I am pleased to report that I am no longer a starfish.

Starting Friday night, I turned my stomach inside-out every hour or two for twenty-eight hours. 

It SUCKED.

Somehow I've managed to avoid--and here I'm knocking frantically on every piece of wood within reach--sinus infections, the flu, things falling on my head, alien abduction, and major broken bones this year. But I got whatever stomach bug is going around, and it SUCKED.

But now I'm better. 'Bout damn time, too.

Mongo, when I got home on Friday, was solicitous. He did everything but hold my hair back for me (because I have no hair to speak of) and then curled up next to me on the couch, carefully avoiding my stomach, and gazed soulfully into my eyes. He's a good boy. The only thing he couldn't do was get me ginger ale and meclizine, because he doesn't have a driver's licence and can't make change. 

In other news: The Powers That Be are expanding the neurocritical care unit, again. Apparently we've done well enough, what with staying full and winning awards and so on, that they want to add four more beds *and* an epilepsy monitoring area. I'm not entirely clear on where all these new beds will be, but whatever. I'm hearing rumors that they want to retrofit a couple of rooms for some mysterious purpose, as well: whether that means light-blocking shades or ceiling lifts, nobody has said. It's all very exciting and fluxy.

We've been seeing more patients with movement disorders and demyelinating diseases, as well, which is nice. Most of the nurses I work with are old med-surg or cardiac critical care folks, so Guillain-Barre and myesthenia gravis and Parkinson's are new territory for them. I learn more answering their questions than I realized I would.

Finally, there is a nice man coming this morning to fix the drain line from the kitchen sink. Ah, the glories of living in an old house. Do they ever stop? No. No, they don't.