I'm still here...

It's been a frustrating bit of one step forward two steps back and I'm just tired, tired, tired.  I went back to work and I was really, really happy about it only to end up in the hospital one week after going back which of course makes me feel like a jackass and I want to say I am not unreliable my body is unreliable but you can count on me but of course my body and I are inseparable so what's the diff?!?

So I have pyelonephritis with "inflammatory changes" to my kidney which is concerning but there is some confusion as to what's actually going on so who knows.  I've had two kidney infections in the last four months and now I have shingles which also hurts like CRAZY but isn't a big deal just annoying, right?

I want so badly to be healthy.

I don't want to be in pain every day.

Alas.

This is how autoimmune diseases like Lupus work: you take a bunch of meds to quiet the disease and then you can't fight off infections so you're sick all the time anyway.  What to dooooooo?!?

I don't know, honestly.

I should be back at work (again!) later this week.  Hope I am strong enough to do this.  I want to do this.  I want to have a normal, active life.

I want to work and write and travel and hang out with people I love because it all goes by so damn fast.  I see my mom curled up in her wheelchair and I think about illness, old age and death.  I wish I could make things better for her.  I've been looking at old photos and thinking about what lively, vibrant people my parents were not so long ago.  They weren't prepared for what was coming--a dementia diagnosis for both of them--but maybe that's for the best?

If I get through this hard week I'm going to devote some days to writing.  For Mom, for Dad, and for me.