Not much new to report. Laying very, very low. Gonna go back to the clinic every few days for blood testing.

I think something has died somewhere in my house (hope it's not me, ha!) ... unbearable smell. Of course--Hobbit Maid has half the day off for religious ceremony and it only started up after she left. Not that I wanted to eat before, but this ain't helping the lack of appetite and nausea.

I did eat a couple pieces of toast with Nutella (AMBROSIA!) and half a chicken liver before gagging. It's too bad. Normally I really like liver.

Biscuits is keeping me good company, but she is a total bed hog.

Three Things to be Grateful For:
1. That I even have a house to be stinked up.
2. My house has a Western toilet with a great flush.
3. All of your wonderful words, love and support!

Three Things I Did Well Today:
1. Slept a craptonloadfull.
2. Really drinking a lot of clear fluids.
3. Am mindfully keeping my iron topped up.

Three Things to Work On:
1. Delegate and ask for help.
2. Be easier on myself.
3. ??? Treat this as a fill-in-the-blank ...

I went back to the clinic today. I've got to start going back before they roll out the red carpet straight into the ER with personal escorts (not the piglet kind) flanking me. Also before I get a lively scolding by at least three different kinds of medical practitioners (hat trick!).

The good news is, after so many rounds of illness and medications, my liver and kidneys are functioning okay. Not great, but acceptably.

The bad news is, I don't seem to have a blood pressure or pulse, and platelets and red blood cells are pretty sparse too.

Diagnosis: I'm a starving vampire!

No wonder I feel so friggin' cranky.

No wonder today feels like I ran a marathon. Dangit, I've felt a lot better than this after some marathons (even two that I was totally unprepared for).

I felt a lot better than this after the Melbourne Iron Aquabike-ish!

Anyway, they were very insistent about dumping me in a hospital right away. Typhoid fever can be hemorrhagic and in my case it has been ... What I waved away as horrible skin, zits, and little rashes are in fact petechiae  and bruising. (My skin is actually also that bad). A slow, constant hemorrhage, and apparently there are all sorts of awful things that can happen because my bleeding body and faded blood have set them up, and then if they happen, my body, having bled and my blood faded, are completely unable to deal with it.

I likely have chronic typhoid hemorrhagic fever. Nice ominous ring to it, and entirely deserved.

I'm fuckin' rambling, can't think, and really can't give any good explanation as to why I insisted on being a catch-n-release at the clinic. Hospitals here suck. I don't have anyone to be a good advocate right now. Gotta keep my nose above water for sis (whom against all medical advice I visited today. She lifted her head up and said, "You look like shit. You should go to a hospital," and promptly passed out again). I'm having nightmares about hospital acquired infections (you think it's bad in the U.S.?!) and medication errors. Plus they want to put BLOOD in me and this is not a place you want a transfusion unless you are actually dying, as opposed to just being at risk of dying.

My poor sister. I made her promise to postpone suicide until tomorrow. She's really, really sick and down. I gasped when I looked at her joints -- hot, swollen, red, some skin flaking. Admittedly, mine have looked that way. (She went to the same clinic right before me). Really hard to cheer her up when I know what's ahead for her ...

And for me ... something on the order of a two-month recovery. MAY be hastened by hospitalization, IV antibiotics, and blood transfusions ... but I'm sick, stupid and stubborn, and I want to take the slow boat.

I stopped and got some supplies for my sister.

This sign was at the shopping center (that has a grocery store and pharmacy and everything else):

HUSBAND
DAY CARE CENTER
Need time to yourself?
Want to go shopping?
LEAVE YOUR HUSBAND WITH US!
We'll look after him
You only pay for his food and drinks

Speaking of pussy, clicking my mouse and rubbing ...

Biscuits makes for a surprisingly good mousepad, and loves being rubbed back and forth. :)

Today sucked big donkey balls! (As does my attitude, apparently ... ) So instead, I bring you FRIDAY's shenanigans, in reverse order, because somehow they make the most sense that way.

I did promise pink chickens (and especially for ell-in-or): On the way home, right near my house, I just had to stop and take a picture of these:

Which is probably why I didn't notice the following until I was right at my house ...

there was a parade of half-naked, very buff piglets coming out of my front gate.

I said to the Hobbit Maid, "There better be a good explanation for this."

"They're our Muslim Javanese neighbors!" she exclaimed happily.

Because that explains everything.

The dogs were kicking up a serious racket and there was more coming from behind the house (racket, and piglets).

I just covered my ears lalalalalala, went into my house and hid curled up on the bed.

Oh look! The pretty pink flowers in my front yard.

Before that, I was at the surf piglets cafe with my beloved non-blood (but still lookalike) brother DIAMOND! (Okay, his real name is Desmond). I posted this before, but just for review:

He did get whisked away by a surf piglet right after our coffee and lime tart. Shortly before that, at the place we'd eaten lunch, he was hit on by a rather yummy piglet who wanted to take him away, too. Diamond definitely scored much bigger than I did that day! (Well ... who wants a diseased whore, anyway? I get it).

At the lunch cafe (said cafe used to be owned by my friend Susan, who still manages it while her son owns it), this is the bathroom wall art by Susan herself. I should have taken a 'stepped back' photo ... it so suits the decor that you don't even notice how weird it is unless you take a really good look at it. Built entirely (even the zigzaggy folded paper chains) from refuse she collected off the beach!

On my way to the cafe, I noticed this at a stoplight ... SAFETY FIRST!!!

The repair guy's foot is actually resting on a big coil of wire, not the ladder. Love how the guy that's safe on the ladder (as safe as one can be on that kind of a ladder used that way, I suppose) is the one who's wearing a hard hat and tool belt.

Three Things I'm Grateful For:
1. My job doesn't involve playing with electrical wires at height!
2. Medicine and medical care. Being able to have them.
3. My mom is doing really well with her new nurse! (New again.)

Three Things I Did Well Today:
1. Read/Reflected, prayed, and meditated.
2. Took a shower.
3. Ate a few things.

Three Things to Work On:
1. Remember to go to an online recovery meeting, already.
2. Flossing as well as brushing.
3. Under-doing.

Yesterday was a great day. Crazy day, definitely too much, and makes more sense backwards than in order, so I was going to start its telling with coming back home ... and pics!

But today's so shyte, I don't care. :( Slept much of the day, now shortly after midnight and now ready to sleep again. Must need it. Physically (phys/mental all the same thing but let's say typhoid) something is not right. Feeling really bad again and diarrhea is back with a vengeance.

I may be looking at another multi-drug resistant strain. I don't feel like I can go through that again. But what's my alternative? HTFU buttercup and remember how good life is, can be, no matter HOW SHITTY it seems! Heh.

My logical self sees how good life really is and how incredibly blessed as well as privileged I am. Not to mention stunningly handsome, unbeatable at the viola, lover of animals stuffed and pulsating (okay that one's true) ...

My physical and emotional well-being seem to be in the toilet right now. HA HA HA ... all right ... I can't be that badly off.

Unlike my sister, who has

DENGUE FEVER
TYPHOID FEVER
and an INTESTINAL PARASITE all at once. I truly ache for her, and I too keenly know what a painful, difficult, inconsistent recovery she has ahead of her. Poor, poor pookie. Please pray for her if you have a moment.

I'll post the pink chickens when I can.

Joy comes, not from finding yourself in an acceptable state of being, but from accepting your state of being.

Sometime after midnight ... a blessedly brief psychotic break where I really heard The Voices. (This happens, rarely, when I'm really depressed, but hasn't in years). Just that happening is terribly alarming and breeds a cascade of WhatIfs. But marvelous Kate suggested I make them sing something terribly ear-wormy ... which is how The Voices ended up singing a very loud, lusty call-answer rendition of "Alouette;" ironically, I hate French, and alouette (the lark) is also known as mauvette, which is slang for a sick person.

5:37am Well, that was fun. The electricity went out, so I went to the front yard to go stare at the stars (it has less foliage and fewer cobras than the back). So beautiful, and Venus too! Then I went ahead and peed in the front yard--why not? and watched dawn slowly breaking in the east (my house faces north so east is east, so to speak). Utterly breathtaking.

4:00pm "Breakfast" (I slept from 11-3. Shrug.) Felt slightly guilty for eating an entire box of mini-cone ice-creams for breakfast, and was deliberately avoiding the Nutrition Facts panel for fear of calorie count, but surprise ... a WHOLE BOX of them is less than ONE Pop-Tart. Shit, I shoulda eaten a whole 'nother box then ... if I'd had one. They really are tiny, bite-sized.

5:00pm Not so fun. My sister is in Jakarta, very ill, missed her plane to Bali, doing an excruciating wait for the next one while she's got high fever, intense headache and body pain, rash, etc. (It is really awful when a host of symptoms, any one of which would deem you truly sick, is simply "etc.") Her hubby will pick her up on this side and take her to the ER/clinic. I feel so sad and terrible for her. You're so ill that you not only feel like you're dying--you actually want to die. (And that emotion, if not the physic, persists for weeks).

It's incomprehensible to me how much of the last two years I've spent in that very state. I don't believe it happened for a reason (necessarily--it might have), but I do believe good comes, can come, from any situation, and much of that depends upon our willingness to embrace it ... along with what we perceive as bad.

It's like I made a pact with God/Happiness/Peace ... whatever It may be called ... in sickness, and in health.

Depression is a very sick sort of serenity ... although I know I'm getting better as I transition from feeling suicidal to homicidal. I'm not there yet, but if there's anyone you're really pissed off at, let me know.

The last pic of my sis and I together; next to me is her husband, next to her is our brother (Fu Manchu walrus goofball), and at the end of the table is our dear friend John who owns the beach cafe we were at. All of us went to the same high school in Jakarta.

6:00pm Really not fun. Maybe it was the box of ice-creams, but I've got burning diarrhea. Nah, not the ice-creams; also have a fever, headache, and feel like crap. Could be sympathy pains for my sister, could be the up-and-down nature of this disease (and it does get progressively worse throughout a day and into the night, then peaks and falls late night into mid-morning). Could be overexertion the last couple days (yes! I'm willing to admit this!), diarrhea could be from the antibiotics. Sigh. It's wait and see 'til tomorrow.

7:00pm Wow. Every time I get up out of bed (bathroom, water, etc.) it hits me just how awful I feel. Almost tempted to head to the ER myself, but it might blow up with both of us in there. Also, it's going to be another enormous bill for what adds up to I.V. hydration/vitamins and symptom relief. I can do that at home (even the I.V., but shhhhh).

Three Things I'm Grateful For
1. That we have or can get the resources to treat my sister.
2. That I have no truly outstanding obligations right now and can focus on getting well.
3. The tremendous love, sympathy, and support I've received from so many of you ... including quite a few who are going through what I'd consider much worse.
4. The breathing FURBALLS!

Three Things I Did Well Today
1. Decided not to do any kind of activity.
2. Took all my medication right on the time dot.
3. Prayed this morning.

Three Things to Work On
1. Persisting with spiritual readings even if I don't like or agree with them. I'm apt to learn the most from those.
2. Even more under-doing.
3. Fuck guilt.

The weather chart at the top amuses me. Is it EVER correct for anyone? I will tell you that, unless you're on top of Bali's highest volcano in the middle of the night during the coldest part of the year and it's raining, it NEVER gets down to 71 F here.

I assure you the stuff up top is not training. It's called having something that I WANT to do and look forward to. And that, my friends, is Hope. No amount of money can buy me that medicine.

I also ate really well today for the first time in ages (considering my normal diet, perhaps ever. Ha). A bowl of corn flakes, coffee, four apples, a banana, and tuna fish with mayo on rice crackers. I might have a chocolate popsicle later if I feel like it.

The animals are extra cuddly. I think they had a mini pow-wow and decided if I lose it, they're all sunk, so they better put the cuddle-o-meter on full turbo.

Three Things I'm Grateful For:
1. All your loving thoughts, comments, and prayers.
2. Biscuits.
3. Lisa and Phoebe.

Three Things I Did Well Today:
1. Ate relatively decently.
2. Attempted paperwork.
3. Read, reflected, prayed.

Three Things to Work On:
1. Meditation.
2. Work.
3. Doing a tiny task when I think of it, like putting an envelope in its correct file.

I'm adding a fourth gratitude (I truly could add hundreds, which in itself is a fifth): I had to think really hard to come up with a third thing to work on, which means that I'm mostly doing shit right. Cool.