Moribund and back again.

Let's briefly review the stresses of 2006:

a) Daughter takes v stressful exams for secondary school in January
b) Husband decides to change jobs in February
c) Father has mini-stroke in March
d) Discover am pregnant in April
e) Have a miscarriage in May, and mother has hip replacement (bonanza month, May)
f) Organise ball for 200 people in June. Favourite chicken eaten by fox.
g) Father collapses and taken into hospital in July. Ferrets escape and never seen again.
h) Father diagnosed with dementia in August: family decision to put him in care home.
i) September: father moved to care home: daughter starts at secondary school.
j) October: daughter having lots of trouble settling at new school. Many scenes.
k) November: mother breaks leg
l) December: mother comes to stay for extended period. Christmas. Another brief pregnancy moment.

So, if you review 2006 (and the above list doesn't include the two part time jobs and other unchanging daily matters), it's pretty apparent that I was a bit of a sitting duck for illness. Nemesis caught up with me at the end of December: it began with a strange swelling in my neck and an odd sensation when I swallowed, and progressed to an illness so nebulous and yet severe that I have quite genuinely, in the last few weeks, at various times, been sure that I've had:

a) glandular fever
b) lymphoma
c) Addison's disease
d) hyperthyroidism
e) multiple sclerosis
f) motor neurone disease
g) cytomegalovirus (still suspicious about that one)
h) hypothyroidism
i) hepatitis
j) something autoimmune.

I shan't bore you, blog, with blow by blow symptoms. The main unchanging feature, for a good fortnight, was extreme lethargy - we're talking the need to rest for twenty minutes after unloading the dishwasher - with increased salivation and swallowing discomfort, but the myriad of other symptoms that came and went were so varied as to keep a career hypochondriac in Google hits for a lifetime. Me, I even went to the doctor, and had a series of blood tests run, which ruled out most of the above possibilities.
After basically losing most of January (though I did find lots of interesting new blogs, and I did learn a great deal about the geography of the USA using this site), I am now feeling much, much better, and ready to resume my life.
I increasingly doubt whether said life is going to include the third child; I think I am ovulating today, only 9 days after last period, which is not encouraging. I decided to skip trying this month anyway, because I don't think it's a great idea to try to conceive with whatever evil virus this may have been still fighting back against my antibodies. I certainly think I'm on the verge of the perimenopause, if not actually there. Still, let's give it a month or two more and then see what, if anything has happened.
And maybe I'll try to blog a bit more often, and not necessarily about the dull twinges of my aging reproductive tract.