mice flurry gazebo

rheumatologist!!!! it wasn't half bad. he said i don't seem to have any joint disease, just some other disease or syndrome is fucking wtih my joints. except i have mild arthritis in my knee-caps. he said if i exercise my quadriceps then that should improve. i laughed at him at this point because i would be exercising my quadriceps and every other muscle in my body if i wasn't in so much pain that i could barely move. he said the muscle pains and spasms and everything else might be due to a vitamin d deficiency, since i have an aversion to sunlight on account of it making me weak and unconscious when i stay in it for more than a few minutes. at first he thought fibromyalgia but, of course, i don't have that. he actually said i do NOT, reapeat DO NOT appear to have lupus. he sent some blood in for further testing and to check other possible auto-immune diseases, but he said it really looks like an endocrine disorder as far as he can tell. hear that? ENDOCRINE! what have i been saying for months now? ENDOCRINE! its very worrisome when it takes the professionals this long to catch up to the amateurs. very worrisome, indeed... (there's a follow-up appointment on the 22nd to review bloodwork. we'll continue the rheumatology plotline then. stay tuned for diagnostic center: massacre or cure? this friday)

i went to the library afterwards to get x-files dvds and book reinforcements. i'm anxiously awaiting the return of my ryan and i plan to force him to watch x-files with me and make him get very drunk and laugh at him. later on today i'm going to lurch around the grocery store picking up ryan-fodder. and getting vitamin D... i dunno if that's it, but it couldn't hurt. when he gets here i'm gonna force him to slave-labor round the clock until my house is sparkly again, even if he has to use glitter. and i'm going to have him take me at least one Place and do at least one Thing. i really miss nouns. i think that's the worst part of being so sick... lack of nouns.

editor's note: i was later diagnosed with fibromyalgia

reply the freezer

this has got to be the shittiest birthday ever. i spent the bulk of the day propped up in a chair watching matlock and star trek and getting drunk from toaster strudel. i'm tired and sore and angry and i just want it to end already! i want my morphine button back! goddammit!! i don't think i'm going to have this birthday. that's right, i'm refusing to age until i'm well again. i'm sending this crappy birthday back to the kitchen and i'm just gonna wait until a better one can be provided for me. hopefully one with strippers and booze and friends and daytime clothes. i'm going to the rheumatologist early early tomorrow. hopefully he'll have some insight as to what this elevated ANA and joint pain is all about. i've only been waiting 14 frikkin years for someone to check my joints!! and if he says lupus i reserve the right to beat his fucking head in with anything i can find. i don't fucking have fucking lupus!!!! don't even get me started on all the ways i don't have lupus. you'll be here all night. more info on the hepatic granulomas: yes, they heal. whenever the thing that's causing them to be here (systemic infection, diabetes, sarcoidosis, etc..) is identified and cured/treated then they should resolve on their own *whew*. i also have this appointment at the scott and white (read: incompetent fucktard) diagnostic clinic on friday, the 10th. supposedly, they're supposed to diagnose you right then and there on the same day as you go in. it was made for people who don't have time to screw around waiting on tests or being hospitalized. i can't wait to see how they manage to make a huge mess out of my diagnosis. they'll probably say lupus and i'll have to massacre them and barricade myself in the building. good thing i adore SWAT teams; it'll give me something to look forward to. from what i've discovered by researching the internets, these are acceptable suggestions to further investigate: diabetes insipidus, polycystic ovarian syndrome, systemic group b streptococcus infection, tumor on either pituitary gland or hypothalamus, or any sort of endocrine disorder pretty much. unacceptable suggestions include: depression, any sort of STD, HIV, lupus, IBS, hypochondria, or any other kind of trendy or bullshit diagnosis. and if they even dare to suggest that i just take some motrin and see if it gets better i will, i swear to you, i will fucking eat their brains.

nostalgic peeping cats

WIZARD PEOPLE! that is what walter and i watched when i visited him yesterday. its not really a movie, so much as an alternate soundtrack for the first harry potter (the sorcerer's stone). some funny-man thought it would be cool if we turned off the movie's original sound and let him do the narration. i liked the part where the wretched harmony (hermione in the original) cried a second self, just so she would have someone to hug. we also watched All I Wanna Do! which is a feel-good, women's lib movie about girls at an all-girl boarding school in the 60's. it was okay, and it made me feel good about women's lib, too. we were watching it because it featured Heather Matarazzo who is like one of our dieties. she played the part of the awkward, bulemic girl. and played it well! Hurrah for Heather! Hurrah! then my mom and dad took us all to red lobster for my birthday and i unthinkingly ordered crab legs. i forgot what a labor-intensive food that is and quickly exhausted myself wrestling with it and had to sleep on the way home. i really hate being a weakling. a dead crustacean should be no match for me! especially if i have the benefit of modern tools and the opposable thumb. and yet, that stupid crab forced me into bed before 10 pm. in the (new) words of harry potter "fuck!! fucking shit!!!!". 

i did a background check on my new friends, the liver granulomas, and according to the interbutts, they indicate something majorly wrong with my body, but don't really point to anything specific. possibilities include: sarcoidosis, schistosomaiasis, systemic bacterial infection, endocrine disorder... and it goes on like that. i was happy to learn that they aren't usually present in cases of cirhossis or liver failure. means my liver is working fine, just some interfering bitch of a disease is putting lumps in it. probably accounts for the slightly off hepatic enzymes i've been getting, too. i need to do more research to find out if the damage is reversible. i would think that it should be since livers are pretty good at regenerating, but i'll check it out anyway. i'm still going to see the rheumatologist on aug. 8th and waiting for a call from the gastroenterologist to set up an appointment. like that's ever gonna happen. doctors are smug, selfish, lazy, judgemental bastards who have better things to do with their time than call patients. especially if those patients are miserably ill and in dire need of medical attention. why would a doctor want to sully his (or her) hands with that mess? better to just attend to the patients who have nothing more serious than a cold or nothing more difficult to diagnose than a broken bone. tylenol is the strongest drug ever to be prescribed and fluid and rest are a universal panacea! oh, and cancer is a lie the government tells you to harm big tobacco, its really just indigestion.

smallish red star

lookit what bippy did for me! these are my friggin hueg rat cages. they be liek xboxes. this is the girl's cage with clear evidence of a haunting by the ghost of a tomato.

 
...and the boy's cage...

 
they're about three feet tall each. i probably should have put something next to them to determine scale, oh well.

i'm kind of staying in my bed a lot recently, not feeling great. i get kind of drunk feeling everytime after i eat. all disoriented, blurred vision, slurred speech, breakdown of motor skills, vertigo, and my lower legs have decided that they want to be tenderized meat instead of leg now. kind of feels like i've been running a marathon, but i actually stayed in bed all day. i don't mind the getting drunk off of food part of this phase of the mystery illness, but these pains have got to stop. i've been having trouble sitting up for extended periods cause my bones get so sore. like wtf?! am i 80 now? i just wanna play with my sims!  i'm going to walter and jean's apartment tomorrow and then my mum and dad are taking everyone to red lobster cause its my birthday soon. i'm kind of depressed cause i was hoping to be better by my birthday. hell, i was hoping to be better by march! and i was supposed to be graduating in a few weeks... *sob sob* maybe i should drown my sorrows in a big salad or a PB&J sammich. i can get drunk offa anything now! in fact, i'm drunk off of brussels sprouts at this very moment.

some winter, we'll all be under the retinal display

the nurse practitioner called me back. she talked to the doctor and they think i should see an endocrinologist, but the only one around is in austin and is only accepting new *pediatric* medicaid patients. i'll see if there's another way in because i absolutely MUST see an endocrinologist. all signs point to that being where the truth lies, where all problems are solved, and where the roads are paved with gold, where chimichangas dance in the street and holidays happen all year 'round. since i can't see one right now, they're sending me to see a rheumatologist which they seem to think is the next best thing. the nurse practitioner has managed to somehow get me an appointment with a rheumatologist in temple for August 8th even though the nice, useless people at Scott and White told me that the only rheumatologists were located in austin and the first available appointment was in october. sounds like someone wasn't doing their homework or looking out for their patient's best interest. bippy (lizzy to most of you) took me to see my general practitioner today. she wasn't nearly as evasive as usual. apparently, bippy brings good luck. she told me my ultrasound came back negative for gallstones BUT i appear to have some hepatic granulomas (liver bumps or whatever). my bloodwork is also showing some elevated liver enzymes, but she assures me these are usually nothing unless the patient has hepatitis. i'm testing negative for hepatitis, so we're assuming its nothing, granulomas or no. i don't know what hepatic granulomas indicate and she says there's nothing i can do about them, so i'm doing some research. research is almost like doing nothing. as for the "acid reflux", i told her the prilosec made it worse but the pancreatic enzyme pills made it better. she sent in some bloodwork to check my pancreatic functioning and gave me a referral to see a gastroenterologist. she seemed to think they'd want to put a camera down my throat. i'm not sure what that will accomplish and i plan to ask them for a hepatabiliary scan as well. the woman who recommended the enzyme pills said she takes them because her immune system is attacking her pancreas and her doctor was only able to discover this by doing a scan involving radioactive dye injected into the bloodstream called a hepatabiliary scan aka HIDA scan aka gallbladder scan. like satan, it is known by many names, but i don't care, i want one anyway. after six months i'm finally starting to feel like we're getting somewhere. even if that somewhere turns out to be nowhere at least i'll have more test results to prove... absolutely nothing.

unfettered wine hats

the appointment had mixed results. the np did what i thought she'd do, which is that she said "this is way out of my league, you need to see a doctor". but i explained to her that i've seen many many doctors over the past 6 months and none of them have done even one thing for me, so she said she'd send all my information over to the doctor she works with (the one who delivered hayley) and see if that doctor can help. she also said that i should really see an endocrinologist. well, DUH!! i've been saying that since march, but no one listens to me cause i'm just an unedumacated trailer-trash, welfare mom on medicaid. (i'm really starting to resent stereotyping.. grrr..) i feel as though i've put my problems into a bottle and flung the bottle out to sea. now all i can do is sit and wait for the right person to read the bottle's contents and try to get back to me. this appointment i just had could be the catalyst to getting me genuine medical care from an actual doctor, or it could just get me right back where i started. at least she didn't accuse me of lying, call me names, or shout at me. she really did show what appeared to be genuine concern and she acted as though she would be willing to help me in any way possible... so, it could've been worse. fuck, i'm tired of waiting and watching my body deteriorate, watching my life deteriorate around me with no way to halt, pause, or reverse the damage. no means to salvage what is left, just waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the symptoms to plunge me back into my pillow-top hell or release me into the world again at their whim. how does one navigate a life like this? is this even a life? i can't plan for the future because i don't know what the future holds or if there's even going to be a future. and i can't live for today because today there's nothing worth living for. so, i'll remain in my gray state, waiting. waiting for the ring of salvation, or waiting for death. its strange, but i can barely discern between the two.

cartagena galore

ok, this is new. my mom called my nurse practitioner that i saw for my 6 weeks check up after i had hayley and explained to her how sick i've been and everything and she said "this is serious business"and gave me an appointment for tomorrow. a next day appointment and actual concern.... wow. i may fall into a coma, i'm so shocked. i've got all my symptoms typed out and my medical history timeline that i made all by myself and a list of questions. oh, i'm nervous. i really hope she can help me and doesn't just say what the other gyns said, "that doesn't sound like our area, see your gp." and then the gp said, "you need a specialist, see a gyn." but that was scott and white, home of the keystone docs (i'm making a comparison to the keystone cops, they were proto-stooges, for all you young folks) this nurse practitioner is associated with king's daughter's. their ER is a mess, but they seem to know their stuff in obstetrics. everybody use your mental energy to make this appointment a good, productive one. or stop the rain or something.

ryan is coming back for awhile! shhhhh, its kind of a secret. he's only going to be here for a few weeks and those few weeks coincide perfectly with the time that my parents and hayley are going to indiana to take my little brother to college. UNSUPERVISED PARTY AT BRAK'S PARENT'S HOUSE!! haha.. um, no. i like my privacy, though, so it'll be cool to have him here while they aren't. no, not *that* kind of privacy! but seriously, we might start a temporary nudist colony or something.