Now, we wait.

Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved.

Yesterday's process of inflating the bladder and then filling the pipe reservoir with water to see what happens.

The good news is that the water did not go down yesterday, and so he cut further down the pipe, replaced everything, and bonded and sealed it all properly. Now, we wait . . . and we run up a hell of an electric bill drying everything out. We're going to have place a space heater in there and run it almost constantly to dry the walls out, and it's going to take a lot of time, because we have to shoot the hot air down the opening, the entire width of the house. If — and it's a big if, but IF — it dries out the wall beneath and behind the kitchen sink, then we'll know that that stain was simply a matter from this massive leak migrating all the down the whole north side of the house, where all the piping is. If it doesn't, then we've got a much bigger problem, because it means they'll have to open up the kitchen wall, too. And then I'll lose access not simply to the washing machine, as with this room, but to the whole kitchen sink and the room's water source.

One thing about it gives me hope: In the bathroom (between the utility room and the kitchen), the sink has been a problem the last couple of weeks, running water pooling high in it and then draining only very slowly after it's shut off. Liquid Plumbr didn't help. But once he finished up yesterday? The water's going down like a charm. So my guess is that the problems with the washer backflow, the bathroom sink, and the septic system were ALL traceable directly to this mess. (And just by the way, pretty much everything was misinstalled. This wasn't incompetence, although there's clearly plenty of that, too, in the sense of not giving a shit; this was deliberate.) As for the rest of it, we won't know for weeks, because of the dry-out time involved, which works for the guys, because they have other jobs going right now. So I have no idea yet what this is going to set us back, even if it's limited only to this room; it'll be expensive, but not nearly as ghastly as it will be if we still wind up having to tear the whole wall out from both sides and excavate.

Everything's late today because I had a doctor's appointment this morning, and while nothing's resolved there, we've at least made some changes. She did prescribe the one maintenance inhaler that does not contain a known allergen for me, and we wait3ed around long enough to pick it up, so I've already had my first dose. I actually do feel a little better breathing-wise already, which is an indicator of how bad things have been, because normally, the difference is so gradual as to be unnoticeable in real time; you simply realize one day that you're not laboring so hard to breathe (and in my case, not waking up having stopped breathing altogether). No surprise to me; my blood pressure was (for me) sky-high when I got there, and it was entirely because my breathing was so labored. Now, we wait on that front, too, because it took two or three months of the Q-var for the hives to develop. I'm glad to have a possible solution again, but the cost is . . . yeesh. Three hundred and fifty bucks per. So we got home a lot lighter in the wallet.

As far as the new mass in my neck goes, she did a little digging while I was there, and is doing some more by way of consulting with a couple of other specialists. The way it's appeared so suddenly, after the very divergent biopsy results, is worrisome. But there is also a particular dynamic seen with this kind of tumor (assuming the second path is correct and it's an adenoma and not a carcinoma) in which the method of obtaining the cells sometimes grabs such a disproportionate number of the Hürthle cells that it indicates fast growth (i.e., metastasis) when in fact it's just oversampling. That's what we're hoping happened with me. Add to that the fact that in some small population of women, the thyroid is hypersensitive and massively reactive (not "overactive," which refers to thyroid function, and mine is normal, but reactive, meaning reacting to external or environmental influences — among them, say, allergens and toxic mists and asthma), and it is possible for the body to respond buy producing these masses that essentially are nothing and mean nothing save the fact that that organ is reacting to something. Think of it like fibrocystic masses: They're not cancerous, they're just painful and in the way. That may be what this turns out to be. 

And, of course, it may not. They may tell her to schedule me for yet another biopsy (please, no). So, again, we wait.

Anyway. $350 a month for freaking inhaler, on top of all the expense of this mess in the walls, and on top of whatever else they schedule for me next means that we need to make sales. Consistently. A lot of them. Wings has a new and fabulous belt in the works; he also has several necklaces in the works, two that belong to the new bead collection (and some earrings to coordinate) and two of his more traditional styles. I'll post them as they drop, and the beadwork ones may drop yet today, although we got home so late that that's not a given. But please share them all as they go up on the site, and please share the site link daily. Because sales are the only way we're getting through this.

P.S. I am so far behind now that I'm never going to catch up. But I have to try, so don't expect to see much of me beyond these posts.



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.