Member News

HI

???

So, um, did I miss anything?

Honestly, big time SCROLL ALERT if you hate an excessively long, whinging pity-party, but I've been out for about two weeks and I figured this is the place to explain why.

I was too busy moaning on a couch in Hades to catch up with life in Adamtopia.

I've been traveling, on vacation visiting family in the north east with plans for more elaborate frolicking to follow, when, about two weeks ago, I started coming down with this awful something. Really the only symptom was a persistent high fever, and I checked in here v. briefly a few days in and mys*&@^#r50 kindly updated me quickly and told me where to check out Russia vids. I was downing fever-reducers like a pro, and had every intention of viewing the Moscow-awesomeness, too, except that day I my fever went up to 103, which I thought was bad until the next day it went up to to 104 (while on the meds, mind you), which I thought was bad until the next night it soared to 104.2 (there was something so out of control about it that honestly, I was getting kind of scared--it would go up sooo quickly and was never below, say, 101, despite all the meds).

At this point an urgent care nurse I called told me I had to go to the emergency room, so, yippee, I got to go to a NYC emergency room at midnight with my poor, long-suffering hubby and get hooked up to an IV and have all sorts of blood tests and chest x-rays done while Dr. Distracted babbled at me about everything from HIV to lyme disease to lymphoma. FUN. They kinda wanted to check me in overnight to run even more tests, but that sounded awfully expensive (even though I'm insured, but this is not the place to go into the health care craziness in this country), so at 4am long-suffering hubby and I went back home.

The next day they called and said they'd decided that it *might* be walking pneumonia (mind you, not a single respiratory symptom on me--just the fevers, and accompanying headaches and body aches and full-fledged misery). So I start antibiotics for that, and get even more blood drawn and down even more pain pills, and that night the fever spikes to 104.5. GAH! Let me tell you, when you're an adult and your temp crawls above 104, this strange thing happens--it's like a dog-whistle thing--where you and only you can hear the special cadence that is the VOICE OF SATAN. Satan and I had a real nice conversation going up there in one-o-four-land. (*Secret Insider Info*: he sounds like Danny Gokey's scream-on!)

By now I'm so hot I've decided I'm a new mutant and my mutant name is Global Warming. To give you a sense of how hot I am and how much I don't give a fuck about anything anymore at this stage (TMI alert, consider yourselves warned): at this point I'm at my in laws in new york, and they're being total sweethearts about the fact that I'm sweating my possibly (probably) bubonic germs out all over their nice furniture. And they have this huge blue-gel icepack thingy that they keep in their freezer that they give to me. It's this large, squishy vaguely v-shaped thingy full of a super-cooled blue gel.

Anyway, I love my in-laws but their fridge and freezer are like a super-fund site, no joke, they don't believe in syran wrap or tupperware, they just stick unidentifiable food in there totally unwrapped, and the results are predictable. This gel thingy smells like if you took all the freezer fuzz in the world and melted it into a liquid and then reduced and condensed that liquid until it was like the very essence of freezer-burn and died it blue and put it in a squishy plastic pack. Plus, and I'm trying very hard not to think about this, I'm fairly sure (though not fool enough to check) that the in-laws acquired this particular medical aid when my 70 year old father in law was recovering from surgery for his prostate cancer. Nevertheless, I hug the freezer-smelling thing tight to me like it is my very favorite teddy bear. And of course it turns from freezing cold to bubbly hot in 3.2 seconds flat, because, you know, hello, it's nice to meet you, my name is Global Warming. SO, there you have it, little snap-shot of my week. (By the way, the great thing about a fever of 104.5 is that it makes 102 feel like a splash in the kiddy pool, so that's something to cling to.)

A few days after that I start to feel decidedly better (THANK GOD). I shudder to think of how many bottles of Tylenol and Advil I've consumed (literally bottles and bottles) to get from there to here. (I swear there's a small whale floating belly-up in the North Atlantic somewhere with my name on it because of all the drugs I've pissed into our waterways :-[). I seem to have gotten a regular cold on top of the FEVER DISEASE FROM HELL, but I barely notice that, its so benign. But a trip across the room from chair to couch still leaves me feeling like I've scaled a major mountain.

Me before FEVER DISEASE FROM HELL:

(Or, you know, something like that, that's close enough 8-))

Me after FEVER DISEASE FROM HELL:



However, the really SAD thing is that for the second half of my trip after visiting my family in the NE, already all booked and everything, I was going to fly to London to visit my brother, and then on to Germany to visit other family. Of course, with the 104 fever and all I just couldn't do it, and had to cancel everything. And to bring it all back to Adam, I was going to be in London at the same time as he and Sauli were, and I just KNOW I would have bumped into them and invited them to join me at my favorite crepe place (omg so insanely good) in Hampstead (beautiful London neighborhood) that's right outside a really chill gay pub, and then we'd have gone for a walk across the Hampstead Heath together afterwards and I'd have shown them this cool old hollow tree and now we'd all be besties.....

Cruel cruel fate....

Okay, I'll shut up about my really not that dreadful saga now. Just thought I'd share (read: whine incorrigibly) :

Off to catch up on news thread...