How today sucks, let me count the ways...

Let's see...for one, my house is of course still turned inside out and being painted. The only difference is that now it's stinky with paint fumes, and we have to closely monitor the comings and goings of the dogs and cats so that we don't have any tails or other body parts dragging through wet paint. Said painting will now, in theory, take 4 days instead of the originally estimated 3. I won't be shocked if it takes 5. Three days to paint that much surface area seemed way too quick to me in the first place.


And, drumroll, I'm in pain. Weird, terrible pain that is almost impossible to fully alleviate. If you combine a severe, acute stabbing-searing pain with the feeling of starting to hurt while novacain wears off and you're all tingly at the same time and an irresistable desire to try and shake out the pain, like when your foot goes to sleep, you almost have it.

Thanks to Dawn, I at least have an idea of what it might be now--lymphadema in my left thigh, pubic and genital area. It HURTS. They don't let me have any bigger letters than that on here. Unfortunately.

Before you say it, don't worry, doctors have been called. I've been confined to the house all week, waiting for my oncologist to call me, afraid to even go to the mailbox and miss his call...but I ran out of patience for waiting today and called them. I've left a message with the medical assistant, for my doctor, the other doctor, or the physician's assistant, whoever gets to me first, to call, call, call.

I'm more than a little scared after learning that all of my symptoms and strange things going on match symptoms of fun things like lymphedema and cellulitis, which is an actual infection under the skin thanks to the lymphedema. I'd like to find out that I do not have these things, please.

We shall see.

I'd really rather be spending my day doing things like decorating a Christmas tree, but we can't even get one until we put the house back together, and have room in the garage to get the decorations down. I suspect this is going to be a very, very short holiday season for us around here this year.

If not for the kids, I wouldn't even get a tree this year, since getting everything down and doing all the work to decorate it hardly seems worth it for such a short little bit of time to have it up...and just the fact that *I* said that (the woman who puts 2000 lights on a 7 ft tree) should tell you something about how I feel this year.