's OK. I wore the black leather halter top with a white peasant shirt, black leggings and black leather boots, and called myself a generic fantasy villain. If I work in the office tomorrow, I have a different costume planned. Will I do my annual Halloween post here? We'll see. I don't believe I did one last year. Hm.

Sophie: Sophie has developed some unfortunate bathroom habits. I'm going to call the vet on Monday to get her checked for UTI and possible referral to a behaviorist. This CANNOT go on. At the same time, I find myself wondering if she is keying off of my own personal distress. If that's the case, this might go on for a while.

Exercise: This weather (dark, cold, rainy, wolves) is not encouraging me to exercise. Tonight, I'm going to try on every piece of workout clothing in the house, pack my gym bag, and hit the gym at the office. The price is right (free) and it's stupid not to take advantage of it.

David Delamare: My friend WI has made it public, so I wanted to make a note of the passing of her incredibly gifted husband, artist/musician/writer David Delamare. Wendy, David and I have been acquaintances for years, but we'd only begun to really get to know each other in the last two years or so. I was one of the proofer/editors on their Alice in Wonderland project, something I was delighted to be a part of. When I learned of his death about a month ago, it was a shock because it was so completely unexpected. My prevailing feeling is one of disappointment because, as we'd been getting to know each other, I was discovering how much we had in common and how wonderful it would be to get David's perspective on things we both enjoyed. Wendy's mourning for David has in many ways been more of a celebration of his life, and so I am following suit, remembering our brief friendship and trying to pursue my own arts in whatever way I can to honor him.

Back to work
Went back to work yesterday via telecommute. I had three weeks of email to catch up on. It's hard to read three weeks of email and not be able to do anything about what's already happened. I wanted to butt into every thread and yell, "No! That's wrong!" But not having been there, things went on without me as one would expect. I don't have to solve every problem or make everyone do things the way I would. But being a slight control freak, it's hard to sit back and do nothing. And my energy gave out at both 11:30 AM and 4 PM. I know what to expect today.

Back to life
The challenge of having people who aren't me cleaning my house has been that I'm discovering things done differently than I would have done them, things stored where they oughtn't have been stored, things opened and assumptions made that were incorrect, and trying to find ways to remedy those situations. I hugely appreciate all the work done on my behalf while I was ill. It was mitzvah on top of mitzvah. But I am a creature of habits and methods and practices, and when those are disrupted or diverted, I get angsty. So I'm trying to slowly deal with all of that.

Hospital resolutions
Toward the end of my stay in the hospital, I made some resolutions:
1. To get a new mattress and box springs. Life is too short to sleep in a bed you're not 100% comfortable in. My current mattress and box spring are probably about 10 years old, so it's time.
2. To get air purifiers into the house. I need two. Those things are expensive! I bought one this past weekend. I haven't set it up yet, because I need to figure out location and power sources. But it will be done, and it will be helpful.
3. To reorganize my main floor. It needs it. There's a whole corner of the room that doesn't work, and that disfunction has been exacerbated by the challenge of having people who aren't me cleaning and organizing the place. I need boxes and shopping time and time to cull and curate the books and other stuff in that corner.
4. To enjoy my balcony more. I've been doing that, between sitting in the shade on the balcony on hot days, and planting and repotting plants. I'm also enjoying watching my strawberries get red and ripe. I've been keeping an eye out for squirrels and Stellar's jays to make sure I get to the fruit before they do. Living with two little predators who love the balcony certainly helps as well.
5. To get a housekeeper to come in. I have one referral and one avenue I need to explore. Haven't done anything about this yet, but once other things are organized and in place, I will.

My weight
All pretense of trying to deal with my weight has gone out the window. I can't even think about it right now.

My emotional life
Sunday night was hard for reasons I won't get into here. I'm still dealing with the fallout. I'm sad. I'm angry. I'm resentful. I'm frustrated. I'm resigned--because there's nothing I can do about the situation that provoked the incident in question. It just is what it is. But I'm upset with people who felt they should get involved in something that wasn't their business. And in the end I just feel empty. I wanted to be creative last night, but nothing I tried felt like it had a point: beading, drawing, writing. Even coloring felt stupid and pointless. I went to bed and read for a while and then fell asleep. I'm glad I'm going to have company tonight. This bashing around trying to make something out of nothing by myself is destructive.

It's Superman! by Tom De Haven: A licensed Superman novel published, like, 20ish years ago that takes a very realistic, pretty literary and at the same time almost pulpy approach to Superman's original story, starting at when he's done with high school and as he heads off into the real world. De Haven's voice cracks both wise and perceptive, and is rich and fully flavored with period jargon and slang, trivia and detail. I enjoyed it hugely. I studied with De Haven in college and thought he was a terrific teacher. Reading this one of his several novels makes me feel like I didn't understand how lucky I was to study with him. Wish I could have studied with him more. I've found his website and really need to drop him a note.

The Just City by Jo Walton (our own papersky): The first of a new cycle that explores the ramifications of Athena and Apollo deciding to try to build a society based on Plato's Republic. It is probably the most cerebral of Walton's books to date, even given some of the very dramatic and, on occasion, traumatic things that happen to the characters. It's a fascinating exercise that ends a little too abruptly, from my perspective--but the next book has already been published and I'll probably pick it up at WorldCon. My challenge with The Just City is that it feels a little like an exercise to me, a thought experiment made manifest. And while there's good story here, I didn't find myself as attached to the characters as I was with other of Walton's works. I felt a little emotionally distanced from them, which is always a deficit in a work for me. I did like the working through of the many ramifications of Plato's rules, though, and the negotiation of the tougher ones to follow. The Republic is itself a thought experiment, and once you throw humans into the mix, well, things are bound to go pear-shaped. It's an interesting read, not my favorite of Jo's works, but a challenging one in many ways.

Worldcon is coming, but there are so many challenges going on right now for me and friends around me, it's hard for me to anticipate the trip with pleasure. It's one more thing I need to do, at the moment, in a world where friends and relations are dealing with cancer, where another is getting ready to move out of state and is feeling just abandoned by a lot of local folks, where work is busy and pressure is being brought to bear in ways that piss me the hell off. I don't want attending WorldCon to feel like a chore, but as the days dwindle toward departure, it's feeling like another thing I have to do rather than a thing I'm looking forward to.

I've been pushing back lately in ways I don't typically push back. I'm always inclined to say yes, to help friends, to do things even when I don't want to just because I've been asked. Lately, I've been saying no more. It's hard. But it's necessary. It's necessary mainly because I've been feeling really tired, really wrung out, like I don't have the time or resources to take care of myself and my own life. I need to say no more. It's hard for me, but I really need to. The fact that I spent the better part of this weekend sleeping demonstrates that I'm running out of spoons faster than I can wash them and put them away. I need to stop that.

I had the worst blood panel of my life a couple of weeks back. It was the annual blood draw, and suddenly, my cholesterol is up, I'm anemic again, and my doctor Isn't Happy. I'm trying to resolve this issue with vitamins, food changes and exercise, but in the midst of feeling like there's no room in my life for taking care of me, it's an enormous challenge.

And now, off to work.

Last night, I met JF for dinner at Agua Verde, a Mexican restaurant in the University District here in Seattle. It's a small place that abuts Lake Union and is attached to the paddle center. I suggested the place because JF is a sailor with his own beautiful sail boat, the place has a great view of the marina and the lake, and because the food there is generally very good indeed.

We each ordered our meals and the conversation was flowing. The food came, and the waitress noticed that JF received two bowls of rice instead of one bowl of rice and one of black beans. We continued chatting when suddenly I found my left arm and my blouse covered in extremely hot black beans. Extremelyhot. Burning hot. The waitress had tripped and spilled JF's beans on me, fresh from the stove. I howled . . . and howled and howled.

We got towels with which to wipe away the sauce, as well as an ice pack. JF asked me what I wanted to do--ER, urgent care--and I told him to make the decisions. I had no brains for that kind of thinking. And so we were off to an urgent care clinic--where they sprayed on some topical anaesthetic and sent me to the ER.

I was diagnosed with first--nearly second--degree burns on my arm, given powerful meds for pain and sent on my way. There's no blistering, thank goodness, but my skin was bright red and disturbingly blotchy.

This morning, the redness and swelling has gone down, though my arm is still tingling and very sore. I suspect I'm going to be left with some marks when this is all done--including a one-bean-sized burn mark mark by my elbow. It'd be funny if it didn't hurt quite as much as it does.

I'm otherwise OK this morning, still a little loopy from the medication. (Been loopy since I got up; I suspect I'll continue to be loopy for another couple of hours.) I'm going to be taking it easy the next day or so, working from home and trying to baby the arm.

I am hugely grateful to JF for taking such good care of me. He is the finest kind of friend and I'm very thankful indeed.

This was not, as you might imagine, the evening I'd been looking forward to. :: sigh ::

When they tell you that the prep is the worst part of the business, they're not kidding. I finished it this morning. ebourne picked me up to go to the medical center at lunch time, and we were off. By the time I got there, I was already feeling a little better. The headache had let up.

While they prepared me, I joked with the staff, flirted with the male nurse who stuck me with the IV. ("Don't encourage him!" said the other nurse. "Are you kidding?" I said. "I'm going to be as nice as possible to the man wielding the sharp, pointy thing.") I did it mostly to keep myself from thinking about the needle going into my arm. When they rolled me into the room to do the exam, they put one of those oxygen pipes into my nostrils--what a weird feeling that is! They rolled me on my side, added the anesthesia to my IV, and I passed out.

Last time I had a colonoscopy, I woke up halfway through. This time I passed out and woke up in recovery. I missed the whole thing. I'm not sorry about that.

Word is that they found two polyps and the doctor is certain they're not cancerous. They're being biopsied anyway--best practice, that--but it looks like I'm fine and out of this introspective business for at least another ten years.

I'm OK with that.

E and I went to lunch afterwards--had the tastiest lunch! Then we did a little grocery shopping and she brought me home. I spent the rest of the afternoon reading and snoozing on the balcony. Though I have fixings for dinner, I'm not really hungry, probably because we ate lunch so late. I'm going to listen to my body on this one. Rest when I need it. Eat when I need it. The rest seems to be what I need most. After all, I'm back to the salt mines tomorrow.

Actually, it's not my birthday and won't be for another two months. What it is though--what today is--is the day I'm preparing for that procedure you're supposed to get when you enter your 51st year: a colonoscopy. As I'm nearly done with my 51st year, it's past time, so I'm having one tomorrow. Today is prep day.

I'm working from home. I'm on a clear liquid diet. I've been drinking water since breakfast. I just took the first medication on the schedule. I'll be on clear liquids through tomorrow lunchtime and then it's off to the doctor for some deep introspection, so to speak. Or, as a friend like to say, the command will be "Up periscope!"

It's not like I haven't done this before. I had a colonscopy a while back due to some unexplained bleeding and everything was fine. I more-or-less know what to expect. Nevertheless, I went looking for tips for surviving the process. I found all the usual things:

--Drink your prep fluid as cold as possible. Chase it with plain cold water.
--Drink it through a straw to mitigate the taste.
--Add lemon flavoring, maybe Lemon Crystal Light, to mitigate the taste.
--Have a variety of clear fluids in the house to keep hunger at bay (I have failed somewhat at this item--I have sparkling cider, half of which is gone already, and chicken broth. And tea. I don't have jello--what I wouldn't do for some lemon or pear jello! I don't have any popsicles. Note to self: don't be stingy with yourself next time.)
--Line up easy-to-transport entertainment.
--Make sure to have baby wipes or rash ointment on hand in the bathroom. You can get a little sore from all the time on the throne.

So I'm as ready as I can be. I'm working today, for certain values of working. I'm a little too distracted to really be giving value for money, frankly. But I'll get it done and it will all be good.

Yes, I have someone to drive me there and back (bless her). And tomorrow afternoon, once I'm home and rested, I'm going to enjoy a nice, proper meal.