That’s what we’re going to have to call January at this point in blog terms. I will do the Roundup today, but then you may not hear from me again until the crap stops hitting the fan and I can get back on track (i.e., hopefully by the time it’s my turn to do the the next Roundup). Forget school, I can barely get life together right now!

I dragged myself out of bed yesterday, got Pumpkinhead dressed and off to school and then headed off in the icy cold rain to the post office and grocery store to run errands for my still-incapacitated family member. Then I called in sick to work for the first time this week and crashed in bed. At 3 p.m., I went over to the doctor’s office to find out that Monday’s “nasty cold” had developed into “bronchitis, a left inner ear infection and a sinus infection” with a $100 list of prescriptions on top of the $25 co-pay for the visit. Lovely. The doctor told me to sleep and drink a lot more liquids. I already felt like I was drinking a ton but she said I’m really dehydrated. Okay. Fortunately she gave me some lovely cough medication with codeine and said it was all right to mix with the Topamax so I took some last night after Chapin got home and slept from 7 p.m. until 8 a.m.! I feel quite a bit better just from that.

Unfortunately the blood-suckers at Quest Diagnostics called to tell me they “forgot” to take one of the blood levels (only the most important one) last Saturday so they have to re-draw it. Yes, this is the same thing that happened a few months back with LabCorp when they took my Thiamin level and accidentally exposed it to light. Obviously I have bad luck with blood draws. The bad news is that they have to stick me again. The good news is that they said they will come to my house today to do it so I don’t have to go anywhere. That makes it a bit better. Still no news on the biopsy or the other blood levels.

School-wise, I talked to the appropriate office on Thursday and I do have an accommodations form waiting for me to pick up whenever I can get down there and take to my teachers. I’m not sure what the provisions are, but they should include what we had discussed and may go as far as extended testing time. I’m hoping it will get me out of oral questioning in class. You probably can’t tell from my written blog posts, but I really am quite confused and out of it in person and having a hard time processing things orally from all the medication. It just takes me a bit longer to crank it out. I was also able to switch sections for one of my classes so that I can consolidate the number of evenings I’m on campus to three instead of four. That should hopefully be very helpful in terms of stress load.