Happy Thanksgiving! Big thanks to Insane for helping me so much the past few days. Explanation and status update below the jump, and new links up on Patreon shortly!

Book 36, Chapter 6 - Refusal Book 36, Chapter 7 - Success

So as all of you reading this know, this has been a miserable week. I've spent around 71 or so of the past 72 hours on the sickbed, doing nothing but just suffering. We were sure that I had strep throat and so was using penicillin accordingly, but earlier this morning (US) time I realized that not only had there been no improvement in fever/throat pain, I was actually feeling worse. I felt sure that I wasn't going to be able to do anything for several days, which is why I asked Insane to post for me.

We went to the emergency room at a nearby Kaiser Permanente hospital, where after an half an hour the doctor finally came around to see me. He had me open my mouth, used a tongue depressor on me... then actually flinched. His exact words were, "Oh wow, that is a nasty, nasty case of pharyngitis. That just LOOKS painful." A bit later, when I mentioned that over-the-counter pain medication like Tylenol had been having no effect, he kind of just rolled his eyes at me: "Of course it wouldn't. Have you SEEN your throat?"

So there's good news and bad news for me. The bad news is, its probably not bacterial/strep after all, just viral... albeit one of the worst viral inflammations the doctor's seen in quite some time. This means no amount of antibiotics will have an effect, which is why the amoxicillin/penicillin did nothing. The good news is, at least it wasn't some of the really serious things I was worried about, like a peritonsillar abscess or a fungal infection of some sort. We'll have to wait to see the results of the swab test to figure out exactly what it is, but he seemed professionally confident that it was actually viral.

Given the severity of my case and the recurrent fevers, I was sent home with narcotic-strength painkillers, a two-day supply of an anti-inflammation steroid, and a big tube of lidocaine to be used as needed. I've never used stuff like this before, but it's undeniably effective; instead of feeling like I'm constantly on the brink of death, I merely feel miserable. I can work with miserable.

I'm obviously not going to be up to full capacity, and staring at the computer screen for more than 20 minutes at a time gives me headaches, but I still have two more chapters left in my stockpile. I should be able to slowly piece together a chapter a day, which would take us to the end of this week... and hopefully by then, I'll have seen some improvement.

This has kind of been a sucky Thanksgiving, but I'm thankful for my parents for taking so good care of me, I'm thankful that I no longer feel at the verge of death, and I'm thankful for all of your support. As for the turkey? I'll see you in 2018, I guess!