There ya have it. Pertussis sucks. The basic gist is the child appears mildly sick all day... maybe a few coughs here and there that sound like your basic congestion and then about 9pm boom... then it starts... the coughing until she turns red behind the eyes, she breaks out in a sweat and you want to shake her and scream BREATHE. The whooping sound.. check. Vomiting.. check. We have now given her cough medicine with codeine just to get her some sleep.

So now we are both on antibiotic therapy... I'm taking the pertussis antibiotics too and have a slip to get x-rays and yada yada. The doctor has assured me that neither of us are contagious, we are free to fly and free to go wherever we want provided we feel good enough. I'm not sure I know what good enough is anymore :)

I practiced tonight. Just standing, a few seated and some back bends. Vinyasas make my head feel like it might shoot across the room. I don't seem sick when you stand in front of me, it has just all decided to congregate upstairs. No wonder I'm not thinking properly.

I stepped on the scale at the doctor's office today and about had a cow. I cannot believe the amount of weight I've gained. I mean I've been saying for months I've gained a ton of weight but I haven't actually had a scale prove it until today... and I was mortified. So today, I stop the hormones. I can't remember what my problems were vividly enough to justify them anymore (remind me of this when I complain about my painful moons next, okay?). I've also begun to make a list of the things that I have to figure out... soon. More to come on that. It involves the following main subjects:

- Where I work and how to be successful, secure and have a work/life balance
- Where I live (in what city and where therein or what combination of cities/wheres)
- What my "main schedule" is (and combinations thereof depending on the answer above) so that I can organize around some "standard"
- What my personal relationships consist of and what those "look like" both on paper and in real life

Nothing like playing with all the big ones at the same time, huh!

In other news, this week is the 3rd anniversary of the "surgery" that started it all really... Surprisingly, I still recognize every day that I don't have real breasts. I thought by now that would be gone. It isn't. It's not that I wake up anymore and think "Oh wow, these feel wierd. I have fake breasts." At some point, though, in the course of a day, I'll recognize that they just aren't real.

I don't regret it... not for one second.

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And finally, to my friends... the ones who have called me to tell me how screwed up I am and how much they love and care about me... the ones who have waited patiently for me... had dinner with me at the last moment... emailed... loved me... stood by patiently with me over the course of the last year. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart... thank you. It is a wonderfully uplifting and beautiful feeling to have so much love in my life. So much unconditional love... it's a beautiful thing. I love you all and I'm sorry for being so absent lately. Kisses and hugs all around.