Candor Creek

Ayyyyyy, mast cells, lmaoooooo Writing posts about symptoms I experience as a result of wonky mast cells (or any of my health issues, really) is still a little weird for me. They're not often shared by others, so it's not really something I post to commiserate about - and I'm constantly worried about being perceived as an attention whore or a pity monger. In the end, though, I take the pictures for my records anyway (which is a great thing to do if you have chronic health concerns and are fortunate enough to have external indicators) and I guess I feel that I have just as much a right to share them as someone else would with a selfie of them and their friends at a dinner or a picture of someone's cute baby. Dinners and babies are someone else's life. Symptoms are mine. I'm actually kind of excited because I found the pattern for this one: predictably, regardless of soaps or weather I get cracking, thickening, swelling, itching, stinging skin on both hand...

My goal today was to make him smile. Storm, as old men tend to do, has been having a bout of just not feeling good lately. I am certain that it's a pain management issue; his behavior matches that of what he exhibited just before going on his latest pain/nerve medication. He has a fairly extensive vet appointment on Wednesday (checkup, bloodwork plus thyroid panel, dental cleaning, benign gum tumor removals) that will most likely result in an incease in these meds, and it can't come too soon as far as I'm concerned. I hate seeing him in pain. He's never been a healthy boy anyway, but as he's gotten older his rough patches tend to leave him in a heap on our floor, life force drained, with this terrible look on his face. That expression will absolutely always carve holes in my chest. It actually haunts me at night. ...so maybe that's why somewhere in my current mania I decided that I needed to drop everything and give Storm a Really Good Day. Between both o...