It's Monday, What Are You Reading Meme

Hosted by Sheila from One Person's Journey.... I really enjoy this meme, even though I don't do it every week. I'm not so good at regular postings, and since I've been ill, it's gotten worse. So, When I'm feeling okay**, I'll post - otherwise I'll just be lurking away on other people's blogs, you'll never know when I'm loitering on your blog....Sounded creepy didn't it!

This week I 'm reading Mind Games, courtesy of and written by Carolyn Crane. I was lucky enough win her book on her contest. I also got some candy! (child's giggle here- so yummy!)

page 131:

' "Wow." Visit to foreign specialists. Aggie enjoys a level of hypochondriac opportunity I'd barely dreamed of. We discuss more medical stuff. If anybody was listening in, they'd think we were two doctors, except for the fact that Aggie frequently repeats herself, then screws up her face and says, "Did I already say that?"

At the moment I'm halfway through this book and I'm having a lot of fun reading it. I you've ever taken any medical classes or have people in the medical profession in your family, you'll be familiar with hypochondria, at least on some level. Some have huge tendencies, some have small similarities to hypochondira sufferers. Ms Crane does a wonderful job showing us how a hypochondriac might think, rationalize and panic her way through worries of diseases.

**I've recently found out that I have emphesema. I'm currently working out how I feel about it (mostly pissed off at the moment). Anyway, I might mention here and there things about breathing or being fatigued or sick. I'm not continuosly looking for sympathy (I'm afraid people will think that after awhile) but joking about illness, or just making comments here and there (some of them might be snarky) is the way my family and I tend to work things out. So I hope people reading my blogs don't think that I'm looking for "sorry's" everytime I mention being sick. I appreciate the well-wishes of course!, but don't want you to think I'm searching for them. Sometimes I'm laughing about being ill, sometimes I'm pissed about it, sometimes I feel like crying, sometimes I'm just mentioning it, because right now, it's a huge part of my life, and it's at the back of my mind 24/7. In the meantime, if you know anything about Living with emphesema, feel free to contact me. Right now, I don't have a lot of information about it, other than the fatalistic information about the disease itself that is all that I've been able to find on the internet. I should have asked my doctor more about it, but I was kind of stunned and just left. I'm not on oxygen yet, but I do have to use three different inhalers and I've noticed a real change in my overall level of health. But I don't know what to expect on a day to day basis. Do I try to exercise or will I be damaging myself even more? I did go on a slow paced walk today with my granddaughter and puppy. Will I ever actually feel better? Am I always going to be coughing and hacking or is this just the tail end of the extremely long cold I've had? Do I ever get my voice back? Is every cold going to turn into a big productions? Should I break down and get a physically handicapped sign for parking? it is getting harder to walk into the stores, much less walk around the stores inside. Sometimes I feel like getting the placard is giving up.

Sorry guys, that just kind of spewed out of me; really this should have been a separate post, but I'm not going to cut it, because if anyone knows anything I'd love to hear about it. I do already know that it's eventually fatal, so no need to tell me that. :) I'm hoping for at least 25 more years, though I don't want them to be a torture of breathing difficulties. <--awkward sentence structure, but my brain is a little fried tonight. <---lame excuses :)

Okay, I'm going to go to bed, probably read a little more. Happy Monday everyone. The best thing about Mondays, is knowing that Wednesdays (and Modern Family) is only two days away. Then after Wednesday, there are only two more days left of the work week and then...A Weekend to play, read and sleep during. This weekend I mostly slept, and read.