Perpetual Smile

Early this morning, I wrote 700 words before crawling into bed. So far, I’ve written 50,290. Technically, I’ve won NaNoWriMo. But I know I have a lot of work ahead of me; the novel is far from done. Initially my goal was to finish it by the end of November; I knew that getting to 50k wouldn’t be challenging enough for me, and that my real challenge is to actually finish something.

I’m not sure if it’s going to be done by the end of November now. There’s a lot going on. My mind is in seventy-thousand directions right now. I can’t even begin to get it all down into words. I will, but for now I’m just processing.

Writing is keeping me going, but I pretty much feel like a zombie right now. Not a dead tired kind of zombie feeling, but a Stone Sour kind of zombie feeling. I’m like a zombie chewing on brains, trying to swallow it all down, but it just doesn’t taste very good. They’re bad brains. And this is a horrible analogy.

I might not be online too much, but I’m here. And I truly do appreciate all of the tweets and BBMs from everyone. It’s been a tough last twelve hours, but I’m hanging in there. Eating brains.

Here’s an updated version of the symptoms list I posted in June 2009. Same deal: for my reference, hoping someone might say “Ah-ha!” and diagnose me. Warning: some of this is gross. Don’t read it if you think I’m sexy.

• Dull and achy to very sharp, stabbing pain in fingers, hands, arms, legs, hips, knees, feet. Migratory and happens at random. Could last seconds or days.
• Jello, rubbery feeling in arms and legs. Sometimes I can’t walk.
• Weakness in arms and legs. Sometimes I collapse and can’t carry things.
• Occasional swelling (once in right ankle, several times in base of left thumb)
• Itchy, sometimes painful, clear bumps on hands (palms and fingers)
• Multiple styes in both eyes. I can’t get rid of them no matter what I do. I’ve just learned to ignore them and seldom wear eyeliner now so that I don’t aggravate them.
• Bumps on the inside of my mouth, usually on the inside of my cheeks. They’re not painful but they’re annoying and pop up all the time. They go away by themselves, but then end up coming back
• Hemorrhoids. It doesn’t matter what I do or don’t eat. I’ve just learned to suck it up and use a lot of A&D.
• UTI-like symptoms: trouble urinating, frequent urination, pain when urinating. This hasn’t happened in a while, thankfully, but it’s been so bad that I thought about going to the ER. Urinalyses always come up fine.
• Hot flashes. This is new. I get overwhelmingly hot, sweat beads at my hairline, I feel like I can’t breathe, and then it’s over.

Hooray.

Also? I’d like to add that I only add symptoms to my list if they’ve been hanging around for about a week. Sometimes I’m stubborn and wait a month to say, “yep, let’s add it.” I’m far from a hypochondriac and just wanted to make that clear. Just sayin’.