WARNING: Extremely Long But Critically Acclaimed Novel To Follow

I. Hate. Eating.

I finally was able to cook dinner tonight, which made me quite happy and made me feel like I accomplished something today, other than sitting in front of the computer with terrible posture reading other blogs. The nausea just wasn't as bad. So, I dished it up, sat down, and realized, though hungry, I just didn't want to eat it. While I haven't had it as bad as some people, the nausea has made it extremely hard to eat much, and lots of times, if I eat enough, I end up getting those disgusting vomit burps for hours after, and getting even more nauseous than I was when I was hungry.

But tonight, I made a connection.

When I try to eat, I feel like I've jumped back in that wonderful cesspool of learning to re-feed myself. I had to learn how to eat again, basically, and I had to do it twice. Once in the hospital, and once on my own. It sucked giant hairy balls. I would just sit and stare at the food on my plate, knowing that one bite of that salad with RANCH DRESSING (DUN dun duhhhhhn) would make me gain at LEAST 10 pounds, and if I ate the whole thing (which I really wanted to do but would never, ever admit to), well, just roll me out the door. But I knew I had to do it, because I knew I was killing myself, and I didn't really want to die. I would cry almost every time, and I would be ranting and screaming and throwing plates and things in my head, but I would choke it down, just telling myself, "One more bite, just one more, and then you can stop."

I remember the day that I managed to drink a glass of lemonade from Barnes and Noble instead of just getting water (that bloated feeling from drinking too much just sucked). While I don't know about my friend who was with me, a small part of me was glad I did it. I was a little proud of myself. This progressed to eating 3 pieces of pizza, without feeling like crying, or hating myself afterwards. And eventually (especially thanks to The Mother-in-law, who is a cooking GODDESS), I learned to relax and just eat. It wasn't (usually) torturous to me anymore, and I didn't worry about how much weight I was going to gain from it. I just enjoyed it.

Well, that wonderful feeling of having to force myself to eat is back. Thankfully though, very thankfully, it's not because of feeling like I'm going to get fat. I just don't want to feel sick anymore. I'm pretty certain that my stomach has shrunk because I've been avoiding eating a lot at one go, and that's why it's gotten hard to eat a full meal (unless it's Cafe Rio. I can down that pork salad like I'm going to die in 10 minutes). The Man has gotten very harsh with me on my eating habits, because now it has very little to do with me. And I know that, and it doesn't make it any easier, let me tell you.

But I managed to eat my dinner tonight. It wasn't a lot, but it was more than I have been able to eat for dinner for a long, long time. Here's hoping that I don't get nauseous and throw it up later. I'm quite proud of myself (hence the posting).

In other news, Dog 2 had to have exploratory surgery on her neck yesterday. It all started when we took her to the vet because we thought she was having ANOTHER allergic reaction to her food AGAIN (stupid dog has the digestive tract of a wet paper bag). We almost didn't bring her, but when I went to pick up some food that we know she can eat (she just doesn't gain weight on it), I just went ahead and made an appointment. This poor dog was miserable (just ask our New Mexico friends, and the Dog Friends). She was hot, she was listless, she had goopy eyes, and she wouldn't eat or drink anything. While the vet was checking her over, she found a lump in her neck which we hadn't noticed, thanks to the fact that she has too much skin on her head. It was soft and squishy, so she was pretty sure it was an abscess, caused by a small puncture wound, either in the back of her mouth, or from playing too rough with Dog 1. So she put her on pain pills and antibiotics. By the time The Man got home from work, it had already gotten bigger, and harder. We realized that the reason she wasn't eating was because her neck hurt, so we started soaking her food (HOLY BANANAS wet dog food stinks!) and putting her food dish and a water dish on some kind of elevated surface so she wouldn't have to bend her neck to get to them. And she started eating and drinking again. And the thing got bigger. And bigger. We brought her back to the vet to see if she could drain any fluid, but couldn't, so she took a needle biopsy to send off to see what it could possibly be. It came back negative for anything except blood cells, which brought up the C word. By this point, it had started leaking fluid, and it looked like she needed a bib or something. It was quite gross. SO, we scheduled her for exploratory surgery/core biopsy surgery. The exploratory was to see if there was a foreign object in there that was causing the lump, though since it was so hard, and so big, the vet was pretty sure that it wasn't an abscess. I got up at the unholy hour of 7:30 and drove her to the vet (we go to Payson. The vet there is totally worth the drive) for surgery that morning. The vet who performed the surgery said that (after getting in there) it looked to him like it was just an extremely fibrous abscess, but couldn't find any foreign object, so he got a sample to send to the lab again. The lump, which was between the size of a baseball and and a softball before it started draining, is now about the size of a golf ball, right in the middle of her neck, so they must have gotten a lot of fluid out. And now she is wearing one of those lovely collars to keep herself from scratching at the drain that's in her neck (dripping fluid every where. So gross). It's pitiful, because of the attempts to back out of it and the whining, and funny, because of the attempts to back out of it, and because she doesn't know how big her head clearance is now, so runs in to absolutely everything. She goes in on Saturday to get the drain removed, and hopefully, have a good, long, and satisfying scratch at that spot.

Pictures will be posted if I ever get around to taking them and uploading them and then posting them. I'm extremely lazy, and it's a long process.

Here's hoping that this is the last of her health problems, and we can just enjoy her as a dog, and not a sick dog.