Hi all,

It was a long, long rough day. Nothing can say it better than that. I did what I needed to do, avoided people the best I could, and I have come home to rest the best I can with this body. Eating has been tricky because everything tastes like meds and yuck. I have minimal energy and the aches just keep at me from the top of my head to my thick, heavy chest all of the way to the tips of my toes. My neck hurts a great deal at this moment, but if it lets up--something else will take its place.

I have napped off and on in 1-2 hour periods all evening. I wake up coughing and choking and my voice is pretty much gone. I canceled physical therapy on Monday and couldn't reschedule on Tuesday because I have an appointment for a bladder scan after school. My Tuesday is wrapping up badly from the beginning--I have to be there at 7:15 for another early morning meeting followed by my day at door duty. Then my schedule was disrupted by changes in the PE and music times for the older kids to have an uninterrupted block of time to take the ISAT, our state;s big standardized test this week. The deal is that nobody gave me the schedule so I get to just guess at which students will be available for me to teach or not.

All I want is to feel better and I don't know how long that is supposed to take. If I don't have a sense of that by Wednesday after the antibiotics are completed, it will be time to call my doctor again. I may do that tomorrow anyway because I found a message on the phone from his nurse that seemed to be dated Saturday. He doesn't work on Saturdays, so I want to find out if they called and what they may have wanted--especially since I called them on Friday and they were the ones who sent me to the ER. I am not sure when he would have gotten that report. He diagnosed me with pneumonia last year around this time and called me day after day for about a week, begging me to go to the hospital. I am wondering if this is more of that kind of thing. I don't know what they can do for me that I am not doing--I know that not being in the hospital allows me to take my pain meds as I need them instead of on somebody else's schedule. It is important to remember that my usual issues still exist and this may big, but it hasn't eliminated my arthritis pain nor my shoulder issues or the stiffness and pain in my right knee.

Life could be better, but I am trying hard to manage. I'd like to feel happier right now. That would be glorious, but oddly enough at 2:43, I am feeling a bit hungry. I think I'll go look for something with vitamin C and/or protein. If I am hungry, I believe I need some important nutrients.

Have a good day--I am praying for something better to happen for myself today. I want to be me--taste like me, feel like me, walk like me, and just be me.

That is my revised goal for the present. I'll be back to normal sometime and I will be that way without a body full of meds.

Gentle hugs from me to you--as we wait for the next blizzard due to start here around 6 AM!
Sylvia