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Cordelia’s dental appointment went well, but we spent $30 on cab fare. I’ve got to get back to being able to take the bus for things like that. I finally remembered to ask Cordelia if she’s the one who’s been using my Gel-cam (extra strong fluoride gel for after brushing and flossing. I use it to decrease pain from sensitivity), and she said she had been. That’s not a terrible thing, but it’s a lot more expensive than the fluoride rinse she had been using. Gel-cam is about $20 for a tube, and one tube, used once a day, lasts about three months. The hygienist gave her a sample of another fluoride rinse, but Cordelia ended up hating it.

I spent most of Cordelia’s appointment fairly uncomfortable. It reached a point where all I wanted to do was to massage my breast in hopes of easing the itching.

Naturally, the radiation oncology folks called our home number while Cordelia and I were out. I called back immediately, but the person I needed to talk to wasn’t there. One of the nurses sent me a message asking me to take pictures of my skin in the affected areas and to send those to her. Unfortunately, the patient portal aborts uploads if they take more than twenty seconds, so I wasn’t able to do that then.

About 5:00, the resident called and gave me her email address, so I sent five pictures. I don’t think they’re going to tell her anything. The skin looks great. It’s just that it itches horribly. She seemed confused by that and told me that I shouldn’t be getting itching this long after treatment. No one has gotten back to me today so far.

But, you know, a lot of the stuff I found online about burns says that itching isn’t rare several weeks after the burn starts to heal. My last radiation treatment was 21 November. That’s not all that long ago. I didn’t find any sites that I recognized as clearly authoritative and trustworthy, but enough different sites said it that I think there’s something in it. (I look first for .gov and .edu sites and then for sites from organizations I recognize as having a good reputation. The best I found was a University of Maryland page talking about itching in pediatric burn patients.)

I didn’t end up getting anything done yesterday but the dental appointment. Cordelia doesn’t want to help me out today, but I think I’m going to have to insist. She’s perfectly capable of taking turns with me to stir the rice porridge, for example, and she needs to practice wrapping presents. I’m not great at that last myself, so maybe, if we work together, she’ll feel less intimidated by the prospect. I also want her to help with the bacon wrapped dates by handing me dates one at a time. That way, we won’t have to throw out the leftover dates due to raw bacon contamination.

I don’t think we’re actually going to have anything at all to put in our stockings this year. Scott hasn’t done that shopping, and I don’t see it happening tonight or tomorrow. We have three little bags of chocolates which will come out to about eight each and is so little that I’m not sure it’s worth putting them in the stockings. Scott always way underestimates how big the stockings are and overestimates what’s in each bag of candy he buys. That’s why I’m usually in charge of deciding how much candy to buy.

Scott’s kidney stone still hasn’t passed. His primary care doctor wants him to see a urologist, but, given the timing, I think the stone pretty much has to pass before he’s likely to get an appointment. I don’t know how far out urologists schedule, but the next week and a half is pretty much a write off for any sort of appointment. Also, getting an appointment relies on Scott having time to call to set one up in between 9:00 and 4:30 today.

Scott says that right now it’s pressure more than pain, but I’m concerned because he was pretty sure that the dratted thing was sitting midway between his kidney and his bladder last night and not moving. That seems like a really, really bad place for it to take up residence.

I want to buy a gift card for the friend who took Scott to the ER and then stayed with him. Right now, I’m leaning toward some sort of pet supply thing. I know the family owns three large dogs and is fostering a fourth, smaller dog. If I knew what sort of places she and her husband liked to eat, I’d go for a card for that, but this will, at least, be useful.

I’m also trying to decide what to get the woman who brought us dinner every Monday for a month. I know that she likes camping and hiking and the outdoors in general, but I don’t know where she prefers to buy supplies. There are a couple of stores around here that sell that sort of thing, and I don’t know if she has a preference. I may end up with REI simply because that’s the easier of the two to buy a card from online.

We still haven’t told Scott’s family that I might not make it to some parts (or all) of the Christmas celebrations. Scott’s parents know that I really can’t bear wearing anything on my upper body right now, but I don’t know that they’ve connected that to the notion that going to church with them would not be something I’d want to do. I think it’s incomprehensible to them in the same way that me not wanting to go to church in general because of agoraphobia is incomprehensible.

(no subject)

Oh, hurrah. I’m developing a headache. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m tired (I haven’t been sleeping well for days) and so needs food and caffeine, given that a nap is not an option, or if it’s because I’m stressing out horribly which would need Ativan. I don’t think that doing both would be a good idea. Caffeine might well make me more stressed, and Ativan is likely to make me more tired. There’s no way to win.

It doesn’t help that it’s noon. Scott will be home around 4:00, and we might have people coming over tonight. I don’t have a lot of time to do all the things I need to do.

(no subject)

I know, I really do, that I made the right call not to try to do Yuletide this year. I’d have ended up defaulting, just as I expected. it just makes me sad that I didn’t write something this year. I mean, I’d have loved getting a story, too, loved it quite a bit, actually since that’s a generally really great thing, but the writing is the most important thing for me. I enjoy that handful of comments that tell me that I got the voice right (assuming I did) and the characters right (again, assuming I did).

I’ve been poking at the list of prompts, sorting out the ones I maybe could write. Later, I’ll pare it down to ones I actively want to write. I’m a little afraid that that last will leave me with pretty much nothing because writing still seems daunting at the moment. Really, really daunting. I have no idea how to start writing again.

Anyone have advice for techniques for getting those first few sentences/paragraphs written after a long period of stress and ill health? I’m hopeful that, if I can get started, even if it’s not with something that’s going to go somewhere, I’ll be more able to write other things. It might not work, but it might.

(no subject)

Scott is not working tomorrow. That means I actually have to decide whether or not I’m up to 8-10 hours away from home, without opportunity to put anything on my skin during that time. The radiation oncology people have not gotten back to me today, and, given the time now, I don’t expect they will at all which is fairly frustrating.

The usual way of things is for us to head up there some time between noon and 2:00. There’s generally game playing, and in the years when there’s snow, the kids sled. Well Cordelia often doesn’t because she wants to put on her dressy clothes before leaving home so as not have to mess with changing at her grandparents’ house.

There’s pizza for dinner, carryout, which is complicated incredibly by the various dietary restrictions and preferences. There are nine of us, and five of us have dietary restrictions that affect what we can have. Scott’s the only one for whom it’s potentially lethal, but we all have reason to be careful.

After the pizza (there may or may not be a salad, too), we have a birthday cake, complete with singing happy birthday to baby Jesus. Then the kids open a present apiece and empty the stockings their grandparents put together for them (these are normal knee socks, so they don’t hold as much as a traditional Christmas stocking).

Finally, we go to church. Where we go depends on timing. The main things are that we want to be home by 9:00 if it’s remotely possible and that it be a Methodist church. We have an hour long drive to get home. The reason for the deadline is that Scott and I still have 2-4 hours worth of stuff to do, depending on what’s been done in advance. For this year, nothing’s been done in advance. I don’t know where Scott’s been putting the presents for Cordelia (or if they’ve arrived or not. He’s been complaining that Amazon Prime isn’t getting Amazon to ship when they should and that things he needs have not yet arrived).

Going to church leaves me pretty wrecked due to the agoraphobia. I need to remember to take an Ativan and see if that helps at all. Maybe, if it does, I won’t end up crashing at 11 tomorrow night with a headache and leaving Scott with all of that work to do alone.