Thursday, September 23, 2010

How am I?

People ask, but I'm sure they don't really want to know.
They're just being polite and I put on a damn good show.

"Pretty good."
"I'm fine."
"Doing better."

Lies...

To put it simply: I have black mold (the deadly kind) growing inside my body. It's in my blood and thus everywhere. I'm starting to think there's more of It, now, than what's left of me. It causes my brain to swell causing blurred vision, headaches and fatigue. It causes my heart and kidneys to work extra hard and inefficiently resulting in toxins building up in my blood so I have to have my blood filtered often. It lowers my immune system making it difficult for my body to fight illness and leads to chronic respiratory, ear, vaginal yeast and skin infections. It causes my joints, bones and muscles to be stiff and achy which makes sitting, standing, lying down, walking, running and basically just being alive painful. It causes mucus and fungus to build up in my lungs making my breaths shallow and arduous. It makes my skin sensitive to touch, irritation, sun, wind, cold, heat and prone to bruising. Showers are difficult because if the water is too cold my muscles throb and my bones scream, but if it's too hot my skin prickles and peels. It's causing my acne to flair up. It's causing my hair to thin and fall out in handfuls. I have constant diarrhea and I throw up frequently (most often at about 2am). I have to take high doses of anti-fungals that leave me exhausted, disoriented and crazy. I'm basically living on raw vegetables, medications, vitamins and filtered water. I'm anemic. I have nosebleeds and rectal bleeding. I'm always starving and I've lost 25lbs, yet I'm flabby because I'm losing muscle tone. I'm tired all the time but I have difficulty sleeping or staying asleep. I'm constantly cold, yet sweaty. I get tired very easily and winded after walking short distances. I'm dead broke, having to work less hours than I'd like and had to accept a handout from my parents(an extremely difficult and humiliating thing for me). I cry at the drop of a hat and the hat drops often. I'm either short fused or too sick and tired to care about things that should bother me. I'm sick as hell, but I'll be fine.

Actually, I feel more alive than I ever have in my life.

"Thanks for asking."

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Pâtissierie pheromones



This weekend two of my dearest friends got married and I brought all their things home with me so they could whisk away to their Hawaiian Honeymoon. Included in these wedding items was the remnants of their cake. Three. Boxes. FULL.



Thus, I was left alone in an empty condo with 20lbs of contraband. The only thing keeping me from having my own honeymoon and making sweet love to that beautiful body of sweetness was the memory of throwing up at the wedding after having a little bit. Yes, I snuck some bites, I'm not gonna lie and say I learned my lesson a few weeks ago. At least this time I was able to limit myself (probably because my friends were there telling me I was making a horrific mistake) and promptly slipped away from the festivities ("I need to pee") to take a nice brisk walk through the moonlit vineyard (aka: high-tailed my ass out of earshot and tossed my cookies on some grapevines)

I took one box to work Monday and fed a chunk of it to the kids ten minutes before I left. It was win-win, really; I got rid of the goods and got the satisfaction of knowing their sugar frenzy kicked in as soon as my car rounded the corner. I pawned another box off on my women's group last night and the last box went to the other kid today. I'm glad it's all out of my hands because I don't trust myself to be alone with it for another day. The chemistry between us is just too much to bear and I can only be good for so long.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Wah

I should be at The Texas State Fair right now. That is all.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Shaken not stirred

Well, I planned for an easy class II, half-day rafting trip to avoid falling in the water and hurting or over-exerting myself, but as I've learned by now, things rarely go as I plan them to. I should've known when the guide asked my friend and I if we were "sturdy" that we were in for it. So much for taking it easy.



Despite being thrown around like a rag-doll, paddling like hell, getting smacked in the face with a paddle, inhaling a lung-full of river water and feeling, for days afterward, like I'd been put in a jar of marbles and shaken vigorously, I had a great time and I'm glad I went.


To put your hands in a river is to feel the chords that bind the earth together.
- Barry Lopez

Bugs Bunny Fries

I mainly wanted to see if I could get The Kid to eat more vegetables...but also wanted to see if carrots could make a fry substitute since eating them raw by the fistful is getting really tired.

I took two large carrots, cut in half length and width-wise. Then I put them in a pan, brushed with olive oil and baked them at 400 for about 30 minutes.



Then I sliced them.



They were crispy on the outside, soft on the inside and tasted great. The Kid had his with a side of mayonnaise(he's weird) and gobbled them down. Who says fries have to hail from potatoes?!

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Two wrongs and a right

ONE: Two weeks ago I sent one of the kids to the ER when I used his face as a putting green. I never liked golf anyway. He cried more when I told him that I was never playing it again than when I nearly decapitated him. I really needed a bottle of Jack after that debacle. I downed a box of oat milk instead.

TWO: Right before I got sick, a friend and I bought vouchers to go white water rafting and were contacted recently telling us they were about to expire. I asked my doctor and nutritionist what they thought about me going and they made it pretty clear they thought it was a horrible idea.

"You can barely walk across the parking lot without getting winded and you want to propel yourself through rapids all day long? Not to mention, you must remember that you're not supposed to overwork your heart, put yourself in situations where you might contract an illness, overtire yourself, or risk bruising or bleeding..." (Sooo...tell me again why I shouldn't go rafting?)

Being as persuasive and persistent as I am, I came to an agreeable solution with my medical team:
-The weather is supposed to be very warm and I will be wearing a wet-suit with neoprene boots and gloves, thus avoiding the potential risk of illness
-We're doing a class II, half day trip, thus minimizing my risk of overexertion/overtiring
-I promise not to bruise or impale myself on anything
-I run a 15-minute mile, without stopping, while keeping my heart-rate under 200 (and some other junk like blood-pressure and not bleeding and whatever)

That last stipulation was the real clencher. Basically, they were thinking "there's no way in Hell she'll be able to do that" and I was thinking "I love a challenge, I totally got this, Bitches!" If you know me then you probably know that I HATE running and the last time I ran a non-stop mile was during A Presidential Fitness Test in Junior High. It is also no secret that should you challenge me, I will accept it, and kill myself showing you how wrong you were to doubt my fortitude.

I'll have you know I didn't run a 15-minute mile. No, I ran a 12-minute mile...with my heart-rate hovering around 190, but never going over 200. Seriously, don't F-ing challenge me.

I'm really looking forward to rafting on Monday. I'm hoping by then my legs won't still feel like Nancy Kerrigan's did in '94.

THREE: Last night I had a major slip-up and fell off the band wagon. Well, more accurately, I didn't so much fall as dive facefirst into a six hour long binge-fest worthy of kings. Ice cream, three kinds of cake, cookies and brownies graced my lips with a hearty homecoming party in my mouth. Oh dear friends, I'd missed you. Interestingly, I didn't go for donuts or candy, my sugar-drugs of choice. Perhaps, somewhere deep in the recesses of my self-will, behind my engorgement, I knew that if I'd gone for those, there's no chance I would have been able to stop once I got going. I also had enough sense to stay away from my Heroin of sweets: PIE(I would have landed myself in the hospital if I'd gone that route). However, I did stay on the sugar-train at full speed until it derailed in Projectile-ville in a fiery display out both ends. I was up all night crying and pissed at myself and disappointed and worried and so very sick. Today I feel like I got hit by a truck.

I'm not looking forward to seeing my test results this week or having to tell my doctor how much I suck. I really hope I didn't set myself back too much. If I have to start back at square one I'm going to have a lot of sucking up to myself to do before I'll be able to forgive me.

At least I get to go rafting before I see my doctor... well, if I'm able to be more than 12 feet from the bathroom by Monday.