We did labs again today (my new favorite Tuesday activity) and fortunately my bilirubin is still dropping. As slow as molasses… but at least it’s going down. On the other hand, my ALT went up again and my AST stayed elevated. I feel leaps and bounds better than I did a month ago, but honest to god I am so ready for this to be over.

The insider wants to go home. I miss my home. I miss my job (actually I’m still doing my job, but I miss the office). I know, I know, it’s sick, but you don’t understand. I. am. so. bored.

I work, I read books (although now I am out of Terry Pratchett—the Man again with the good taste—and my dad is pressing me to read Bible prophesy books, sigh) and I watch movies with my mom. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy I’m no longer sick and I have fun with my mom, but enough’s enough.

So how is the wide world of blogging doing? It’s now March (or will be in six minutes)… do tell how 2006 is treating you. I have decided that 2006 is going to be, shall we say, a bust year. The year I hope to forget. Now I think I have Grampa on this train too, so what about the rest of you? Good year so far, or bad?

Remember, today was Fat Tuesday. If you didn’t party, that’s not a good sign. 🙂

Hey cousin… happy birthday!

Wait.. are you forty yet? Aren’t you ALMOST forty? Good god when did we get this old?!

Can you read this? Is it too small? Is this better?

Wow… I can hear you yelling at me all the way over here. ::snicker::

Well my blood test results came in and I’m at an 8.8. Eh. We thought I’d be at a 4 by now. I can deal with an 8.

But… my ALT and AST (liver enzymes that say how healthy your liver is) are elevated again and my albumin (which says how much protein/food/bacon I’m getting) has dropped again. Bugger.

I’m less itchy and I’m off all the meds that made me wacky (like forgetting entire days I’ve lived in the past two months), and I’m really hoping that everything drops back to normal by next week.

Or they might make me get a liver biopsy. Argh.

Here’s a question I have: why do baby gates exist?

When my parents brought me home, we brought my two cats with us. It was a stipulation of mine. I couldn’t board them for an indefinite period of time, Izzie gets very freaked out when I’m not around and honestly, I wouldn’t feel right about leaving them with anyone. However, four cats? Insane. Especially considering two are 17 and two are three. Two are energetic and nosey and inquisitive and two only like to sleep and eat. There is hissing and growling and ridiculous posturing, so we tend to keep the cats separate unless we’re all out there, prepared to jump between them.

So my dad put up baby gates. I’m in the guest room downstairs, which is attached by a hallway to a laundry room and a bathroom. Right outside the hallway is the den and the kitchen, so the gates were set up at the juncture of the hallway and the den. I say “gates” because I was afraid that my cats would jump the one gate and get out, so my dad rigged up two, one on top of the other. It worked, but it really made for a hassle when any of us were trying to move in and out. My mom hit her head once, twice the top gate fell and then I knocked the top gate off the wall… so now we only have the one gate. It’s still very annoying though. You don’t realize how easy you move between rooms until you are forced to stop, open a gate, walk through and close a gate.

(My two have figured out that they can jump the one gate, and they do… but only when I’ve left them to go into the kitchen or upstairs to the bath.)

Anyway, my mom and I were talking and I said, “When I have kids, they’re just going to know that they can’t be in a certain room. No baby gates for me—I’d go nuts.”

Laughing, my mom replied, “Oh really? You’re just going to train them while they’re babies that they can’t play in the room with the knives in the drawer?”

“Yes. My kids will be brilliant and know that they aren’t supposed to… oh man, I’ve lost my mind.”

Laughter ensued all around.

When the Man called, I told him that eventually… and it might not be with him, so don’t everybody all freak out or read anything into this… I want to have kids. It’s a definite for me. Poor guy, he didn’t know what hit him.

I think I freaked him out… ::snicker::

They took me to another lab that uses the same machine as the one back home, and drew blood again.

14.6. It is dropping at two points a day. 🙂 🙂 At this rate, I will stop itching by next Friday. Woohoo!

The first set of results can in this morning, and my dad said “no way these are the numbers,” so they ran them again. Three times. And the numbers are? 18. 19. and 20. According to this lab, I dropped 11 or so points in a week… which is relatively unheard of.

And my albumen jumped to 3.6, from 2.8, another jump that has all the doctors stumped and surprised, and me ecstatic. If it continues to drop at this rate, I could be at a 9 by next week. WooHoo!

I’m less itchy, but I’m told I look the same—it’s a shade issue I suppose.

My dad had them run the tests several times, and tomorrow he wants the sample sent to the lab back home, to see what they come up with… see, to test for bilirubin in blood, they have to use a spectrometer test—i.e., shining light through the serum tail of the blood. Mine was so dark orange/yellow that they diluted it to get a better sample. And they were doing that back home as well, but the docs want to make sure all the machines give the same answer before giving me a definitive number.

For now, 19 and dropping. 🙂 That’s what I’m going with. And I’m ecstatic.

We’ll find out tomorrow the definites, but for now… we party. 🙂

I hope everyone has a lovely day. The Man sent red roses… and a teddy bear. (I think my mom is smitten.) 😉

Thanks baby.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

We cut my hair yesterday. I know that may not seem like a big deal, but it was to me. I had long hair… not super long, but about the middle of my back—maybe a little less—and I really liked my hair. Considering the circumstances I’m in right now (being yellow, itchy and drugged) I probably shouldn’t be vain and care about my hair. But I am and I do.

It’s not super short, but he took off eleven inches (my mom’s hairdresser came to the house) and now it hangs just below my chin. It doesn’t look terrible—everyone says I look like a pixie… but I don’t want to look like a damn pixie. Ever since I got sick I’ve been having trouble with it… it iched on my back and neck, and I was only washing it every three days or so and it was breaking where I kept pulling it up—another sign of the lack of protein. But still.

Oh and I also ate bacon yesterday… first time in years. The Man is happy. My dad’s forcing all kinds of things down me… I have to eat something every four hours, I have to eat a little bit of pure fat every hour or so, etc., etc. He wants my gallbladder to release CCK, which will help clear my colon and move the bile out of my body. It’s working. I feel better than I did yesterday, and light years better than I did three days ago, so that’s good. We find out Tuesday the bilirubin number. My dad thinks that if he is correct in how he is treating me (the food, flaxseed oil, SAMe and other vitamins), I should be at about a 26… and we might be able to get it down to a 12 by next week. It would be a miracle.

My mom caught me up on all the gossip from church today—the one I haven’t been to in years—and it was highly entertaining. Except that I found out my ex got married… and I saw a picture and she’s cute. I’m not still in love with him, and I’m not jealous or really that upset… but I’m a little cranky that he got married before me, even though I’m not ready to get married just yet. It’s the principle of the damn matter. 🙂 You understand.

Oh and we let the cats out today to get acquainted and when they got back in here, Ellie pooped on the linoleum. Typical.

I have one cat who only pees in the catbox—she poops on the linoleum next to it. I’ve tried everything, and after three years, have just accepted that it will always be this way.

Except, apparently, at Grandma’s house, where yesterday, to all of our great and astonished delight, she pooped in the catbox.

There was cheering.

So basically I want to kill myself. The flights yesterday were agony, especially after we learned that the bili is up to 29.7.

It appears I’m hitting record numbers for this. My dad is looking into a new way of treating jaundice, but it’s a) not really for jaundice (it just cleans my blood… eight hours hooked up to a huge IV pulsing from my neck) and b) is only approved for testing in the US….. so Austria or Toronto is the thought.

Maybe.