hmmm

Just keeping track a little more closely:  I do think I'm coming down with something, but I can't figure out what.  I have no sign up anything upper respiratory -- no post-nasal drip, no congestion -- except I now have a remarkably painful lymph node just under the jaw joint on the right side.  I think I've had this before?  It's a weird place to have a constant pain and it is kind of distracting. It started Monday morning, I think, but yesterday was an all-over painful kind of day so it was just kind of background noise.

Body aches again today but not as bad as yesterday, but that may be because I slept for about 9 hours last night.  That's not happening again today because I had too much grading to do, since I didn't do any yesterday because I was sleeping!  Anyway, fewer body aches meant that the painful lymph node was that much more noticeable. And I'm just going to say it: it's just a reactive node, and not cancer.  The odds of it being cancer after the incredibly thorough workup I had over the summer are so close to zero we'll just call it zero. Even though it feels like one node to me, it's really a small cluster of survivors from neck dissection, and they freak out if something's going.  I've had them biopsied at least twice and examined under countless ultrasounds and they're always 1) reactive which means 2) not cancer.  (The evil-thinking part of my brain thinks, Wouldn't it be funny if you got a recurrance because you're on a lower dose now? To which the rational part of my brain responds, Shut up.)

I'm trying not to psych myself out of (or into) anything here, but I feel ... off.  Clumsy.  In the past week I have sustained 3 minor injuries in the kitchen: one burn, one knife wound, and then to top it off, I grated the side of my thumb just enough to make it sensitive.  None of these injuries are life-threatening, but to me they are a sign that I'm not at the top of my game, so to speak. 

I really can't afford to be operating at less than peak efficiency.  If this goes on much longer I'll have to think about ditching the new dose and going back on the old one, hoping the damage is reversible...  or maybe I have a little virus or something that will blow over in a few days... or maybe there's nothing going on (I just typed "they're" and stared at it for a few seconds knowing it was wrong but not knowing how to fix it! I finally figured it out.) and it's all in my head and I'll have forgotten all about this by next week!

I'm busy enough.  It's not as if I want to sit around examining how I'm dealing with this new dose, but enough "off" things are happening that I really need to document if I'm going to convince my doctor to put me back on my old dose, even if it is stressing my body in other ways.  At least my brain was working well on it...