naming the puffy

It's called angioedema.

I would not recommend reading the Wikipedia entry on it, as that makes it sound like a violent, agonizing, frequently fatal immune collapse, when as far as I can gather from other sites it is generally a non-life-threatening allergic reaction on the same spectrum as hives -- in essence, your face is one big hive. Also, what happened to me is in no wise as severe as what I saw in the pictures posted to the web. It may not even be angioedema in the strict sense, but what the doctor described sounds remarkably like what happened.

My doctor is excellent. He is always kind and considerate and he figures things out that other doctors don't seem to.

He thinks it's stress, and I have to admit that makes sense. I tend to have an inflammatory reaction to emotional duress. When I left my evil ex many years ago, and went home to visit my parents, I developed a violent case of hives that endured for over a week, and for months afterwards I'd get random swelling in irritated areas of skin at stressful times. It went away after a while. and I stopped consciously expecting it as a stress reaction. I think part of what alarmed me so much about this (other than its idiopathy) was that it reminded me of that time, and how out of control everything felt.

The thing is, though, okay, the thing is you should not look up your diagnoses on the Internet. Because then you will find a single reference to people dying during dental surgery of the most severe hereditary form of the thing, and you will think about your dentist appointment on Tuesday, and you will not sleep at all well.

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on being broken

Caro and her husband A. left today. I'm afraid I wasn't much good as company because I've been sleeping so badly. Or we'll say that's why. At least they had a place out of the rain.

We did make the journey out last night, more for a lark than anything else. We drove by Bolen Books at 11:45, but the lineup was getting-married-while-waiting-to-see-Star-Wars insane, so after a brief period lost in the Oak Bay Vortex, we found Ivy's Books and queued up in a quite reasonable, mellow, and pleasant group there.

Scant hours later, we went for an early breakfast at lemon_pickle's. It was incredible -- roast veggies, potatoes, and eggs benedict with the lightest, foamiest, home-made hollandaise you ever had.

The only slight snag would be when I went to get out the plates and somehow brought down an entire stack of crockery, as well as the full coffee pot.

Thunder of a thousand restaurant disasters. I'd washed dishes without incident (the first time I ever washed dishes there without breaking something) and was moving various unsuitable bowls and dishes to get at the plates when --

It went like awkward machinery, in two steps, the stop-motion of disasters. Everything collapsed onto the counter. There was a moment, not even a full second, when it seemed like I could have stepped into the path of the remaining fragments teetering on the counter and tried to stop the final plummet toward the floor, but the thought falling pot of boiling hot coffee floated past and then it all came down.

The food, though: great. And now I get to go dish shopping! lemon_pickle -- I saw some quite nice serving dishes at the Moss St. Market.

Then we sat around comparing Spanish and English homonyms and trying to translate "Deathly Hallows" into Spanish. (I couldn't find a noun version of "hallow" in either of my dictionaries -- even the Penguin, which is British.) After they had gone to pick up the takeout Szechuan to take to Hornby Island (where there is little takeout opportunity), I had a NAP. The second round of coffee did nothing to prevent it.

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