shalanna

Today at the doctor's office, he sent us over to get Mama a lung X-ray and other tests to rule out lung cancer. She thought for sure she had walking pneumonia, because she wasn't getting better from the bronchitis, but when his nurse gave her the breathing test, she coughed up blood. I really don't feel that it could be *this*, but on the other hand it has been a few hours and we haven't gotten a call saying that her X-ray was clear (and we're holding on to a package of steroids to start them as soon as we hear it's not pneumonia, so they know to call us when they've read the film--and always before, they told us as we walked out that she didn't have water in her lungs. This time, they did two re-takes and just told us to call the doctor later.)

She's terrified. She has put off her colon cancer recheck (colonoscopy) that was due in February on various pretexts, but she's been clear for a few years. Still, with this ordeal my cousin's wife is going through (she's doing very well and is a model patient, though still in the hospital), my mother is panicky.

She asks for your prayers and good thoughts. Her name is Jodie.

I go in tomorrow to get the results of MY blood work. This morning was the first morning in three weeks I haven't woken up with double vision (it was lasting for between fifteen and twenty minutes), so maybe the antibiotics and the new glasses and the prayers are all working to restore that to normal. Our theory is that it was caused by persistent high blood glucose (and they said that can last from three weeks to three months in diabetics who go out of control for a long time.) That's the GOOD answer, at any rate.

But despite all my promises to the Universe that I would not do any more marketing if I could just be healed . . . I went ahead and e-mailed partials to one agent and am mailing partials to a second agent today. My rationale (rationalization) is that these were contacts made and promised months ago, and the agents only just now came back and said, "Okay, I'm ready for you to send the partials." So that counts as an old obligation I'm fulfilling. If anything comes of it, then so be it. I'm going to suspend further crazy-making marketing efforts for the time being.

Of course, if anything DOES come of these partials, that'll be a good sign. If it doesn't, I'm not going to worry. I'm going to forget about them right now. Have more things to concentrate on.

And I'm going to go back and finish the Pundit novel, just for myself.

I'll be answering everyone's e-mail and comments later today, assuming I have computer time. It's just been really hectic around here. Can you believe it's the end of summer? (Technically, not temperature-wise.)

And now I hope to cobble together a GOOD LJ entry all about how to write humor.