Ain't Nothing to Sneeze At

 

It is 5:30 a.m. and I just inhaled the most vile, battery acid of a nasal spray in the hopes that my nasal passages, sinuses, and throat will not explode with whatever is packed inside there. 

What a lead. You have my permission to close this tab. 

I am just going to say this real fast: since January I have had a round of obnoxious and sometimes grueling medical tests and procedures that were partly "Oooh, you'd better biopsy that," and partly, "You have to because you are old." No one in my family wants to hear One. More.Word. or drive me to one more test where I either have to have anesthesia or have my hand held while needles are poked in one side and come out the other, scopes are inserted, plumbing is plumbed, things are gouged off, or a series of injections are required weekly. I cam more than relieved that   every single test came back negativo, zero, nadda. I got one more dealio left, and  thought I was home free.  

Until early Tuesday morning when I had my first ever kindey stone. My husband is still walking around with his eyes at half mast because every torturous exacerbation would slam us awake in the middle of the night. You know you are in pain when you agree to go to the ER in your old pajamas at 3:00 a.m. when it is 20 degrees. 

Mr. Pom gets up at 5:30 every morning. He just poked his head over the covers and saw the laptop light. Whats the matter? Is the pain back? Are you ok? "No, I am dill." "Dill?" "Da dold, da really bad dold and doff." And then I coughed all over him and turned on all the lights to rummage through my "throw everything in here" drawer to find the Astepro, which my highly allergic daughter swears by but seriously does nothing for me but I use it all the time in hopes it would. Mr Pom could be heard sighing and I swear I heard him trying to book a hotel room in Vegas for the weekend whilst in the shower. I haven't gone back to work yet, but I have already lined up the next medical event. 

The allergic preggo daughter has not had her allergies kick in yet. While I am typing this, I just spit three times over my shoulder and said, "poopoopoo" like my friend Betti does to ward off evil.  They are moving this weekend from their beautiful newlywed apartment to a more practical 2-story garden apartment that does not require her to park 3 blocks away or walk up 3 flights of huge marble stairs, engendering grandparental nightmares of slips and falls.... poopoopoo!

I can't do much to help her because I'm not supposed to be near her with these germs and I feel like crap. 

And I'll take all this run of age- and symptom-related testing, the juggling of appointments around work, the scary procedures, the week's waits for test results, the pain-like-I've-never-felt-in-my-life-before, and the head-pounding coughing and gagging, with the knowledge that all my tests were negative, that  this cold will pass, that I probably already passed the stone,  that another couple of years will pass before I have to go through all of this again, God-willing, poopoopoo. 

I am focusing all my prayers and thoughts this weekend since I've learned of one of our beautiful Art Girlz is seriously ill and in the hospital. Prayers for Allison, for her wife Midge, for her sister Tracy and her wife, Sue, and for her children, nieces, nephews, and friends.

May this week bring them a plan of action, an assault, and a glimpse of a kind future.