May flowers. I mean, showers. I mean, QUIT RAINING ALREADY.

I can see why they used to send people to the dry air of the mountains for "rest cures" related to consumption and whatever else they called conditions that featured craptastic symptoms of lung deterioration. I really get it now. 
About a month ago, I was in the hospital for pneumonia, which turned actually to be radiation pneumanitis - a side effect from my radiation treatments in February. They sent me home with oxygen (the giant green metal cylinder kind that made me feel like a helium balloon salesman), and, once we figured out the pneumanitis part, steroids for me to take to help clear my airways and keep them open. And thanks to the fact that I have an awesome medical team and enough bandwidth to manage my care (thanks to my holy host of helpers that include my whole family, various indulgent friends, and so on), I've been weaning my way off of the oxygen and the steroids pretty steadily under my doctor's guidance. Or at least I was, until the last day or two.

It has been raining here. All week long, buckets and puddles and baskets and faucets of rain. This might sound like a "so what?" moment to anyone living in, say, Oregon, or England, or wherever else we get those lovely looking pictures of haze and greenery and sheep wandering into the fog. But here in Denver? It's unheard of. And it's hit my lungs like a plague of locusts.

I don't like it. I was down to one tablet of my steroid a day, off oxygen in my house (thank GOD - walking around the house with my head tethered to that damn machine made me feel like an astronaut on a space walk on a good day and dog on a short, harsh, painful leash the rest of the time), taking my new and improved smaller oxygen compressor along for when I needed it but letting it lie low for hours at a time, and generally starting to feel like a human again (well, except for the steroids, which give me a bloated painful belly and a moon-pie face - but ah, well, what the hell can I do about that? - not much really). But now! Ugh! It was a struggle to make it up the hill by the kids' school, and I fell behind on our walk home, and I've had to wear oxygen most of the day today - I'm even wearing it right now, dammit! And I can hear and feel a little squeaky wheeze in my throat and lungs, like there are mice in there scrabbling to get free...and it's all because of all this rain. I just know it. My lungs feel like a wet, woolen sweater - but at least without the itch. 

How's your week been? 

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