Red skies, and a quick summary of IT.

Photo copyright Aji, 2019;
all rights reserved.

Red skies. Sunset last night, after we were finally home and the chores were done. Today's been hectic, too; all the medical and other appointments and vehicle issues and dog problems this month have put us way behind on all kinds of things. Wings has an absolutely spectacular concha belt in the works, and he hasn't been able to get back into the studio to work on it for about two weeks now. The next two weeks are going to be a mess, too, mostly because of my medical stuff.

A quick summary, without going into two much gory detail: What we know so far is that I have at least one organ enlarged and at least one other with [at least] two masses on it.The former could turn out to be something very ordinary, although my labs are bizarrely normal for what would be expected for this scenario. The latter? That's the $64K question, or, rather, set of questions: Is it only the two? Is it only that organ, or are others implicated? Are they benign or not? Are they . . . something else (i.e., not tumors) that could be relatively manageable, or one of too many other possibilities that fall into the horror-show category? And to top it all off, neither of these seems to be implicated in whatever almost killed me twice 14+ months ago. IOW, these are entirely out of left field, something no one was looking for, much less expecting, and we still don't know what caused the other issues. The one thing that has changed is that, after more than half a century (thanks, Mom, for fucking that up for me my whole life), I finally have an asthma diagnosis, and a ludicrously expensive inhaler to go with it. Also a caution that it'll be about a month before we know whether it's working. 

Yesterday also included another very costly blood test, and there will be a lot more bloodwork with a bunch of different panels coming up next week. The following week, ultrasounds of the organs in question, with a look to see whether anything else in the general vicinity is a problem, too. And depending on what that shows, possibly more imaging, possibly more invasive measures, possibly really scary stuff . . . or possibly no more than we know now, which is not comforting, either.

We're focusing on the prospect of good news right now, because goddammit, I can't handle the thought of the really, really bad stuff, and I'm not going to handle it well at all if it turns out to be worst-case that could have been prevented had they done the right thing 14.5 months ago. But it's going to be a very expensive two weeks (hell, it's already very expensive, but it's going to get a lot worse), so since all this stuff is piling up fast, here are the links for sharing (or using, if anyone's so inclined:

• My Patreon, The Interstices (Writing Between Worlds) (and if you subscribe today you won't be billed until January 1st for December);
• Wings's site, for sales, with lots of new items posted;
• Wings's direct PayPal link;
• A way to buy me coffee (which actually goes to all of our medical bills, which continue to mount);
• Amazon wishlist, which mostly consists of animal and household stuff;
• Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. There are new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need to replace (either because the RV ruined it or because we gave it away when we had to downsize).

Good vibes for Raven are still welcome. I could use some, too.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.