So I think I finally have this flu thing on the run. My doctor gave me antibiotics, nasal spray, and an inhaler, and my sniffling and coughing are getting slowly better — emphasis on the "slowly." The laryngitis is no better and I still have serious coughing fits, waking me (and the rest of the building) up during the night and rendering me practically laugh-less the rest of the time. Ok, maybe "on the run" is an exaggeration. :p

Meanwhile, it's back to the Moors of Ykesha in EQ2. Without the Frostfell Wonderland Village and all its shiny goodies to distract me, I'm back to running through the solo faction quests and the daily tradeskill tasks with Riannon, my main. I initially tried the daily tasks with Kharri, my Carpenter, but being as she's only a 50-something Defiler it was going to take me eons to get enough faction with Grobb and Tupta for the "fluff" furniture recipes. Ria, on the other hand, is capped, which gives her the option of adventuring to raise faction. I think she was able to reach the recipe-purchasing goal in only a day or two.

After a full evening of laid-back adventuring and questing, I'm up to 11k with the Guktan Guard, 14k with Clan Grobb, and 16k with the Survival Accord. I also earned a full Achievement Point — Ample Harvest FTW! — and cleared out a handful of quests from my perpetually full journal. All in all, not a bad night!

Heading to the doctor this afternoon at 2:45. Wish me medicine! Gotta try to get a few winks in before I have to shower and get ready…sleep is still hard to get and even harder to hold on to.

It's time to make lists of things that I feel should be listed! Here we go!

My holiday gifts:

• Intuos3 6×11 tablet — OMG, the best present I remember getting, ever
• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on DVD — love it!!
• Animal Crossing: City Folk for Wii — really looking forward to giving this a go
• Personal Trainer: Cooking for Nintento DS — another one I'm eager to dig around in
• Eragon by Christopher Paolini (hardcover) — I'll be cracking this one open soon
• A 1GB USB thumb drive leather keychain that would be nice even if it was just a keychain!
• An IOU for Afrika on PS3, if/when it ever arrives in the US (I LOVED Endless Ocean on Wii, and this is along the same lines)

Hmm…did I miss anything?

The Ailments to Date – cue the ominous music!

• Ovarian cysts (15 years and counting)
  • I've had 2 laparoscopies to aspirate them as well as more combinations of birth control pills and hormone therapies to try to control them than I care to count. They're reasonably under control now, but I still have pain a couple times a month. The general concensus is that they're a result of endometriosis.
• Migraines (11 years and counting)
  • Took me forever to find a doctor that was even willing to treat them, but I'm on a cocktail of anti-depressants and blood pressure medications that keep them at bay –  mostly.
• Fibromyalgia (diagnosed August 2008)
  • One walk-in emergency clinic, two PCMs, two rheumatologists, a bone scan, several x-rays, and countless blood tests and physical exams later, it's official: fibro. The joint pain, overwhelming fatigue, body aches, over-sensitivity to certain stimuli (pain, heat, cold), and inability to focus on just about anything most days really isn't all in my head.
• Polycystic Kidney Disease (diagnosed October 2008)
  • All the blood work I'd had done on the way to my fibro diagnosis alerted my various doctors to an unexplained elevated creatinine level. After meeting with a nephrologist and discussing my family and personal medical histories, he ordered an ultrasound to look for cysts. (My dad and his mother both had one non-functioning kidney, probably congenital, and PKD in the remaining one, along with high blood pressure issues; I'd already passed a kidney stone by age 24, and had been in a car accident in '97 that banged them up pretty bad.) Nothing showed on the ultrasound, but he was sure something was going on, so in I went for a CT scan. Sure enough, cysts ahoy. I'm pretty asymptomatic at this point, but my dad's functioning kidney isn't doing so hot, and I remember my grandma living with dialysis for years, so I know what can happen to me down the line. Thankfully, it was caught pretty early, and with medication and diet management, I might never have symptoms. Then again, my kidneys could fail in 5 or 10 years. Good times! :p

I think I'm all listed out. Mmm, clam chowder time…

I get it every year, it seems. I've decided that I'm going to have to suck it up and just fork out the $15 or so to get a yearly vaccination. Being sick like this for more than a week is absolutely hellish. No sleeping, breathing, talking, or laughing. Not only are there severe mucus issues, but I've got this horrendous cough that sounds (and feels) like I'll wind up holding my spleen when I'm done. I'm not even going to mention how yucky the fever makes me feel.

And as is forever true, when the woman of the house is miserable, everyone suffers…poor Peter has gotten as little sleep as I have, and the pigs are scared to death of the Big Scary Hacking Snot Monster. Just shoot me!!