Sometimes the darkness wins.

A friend commented today that I have been quiet and wanted to know if I was okay. This blog is by way of a back-handed apology for not texting her back. I am sorry. I did not have the emotional energy to text all of what's been going on.

It's been a rough three weeks or so with those little demons I live with and I am not talking about the dogs. I did pretty well off and on with fighting the darkness with my thyroid cancer scare. I did mostly okay...except for the day where I was bequeathing all my earthly possessions in my mind. I survived that and although I am having some issues with my thyroid...vis a vis...swallowing and blitzing anxiety attacks...I was doing okay. I was just beginning to come back out of the weird potential death zone when they called me for jury duty.

I dutifully showed up and wound up getting picked to be the first alternate and was looking at three days off of work. I do get paid for that time so it sounds like it would be a nice diversion right? No...it was a capital murder case. It started on Wednesday and wound up Friday morning in a mistrial for one of the stupidest reasons known to man. I will not wander into all that...let's just leave it at I was well and truly pissed off about the mistrial. It was a waste of time and money.

But aside from being pissed off about the mistrial it was a very disturbing case. I will not get into gory details but let me just say that the crime scene photos on the big screen TV are not going to leave my memory...EVER!! It was very upsetting and disturbing on every level you can think of and it's left me a little bit shaken. It also opened the rabbit hole wide and I dived in for a bit. All I could think about for a day or two was a woman I know who could easily wind up in the same position as this poor victim someday because she has no one to really look out for her and she does put herself in vulnerable places. It's been hard.

I was just starting to calm down from my mistrial hissy fit when I went up front at work and was glancing at the paper and just happened to see an article detailing how a professor of mine from my Master's program had been murdered in his home Wednesday and his wife wounded. I was just shocked that this could happen. He was a good professor and he was very kind to me when mom's illness and death landed right in the middle of my trying to finish up my degree and graduate. I just don't understand the senseless evil of such an act. Needless to say this opened up the rabbit hole into something more resembling a rabbit canyon.

So I spent a quiet weekend trying to re-boot and not doing a really good job at it. I have begun to crawl out into the light a bit today. It's getting better but I am just limiting my human contact for a bit. Withdrawing into myself to try and get out of my own way. Interacting with folks at work is about all I can muster right now. So...if you don't hear from me and I seem quiet...I really am okay. I am just trying to make sense of a lot of things that have been thrown my way these past few weeks. I will process it all and I will be back but for now I just have to sit with myself and find my center again. See you all soon!!

Surly Girl Explained

Some of you may have noticed that I have not been my usual, jovial, snarky self lately. Well I cannot excuse my behavior but I will try to explain it a bit.

I have been out of sorts for about 3 weeks now due to some health issues. As a result I have been erratic, moody, pre-occupied, angry, absent and okay...all within the same 15 minute time frame sometimes. Mostly...right now I am pre-occupied and I just don't have a lot of emotional energy to give folks.

Here's the deal...I went to a new GP and he did the routine blood work. He said my thyroid was elevated by one point over the high so he wanted to do an ultrasound to make sure "there was nothing growing on it." Well...turns out my thyroid is enlarged and I have multiple nodules on both sides. Some of them are "suspicious looking". So I had to sit with this for 2 weeks until they could run a thyroid uptake scan. I took a radioactive iodine pill and let it absorb for 24 hours and then they measured the rate the thyroid took up the iodine in order to produce the hormone.

Evidently my thyroid is an overachiever because it came back at 40 whereas it's usually in the 20s. This means it is showing hyperactive. Then they did 3 ten minutes scans/x-rays. On the upside the high absorption rate means it should give them a really good look at the

thyroid and the nodules. On the down side...and this is where the moodiness comes in...some of the nodules might be cancerous. We don't know yet for sure. Hopefully I will know something tomorrow.

So that's it really...I have been struggling with whether to wait to post anything until I know for sure but folks are wondering. I am out of sorts because I don't know if I have thyroid cancer or not and that's making me a bit erratic. I am hoping the odds are in my favor because thyroid cancer is rare but unitl they tell me something the being in limbo is a bit stressful to say the least.

So I apologize if I have been a bit cranky with anyone. I am trying not to be but some days I am just holding it together with masking tape. You will all have to bear with me until I process my way through this news and try to make sense of where I go from here. Now...my eyeballs are getting fuzzy so I must say goodnight.