It's been a while, huh?

Excuses, excuses. I've been down for the count for over a week now with pleurisy brought on by my Ellen DeGeneres cold from three or four weeks ago. It's been very painful. I've been living on various OTC pain relievers and toying with the idea of seeing a doctor, but every day I think "If I'm not better by THEN I'm calling the doctor" I feel better on the target day and put it off.

New York was fun, as always. Everyone connected with the show--cast, crew and producers--are really nice people; very sweet and down to earth. my brother and his partner came up to Mom and Dad's for Thanksgiving, but my husband and I went up to see his parents and missed everyone.

My inlaws are bummed because their cat died suddenly last week. He asked to go out on the porch one evening, they let him out, and when they called him in a half hour later he was lying in his chair dead. He was an ENORMOUS cat, so probably a heart attack. So now I worry about Ratty, who is even bigger. I think Ratty is a coon cat, though, so he's on the big side to begin with, but he has gotten FAT since he's taken up with us. I've put him on diet cat food, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Yesterday (the 25th) was also my husband's 44th birthday. Didn't really do anything for him, not even a card. I've been too sick. I vowed if I didn't feel better by today I'd go to the doctor, so true to form I feel better this morning. Pfft! It's still there, but it doesn't hurt so much.

I've been reading LMA's biography (by Stern) and it's near the end and getting depressing. She had typhoid when she was an Army nurse during the Civil War and they treated her with mercury. So she spent pretty much the rest of her short life in pain, searching for a cure among the various quack practices of the 1880s. (If you know anything about Dr. Kellogg's spa and stuff like that (read or see "The Road to Wellville"), you know what she was going through.) Turkish baths, various electrical and/or mechanical devices, various homeopathic substances, the Christian Scientist's "mind cure", et al. Not to say that some of these things may or may not be valid, only that she was searching more and more desperately for a cure as the years went on--she was taking opiates so she could sleep at night--and never found it. It's not the sort of thing you want to read when you yourself are sick and in pain. The sheer hopelessness as she went from one to another is very sad and depressing.

Pleurisy isn't so serious--at least if, like me, you're not running a fever so you don't have an infection--but it is painful and it does take the wind out of your sails, both literally (it's harder to breathe) and figuratively (the whole thing utterly EXHAUSTS you). So I probably shouldn't be reading about hopeless people right now. I keep putting off going to the doctor, but this pleurisy thing keeps lingering. I think, man, what did people do in LMA's time? Before real doctors and real antibiotics and real pain relievers other than opium or morphine? The final twenty years or so of her life must have been just absolutely miserable....

Yay! What a happy entry! Y'all come back now, hear?

Mojo