I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: the disappointment I felt when my blood results didn’t show a surprise pregnancy, or the true reason WHY I was disappointed when my blood results didn’t show a surprise pregnancy: it would have made for some truly excellent long-winded conspiracy theory update topics.

The doctor says I’m super, which sucks – I want a reason for feeling so crappy. My iron is in fact a little low, but not enough to require that I go on iron pills especially since she warned me 9 times that iron pills make you not poop (which frankly is not a big deal given that I do not poop anyway). She gave me a big list of foods that are rich in iron such as beans and nuts and liver, then rather off-handedly mentioned that a census taker just happens to live down the street and that Safeway has a sale this week on fava beans and a nice Chianti. I’m not so much into the cannibalism as I’d have you believe, so tonight we’re having a Steak and Molding Clay Extravaganza because steak has tons of iron in it and molding clay is just plain awesome.

So, stuff is fine. I’m not dying of werewolf herpes, my withdrawal symptoms should go away in 4-6 weeks (um, what), and I’m feeling much better than I was two days ago.

However, none of this means a goddamn thing because Sasha is sick.

She did another marathon puke today, one I was thankfully not awake for. I called the vet, and we’re going in at 12:30 to find out what’s wrong. I am not good at this. I can’t imagine something being even mildly wrong with Sasha without bursting into tears – if something is seriously wrong, I’m going to need to be taken away by the men in white coats and locked up until I can stop sobbing hysterically. It does not help that Sasha is officially 13 now and that is very old; the likelihood of something being wrong with her is increasing daily. I am scared for her (and for myself because I will completely lose my shit if she dies) and oh, this sucks so much.

Could you please transfer any good thoughts you may have been thinking towards me for my ongoing mental health to Sasha? I’m much more robust than she is, and I throw up a lot less.

Today I feel slightly more human. Last night I had some exciting new ailments to enjoy along with my Verts and my Quease – a massive allergy attack and an onslaught of light sensitivity. I eventually gave up on trying to be alive and took some Benedryl so I didn’t break out into hives overnight, and that seemed to do the trick. It forced me to sleep for almost 10 hours, and I woke up feeling groggy but more human (than human) than I had in over a week. Hooray!

However, the doctor’s office just called and said my test results are in and that I need to come into the clinic as soon as possible to discuss the results. I am so totally dying, aren’t I. On a hunch they ran my blood for other diseases because they knew getting more blood out of me later wasn’t going to happen unless they had a hatchet, and lo I have 17 strains of Super AIDS and also some traces of lycanthropy. My dizzy spells and nausea aren’t withdrawal; they’re an early sign of blood lust. Shit! Everyone run away!

The mailman brought me presents today, which make me very happy. I got my Sephora order – nothing cheers me up like new expensive makeup – and the shiny trinkets I ordered from Retro-a-Go-Go late last month. These things are awesome and can now be scratched off my Waiting list, but there was one other thing the mailman brought me that is just beyond super:

The letter is from the Royal Thai Consulate General, and is obviously not for me. I can’t imagine the contents are anything interesting so I won’t go out of my way to commit mail fraud and see what’s inside – but holy crap, that has got to be the best last name I have ever seen. SUPAPORN! It just rolls off the tongue and splashes across the face, doesn’t it?

I suppose I should stop stalling and go see the doctor so she can tell me I’m dying of werewolf herpes.

Operation: I Am Totally Sane is not going so well.

I’ve never had any kind of addiction or bad habit to break because I am pretty much perfect in every way. This is making my life very hard at the moment, because I am wholly inexperienced in dealing with withdrawal. I’ve been going through what I assume and hope some pretty wicked crazy pill withdrawal, and it’s frankly fucked my life up to an unmanageable degree. When does withdrawal end? It’s been, like, a week. Shouldn’t I be done withdrawing by now? This is stupid.

The Verts have mutated, and now I also have The Quease – I am constantly dizzy and nauseous and unable to do a hell of a lot of anything because I feel so violently horrible. I don’t have any real idea of what’s going on beyond my self-diagnosis – nothin’ but herpes – so I’m suffering. Am I getting sick? Do I have some sort of viral infection? Am I truly short on iron, or do I have some kind of brain disease eating away at my inner ear? Am I just going through withdrawal and all this is normal? What the hell is going on?

Okay, so I can’t walk a straight line and spend a lot of my free time looking for emergency vomitoriums. As fun as this all sounds, we’re only barely scratching the surface: I’ve lost control of all emotions.

Last night, Ed commented that my bowl of chili was large and suggested that I rinse something in the sink instead of using a paper towel. Naturally, this means he thinks I am fat and ugly, so I burst into tears. I’m a little over-sensitive right now; everything is some sort of huge insult and I think everyone is avoiding me because they hate me. Everything makes me cry – commercials, shoelaces, phone books. I’ve teared up more than once over things that make no sense at all – reading an article about road construction causing the traffic lights to go out downtown, for example. It is awesome.

I’m also freaking the fuck out because Sasha has lost some weight and is throwing up a lot. Last night after getting into some people food, she puked up a fountain of vomit. I’m worried about her, so naturally I burst into tears (again) and sobbed hysterically for about 15 minutes. The way I remember it, I was hysterical for three reasons – I feel like shit all the goddamn time; I’m worried about my cat; I do not want to deal with the 8 or 9 piles of puke she just deposited on the floor. All of these are excellent reasons to be upset, but hysterics? Honest to god wailing and tears and hiccups and cat-frightening sobs? That is not normal. Something is not right with me inside my head, and I do not know what.

Ed thinks perhaps I should go back on the crazy pills. I do not want to do this; I was on them for almost 4 years before managing to wean myself off. It’s only been a week, and while I honestly don’t know how much more of this constant nausea and vertigo and random sobbing I can take, a week seems a little short to decide that I am evidently still completely insane and should be medicated as such. I haven’t heard back from the doctor regarding my blood, so I don’t know what’s going on there and I don’t want to go back to the clinic because there isn’t really a hell of a lot they can do. So, I’m miserable, dizzy, barfy, emotional, worried, unemployable, insane, and everyone hates me. Hooray!

I loathe being scared.

There’s a job title that I hadn’t considered but is obviously perfect for me: Vampire Hunter.

I finally managed to scare myself into going to the doctor to ask why I am downtrodden with the Verts all the damn time. The doctor took my blood pressure (after deciding she needed to use the Fatty McFat Arm Cuff on me because I am so obviously corpulent, except it promptly fell off my less-huge-than-she-thought arm – take that, Dr. Skinny) and asked a series of invasive questions (honestly, by the time she got to asking my thoughts on the reverse cowgirl and how I feel about tea bagging as a sport, I began to wonder if I had mistakenly walked into the other kind of clinic). She told me that she didn’t think I had anything deathly serious and that I was probably low on iron (dashing my hopes that I am Iron Man) and sent me along for some blood work at the lab down the hall. Super! Off I went.

Except the primary side effect of having blood withdrawn is feeling weak, faint and dizzy. I am already AT the weak, faint and dizzy stage – getting blood drawn on an empty stomach was, quite frankly, not the best idea I’d had since I used to walk along the lower breakwater during violent windstorms. Also, there’s an inherent danger when I have to get blood drawn – namely, I don’t have any.

(this is why I would make a good Vampire Hunter, get it? I don’t have any blood, so vampires could suck until dawn and they would still be hungry and I would still be un-undead)

I warned the Blood Taker that I am without blood, and she chuckled politely. Then she couldn’t find a vein in my right arm, so she went to the left. Nope, no vein. Back and forth between the two arms until she thought she felt a pulse, so she whipped out a baby needle – I HATE baby needles – and started poking away. I’m not squeamish or anything, but she lost the vein and started fucking my arm with the needle to try for red gold. She eventually gave up and went back to my right arm, this time using a grown-up needle. Same problem. No veins, no blood, and all the arm fucking in the world wasn’t going to make blood come out of me. She finally gave up on me altogether because a line was forming in the waiting room and people were staring at me in horror, and called in the expert – Randall!

I gave Randall the same warning about the no blood, and he laughed. Oh, he was going to get blood out of me – he was going to take it out of my HANDS. Out came another baby needle (ow ow ow), and Randall’s magic touch made my juices start flowing. He got three vials of blood out of me and sent me away with three band aids, a pounding headache, more holes than when I started, and anticipation that I will soon stop having to plan my day around how many hours of vertical time I can manage.

My hand hurts. However, I have Tiger Tiger ice cream and that just about fixes anything at all.