lunabee34

1. Ha ha! I am vindicated.

So, my family will sometimes say stob for a small stump or a stick sticking up out of the ground or a broken off piece of fencing. Josh has insisted repeatedly over the years that this is not a real word and just something weird my family says. However, I'm reading one of Rick Bragg's memoirs and he uses the word stob, which prompted me to look it up in the dictionary and confirm it is indeed a real word and not just another example of the ways in which I belong to a bunch of hicks. I've always assumed it's a bastardization of the word stave.

2. Fiona is sick again. She has the flu now, and the pediatrician had us go to the hospital so she could get a chest x-ray (I guess their machine is better than the one at the pediatrician's, IDK). We haven't heard back about the results of the x-ray, but I really hope she doesn't have pneumonia again. I just don't understand why she keeps getting these respiratory things.

3. Dylan has a weird lump on her shoulder that we think might be lupus-related. The rheumatologist is sending her to an orthopedist to look at it (which makes no sense to me), so hopefully we'll know more about it soon.

4. I have to go to the dentist today. I've been putting it off as long as I can because I am a ding ding, but I hate going to the dentist so much. :(

5. We watched The Wild Robot on Netflix. Fiona loves the book(s?), and she was satisfied with the movie as an adaptation even though it made some minor changes to character and plot. All three of us ended up crying multiple times throughout; Josh popped into the living room at one point and turned heel and left again immediately. LOL Definitely worth a watch.

1. The move began today. Our friend Peter, a former colleague, has a trailer and is helping Josh move Tom. They just arrived at the TN apartment an hour ago. It doesn't feel real yet, but it will.

2. I think I mentioned that I had my antibodies checked and that I had gotten those lab results in; they are normal, so I'm not being accidentally glutened, yay! I also had a bone density scan, and today I found out I've got normal bone density, so no osteopenia/porosis.

3. Steddie rec:

Good Ol' Fashioned Sexuality Crisis during the Apocalypse by words_reign_here
Stranger Things
Steve/Eddie + canon pairings
OMG so wonderful. Stories like this are my catnip.

4. Your latest trivia re: Strangers Things fanfic:

I'm at page 68 of fanfic sorted by kudos, and I've only encountered three reader fics (which completely surprises me; I thought they'd be more prevalent).

Almost every fic on these 68 pages is Steve/Eddie. There's some Steve/Billy, some Mike/Will, some Nancy/Robin, and a fair amount of gen, but it's 85% Steve/Eddie, which really truly surprises me. Not complaining; just surprised.

Lots of Eddie is a vampire fic.

5. Plot Bunny:

There's a fair amount of Eddie is a ghost fic, but I would love to see a story modeled on that old YA book, The Ghosts of Departure Point, where both Eddie and Steve are ghosts. I keep being tempted to write it, but I'm not going to. I'd have to watch the series again because at this point I have no idea what's ubiquitous fanon and what actually happened in the show. LOL

So, I went yesterday to have the initial consult for my first colonoscopy, and lo and behold, it's happening tomorrow. I mean, medical stuff never goes that fast. LOL So, I'm spending today in the misery of liquids only + prep. Not looking forward to being NPO until the afternoon tomorrow either. But I'm glad to be getting it over with.

Also, the gastro was appalled that I've had no management of my celiac since diagnosis so I'm getting a bone density scan in January, and he tested my antibody levels. If those are elevated, it means I'm getting glutened even if I don't feel bad. Of course, if they do come back elevated, I suspect a certain new housemate is responsible for that.

But the house sale is completely over and the money is in the bank! OMG! So now the relocation may begin.

1. Everything is going really well with FIL. His transition into the household has been seamless, and his health is good. I was really worried that him living with us was going to be a negative experience in a lot of ways, but that has not been the case at all!

2. Deep, deep thanks to executrix for helping us navigate all the elder care rigamarole. We have lawyerified, and the plans are in motion. I think MIL will very soon be in a facility.

3. The Cushing's diagnosis has fallen through; despite testing positive on 3 out of 4 of the diagnostic tests, I didn't test positive enough. Fuck all them fuckers, she says cheerfully. May they and someone they love, preferably a child, develop simultaneous chronic illnesses no one can diagnosis and which everyone vaguely acts like they're making up.

4. The semester starts tomorrow. I'm not ready to go back.

1. ( cut for discussion of physical and mental health )

2. Josh is having surgery on the bottom of his foot on July 10. We thought he had a ganglion cyst, but after the whole X-Ray/MRI rigamarole, turns out he has a torn tendon that needs surgical repair. He'll have to stay completely off the foot for 3 weeks following the surgery. That is going to be interesting.

3. I have continued to receive incredibly generous birthday gifts. misbegotten sent me some Sharpie S-gel pens (so smooth!) and a book about living with chronic pain (review below!) and executrix sent me some more books and a collection of lip gloss.

I had a birthday party with my RL friends and received glorious stationery items and a gift card for books and a beautiful napkin holder I've been coveting for some time.

A dear fandom friend (if they wish to can identify themselves) sent me enough money to fill my Nurtec RX. Y'all, I cried and cried when I opened that card. I am surrounded by such kindness and generosity and love. I am so grateful, always.

4. ( so much reading, so eclectic )

1. Hello, friends! The semester is blessedly over. Through a combination of being so damn busy all the time, my ongoing physical health issues, and the resulting mental health issues from the latter, I managed to be in a position where I was grading up to literally the last second before grades were due.

I gave a final on the 9th; grades were due on the 11th. I was still completing tasks for Senate Chair and tasks for this conference I'm coordinating while doing all this. I had to get up at 5:00 on the 11th and grade for 7 hour straight so that I could turn in grades with literally three minutes to spare. Then I had an international Zoom meeting. Following that, I jumped in the tub long enough to scrape the horror off my body and drove for an hour to our main campus for graduation (where we graduated our first cohort of doctoral students OMG so exciting!!!!) and got home at 7:00.

Then I spent the next day writing my conference paper, and I've spent every day since then writing the new class I'm teaching that goes live on the 24th and doing conference admin. Did you know you have to individually enter each email address into Teams and cannot cut and paste as a block? *tears out hair*

I went shopping with a friend on Mother's Day and had to bail after a couple of hours because I felt wretched. Frankly, I still feel wretched.

Something has to change for next year. This spring was miserable. I was so depressed and unmotivated because I felt awful and tired that I procrastinated and that made everything so much worse. Never again. I have to stay on top of things because letting myself get behind quickly becomes unbearable.

/whining

2. I got cards from elfin and misbegotten. <3 <3

3. I have lots of exciting professional things coming up: this weekend is the conference of the organization I'm the president of. My presentation is on some ideas for combating teacher burnout. I think my summer class is going to be good; it's a junior seminar on poetry. It has to be American and British lit; I'm starting with 19th century and going to the present and looking at poetry through an ecocritical lens. I'm giving a paper at the Victorian Popular Fiction Association's conference in July on Ouida's use of birds in her novels and non-fiction essays. I've got a book review of Ungrading coming out soon. I've got a graduate class in teaching college English to write for fall deployment (super excited about teaching this!). And come July, I get to change all my stuff to Professor. Whooooo!

4. I've read a bunch of cool stuff recently. I shall post about it forthwith.

1. One of the people who comments in journalsandplanners has banned me from commenting to them (accidentally, I hope, as I have never interacted with them outside the comm or inside the comm given the aforementioned), and I always forget that and type up a useless comment as I reply to every comment in all the posts to the comm like a good mod. LOL

2. In addition to upping the Synthroid, I upped my Topamax dose to 100mg at the beginning of this week. So I feel weird, anxious, and stupid--not to the degree that I did when I initially began taking the med, thank goodness. I've been on 75mg for at least a year now, maybe longer, so there have been no repeats of the interminable "I need a spoon. But no really I need a spoon. Did you have a spoon?" conversation, and I am not a danger to drive like I was during the original titration weeks. But I am, as they say, emotionally labile and panicky and I'm ready for this adjustment period to be over.

3. Yuletide comes along nicely. I always get the best recipients with the best ideas and prompts. I have never left the writing so late as I have this year; I generally like to have it in early, but I feel good about the story, and my goal is to get it uploaded today or tomorrow.

4. I am resigning myself to just not really having a break this winter. I had a meeting yesterday; I'm driving to one of our campuses today to give a presentation to the Foundation. I have to rewrite an online class and write a graduate internship (it's the pilot graduate internship for our department) for spring deployment. I'm just tired. Sigh.

5. I don't want to do the sign up for a specific day thing, but ask me a question (fannish or personal) or give me a topic on which to pontificate, and I will do so at some point. :)

1. The MRI is clear as I expected. Whew!

Getting it was not as smooth sailing as the sequence of three I had last year. I had this one with contrast, and the contrast dye hurt really badly. I'm talking excruciating pain at the injection site that migrated up my bicep. They do a bunch of imaging (like 45 minutes worth), pop you out, inject the dye, and immediately pop you back in for another 10 minutes of imaging to finish the procedure. So I had to be utterly still and keep my eyes closed while my arm was killing me. I was certain I was going to open my eyes and see that it had swollen up like five times regular size, but no. It looked totally normal. I didn't even get an injection bruise. But my arm hurt like a motherfucker all night and still felt weird the next day. I hope to avoid contrast dye in the future.

2. The trigeminal neuralgia pain had gotten really bad since my last neuro visit and then suddenly in the last week dissipated. We've got a plan to treat the pain if it flares again, but right now, I'm just very happy the pain is minimal. I don't want to take the drugs that are typically used to treat it because they make me tired and dopey, so hurray!

3. Emma's lumbar puncture is on Tuesday. *crossing all the fingers for some useful info*

4. Tuesday is also my pre-op appointment at the hospital; they'll run labs (got to make sure I'm not seekritly pregnant ha!) and explain the surgery. Because...

5. I can't have a needle aspirate biopsy. That would be too easy and inexpensive, my friends. LOL I get to have a surgical biopsy where they remove the whole lymph node under general anesthesia! That's happening on Friday (not tomorrow but Friday week). Then it'll take a week to run the pathology, and then I'll have some answers. I like the surgeon, and he agreed with me that I've got risk factors (dad's lymphoma, my autoimmune disorders, some symptoms (but the symptoms also overlap with autoimmune symptoms and aren't necessarily indicative in my case)), and that we need to just pop the sucker out and see what's what.

6. I am anxious. I do not want to have cancer. Which seems to me to be a completely valid and understandable sentiment. But also lymphoma has really good survival rates and treatment options. So I am trying to remain optimistic while also feeling like I need to throw up constantly. Also not super excited about having surgery. I've never had genuine surgery; the closest thing is having tubes in my ears almost 40 years ago when that was considered a real surgery that required an overnight stay in the hospital or like having my wisdom teeth out. Not fun, but not surgery really.

You know what is helping? Y'all. :) I got an amazing box of books from executrix that I have already begun devouring. Be on the lookout for a review post. And I got a card from elfin with amazing stickers: journal jewelry! And I got an amazing package from misbegotten: fountains pens and ink to geek out with!

I have been shit at commenting on everyone's journal and replying to your comments to me, but I'm reading your journals and taking joy in what you're posting and in the lovely things you're all saying to me. Thank you thank you, friendos.

So, apparently I have a bunch of lymph nodes that are enlarged in addition to the one I'm worried about. This is apparently typical for Hashimoto's patients who often have enlarged lymph nodes clustered around their thyroid area. Apparently last semester when I had the very swollen and painful lymph node, a bunch of my other lymph nodes were also enlarged at that time, too, and the endo did not find any of that concerning.

The radiologist is likely going to just sign off on this ultrasound as fine as none of my lymph nodes appear abnormal (despite being enlarged). Apparently they only worry when the lymph node appears malformed.

But I'm not satisifed with that because this particular lymph node (and it is a lymph node that is measuring 7 mm) is outside the range of the lymph nodes that they typically see enlarged with Hashimoto's and it is also potentially indicating something more serious (what I didn't say before is that I'm worried about lymphoma and ovarian cancer). I didn't think of it until after I left, but I called them when I got home and asked them if they'll biopsy it. They do that in-house. It's possible the radiologist will recommend biopsying it anyway. I also called my obgyn and told the nurse all about it (and he's going to wait and review the radiology report), and if I need to, I'll go to my gp. But one way or the other I want to get this lymph node biopsied, and if all is well, then I will put this to rest and just know that my lymph nodes do this and I don't need need to freak out about it.

In other news, I've got Synthroid in hand and will take my first dose in the morning. I have high hopes for feeling better in a few weeks!

Thank you all for your well wishes. It was very cheering to read them throughout the day.

1. I finally finished grading today. I gave a final on Monday at 8, had a meeting from 10:00-12:45, and then went to the endo (an hour away). Got up at 5:30 on Tuesday and graded until time to go to the neuro at 10:00. Emma and I had our appointments, got home at 3:00, and graded until bedtime. Got up at 5:00 today and graded until 9:30. But now the semester is put to rest!

2. Neuro agrees that it is trigeminal neuralgia almost certainly caused by the root canal. We're going to do an MRI just to be sure it's not caused by anything else like an MS lesion or whatever.

3. We all agree that we are going to aggressively pursue as many diagnostic avenues as possible for Emma, so she's having a lumbar puncture, and hopefully that'll give us some info. If not, we're going to do this new kind of skin punch nerve biopsy. *crosses fingers* She's had some improvement from the starter does of Cymbalta, so he upped her to 30mg. Back in a month. Friday, we see my GP who will start her on a low dose of statin for her bizarrely high cholesterol.

4. I am so tired. I have cried every night for the last week with stress and exhaustion. I am so glad the summer is here. I have got to get some genuine rest.