Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
—Naomi Shihab Nye

Whoa

For the first time ever in my entire LIFE I am happy that Spring Break is OVER.  If that doesn't clue you in to what a sopping mess this last week has been, I don't know what will!  Having dealt with things like:

• horse issues that involved a retained molar that abscessed out (the Dutch filly is a saint, and I am so happy that she is going to be my riding partner in a few years!)
• confronting dentists' ridiculous policies designed to terrify children
• a shouting match to beat all shouting matches
• my order of baby chickies arriving over 75% dead (hatchery is reshipping the entire order at no cost...which is why I love them)
• crampy Lyme fingers

I was delighted to be able to close the door on everyone else's life yesterday and just deal with my own drama.  I managed to clean stuff, take a walk on foot with two of my girls (they were EXCITED, ZOMG) and little E., and dig out my old Sega Genesis and N64 for some old skool game relief.  And I found my clippers, which have been missing for almost two years (yeah....).

Now if only my pharm would just go learn itself, I would be golden. 

A Moment or Two of Silence

Due to various issues with Lyme and family, I am going to not write for some time.  I will probably be back after the Kill 3 exam (Path, Pharm, Immuno).

and it all went bad

Just like that.

In which I made an A and fell off the map for 3 days

Friday's Phys exam was an A.  And I think I am just now awake.  Now since it is after 1 am and I see my vet in a few some hours, I need to sleep.  Without zombie nightmares, k thanx.

Flagyl, the Magic Weight Loss/Endless Sleep Pill

There, I said it.  That chalky white nastiness that I am taking once a day has so totally killed my appetite that weight has been disappearing.  My mother came by the other day and complained about feeling my shoulder blades.  My awesome deerskin chaps zip up without a problem.  My breeches are too bleeping big. 

The stuff gives a Herx like no other.  Let me give you a symptom list:
paresthesias...on my arms and legs, sometimes as if there is some invisible mini person pricking me with a pin, othertimes as if there is a bug crawling on me
depression...big, black and honkingly nasty
evil attitude...I blame this one mostly on the doxy, dude
vertigo...this Herx is making me standing up a bad idea.  I was debating about going to my therapist appt and then my ECE....and then I stood up (bad idea).  The room started spinning, I crawled back into the covers on the couch, and started making alternative plans for the day (who to call, how to get to the rest room, etc.)
and did I mention the no appetite?  yeah.  none. 
comatose fatigue...I have literally slept from 330 pm Monday till 2 or 3 pm this afternoon.  Mike was able to get me up a couple of times to eat, go to the bathroom, and to give me my shot (which to add insult to injury, hurt bad).  Still.  That is ridiculous. 

But after every Herx comes an improvement in function.  And given that I clouted the Behavioral Med exam on Monday, and barely missed the minimum grade on the Pharm exam (we are talking like two questions) due to MATH (normally my beloved little pet, but when I am sick, always a downfall), I think the resolution of this baby will lead to better brain times and please God some riding. 

On the horse front, my Holsteiner mysteriously cut her leg.  The turnout is mud, mud, mud, just a perfect germy paradise.  I found I have wrapping skills out the wazoo, because I can wrap good while being woozy.  And the ding-dong Trak mare's gaskin injury is acting up--she is now on stall rest.  I am going to drop by vet's tomorrow for abx for the two of them, and may have the vet come out on Monday to look at them (until then it's wraps for the two of them. Be still my heart.)

Belles, the Trak, has discovered the joys of Uncle Jimmy's Hangin Balls.  She is covered in goo.  That is one grooming catastrophe I am just not going to deal with right now...especially since I have my final physiology exam on Friday. 

Girlfriend

The amazing footless wonder. 
Alternative title: why my old chickencoop sucks in cold weather.
Or: why young chickens are stoopid, and get their feet wet in like zero degrees, and stand out in the snow until they get psycho frostbite all over their feet, and their feet like die and fall off, and I so don't need pet chicken number 4, but when you have that many, what does another matter? 

I need to make a prize for run-on sentences and award it to myself.  'Cause despite my bacc'l degree in English, I can still writes myself an awesome one. 

Anyway.  Girlfriend's main priority today is keeping me company while I study for the 3 exams that separate me from official I-am-staying-home-all-week, also known as Spring Break for other students that do not have Lyme. 

But...on the HARDEST exam of year one, the monstrous renal physiology exam, I made an 85%.  That is a B enroute to an A, fellow peeps.  A fabulous B.  A pimptastic B. 

And after that score, I honestly did not give a flying patootie that I was sick for the balance of the week.  Who cares if my Tuesday was Migraine Day, that Wednesday was Migraine Hangover+Flagyl Issues Two'fer instead of Hump Day, that my should have been humdrum Thursday with annoying OPP checkout turned into Baby Horse was colicky, I ate nothing until 7 pm, got sick and sniffly in lab (due in large part, I think, to prof getting upset that I was describing cranial flexion as expansion instead of lengthening towards the feet...welllll, there is no huge expansion in stride length combined with a power increase, so it ain't a lengthening in my book, thanx), and wanted to jump off a bridge day? 

Nah. Baby Horse was ok, and I made an 85 on the hardest exam of first year. 

And only 3 exams are between me and a week of being sick with no responsibilities.  Yes. 

27 hours of sick (be forewarned...depressing!)

Unfortunately, that was not a typo.  27 hours of sick is exactly that: from 4 pm yesterday when I crawled into bed fully dressed to 7 pm tonight when I finally managed to untangle myself from the heated blanket on the couch.  There were some moments when I felt ok--somehow I made it to the couch from the bed in order to eat some chickens wings, for example--but there were a lot of zomg I am going to fall the *beep* over!!! when ever I tried to stand up.  (And if you have never experienced those moments when you are afraid you cannot stand because your legs are buckling under you, well, I admit to being kind of jeaulous.  Because they are not fun.)

Luckily, luckily, I had been working like a crazy person on studying.  I missed a required lab, but am going to see if I can get it excused becaues of the Lyme-wakeup-symptoms. Losing an 8 hour shift of homework sucks, royally, but I may be able to crawl out of it, as I have being working relentlessly. 

The weather has been ridiculously beautiful here, and I am stuck inside unable to do anything.  And it sucks.  Sucks because I want to go outside.  Sucks because I know I only have X amount of energy, and it has to be spent studying. 

And it is not fun to be studying exercise physiology, and being reminded of all the dreams that I have lost because of this Lyme beast--of running, biking, swimming, not to mention riding...all of the things that I felt defined me.  I am not going to go on in this vein, because I have a chunk of studying still to go and am making myself even more peeved. 

But damn.  Lyme sucks.