I WILL Beat This Thing

not actually me, as the hair is too dark and too straight when I'm too sick to straighten it, but you get the idea

My temperature was manageable all day, but tonight it's right back above 104 again. My dad says if it shoots up again tomorrow I need to take antibiotics and probably to get a chest Xray Friday morning. I will hope it is gone tomorrow. My dad could get away with giving me antibiotics earlier, but he's very conscientious and follows CDC recomendations on any given illness before giving antibiotics. Doctors worldwide need to follow the protocol if they don't wish to create antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. With this particular strain of influenza or whatever it is, five nights of moderately high temperature has been determined to be a normal interval of illness. Once the fever reaches day six, it has exceeded its limits, and there is probably secondary bacterial infection. I would prefer that it go away, although taking a three or four pills a day is a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.

Today's midterms were a minor inconvenince -- a mere blip on the radar screen. They tests were more or less as I would have written them had I been givn the privilege of creating examsfor the courses I'm taking. I studied all the right material. Actually I studied all the material, but I agree with what the professors chose for inclusion on the midterm exams.


Tomorrow early evening I have a dress rehearsal for the cello recital. My mom will show up too just in case I get sicker and she has to play for the recital. She doesn't need tobe there to play the music. She's probably played it all bfore, and she could have played it perfectly withou ever having seen it before, but if she's actually called into service, the cellist will feel more at ease knowing that she attended the rehearsal.

So I will sleep all day tomorrow, then play for the rehearsal. Then I'll sleep all day Friday, then play for the recital. Then I'll sleep all day Satruay and Sunday, and I'll hope I'm able to drag myself to classes on Monday.

This blog is ended. Go now in peace to love and serve the Lord and to sleep until your sleep is reclassified as hibernation.

awake for not good reasons

This is a generic abdominal ultrasound; it's not mine. I'll be undergoing the procedure in about four hours. It's one of the few diagnostic procedures that is both painless and isn't going to eventually kill me with cumulative residual radiation. Someday it will probably be discovered that the soundwaves cause deafness or pelvic inflammatory disease, but at least, for the present, it's considered to be a harmless procedure..

I am awake at this lovely hour because of extreme abdominal pain. One thing we know it is not is appendicitis, because my appendix was removed a couple of summers ago. An appendix can regenerate itself (it does so only rarely), but not in two years.  It appears, for reasons we need not get into, not to be a bowel obstruction, either, which is a good thing. Bowel obstructions are rarely if ever good.

My dad thinks it's adhesions from a prior surgery. I've had two kidney surgeies, an appendectomy, and a splenectomy. The appendectomy is the one most likely to result in adhesions, although the location of the pain is vague enough that it doesn't automatically point to that as the culprit. The pain is centralized enough now that it could also be gall bladder or kidney stone issues, neither of which have been a problem for me before. It could even just be a bad stomachache from something I ate or something I contracted, though I only have a low-grade fever. My dad is convinced that it's adhesions. My mom is certain I picked up something at the lab where I'm interning, where they use interns to dispose of waste in a not entirely safe matter and to mop up toxic spills.  My dad, who was the first one to suggest the tasks the lab personnel were giving the interns there are hazardous, says my mom is letting her imagination run wild, and the odds of my having contracted some lab-created superbacteria are quite remote and sound like something from deep in the entrails of her memories from  her early childhood days when she used to watch soap operas with her older sisters, or maybe from an episode of House, M.D.

Blood and urine samples have been delivered to the hospital lab, and my dad picked up IV versions of the good drugs, so I'm not feeling nearly so  much pain and nausea as I was about three hours ago.  My dad keeps telling me to go to sleep. The drugs help, but not that much, so sleep is not in the stars for me right now. I wish I could go to sleep, because then maybe everyone else in the house would go to sleep. They've even got my Uncle Steve, my primary care physician, who lives 30 miles away, here to monitor things.  One would think the logical thing to do once specimens are being delivered to the hospital and I'm receiving IV meds, would be to admit me to the hospital, but my dad and Uncle Steve, though they spend a good portion of their workdays in hospitals, are afraid of hospitals when it comes to their own kids, and won't let us in one unless it's absolutely necessary and only for the length of time it's absolutely necessary. If you ask me, my dad has something of a fetish when it comes to MRSA,

My dad or my uncle could give me drugs that would knock me out, but won't because pain is a diagnostic tool. Drugs that dull pain when necessary are OK, apparently, but something that could allow me to sleep through virtually any level of pain when the cause of the pain is unknown is not OK. I'm going to the hospital at the crack of dawn for an ultrasound. It seems to me that the sensible thing would be to get it done now while we're all awake anyway, but my  uncle Steve says the lady who's on duty for ultrsounds right now is bat-shit crazy and a bitch as well. He could read the ultrasound himself -- she's just the tech, not the radiologist  -- but she's apparently enough of a psycho that he'd rather risk my life than deal with her. He says I'm being melodramatic.

At least my illness didn't interrupt anyone's 4th of July festivities, as I didn't begin to experience symptoms until just after 10:30 p.m., which was after  the party had wrapped itself up. One thing I know is that I didn't get anything from eating anyone's potato or macaroni salad, as both are on my Donner Party List, which is my list of foods that no level of starvation would induce me to eat.  Actually, I ate one browine and a couple of crackers. I wasn't all that hungry; the illness was probably already on its way. My dad says it's not food-poisoning, anyway, because the output isn't enough, if you know what I mean. There's been a little of both types, but not enough for food poisoning. The major symptom is pain, and the nausea, my dad says, is mainly from the pain itself.

Jared was at the festivities. We were not rude, but did a good job of ignoring each other. I assume from his presence that he and his father must be back on at leat semi-speaking terms.  My brother told me Jared texted him to inquire about my well-being when he learned that I was ill. My parents had to call everyone at the party to rule out any obvious food-related issues, although my having eaten only two saltines  and a brownie (a plain one -- not one of those dressed up things with cream cheese that shouldn't even be called brownies) should have pretty much ruled out food-borne illness.

By tomorrow morning we should know if adhesions are the source of my pain. I almost hope they are even though such could necessitate another surgery, because if the cause of my symptoms cannot be pinpointed, my mother is going to go crazy thinking it's something created in the lab for which there is neither a readily available diagnosis nor a cure.  She has been worried about my immunity ever since they took my bone marrow to give to her without her knowledge and against her express wishes. She needs to get over it. It was over  twelve years ago. Any major consequence  suffered as a result should have come and gone a long time ago.  It's akin to donating blood in a perfectly sterile environment, then claiming eight years later than light-headednesss or some other symptom is from the blood donation.

My mother is an intelligent woman, but she sometimes appears to be from another planet, or even from another galaxy. My father shows some of the same characteristics, although at the moment, my mom is out-weirding even him, which is not an easy feat to accomplish. It's a miracle that my brother and I function as well in society as we do.

This is as good a place as any to reinsert a video from one of my favorite songs.

Minor Illness/Jackson Update/Upcoming Plans

With the number of doctors in my immediate, extended, and pseudofamily, I seldom visit a doctor's office, but, unfortunately, that's precisely where I am right now. I'm not in the waiting room, at least. I feel compassion for those who are less connected in a medical sense than I. Physicians' waiting rooms are a virtual smorgasbord of pathogens. I'm going to suggest to my Uncle Steve that he invest in  pagers similar to those used by Olive Garden and other restaurants, which would give patients (or their parents' in the my Uncle Steve's case, as he's a pediatrician) the option of waiting in their cars if they wanted to avoid becoming sicker than they already are. i understand that it wouldn't necessarily be fun to wait in a car with a two-year-old, but it might still be preferable to the alternative.

I developed a gastric ailment almost immediately upon returning home from Utah. .My parents feel reasonably strongly about giving garden variety ailments time to remedy themselves and about not over-medicating me or my brother just because they can.  I've been existing on 7-Up with just the bare minimum of Ondansetron, but my temperature is high enough that my mom wanted me to be seen by my physician of record, who is my Uncle Steve. I begged my mom to wait until tonight and take me to uncle steve's house, but she said that he doesn't want to diagnose and treat patients in his time off any more than does the next physician. While there may be truth in her words, what is the point of my being Uncle Steve's favorite niece if I can't even seek after-hours medical treatment? It's now a moot point, because i'm sitting in my uncle's private office waiting for him to come in, do his best Benny Hinn impersonation, and make me well again. I'm even using his office computer to type this entry.

The latest turn in the surreal world of the Jacksons is that T.J. Jackson and Katherine Jackson will petition the court for joint custody of Prince, Paris, and Blanket. This seems like a most satisfactory arrangement for all directly involved. A judge has ordered an investigation of the welfare of the children in the form of interviews that will take place at school, A report of the findings of the investigation will be accessible only to the judge. This, too, while routine,  Dysfunction in one form or another exists in most of our extended families. The inclusion of extended families in all out lives can be a great benefit and blessing, yet it's tricky to be much a part of a large and diverse family without being bogged down by the drama and dysfunction. i genuinely hope Prince, Paris, and Blanket will find that often-elusive balance.

And speaking of extended families -- dysfunctional or otherwise -- my brother and I have been invited to travel a short distance  to Santa Catalina Island with Jared's extended family. Jared's grandparents, all of his dad's siblings, and all of their wives and children will be on the trip. fared and his cousin alyssa are the only two older teens in the family, and the grandparents invited my brother and me to make the trip more fun for Jared and his cousin Alyssa.  The plan is for a Monday morning departure, with a return to the mainland Wednesday afternoon. it sounds short, but there's not all that much to do in Catalina, anyway. Two days should be about right. The trip is one of the reasons I agreed to a doctor's office visit. I don't want this pseudoillness to get in the way of my alleged frivolity.

On a totally unrelated note, a  well-known British tweeter recently tweeted: "Americans, this mitt person is some of American Borat: right?" Too perfect.