Black Doggerel

Blood test results = borderline hypothyroid. Doctor won't treat it unless another set of blood tests in two months confirms it, which doesn't help much with the shambling narcoleptic stupidity happening now.

there's like... foods that help, right? I already had a seafood craving going on and now I know why. Would help if I had any seafood. Am taking Spike's cod liver oil caps in the meantime. Halp me Internets, you're my only hope.

ETA: daffodilblonde read about it on Facebook and turned up at my house with ginger and garlic prawns, mackerel pate, kippers and bananas. I have the best Mum evar <3

So the doctor thinks I either have post-viral fatigue syndrome or possibly a thyroid issue. Today I went to have blood drawn so they can check thyroid functions. I don't have words for how much I was dreading this. I never had easy veins to start with, and I destroyed what little there was very thoroughly during the junkie years, so that getting blood out of me is normally only slightly easier than pulling hen's teeth. What normally happens is that the first nurse will stab me five or six times in each arm, fail to find a vein, call in a different nurse and sometimes a third, and eventually they'll send me home with both arms bruised and sore from wrist to shoulder with instructions to come in next week so they can try again. When I had my dental surgery they put the drip in my neck because no one in the entire hospital could hit my arm veins. That's how bad they are.

So I'd warned them about sucky vein access when I made the appointment, and they smiled serenely at me and said "Don't worry. We have Ying." I gave them a funny look and went "...Okay. Whatever."

Ying turned out to be a dry, quietly-competent nurse that made it hard even for me to be anxious in her presence. She felt over both my arms carefully before she so much as touched me with a needle and bugger me if she didn't hit the vein squarely on the first damn poke. That's never happened in my entire life with anyone, professional or otherwise, not in those veins.

I have typed more words today than I have in weeks. I seem to be having a good day. This has been driving me batshit because I haven't had the energy for IM conversations. I've been staying out of the Khimeros chat; I've tried, but one of the side-effects of feeling this shitty is that my brain-keyboard filter is holed and shaky and it's too hard not to get snotty with people. So I'm only talking to people who don't tend to piss me off and who understand if I say something tactless by accident. It's made me slightly stir crazy, but most of the time I've just been too fucking tired to care.

This is likely to continue for a while yet. Today's been a good day, but I've had a lot of days when the combined effort of hitting Post Comment, stringing an intelligible sentence together and then typing it has been more than I could deal with.

In other news, Spike is still licking his elbows. Also, I have liquorice allsorts and rhubarb-and-custard boiled sweets, neither of which I ordered - Tesco sent them as substitutes because they'd run out of the toffee I did order. I love the way internet grocery shopping occasionally produces these little serendipities; the rhubarb-and-custards are a bit harder than I really fancied but man, they taste good. And liquorice allsorts are complete love, especially the pink and blue sprinkle-covered liquorice jelly cushions. Though admittedly it's more usual for them to send me filthy camomile tea when I ordered blackcurrant or ginger or fennel, but still.

Today is my Dad's birthday and I feel vaguely guilty that I didn't remember till my sister posted something about it on Facebook. He was never very good at remembering birthdays either, mind you.

/end ramble

1. i aten't dead.

2. sore throat, swollen glands in my neck, a lowgrade headache that's persisted so long I've started to treat it like a regular body part, palpitations, nausea, chronic fatigue on top of my normal chronic-fatigue baseline to the point where walking the dogs round the block needs psyching myself up for as if I were sailing round the world singlehanded on a reed fucking raft. and often a nap afterwards. wtf, body. also my ability to think clearly is intermittent and shortlived. Flowers for Algernon r us.

three weeks-ish and counting. i've told myself i'm calling the doctor monday. everything about this scenario - starting with the having to telephone people and going on into all the possible crap like blood samples, repeat appointments, whatever might be necessary to fix it - makes shooting myself now feel like the saner and pleasanter option by far.

3. Spike had a UTI which is now fixed yay. After talking to vet about foreleg-licking I'm trying him on painkillers. Almost immediately the licking stopped and he's got a bounce back in his step that he'd been losing so very gradually I hadn't noticed it waning. This is not as depressing as it would have been if I weren't still riding the dodged-a-cancer-bullet high, but it's still fucking depressing.

4. finally remembered to plug the battery recharger in so i can at least take photos. m'not kidding, i've had that on my to do list for weeks. all it needed was to flip a fucking switch and it took three weeks to get round to it. what is this i don't even.

I have started and deleted this entry several times, because it's uncomfortable and I feel as though I'm doing something wrong.

The lovely people on Khimeros (which you should join because they are lovely people and there are pretty shiny fake pets on it like this) set up an art auction, unasked, to help pay for Spike's surgery. So I am finally making this entry because more than one of you has asked me to, and while I don't like to ask, I am not too proud to turn down help offered.

Well, the surgery's been paid for. So it isn't urgent. It isn't one of those "help me or my dog will have to stay sick" deals. But it was a lot. The diagnostic work pre-surgery came to £1500 - that was my DWP back pay and some that my Mum kicked in. The surgery itself came to £3000. It was paid for by my mother killing off her savings and running two credit cards up to the limit and my sister putting in £500 and now Mum doesn't have an emergency fallback if anything goes wrong in her life. I'm paying her back, but even if I live on ramen noodles and Smartprice baked beans for the rest of my life I can only pay it back pretty slowly.

So since I've been asked, if you want to help, if you can spare it, here it is:

That goes to Mum's bank account, it was set up specifically to help cover the surgery. Please don't think you have to or that you're a bad friend if you don't for any reason. You've already all been awesome; like a huge tidal wave of love and supportive.

My original idea was to try and do art commissions, but I have something close to a panic attack every time I think too hard about that one. What I thought I'd do is a kind of compromise: if anyone puts in more than £7 or $10 (i.e. enough to cover postage and a bit over) I will mail you something I painted. You'll need to give me a mailing address (comments to this entry are screened) and tell me what kind of thing you want. I don't guarantee I'll be able to do exactly what you want, and may fall back on dragons or flying unicorns instead, and it may take me some time, but I promise there'll be SOMETHING.

Meanwhile, Spike is doing good. His teeth need cleaning and his lower lip is getting all dry and cracked where it used to be covered by his upper lip but isn't any more, but these are minor things. He also informed me that handfeeding is for invalids and if I hold the bowl up for him he can eat out of it fine by himself, thanks.

I've caught Mum's bronchitis and have twisted my knee (that first night when Spike puked twice? I slipped in a small pool of it, landed on my arse and apparently near-crippled myself.) so I'm feeling like shit on a stick. But that's minor too, in the larger scale of things.

Love you all.

blerrrrgh.

so I have these antibiotic lozenges I am supposed to suck, for the mouth infection I have recently discovered has been causing the constantly-broken corners of my mouth. I am supposed to suck four of them a day. They don't taste good, but they taste okay. Or they did. Or I thought they did.

Put yesterday's last one in my mouth around midnight. Its shiny coating dissolved, and underneath it was suddenly the bitterest thing I've ever tasted. Like drinking a whole bottle of drain cleaner or that shit they put on my nails as a kid to break me of biting them (successfully, I might add.)

and I about turned myself inside out puking. And it's eighteen hours later and I still feel nauseated and shaky and I have a splitting headache and I can still taste that fucking bitter in the back of my throat. And I hope the mouth thing will go away without the fucking lozenges because even if I manage to ever put anything in my mouth again as long as I live (and the jury's still out on that) it's sure as shit not going to be another one of those things.

I say again, blergh.

so, I've had flu. I actually thought for a while I might have septicaemia, because my dogbitten finger had swollen up and gone red and interesting just when the flu entered its "feverish and dizzy" phase; luckily, the finger went down and the "who would have thought the human body had so much snot in it" stage cut in. So that saved me the bother of seeking medical help. My immune system kicks arse.

but that's one reason I've been a bit incommunicado. The other is... oh, how do I talk about being filled with depression and self-loathing without sounding like I'm begging for sympathy? I'm not. But I recognise that I need human contact to haul myself back to something approaching sanity, even when I'm ducking away and avoiding it.

to that end, I am not disabling comments, but I ask that you don't try and be nice to me. I don't feel I deserve it and won't know what to say to it. Just... if you feel moved to comment, talk about the weather or tell me something that happened to you today. I'll answer.

I am also going out this afternoon, for some actual physical human contact. A large part of me is telling me I don't want or deserve that either. The saner part, though, tells me it's necessary and I'll feel better for it.

See you later, peoples. Love you.

Bleaurgh. Dunno what's wrong with me, but something for sure is. Been feeling mildly rough for the last several days, but today I have a fever, upset stomach and spinny head and feel like dung on a stick. Can barely perch in front of the 'puter and will be going back to bed soon. If you're online and wondering if I'm avoiding you, I am, but only because I'm avoiding everyone.

Heh heh heh. After supper zoomies. Spike and Squish just slammed into the computer chair and the coffee table next to it. Table was covered in DVDs and bits of paper which are now EVERYWHERE, and the comment I was in the middle of typing went like this.

I yelled "OY!" and they both stopped in their tracks. Spike's ears and tail went low and Squish came and licked my elbows by way of apology. (Elbow licking is one of Squish's funny little habits. Startled hell out of topbit who wasn't brought up with dogs, especially as Squish has a way of sneaking up unnoticed and doing it to whoever's in the computer chair.)

I really owe them some off-leash time in the worst way. I'm going to try and do it tomorrow despite the cough and the elbow. They bring me so much joy, and I've really been short-changing them these last weeks.

The Evil Bugger is on a flat collar again because he chewed through the chest-strap of his nice harness yesterday. Arsehole.

I still feel like shit. I'm just recovered enough to feel frustrated and restless and still sick enough to fall over every time I try and do anything. Also coughing worse than ever. (This is partly because I feel well enough to want to smoke again. Hey, I never said I wasn't an idiot.)

oh, and it's too fucking hot. GAH.

just briefly booted up the IM, because I wanted to find out if topbit had caught the London Lurgy and I couldn't find my phone.

there were two people asking to be on my contact list. One was an ICQ number and one was a Hotmail username, and I denied both. This is because I HAVE NO IDEA WHO YOU ARE.

I don't add strangers to my contact list. I add people I've interacted with on message boards, LJ or real life but I never add anyone unless I know who they are and I've had some conversation with them already. This isn't to avoid perverts - most of my favourite people are perverts - it's to avoid stupid and illiterate people, who are more common than nitrogen and not nearly as unobtrusive.

so if you're the hotmail user with "surf" in your username or the ICQ user beginning with 15, comment here and when I know who you are I will add you next time, okay?

am not likely to be on IM much in the near future anyway. elbow still highly dodgy and the flu feels like it may finish me off yet.

in the meantime, check out scarletdemon's Feng Shui of the Penis, which made me laugh and then cough my spleen up again, but it was worth it.