I'm still standing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Lawdy people, it's been a rough month. But I am here, still fighting the good fight with just a few more chinks in my armor.

I've been pretty much a sick wreck for several months. Around Thanksgiving, I started feeling like refried poop. Achy, weak, intermittent chills and fevers. When I wasn't hanging around Cancerville clinic getting tanked up with blood or platelets (A process that sometimes takes nearly all day.), I was at home wrapped in blankets either on the couch or in the bed. Poor Adrian was having to juggled taking care of our whirling dervish of a child and his pathetic sick mess of a wife. I was a lifeless puddle of flesh. My small bursts of energy could carry me through the day, but I never felt like blogging, so apologies all around for keeping the theater of my discontent dark for so many weeks.

Turns out I have some sort of infection, a wicked little bacteria that resides in the same family as TB. My doc's got me on two kinds of antibiotics that seem to have kicked out the "feelin' craptastic" side effects. Yet, the infection decided to start playing house in my urinary tract. And we all know what fun a UTI can be. It's like this really bad joke: the UTI causes this nuclear blast of pain whenever I pee AND it also causes me to pee A LOT. Never knew the toilet could induce such a sense of dread. Plus, as anyone who's had a UTI can tell you, when you've got to go, you've reeeeeally got to go. Like now. Like right this very instant or you'll wet yourself. It's not an uncommon sight to see me dashing off to the bathroom doing the pee-pee dance like a four-year-old.

To cap off my loveliness, I developed a weird craving due to my whacked out taste buds (More on that later.) for ruby red grapefruit juice. I kid you not; I drank like a gallon in two days. Hey, you know what's one thing you're not supposed to drink when you have a UTI? Citrus juice. Know why? It exacerbates (you know, to make worse) the pain. Who's a BIG FAT MORON? Who spent the next few days afterwards going full retard every time she voided her bladder?

Good times. Still trying to get the UTI under control. I've got another antibiotic to start in hopes that we can finally chase away the last of the ickies.

Due to low platelets, I've been susceptible to weird bleeding. My legs are all bruised to hell. I bite my lip in my sleep and I've got a fat welt on my lip for days. I also had a bout with nose bleeds, especially at night. My pillowcase looked like a crime scene (Thank God for Oxyclean stain remover and a good washing machine.).

Then I picked up this snotty, bronchial thing that's been making the rounds. Of course since I have no functional immune system to speak of, I get the horrible consumptive cough. I was coughing so hard that sometimes I would wretch and heave. It was horrible. After coughing like a maniac, my stomach would then start spasming. Every time I did this in the presence of my cats, I honestly think they were waiting for me to hork up a fat hairball. The cough is finally starting to fade into the background; I no longer sound like a doomed heroine in some 19th century novel, wasting away in my bed coughing up blood into a lace hankie.

As for my treatment, the last round of chemo brought down the white counts in my blood slowly, but now they are back on the rise (Meaning chemo no work-o). So the doc is researching clinical trials at hospitals around the East Coast. But first, I've got to be free of this infection before I can be considered a candidate for any trial. I'll be on the move soon, just don't know when or where. Life is a highway, people.

There's the litany of most of the fun adventures I've been having. Needless to say, all my sickness has kept me from really getting into Christmas this year. I've gotten gifts, but nothing special or handmade like I prefer. I didn't even have it in me to make my annual Christmas mix for my friends. The house is mostly decorated. All my nativity sets are out on display, and The Mister did a great job hanging our Richmond Rococo-lite wreaths on the windows and wrapped the evergreen in front of the door in lights. But we don't have a real Christmas tree to speak of since I can't have a live tree in the house for fear I might get some crazy tree fungus or something. We do have a silly, lopsided table top tree with colored lights and no ornaments that is functioning as our substitute.

But I'm here with my family. That's way more important than any of trimmings and trappings.

And I've not crapped out on Cannonball Read but been piss poor with updating and writing my reviews. Here's what I've knocked out so far:

Book 21: The Darkest Part of the Woods-Ramsey Campbell
Book 22: The Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse-Robert Rankin
Book 23: A Nearly Normal Life-Charles Mee
Book 24: Body Piercing Saved My Life-Andrew Beaujon
Book 25: Richard Matheson Collected Stories Vol. 3
And just finished Book 26-The Black Spiral: Twisted Tales of Terror

I am pretty sure this is where I stand; I'll have to check my bookshelf to confirm.

(Much props to the excellent Shawn of Texas and his care packages. Much appreciated and loved.)

I'm looking forward to a crazy Christmas with Little A and The Mister, hopefully feeling mostly human. And to the rest of you faithful readers who've been hanging around waiting for me to get my act back together, Happy Christmas. Enjoy the day, and in the immortal words of Christine Baranski in the holiday classic The Ref:

"Celebrate the birth of Christ, dammit!"