::whimper::

I want to curl up in a ball and just stay there.

For a week, I was sick.  I have lupus, it's a fact of life, blah-blah.  I couldn't concentrate so I struggled to be just a little behind on school work (technically, I'm not behind in the two classes that I dreaded it most in...I just feel behind).  My professors for the two classes I most worried about were great--understanding that it's a chronic illness, and if I could manage my work, so be it.  In my 3rd class, it hasn't been an issue.  It's just once a week on Mondays--I am a paper behind, but I've been averaging an A and the last class was canceled anyway.  Now worries...

...X's "stomach virus" put him in emergency surgery to remove his appendix.  (I wrote that and remembered this is not my journal and not everyone reading this knows that X is my husband.  Now you know.)  It was horrible.  I was a little scared by the time that I got him into my brother's car to go to the hospital, but at that point, it was 1am; I needed to get my daughter and nephew to school in the morning and get myself to class, and I still believed that he'd get IV fluids and better meds than I'd gotten him over the counter.   He called at 5am to tell me that his appendix had burst and they were about to prep him for surgery.

I was so not going to class.  I explained the situation to the lovely two professors mentioned above with my assignments attached.  They were great about it.  So I foolishly didn't think to get anything on hospital letterhead explaining what happened.  I was worried about how weak he looked, how I needed to feed him. They only kept him one more night, but he was so much stronger that I didn't question that.  All I cared about was what I needed to know for his post-op care.  So guess what Professor #4 wants to not smash my grade over my absences?

Hopefully, it will be easier to get in touch with someone who can give me something on hospital letterhead once the weekend is over.  My bitchy-self says, "Or I'll just show her all the post-op info sheets and she can take 'em or leave 'em."  My regular self is tired...tired from being so worried about my partner...tired from being worried about my grades...tired from my lupus flare...

I want to call in dead for the rest of the semester.

And I want to write.

In all the stress, I turned to fiction.  Having read an *almost* satisfying novel, I want to put my own words on the page as though I might make a million and one mistakes, but I've been inoculated against those that made that piece of work *almost*.  And that fear from suddenly learning that X was going into surgery and the awareness of what can go wrong even in simple procedures is with me in a little ball that I can't throw away despite it all ending well.  I want to fictionalize it so it has a place outside my body.

But I can't phone the semester in so I'm going to hit the books.

...Screw it.  I'll hit the books after writing for half an hour.