Forty five minutes with my rheumatologist yesterday and it was decided: I’m switching to a new medication, stat. For the last three weeks, I’ve been feeling worse and worse -- pain rattling me awake in the middle of the night, the inability to use my right arm/shoulder for at least 20 minutes in the morning, then throbbing pain the rest of the day.

It’s been a depressing few weeks, to be honest. My workload has been nuts, my body has been deteriorating, and then yesterday I got the news that my younger sister’s cancer has attacked the membrane separating the two hemispheres of her brain, and she has weeks to live. I was actually allowed to talk to her on the phone -- her husband lifted his interdiction on communication with my family -- and it was great and also profoundly shattering to hear her voice, still hers and true, but slurred and slow from the cancer.

I’m flying out in the next couple of weeks.