Bet y'all didn't know that hypoglycemia can lead to the funnies. (I'm pretty good at putting in those non-sequitur-looking openers that turn out not to be non sequiturs at all.)So, for those of you who have been playing the home game, reading along here, or reading along on the techops boards, Patrick's mother's bone marrow transplant is tomorrow. Today is her last day of chemo prior to the transplant itself. Patrick's in Houston, the fam's all rallied and everything's as ready to go as it's gonna get.

I knew things were a bit more serious than my original reckoning when I realized that over half of the skin of my bottom lip had come off in a single piece. Stupid, stupid girl; what in the previous twenty-four hours had failed to convince me that I'd had a major lapse in self-control? Did the insomnia and the twenty-four hours of shakes not serve as warning enough?

Stupid, stupid girl.

Day two of caffeine withdrawal. On the phone last night, in the middle of something that smelled halfway between chastisement and argument, I admitted to the voice on the other end of the phone that I should probably start treating caffeine with the same wary respect that most people give to alcohol.

My thoughts this week have been dark ones. My frustration with suddenly losing my job has been compounded with my frustration about my poor health since late November / early December.

It's pointless to rehash things that cannot be undone or changed. But I have spent a lot of time, especially in this past week, mulling over some things. We have a euphemism here in the States that we call "a moment of clarity."

Mine, I think, came in the midst of a 101-degree fever while lying in a hospital room. It consisted of a very simple thought that has stayed in my waking hours and my dreams ever since that moment:"If you do not find the courage to change your life, you will die before your thirty-fifth birthday."

I've only mentioned this to one person so far. It troubled me enough that I held it to myself for a while, trying to understand, trying not to let on to other people that something had happened that both confused and frightened me.

Hi. My name is Amy, and I seem to have a major problem staying well this winter.

I appear to have caught the same stomach bug that Heather caught. So much for my promise of a Wednesday night update—I spent most of Wednesday night praying to the porcelain god. It got bad enough (fever of 101, bits of blood coming up) that we got to make an emergency visit to the hospital in the wee hours of Thursday morning.

We got there, and they did some tests on me to determine how dehydrated I was. When lying down, my heart rate was very fast and my blood pressure was around 110/80. When I stood up, my heart rate accelerated even more (to somewhere around 135 bpm?), but my blood pressure dropped to 90/60.The end result: IV time.

I really shouldn't have taken that nap earlier this evening, but it felt wonderful to lie on the couch with the cats stretched out on me and drift quietly to sleep while Jeff was watching Iron Chef. I vaguely remember opening my eyes once and seeing something about an unusual preparation of fried rice, and then sliding softly back into sleep.

This was a good thing; I think I need the rest. My concern over my general health is starting to nibble at me a bit. First, a serious bout of stomach flu and strep throat within a six-week period, and now a week after finishing up my medication to treat strep, I appear to be coming down with a cold.I rummaged through our horrendously messy kitchen table this evening and found the cold medicine Jeff bought a few weeks ago. It seems to be helping a bit. If nothing else, it will probably help me sleep—once I get sleepy, that is. My nap has thrown my internal clock for a bit of a loop.

A joyous season to you, reader. It's good to be home.

I woke up this morning with a maddening snippet of lyric in my head. Somewhere in the last dream I had before wakening, I heard the song phrase, "Every time you walk into the room…" Some quick googling told me that what I was hearing in my head was a snippet of the chorus from Stevie Nicks' "Rooms On Fire."