Positively Phoebe

**This post was transferred from the now defunct "The Long Ease" blog.** Well, I survived yesterday's goodbye and managed not to cry all over Dr. Kebria like I did on Dr. Avellone...  As Ryan and I were walking down the hall on our way in, I heard my nurse, Alex, say in a sad voice, "Phoeeeebeeee..." to which I yelled back, "Don't even look at me!"  I knew if I saw Alex's sad face, too, I'd cry.  It was a MIRACLE that I held it together when my Nurse Practitioner, Erin, came out to the waiting room to hug me - I am ALWAYS crying to Erin on the phone every time something new is wrong with me.  I love my nurses as much as I love my doctors.  They are incredible ladies. After they got my vitals, we were led to "The Room".  It was serendipitous, somehow.  The first time I ever saw Dr. Kebria was in that room, back in November of 2011.  It's the room where we met, where he did my biopsy, where Dr. Avellone told me Dr. Kebria wa...

**This post was transferred from the now defunct "The Long Ease" blog.** Yesterday was one of those days - the perfect example of my state of medical weirdness. I woke up feeling perfectly "normal," took a shower, got dressed, went downstairs to let the dogs out, and felt, quite suddenly, an unfamiliar and intense pain in my lower abdomen.  It was somewhat reminiscent of feeling like super-constipated, except that I wasn't.  But I definitely didn't feel well enough to eat, so I packed a lunch and headed to work. I could not get comfortable at my desk.  The pain was getting worse.  I started to feel cold.  Put on my emergency work hoodie.  Still cold.  Busted out the space heater.  Kept working.  Got a phone call from a vendor.  Was doing fine and then, 5 minutes into the call, I was sweating.  Dizzy.  I told the guy I had to go, hung up the phone, fell to the floor, and threw up in my wastebasket.  The freezing went ...