Once more, Again and Again and Again; or Return of the Localized Night Sweats

[I'm exhausted.  What follows is just some rambling meanderings as to what has lead me to this point, sitting in front of the computer screen, typing while doped.  I went from crazy sore to too numb to sleep.  So I type.]

The current problem with the puppy, other than it being a small dog, a yippee little shit, a teething terror with the jaws of a piranha and a taste for my flesh, and has a puppy brain, is that it's too damn cute to not fall for.

Even Maya, the terror of puppies, loves this little brown furry land piranha.  Of course, Maya is deaf, so the yippee portion doesn't bug her much.

No, I like the dog.  I may even get used to the small dog concept.

*     *     *     *     *

The real problem is that this is harder than I thought it would be.

When I do my little jog/swim/jog, the ONE FUCKING THING I have been able to push myself with, the one way I have been able to really experience some progress, actual tangible progress, not simply subjective, I really do give it everything I have.  I hit the "I wanna quit and walk home" moment within a block of leaving the house, and no matter how well things go, I fight through so many pains during the outing that I am mentally fried when I finally get home.

I'm spent.  The tank is empty physically, the pain is everywhere, and the mind is like a scratched record, skipping, sliding and looping.

Enter Willa.

*     *     *     *     *

I mean, the puppy has been in a pen while I was out for 2.5-3 hours.

I go straight to her and pick her up to take outside so she can relieve herself (though a few times the excited pup went as I bent to pick her up).  Then, she becomes puppy spaas.  I do what I can to entertain her.

I don't get to recover from my rehab.

The next thing I know, the wife and kid are home, and I am desperately tired.

But now it's time to be Dad.  So, I do what more I can, though poorly at this point.

*     *     *     *     *

All the while, the body keeps changing.  It's high up the back now.  The kink/knot/fold is noticeably mixed with whatever it is that so often prevents me from swallowing.  It hurts my chest, and my right arm feels almost entirely unhinged, held on by some perversion of a tendon, still twisted beyond belief.

But I know some of the changes have been real, because the night sweats have returned.  They remain limited to the exact spots where I feel myself unfold.  The pillow of sheet beneath the spot is drenched when I awake, but nowhere else.

It must be like R.E.M for the negotiated muscle groups.

*     *     *     *     *

I'd sleep in, but the new alarm clock goes off.

My daughter wakes up to the puppy biting her nose.  She wakes and plays and takes both dogs outside to do their business.  She then wakes her mother.

I wake up shortly afterwards, when the puppy is finally biting too much, too hard, and creates the "No, no, no, No, No, NO, NO, NO, NO!" alarm that my daughter becomes.

Good thing she's cute, too.