My tooth has become a mass of searing agony, to the point of invading my thoughts and denying all attempts to ignore or cope. Ha ha ha, I'm fucked.

I am taking a break from writing today, owing to how much of a mess I am.

Lately my left wrist, hand, and fingers have been bothering me -- not quite painful, but hovering on the threshold between discomfort and outright pain. I've made efforts to adjust my posture to deter further injury, but these efforts in turn have been absolute murder on my back and neck. Particularly my neck. Constant work leaves it tight and sore to a headache-inducing extreme, which is where it is right now. Ow.

Beyond that, I worked 7p Tuesday to 7a Wednesday. Tomorrow I will work 11a-7p, and Friday I work 7a to 7p. Needless to say, this has an effect on my sleep schedule not unlike banging very large dents into it with a sledgehammer. I rob myself of sleep to make myself sleep early... I won't get a full night's worth till the weekend. I can't possibly express how much I'm looking forward to it.

It looks like Turkey Day is going to be pretty sparse here. *I'm* bringing a pie, but it seems the majority of people working tomorrow are bitching about how they have no money, or no time, or can't cook. Barring some dramatic and unforeseen event, I probably will be eating turkey... sandwiches, brought from home. Oh well. I will get holiday pay and all that good stuff for this. My plan to heal my finances is tentatively on-track.

I'm tired. Overworked and tired. Oh well; next week I have only four hours of overtime, which means two 8 hour shifts, two 12 hours, and a four. Now if only I wasn't doing overnights next weekend...

Root canaled!


::swears::

I wouldn't say I lucked out, but at least my dentist had an opening tomorrow for me to go back in. So while it isn't fortunate that I am still having problems, it is fortunate that I won't have to wait long to get them resolved. Waiting has always been harder on me than anything else anyway.

Apparently, no matter what I do, no matter what I try, I am going to suffer from this tooth in my mouth till I get the roots gouged out.

At least this one.

Life is suffering. Every day I wake up in the morning and realize that truth anew.

Tonight is going to be a veeeery rough night at work. The hospital is switching to an electronic records system, and *I* get to be there for the downtime - go-live conversion. It's going to be a mess, absolute chaos and despair!

WHY DID I HAVE TO GET SICK NOW?

No two ways about it; discounting food poisoning, this is the sickest I have been in a decade.

I don't know what I have! Fever, lightheadedness, and aching are my only symptoms. (And chills, but I file that under 'fever'.) Those of you who know me and my vaunted cold resistance and heat generation prowess probably cannot imagine me huddled under a blanket and thick comforter and STILL be shivering violently, but that was me yesterday morning. Ibuprofen has been my godsend and salvation, at around four tablets every two hours or so, which means my stomach will be shredded to glue come the end of this.

My doctor believes it's a viral illness, and advised me to just stay home and rest. This sits very poorly with my sense of responsibility. I despise calling off work for any reason; I didn't miss a day of class in all my years of college and I don't think I've ever missed a day of work from sickness before (except back in college, but I STILL went to class).

I'm not a happy camper right now. Siiiiigh.

The biopsy was perfectly normal, not a thing to worry about.

Now, HEAL, torso!

I come to you all less of a man than I was.

Specifically, less one mole and a chunk of skin surrounding it. I visited the dermatologist on Wednesday, an appointment I'd been waiting six months for. He didn't mess around -- five minutes after he started looking at me, I was on my back getting drugged up. Whack, off came a mole in the middle of my torso -- actually, snip. Biopsy.

When I say hole, I mean hole. I mean *crater* which is obviously the result of losing my ENTIRE LAYER OF SKIN there. It's deep, it's ugly, and it clearly won't be healing any time soon. (Much as I might want it to.)

Quite a trip. Everyone keep your fingers crossed that the biopsy's normal, if you would?

I'm a fighter. I can't help it. That doesn't necessarily mean I like it, of couse. But it just doesn't seem to be in my nature to simply lie down and die. I'm easy to make into a bad guy for the most specious of reasons. I can't rest easily unless I at least let my side be heard.

Really, between just taking abuse and fighting it, I can't win either way.

For those of you who knew about my sore throat thing, I did in fact ask the PA here at the hospital to give it a look. She decreed it nothing more serious than a mild cold with post-nasal drip, so you needn't worry on that score.

Incidentally, I hate people who think that they're better than other people because they have a fancy title, and feel it's okay to yell at people for accurate descriptions of their behaviors just because THEY don't like owning up to how they are. I guess people in a hospital setting tend to have that sort of attitude, but I've never had it with any of the docs I know, or most of the nurses. The people who I don't work with on a day to day basis are the ones who act like that.

But that's no surprise. Anonymity breeds stupidity. God, I HATE people. Scour the world, I say. Scour the world.


I work 12 hours today, tomorrow, and Saturday, and 8 hours on Sunday. After that... a blissful week of vacation. Between the stresses at work, and the even worse stresses at home, I need it. Assuming I survive to it, of course!

So what's going on in my life. Hmm.

I've started going to a dentist (ably recommended by tlttlotd), and as a consequence have been reciving some filling work. Two a couple weeks ago and I'm going back for another one tomorrow. It was fun and exciting, my ear hurting for a week (damn referred pain). The pain in my lower tooth has subsided to mere sensitivity, but it remains really sensitive to cold. My dentist said I might possibly have to have a root canal for it, depending on if it continued to hurt or not. I haven't gotten any unusual throbs of pain for it, which is good, but the sensitivity to cold is bad. So I don't know. I'm going back on Tuesday for one more, and we'll likely discuss it then.

It's not something I want to go through, really. We'll see.

Pending a review or two from some people whose opinion I'd like, I've prepared my first actual submission to a magazine. I'll send it off very soon, I hope, and cross the line from "aspiring writer" to (most likely) "rejected writer."

That isn't pessimism, just realism, so don't start lecturing me on expecting the worst. And if/when I DO get rejected, I'll kill anyone who posts a long note imploring me not to give up, that rejection is common, etc. etc. I know that!

I saw Batman Begins yesterday with tigerphoenix, which was an excellent movie. I really prefer the simple cape-and-cowl design of Batman: TAS to anything I've seen on the screen; graphite masks seem a bit excessive to me. But it was nevertheless a good movie, and for those of you who understand the reference, I totally get why readnofurther spent the entire movie going, "Morgan! MORGAN!"

Also had a wondeful brunch with kaote. How did I go 14 months without seeing her? Definitely need to make sure THAT doesn't happen again.

If I'd know Barnes and Noble had begun registration for line position at 4, I would have gone earlier. I ended up in the 300-350 block to get Half-Blood Prince, but it only took about half an hour once midnight hit. I ended up staying up till 5:00 finishing the book. Holy damn.

Harry Potter is turning into Daria. Everyone will bitch because it doesn't stay the same, but it can't stay the same.

And that's my epic post at work. How's things with you?

Well, after almost ten years, my vision is... unchanged. While my right eye remains very slightly nearsighted, my binocular vision is 20/20 -- which is actually better than I remember it being, to my surprise. I was expecting worse news -- hell, I was expecting to need glasses -- but no need for them at all.

Yes, this means I don't require any vision correction. Sit and think for a moment about how many people you know who do... and how many don't. It's a silly thing to be proud of, but I take what I can get.

It does mean, though, that I can barely read at the moment, thanks to dilated pupils.

I gave blood on Friday, something I try to do at least semi-regularly. Normally I have no problems with it -- I go in, bleed into a bag for a while, and all is well.

Not this time!
I don't know exactly what happened to cause it. I may not have eaten as much as I normally do before I go in, and I do know my blood pressure was low (for me) when they took it prior to the actual procedure. Whatever the reason, during the final part of donation, I suddenly became extremely light-headed. I mean, extremely, to the point where I nearly passed out. There was also a pretty strong nausea there for a bit. Whatever it was, it must have looked worse than it felt -- it wasn't fun, mind, but I can compare it to standing up too fast and carsickness wrapped into one -- because I freaked out a couple of nurses there. Evidently I looked very pale.

Let's hope THAT doesn't happen again...

Oh man. What the hell is with the insomnia, that kept me up till three last night? I know the guy upstairs being a loud ass didn't help, but even so I just could not get to sleep. Hell. I feel like crap. I don't need this!

I have a strange tingling on my shoulder. Put your fingers on the side of your neck, then move them directly over your shoulder right onto your back; that's where the tingling is. It comes and goes. I don't understand what causes it, why it's confined to that one particular place, or anything about it.

Bad news: I have a cold. This is totally, completely outrageous to me, as I just HAD a cold not two weeks ago. I have no patience for being sick; absolutely none at all.

The good news: I have a car. A '95 Nissan Altima. It's all right, not as good as my old car, but it will do.

Sick and tired. Gotta call an early night tonight.

If this damn cough doesn't stop soon, sooner or later I'm going to rend the last shreds of my trachea and end up coughing into my medulla oblongata. Ow. Dammit.

Woke up this morning to searing pain! My calf muscle had locked so badly I couldn't move it at all. I had to reach down and wrench my foot back into place to get it to unlock. When I actually got up, it was so stiff I couldn't even walk.

It's not so bad now, but still painful. How did I do that?!

My life sucks beyond human comprehension.

In addition to the total, maddening, unbelievable crappiness that went off yesterday, I am also *sick*. Of all things, *sick!* Not only that, but last night was the night where I got literally no sleep. Well, maybe an hour, punctuated by a fucked-up dream. And today I work 15 hours?! God, I feel like shit! Argh!

I'm going to go insane today. Oh, God, and the total loss of my mental functons will be such sweet bliss...