Now, where were we?

Been a while since I posted to the blog.

Very busy couple of days at the office on Monday and Tuesday of last week.

Wednesday I woke up feeling bad, called in sick. It felt like sort of a mild stomach flu or something. Fever, headache. Crampy, achy - a bad pain in my lower left side. Ick. Slept approximately eighteen hours.

Thursday: Lather, rinse, repeat.

By Friday I realized that things were getting worse, not better. Had been having trouble getting an appointment with my overbooked-and-popular regular MD, so I got myself to the local doc-in-the-box.

The doctor ran a couple of quick tests and, to use a technical term, freaked out. In particular, my blood sugar was through the roof (blood sugar? Dude, I'm not a diabetic... um, I don't *think* I'm a diabetic...)

He sent me straight to the emergency room (which, in New York City, is quite an experience... like being trapped for eight hours in an overpacked passenger car on an unusually incompetent third-world railroad, say.) I was admitted to the hospital directly from there.

After four days of blood tests, x-rays, CT scans, etc. etc., they delivered the final diagnosis:

• Pneumonia, lower lobe of left lung (say that five times fast.)
• Inflamed pancreas, verging on pancreatitis
• The elevated blood sugar (probably due to the pancreatic inflammation) is being treated for now as new-onset Type II diabetes (oh joy!) until treatment is completed and we can sort things out.

I am home now, with computer access, etc. I still have many days of tests to get through, which will involve a fair bit of running around lower Manhattan, and it will be a while before I am cleared to return to work. But I got the best night's sleep I've had in a long time last night, my fever is gone, and so is (most of) the pain. Those are all good signs, I think/hope.

If I owe you an e-mail, apologies. I'm working on it!