February 21

Had my CT scan yesterday afternoon. No idea when to expect results back for that. I was originally scheduled to see Dr. M on 3/7 but was notified yesterday that that's been pushed out to 3/14. I'm a bit bummed because I really want someone to look at my fistula. I had baby doll look at it the other night and what he had to say about it didn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. He said before when he looked at it, he was looking into a hole in my neck and he could see stuff down in there. Now when he looks at it, it looks like the 'stuff' is closer to the surface and the wound is closing around it rather than over it? Or something to that effect. As much as I want this thing to heal, I don't want a screw to be sticking out of my neck when all is said and done. I feel like I should grab the edges of skin, pull them up and over the hardware that's showing, and steri strip them in place so that it heals correctly. But I don't want to do anything without a medical person okaying it. I think I need to e-mail Dr. M. I'll go ahead and do that right after this blog. 

I guess the good news there is that the HBO treatments seem to be doing something. Yay! I haven't had much trouble with the swelling at all for the past week. For some reason I was running a low grade fever again yesterday morning. Janice at the HBO place told me that if it gets up to 101, she can't give me the treatment because I'm at risk for seizures. Luckily it was the usual 100.5 nonsense that seems to happen now and then and today it was gone again so I'm okay.

I usually try to e-mail Dr. Claire only once a week in regards to any prescriptions I need to have refilled. I had to e-mail her twice this week and I felt bad about it. I told her that I totally owed her a treat because she was always so patient and prompt in regards to my requests. I told her to name her treat and it was hers. She laughed. She said she's just doing her job and she's happy to help me. Then she said that if some 7 layer bars made their way over to her anyway, they wouldn't go to waste. Ha! I will deliver her treats next Tuesday.

I'm still trying to get a handle on where my health stands. I tried going back to work full time and it was an epic fail. So now I'm wondering if I could manage to go back part time. I have a query in with HR to see if my company would even want me part time. I should hear something about it next week. Meanwhile, Sammy brought up a good point. Why would I want to go back to work part time, making 50% of my pay when I could go on long term disability and make 60% of my pay? And yes, my understanding is that I should definitely qualify for long term disability. I might have to get a disability lawyer to prove it but supposedly, I'm a pretty sure thing. So, I don't know the answer to her question. I'm assuming there's an answer out there. Maybe I'll see what HR has to say when I talk to them next week about part time being a viable option or not. In the meantime, I sat down to look at my budget. I've been ignoring it for months thinking that I was going to go back to work and I could simply catch up on whatever fell behind while I was only collecting 75% of my pay. Since that doesn't seem to be an option, it was time to do a reality check. Man, talk about depressing. The estimated part time pay figure that I came up with would cover all of my fixed expenses for the month and leave me with $84 for groceries, vet bills, Christmas presents, hair cuts, gasoline, etc. Yeah, that's obviously not going to cut it. So, I started taking a serious look at the housemate option. I figure I can charge $400/month including utilities to have someone live with me. That would go a long way. I started looking at ads on Craig's List and I started composing an ad for myself. I told baby doll that I wanted him to read my ad when I was done with it and smooth out the rough edges for me. Well, he came home from dinner with his daughter last night and told me that he wants to apply for the position of being my housemate. 

Yeah, not sure how I feel about that.

I told him that it didn't seem right, making him pay to live with me. He's already still paying half his mortgage on his house and he has a place at his brother's where he can stay for free. Plus, I enjoy providing for him. I love him and feel that he deserves to be treated like a king!

He argued that it's worth $100 a week to him to not have to share his bathroom at my house, and to be able to walk around naked whenever he wants to, and that he's been freeloading off of me for long enough.

The logical side of me agrees that I wouldn't be shopping at Wegman's at all if it weren't for him because I no longer eat food. And there probably are some incremental costs to me from running the dishwasher every other night, and doing his laundry, and having him shower here more often than not.....

So, I agreed to take him on as my housemate. First month's rent is due on March 1st. We'll see how it goes. :-) And yes, that's said tongue in cheek because nothing at all is changing other than him handing me a check once a month. He already has half the bedroom closet filled with his clothes and the entire TV console in the bedroom houses his stuff. He already has a drawer in the bathroom, artwork on the walls, family pictures in the living room, etc. Now he's simply paying for all the perks that I was happy to supply to the love of my life.

Okay, I think that's about it. Health is so-so. Monitoring my general health awareness hasn't been going very well. There just aren't enough days where I feel good. I'm dying for that to change. Mentally, I had a bit of a meltdown earlier this week. I wrote down all of my distress in an e-mail and sent it off to 6-7 peeps to weigh in on. I feel better now. Financially, things will hopefully work out. They're at least on the right track at this point. Have I missed anything?