It seems like there’s a lot of really intense Stuff going on right now. A disproportionate number of my acquaintances seem to have developed fairly major illnesses, and more than one pet has had to be put to sleep in the last couple days. Of course, some of these incidents are occurring far too intimately to be referred to as the occurrences of acquaintances.

I am, of course, referring to my girlfriend. The last doctor’s appt was both clarifying and frustratingly vague. The Clarifying part was finding out the doctor’s time-frame for Monacita’s surgery. The frustrating part was the part where it turns out her abdominal mass is so large that the MRI ended up being totally inconclusive. All they know for sure is that there is a huge mass in her abdomen, and they know it Shouldn’t be there. It’s about 22 cm across, whatever it is. (A baby’s head is usually about 10 cm in diameter when it’s born, to give some perspective.) Parts of it seem to echo, like a cyst does. Parts are solid. And they have no idea if any of it is cancerous. They aren’t even sure which internal organ it is attached to.

So she’ll have to have exploratory abdominal surgery. For those unfamiliar with exploratory surgery (I was until the doctor explained it to me), it’s what they do when they know something is wrong, but they don’t know enough ahead of time to know how they’re going to treat the problem. How they treat it depend on what it is, and there is no test that can give them enough info. So they’ll have to dive in, figure it out, and do what they can. Suffice to say there will be an oncologist present.

What can I say? I’m scared. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. She is too, of course. But I feel good about her doctor, and while this isn’t what I’d call a best-case scenario, it’s not a worst-case one either.

Anyway, I feel like I’ve purged enough from my soul that I might be able to sleep. Time for bed.

I have successfully hacked my own resotre CD, so I don’t have to ship my laptop back to Toshiba. Woot!

Oh, and my girlfriend is having full on exploratory abdominal surgery late next week, or early the week afterwards.

Woot!

Monacita is home, we talked. And I showed her how to make homemade corn tortillas, and she, Araceli and I had a lovely late night snack. Damn those things are yummy!

And my body feels sort of better today.

It’s been weird since Monday.

Actually, it’s probably been weird for longer than that, but the acupuncture has had some really exceptionally noticeable side effects. First, and most importantly, the carpal tunnel symptoms have gone way down. I can feel my wrists ache at times, but they rarely hurt now. This was not true for the first day or so after the treatment.

My shoulders back and neck are getting better too, though I still feel like something is seriously out of whack. But it isn’t nearly as painful either.

My body seems to be able to handle doses of allergens it couldn’t before. (Not that I intend to add them back to my diet in a major way, but still…) I hadn’t realized that I’ve basically been on the verge of being sick (if not out-right ill) for months. I still feel like crap when I eat things I shouldn’t, in fact, I feel far worse immediately after than I used to. But it doesn’t make me ill. No ear infections. An accidental exposure to dairy no longer seems to equate waking up in the morning with a sinus and ear infection. In fact, I no longer feel like I’m walking around on the verge of another ear infection.

But then there are the mornings. I wake up in the morning feeling absolutely ill. This morning involved a sore throat, and all the hallmarks of a great case of the stomach flu. But I was fine by afternoon. Wednesday was much the same, though I felt like I was about to come down with the worst ear infection and sinus infection duo EVER. But again, by afternoon, I was fine.

Tuesday… well… The treatment on Monday night left me feeling stoned. Tuesday was my hangover. There’s really no other way to describe it.

Still, the whole thing has been fascinating and fun. I can’t wait for my treatment next Monday.

Dammit.

Tomorrow’s going to be ugly.

I got home late from class and stopping at Rita’s house, only to find that my girlfriend had been waiting up for me to come home.

I got home shortly after midnight.

Oops.

So now I have this feeling of total dread, and I feel like I did something wrong, and yeah, I kind of did in not calling her.

I thought about it at 10 PM, but she was in bed and asleep by 10 PM on Monday, and in bed (reading) before 9:30 last night, and half the time, even when I make an effort to be home by 11 PM (and tell her I’m going to do so), she’s already in bed asleep.

She needs her sleep. I understand.

I’ve also been home late from a class night with Rita before, without calling, and it wasn’t a problem.

But now it is.

I feel bad for making her worry.

I feel bad that I didn’t call at 10 when I thought about it.

I feel bad that she lost sleep over me. This is doubly ironic since I decided not to call so I wouldn’t wake her.

But I’m also pissed that she’s mad at me for something that wasn’t a problem before. I’m pissed cause the blankets on the bed are all a mess, and I know I will spend half the night freezing my ass off because she can be passive-aggressive about bedding *in her sleep*. (This is an amazing ability. I wish I knew how she did it.) I’m pissed because I know I will wake up at least hourly, if not more, all night, still angry about this. And she probably will to. Which is ironic because her gut reaction was to tell me to turn off the light so she could go to sleep. Not talk for 5 minutes so we could both sleep without this being an issue. Not talk for 5 minutes so that she can go to school in the morning without this still looming.

Nope, this one will drag on until at LEAST tomorrow night. Because we won’t have time to talk about it before then.

But mostly, I feel like an asshole. Because I made her worry. I really didn’t mean to make her worry. I really intended to do the right thing by not calling.

Note to self: when in doubt, call anyway.

I have all these things I wanted to post from the last couple days, then I found out that I should pretty well write off the job I thought I was going to get.

So now I’m back to job hunting.

This has had a less than positive effect on my outlook on life right now.

Depressed might sort of be the word, but it’s not a severe depression or anything, just a slight sulk about the fact that I thought I had scored a job at a company I liked, working for people I really love spending time with.

Plus I would be able to continue doing stuff at Lindsey, AND I’d have an excuse to bring the number of days I do interpretive services down. I have a love/hate relationship with that position… I really like what I learn there, and I love talking to people directly, but the presentations, and the sheer volume of people when the school tours come through traumatize the hell out of me.

On the plus side though, I have time to do the hospital internship, and there is a pug sitting on my feet, keeping my toes warm.