Zone of Truth

Inspirational song: Tell Me Lies (Fleetwood Mac)

It was Wednesday game night, and it was chaos. When last we left our party, two weeks ago, my compatriots had thrown a big monkey wrench into the game master's plans. We had been given lodging, with food and the first luxury baths we had had access to since the game began. We were expected to refresh ourselves and then join the leaders of the city at a formal dinner. Instead, three of the guys went out and tried to roam the streets, and had a hostile encounter with city guards. Another party member and I ran outside, but she and I were suddenly unable to move at all, much less defend our cohorts. This is where we left off two weeks ago, and when we started tonight, we had to find a quick face-saving way to de-escalate the situation. 

We managed to get everyone to ease off, and mostly got ourselves prettied up for dinner. The meal was set up in an elaborate garden that sounded like it belonged in a fancy Brentwood estate, with fruit trees, flowers, and multiple pools. Our table was set on a platform in the middle of one of the pools. Once our hosts arrived, conversation was stilted and distrustful. Everyone was still on high alert from previous interactions. And then one of our magic users created a "zone of truth," but his spell went wild and encompassed the entire table, even affecting the staff serving the meal. Everyone spilled their secrets, and nothing was held back. This was not the wisest course of action for any of us. At least now we kind of know everything, but then the same can be said of our adversaries.

So now we are going into a summer hiatus from this campaign, while the GM catches his written plans up to where we are in his world. He said he has been flying by the seat of his pants for months, as we blew past what he had pre-written. Also, in real life it is high build season at his mountain cabin, so he will have some alone time to dream up new scenarios for us to totally screw up, much as we did tonight.

Just Breathe

Inspirational song: Skateaway (Dire Straits)

Round two of testing was today. It was not any easier than yesterday's version. In fact, I've had lingering effects that I distinctly do not appreciate. This afternoon's fun was a pulmonary function test. I got to sit in a plexiglass chamber and breathe into a tube, with a clamp on my nose, for a few different evaluations. I can't remember everything I saw on the computer screen as the tech ran me through it, but I did learn quickly where to look for baseline numbers for their optimal reference range, my values, and the percentage of where I fall against that range. I believe my percentages were between 70 and 90 of normal/optimal. This is the part I didn't memorize, so those are just guesses. They put a test result in my portal, but my phone can't open the TIF file (and I'm too computer ignorant to know why). About halfway through, they made me take albuterol on a nebulizer, and at the end, i repeated the first set of tests, to see whether it helped. It changed it between 2 and 5 percent, which doesn't seem valuable to me. Not enough to justify how utterly crappy albuterol makes me feel. I was jittery and shaky at first, and uncomfortably vacant-brained on the way home. I stopped in to cuddle my Grumpus, and I felt that total body let-down as I came off the med, barely able to enjoy grandbaby time. It's awful. If the pulmonologist tries to suggest I take albuterol regularly, I will politely but firmly decline.

Before I left, I asked them about the chest x-ray the doc had also ordered, and was someone supposed to have called me to schedule it. I never got an answer to the direct question, but they did say stick around after the PFT and we will get it done. It was fast, and by the time I had changed back into my clothes (didn't think ahead to wear no metal) the tech asked me if I wanted to see the images. Of course! It was wild, being able to see clearly the elevated diaphragm on the side view, as well as the straight on shot. The right side is still pushed halfway up, even though I had taken in a big (for me) breath and held it both times. I'll be curious what the doc will say in response to my question I asked him a month ago, "Is it my imagination, or is it getting worse?"

Tomorrow is my down day, with only out of town company, meal prep, shopping for a replacement guest bed, and D&D. Easy, right? 

Next Round of Tests

Inspirational song: The Needle and the Damage Done (Neil Young)

I already knew this week was packed with medical stuff--three tests and one regular quarterly specialist visit. Then BAM! First one out of the gate added a whole new set of complications. More tests. More stuff to discuss with the same specialist. I'm not ready to panic or anything, but I am not looking forward to the particular test ordered.

Two and a half years ago, not long before I discovered the lump that indicated how far my cancer had developed undetected, I gave a friend of mine a ride to a breast biopsy. She doesn't handle outpatient procedures well, and needs more advanced sedation than they typically offer. (I took her for dental procedures twice for the same reason. She's kinda funny when she's loopy like that, and she knows I am amused by it.) I had never heard of the kind of biopsy she had. It never occurred to me such a thing existed. She had to lie face down on a table, propped on wedges that stopped at the rib cage, and continued after a gap to support the head. One's breasts then dangle into the gap, and are clamped similar to a mammogram. Then some kind of imaging (MRI, x-ray, etc) is used to guide a needle into the area of suspicion for the biopsy. I remember hearing all of this and thinking, holy crap, I am so glad I don't have to go through this. (Two months later, I was having an MRI in basically the same position, without the clamps or needles, to make sure the one kidney bean-sized tumor was all I had.)

My annual diagnostic mammogram was this morning. I expected it to be pretty easy. Yeah, sure. That's my luck. The half breast is fine. Scarring where they expect it. Nothing else of note. The tender area where underwires irritated me before I threw out all underwire bras seems to be just where a raft of lymph nodes are, and while normal, they just happen to be sensitive. But on the whole breast, there is something new. There is a series of small calcifications, and they want to get in there and check it out. Considering how unimpressed the specialists were with my thyroid and its calcified nodules, just little flecks of calcium in fatty tissue doesn't scare me much. Lying in the dangle position, waiting for a needle on the other hand...

I needed to get my mind off of it all, so I invited myself on the Mr's loop-around-Denver sort of errands. We stayed gone nearly all day, and I was pleasantly distracted. By the time we got home, storms had rolled in from the west, completely skipping our neighborhood, but dropping a little tornado just over the Weld County line. I was so tired I missed all the hullabaloo, not knowing about it until an hour later when I checked social media. Darn.

Whatever Works

Inspirational song: Killing Moon (Echo & the Bunnymen)

Have you ever been so overwhelmed by inexplicable tension to the point you soothe yourself with a distraction that shouldn't be the right answer, but somehow is? I was agitated today, during the moments I wasn't still wiped out from trying to cram too much activity in last week, and I found myself listening to a true crime podcast for five whole hours. Maybe giggling over horrible things people have done to each other isn't necessarily the proper response, but it took my mind off of current events just as well as watching animal videos usually do. And hey, now I know (in theory) that dissolving a body in a strong concentration of sulfuric acid mostly works, but the reason burning isn't a good DIY method is because bodies are primarily water. Never thought about that before. Maybe I ought stick to watching that rug cleaning guy when I'm stressed, instead of choosing creepy, dark podcasts.

Next week is going to be busy as heck for me. I hope I remember to pause, take some pictures, and pick out details to make good posts. I was too busy listening to other people's misdeeds to get into any good or bad trouble for myself today. I went digging through my photos, to see whether anything recent would work for today, and found a screenshot I had taken of my work email inbox. I had sent it to my nuclear family, to show them just how nuts the real estate market is these days. There was a headline today saying the average -- average!-- home in Denver just hit $700,000 for the first time. Man, if I had a few more active clients, I would be making a killing in this market. Unfortunately, my timing sucks for catching those few friends who can buy or sell at the moment they are looking to do it. It is getting better, but maybe it is time to be more vocal about it, so those folks think of me when they need an agent. 

Couplet

Inspirational song: How Soon Is Now? (The Smiths)

There is no real reason the last two weeks should feel like a cohesive unit, but they do in my head. The only discernable explanation I can come up with was it was two weeks since my last massage, that short one focusing on just arms and legs, and I had a normal one today. But somehow I feel like I've just finished something like a summer camp or training program. Nothing particular changes tomorrow, to make it different from today. So why do I feel like I just completed a task?

Between the stomach bug I had last week, and the sun exposure and overextension of my capacities, I think the best way to rest up and treat tomorrow as the start of a new adventure would be to quit the field early now, and not worry about my subject matter. I can find new tales to tell in future posts. For now, my pillows are beckoning.

Fan

Inspirational song: King of Sunset Town (Marillion)

Well, poop. The warm weather caught up to us. The 14-day forecast is hot all the way through. And here we haven't prepared the whole house fan for the season yet. I'm home alone for one more night, so maybe (maybe) by Sunday morning the man will be willing to climb up into the attic and set us up. 

It was supposed to be a nice quiet few days while the man was up at his cabin for the first multiple overnights trip. He took the two older dogs with him, and loaded up food and supplies for the first half of the build season. For the most part, I'm enjoying the stillness, or as still as it can be with a giant puppy woofing at the back door, because she just knows the west side neighbors have their grandkids playing in their yard. But then I took two solo babysitting assignments, one at her place, and one at mine. I had to burn energy to clean the floor, the whole floor, so she wasn't tromping through the dried mud that Saoirse brings in every day. I was already running on fumes when she arrived this afternoon. She wasn't difficult, until the very end, when she and I both ran out of energy. Mine manifested as listlessness. Hers as wiggling and whining. But boy, did she light up when she saw her parents walk up to take her home.

I tested that baby out, to see whether she will survive trips to the homeland (the American south). For dinner I made homemade mac and cheese and fried okra. She did okay with my mac and cheese. It's made with rice pasta and arrowroot thickener in the cheese sauce, so I didn't expect her to take to it immediately. But she thought that fried okra (not coated at all) was pretty special. She passed my test. This baby is a keeper.

Sun Fatigue

Inspirational song: Waiting for the Sun to Shine (John Wesley)

No matter how well I think I'm doing, how much good my doctors are doing for me, it just takes a couple sunny days in a row to ruin my winning streak. We got a huge UV exposure yesterday on Trail Ridge Road, and then I got a second dose going to Fort Collins this morning. I know most of you love warm sunny days, but wow, is it hard for me to push through that much light. I need to race through this night's post and hit the hay.

We had our second in-person sales meeting. There was a 50% increase in attendance. Meaning one other agent besides me showed up, to join the boss. The others were on Zoom still. We made a point of talking about how important it is to carve out this time each month to look each other in the eyes, and re-center our minds on work. There were other very interesting topics discussed, but I'm going to wait to cover those when I see how they pan out. 

I had a surprise visit with the baby tonight. Her parents needed to do yardwork, so she and I hung out and watched food prep videos. I arrived right after she had her first experience in a backyard pool. She absolutely loved it, even with cold water. She walked all around her little living room play area. Full-blown toddler action. It is awesome.