more ironic

In the midst of being somewhat of an insomniac tonight, I ironically am craving coffee. I used to drink mochas when stressed because of the oddly calming effect it would have on me. Now it probably wouldn’t be a great idea to pump caffeine into my system anymore.

Tomorrow’s my 4-hour video EEG at Stanford and I am hoping that this test finally shows something useful. I am tired of being poked and prodded and not having them find anything when clearly, something is weirdly wrong with my body, as demonstrated most clearly when my reflexes are tested with tuning forks and I spasm strongly enough to send them flying across the room. I am tired of doctors using words like “remarkable” and “fascinating” to describe me because I’m a patient with shiny new symptoms the likes of which they haven’t witnessed, and yet not following up to test me for anything out of the generic path. I’d like to somehow give life the finger right now just for kicking my ass so much. Given all that’s happened in the last almost four months, I think I’m perfectly justified in having an immature and raw angry moment in which I turn to the universe and say: cunt.

In upgrading my blog from Wordpress 2.2.1 to 2.3.2 (I may have been a bit behind), I remembered why the process is such a pain in the ass. It’s not that the upgrade itself is difficult — it’s just that more often than not, something will go wrong while I’m trying to get the files from my computer to the server. For example, my FTP client will often freeze and die in between (and I’ve tried multiple ones with the same results). Today, however, my whole domain’s FTP connection went down in between, so the whole upgrade stretched out over two hours when the actual work lasted perhaps five to ten minutes. Nonetheless, I was successful in the end…or so I hope, but feel free to report any possible errors/general wonkyness you might run across!

As for things that I’d been working on over winter break, the poetry section got a facelift and a proper name of its own: Poetica. Sadly, it does not have any new pieces added yet. I finally got the portfolio up as well, although it already has a layout of its own I will be working on to turn it into a full-fledged subsection of the site. I also drew up a new look for the blog, only to scrap it in favor of trying to push myself more design-wise. So in other words, all this time at home has at least been inspiring some site productivity and design!

When I take it easy, my body’s happy but I get restless. When I try to push myself just a bit, I’m happier as a person but my body definitely gets angry.

Yesterday was the first day of the spring semester. I’d been trying to slowly extend the number of hours I’ve been out and about per day (even returning to work for a few hours last week) so that school wouldn’t be overwhelming, but it was too much anyway. It’s frustrating because regression quickly beats out progression, and while I may (mostly) have patience for others, I seem to be running short of it for myself.

The neurologist’s secretary refused to ask the doctor about writing me a note for my professors. “I don’t think we ought to do that sort of thing,” she sniffed, as if I was asking her to type up a note condoning my consumption of alcohol during class rather than “She has a condition which may cause her to miss classes on occasion.”

I guess trying to expect myself to be normal again before even being diagnosed is unrealistic, but I felt the need to experiment with “mind over matter” anyway, as I absolutely refuse to let this condition define me. I don’t want to be The Sick Girl, I want to be the girl who does this, this, and this, but happens to be sick. I would like to be more than I am right now.

Wish me luck that the new general physician I’m seeing tomorrow (since my previous new GP retired his practice unexpectedly) will actually look into my condition rather than brushing it off like just about every other doctor? I feel like I’m playing the doctor lottery now with the number of medical professionals I’ve seen in the last nearly four months.