femminista: thoughts of a feminist rhetorician

I have been informed by a recent subscriber to my rss feed that I'd "better post some good stuff" or I'd get demoted on his iGoogle page. (This is what I get for being a sweet maven.) So, as per his request/threat, I am posting. Good or not remains to be seen, but here I am.

First of all, it seems that I write lots of apology posts, mostly for my lack of posting. Part of this is the strain of posting for multiple blogs and maintaining several websites. Last time I checked there were still only twenty four hours in a day. I've submitted a grant request for an extra eight hours but have yet to hear back. So, unfortunately, my personal blog generally ends up getting the shaft.

Secondly, I've been sick. Not big news, I know. I've spent more of my life sick than not, but now it seems to have escalated to new levels of discomfort and disruption. This past Thursday I was dealing with dizziness, nausea, a blinding headache, convulsions, and brief stint of unconsciousness. (The former four are typical daily symptoms but with higher intensity.) My partner took me to the doctor who ordered a CAT scan and EEG. Oh, and I missed class as a result. Unfortunately it didn't end there. I awoke on Friday morning with one of the worst headaches that I had ever had. It was excruciating and three bottles of water and two aleves later it had only barely lessened. My partner took me to have my CT scan and by the time he picked me up, I was in so much pain I could barely open my eyes and he had to lead me out to the car. As we drove back to my house, we changed routes and took me to urgent care, where a truly kind and attentive doctor examined me. SInce my headache had been persisting for about three days and getting progressively worse, he prescribed a shot of toradal, which was then administered by a less than pleasant nurse. Oh yeah, and she gave me the shot in the bum, which still hurts. The doc also prescribed a fairly high dose of prednisone, partly due to my history of MS-like symptoms, and lots of rest and fluids. (Uhm, did I mention that I was a grad student? Rest is a word that I'm not terribly familiar with.) The toradal helped but the headache persisted for the rest of Friday, all day Saturday, and I'm still not super-comfortable.  However, I am doing well enough to work on my laptop, which is a big improvement.

The last week has been unbelievably hellish.  My partner's kitty has kidney failure and is in the kitty hospital; I've been miserably ill; my partner also had to fork out a good bit of money for new tires and alignment (thank you Indiana DOT); I've spent way more time in medical facilities than I would ever want to; and now I am behind on my work.  All I'm saying is--this is a pretty good excuse.  

I am working on making lemonade out of this lemony week.  My post this week on Student Avatar is on disability and Second Life.  The liberatory potential of SL and other virtual worlds only works if you can stand to open your eyes and sit up so that you can actually interact with your computer.  This is something that I have not been able to do and many people with chronic illnesses have the same experience.  I'll post a link to that blog entry once I've completed it.