Droopy, the missing dwarf

As you know, when I'm not ranting about politics, I sometimes talk about the only other thing I talk about: Lyme disease. Today I'm just updating my reader(s) on my condition.

It has been a rough week. It began with a fever. Then I got a sore throat. Great, I thought, not only do I have a severe neurological disease, I have a COLD! But then I got double vision, which, last I checked, was not a usual cold symptom... more of a neurological disease symptom. Then my eyelid started drooping on one side. Then half of my mouth started. (The combination of the former two symptoms is known as Bell's palsy.) I started slurring and became a little confused. I thought the closet was trying to eat me, which made me both scared and surprisingly angry. I got a bad headache.

I realized that I have all the symptoms of encephalitis -- which isn't surprising, since I know I have Lyme encephalitis from some sweet nuclear scanning. What was weird was that these things came out of nowhere -- no medication changes, no routine changes, nothing. The only thing I can think of is stress or infection, but it's pretty unsettling (and inconvenient... the double vision seems to be making me nauseated. Well something is anyway.) I have been avoiding a herx because we are trying to get me to stop constantly having grand mal seizures, so there's no reason for a sudden change, and as anyone who knows Lyme knows, sudden is usually bad.

Anyway, I have a "phone date" with my doctor on Tuesday, and I am hopeful that he'll be able to explain this (and that I don't end up in the ER before then... BOOOO ERs!).

I'd also like to give a shout out to all my pimps and hoes who have been doing their best to keep me happy and sane since I've been here. Thanks for the calls, IMs, emails, visits to my bedside, care packages, mini-outings, and just in general putting up with me. You're good friends and I love you all!

White Flag

"I will go down with this ship,
I won't put my flag up and surrender."

Well Dido, you couldn't have said it better if you were Hank Williams Jr. Here in the land of politics, Democrats everywhere are declaring victory. I have not made a prediction, not once, about who will win this election -- that's not scientific, the only political scientist who does that is Larry Sabato, and he's a jackass.... unless he accepts me into his PhD program, but I digress. I'm sticking to my guns about that, but more importantly, I will never, ever abandon ship. I am NOT voting for the other guy, nor will I stay home on Election Day, declare it a lost cause, tell pollsters I changed my mind, or any other such nonsense. I think it's a shame when people see falling poll numbers and leap to the other side just because they want to say they voted for the guy who won. For the record, yes, that is a phenomenon that does happen every year, and people even answer the same survey immediately after they vote and after the votes are counted differently -- the first time honestly, the second time for the winner. Amazing, right? So to me, the poll numbers don't mean much right now and they shouldn't mean much to you either. Stay on board. The ship may sink, but you'll still have your integrity. In the words of another great rock sensation, Fall Out Boy:

"We're going down, down in an earlier round
But sugar we're going down swinging."

Also, check out this article. It seems that Charles Krauthammer may secretly have teen angst and/or be an emo kid, and no one knew... *see above lyrics*

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/23/AR2008102302867_pf.html

Sleepless in Suffolk

So, I've been off the map for five days. After my BFF kitschen threatened to send a search party out for me today if I didn't get online, I decided to a) get online before she sent one (she doesn't mess around) and b) post a blog.

That's a lie. The Part B. I am blogging because I can't effing sleep. No sleep in two full days and the two days/nights before that I had fevers, seizures, and night terrors, so they weren't exactly peaceful either.

Those of you who read my blog for the Lymie-licious content know about insomnia. And chronic fatigue. And narcolepsy, cataplexy, and all the other swell sleep problems we (can) get with this disease (but I somehow have all of them, and also know other people who do, WTF). So you know when you're rolling up on half a week, no sleep you gotta call the LLMD (before you turn into a gangsta... what is with my vernacular in this post?). So, check, got an appointment with my man for sleep problems on Wednesday.

He has told me before that if I fail a few sleep treatments (which I think I now have... when we started there were already hardly any I hadn't failed) that we have one viable option left: Xyrem. Google it if you want to, it seems imprudent to link it here, but basically, it's... well, Google it if you want to. I think it might be more tightly controlled than ANY other medication I take. The worst thing is, you can't just get it at the local pharmacy, so it may take a while to get it in my hands while the doctor mails the Rx, the Rx company fights with the insurance company for coverage, etc. And I want sleep NOW. Yes, I have considered just chasing booze with pills but I have some weird horse like property that makes everything bounce off me. You Lymies know the one, it makes everything too strong or totally ineffective. It's craptastic.

So, here I am, rambling, at almost 5 AM, and wishing I could sleep without waking up screaming. I'm going to keep trying to achieve my goal, because I'm not a quitter. Also I have nothing else to do.

As far as everything else goes... well fuck if I know, I can't sleep! But I know not much has been going on in my life, aside from some vampire related stuff and I'm reading Mansfield Park again (Jane Austen's "most complex and most disliked novel" -- I disagree, Northanger Abbey really gave me the creeps, but to each literature snob her own). I had lobster and filet mignon for dinner but that's not really unusual (seriously, Italians eat well... we don't skimp on that part of the budget). I got a new BCBG cocktail dress for this awards dinner thing I have in New England next month... and I can't find my fountain pen. Also, I think the pipes in my bathroom have centipedes and they scare me.

So, that's the news from Suffolk. No sleep, vampires, lobster... not in any way related.

Buona notte... e sogni d'oro.

Long overdue!

I am terribly delinquent in updating my loyal reader(s). At least two friends have asked whether I am alive. The answer is, of course, mostly.

I have been working like crazy getting the house unpacked, cleaning, doing laundry, making lists, and doing a whole bunch of other things that seriously ill people are not supposed to do. So right now I'm strapped into my wheelchair (literally) in a neck brace, packing so I can leave tomorrow to spend one or two weeks at my dad's house.

I am bummed about this for a number of reasons.

First, Phil. I love him, I don't like being away from him, and it's harder than I can explain, especially with being ill.

Next, friends, friends, and oh wait, did I mention friends?
1) I got to see my dear friend Liz, and she helped me bust some serious ass in the cleaning department around the apartment.
2) All of my busting ass this week resulted in Phil and I finally being able to entertain. We got to see two old friends (not on the same night) who each brought over their own old friends (new to us). We had a really great time with all of them, and it felt good to play hostess.
3) In a delightful surprise, I got a chance to get to know some of the girls in Phil's section a little better last week. I had a great time dancing, drinking, talking, and just hanging out with them.
4) The same night, I also hung out with some of the guys in the section. As always, I was impressed by how polite they were, and even more impressed by how well they could carry on an intelligent conversation while drunk. It's a rare gift.

The final reason I'm bummed (well, the final one I'm going to post right now) is that I just got everything unpacked, tidy, and comfortable/easy to live in... and now I have to leave it. Inevitably, when I get back, it will be a mess. Maybe I'm wrong... but I sincerely doubt it. Sigh.

Anyway, that's it for now -- just wanted to let everyone know that I'll be hard to reach for the next few days while I settle in down at dad's house... and I'm going to miss everyone here at school, but I'll be back very soon, so you can go ahead and start planning my welcome home party now, okay?

Much love to all...

It's funny because it's true...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgPHPxQWI_Y

It may be highly endemic for Lyme, but I still rep the Cape with pride.

Cold called

Last night, in a room full of some of the brightest minds in the country -- future attorneys at a top ten law school -- I was, for the first time ever, cold called by a law professor. Actually, it was by two law professors and one law professor's wife.

Mainly it was just friendly banter (ordinarily I'd just refer to it as conversation, but I'm not sure lawyers do that exactly), though I did have to give a "fun fact" about myself in front of the whole room! I admit that the topic I chose was not law, precisely, but it was politics -- and I had done my reading ahead of time, so I knew what I was getting into before I opened my mouth, and I did it anyway.

I have to say, it was sort of a thrilling experience. True, I have a new and deep fear of what being a 1L would be like if I went down that road (they expect you to actually answer the question and they NOTICE if you don't!), but I was genuinely impressed by the kindness, intellect, and overall excellence surrounding me... even if I did wake up sweating in the middle of the night afterward thinking "oh no, what if I didn't do well enough!?"... and I'm not even being graded.

Yes, there were some tough questions, such as when I had to explain WHY I'm a Republican (the bf's LRW professor pinned me pretty effectively, though I thought I answered her well enough), and I did accidentally spend longer than I intended to talking to our host -- a professor of criminal law who shares one of my health complications (big no-no, I should have mingled so that I wouldn't monopolize his time), but he was very kind, interesting, informative, and gave me a ray of hope that even if I don't recover my vision, I can still do whatever I want with my life.

I also appreciated how many of my boyfriend's section-mates went out of their way to acknowledge me. They are all really good people. They probably all think I'm insane (which, of course, is true), but seeing them all last night was a lot of fun.

As an undergrad, my college's informal motto was "At Mary Baldwin, we work hard AND we play hard!" It was repeated often by our former president and all of my classmates. Here in Charlottesville, no one says it because they don't have to: they live it.

I raise my glass to all the delights of last night's gathering: to great professors, great minds, and great hearts.

She might have a career playing for the Dodgers if we lose this election...

Yet Gov. Sarah Palin did, truly, hold her own in last night's one and only VP debate. Sure, they both deflected, and she did a bit more than Biden did -- but any politician worth her/his salt (or any of us who have stumped on behalf of a candidate -- like me, for instance) knows how to do that. In the age of CNN, MSNBC, blogs, video trackers (macaca, anyone?), and all that jazz, it is better to dodge a question than to create a hideous and bloody sound byte that will replay over and over and over. This is simply something that any decent political consultant should accept as fact. They pay us to tell them how to win. We tell them that if they don't know or have a tough time speaking off the cuff that they should try to avoid it -- change the subject to what YOU want to talk about, forget the question, and hope most viewers didn't mind, liked what you said, or were able to determine the message of your campaign. It's that simple.

*****

The Wall Street woes have been an October surprise to remember (and I always love to tune in the Thursday before Election Day to see if anyone drops a bomb to see if the other side can manage to scramble and respond), but we're holding up OK. Barack Obama is a compelling, intruiging candidate. He's just also a bleeding heart liberal. His voting record is 99% liberal. That's all I need to know as a pragmatic voter. He has not changed anything during his brief tenure in the US Senate. He has towed the party line consistently. Why would I believe that he will bring something different to the White House? Or, in a better question... why would you?