The sad thing is that this morning I’m actually feeling better.

I’m not really all that certain as to what, exactly, is causing this set of symptoms that I’m currently enjoying. Certainly the heat has something to do with it; Davis has been hitting 100+ temperatures consistently for the past few days, reminding me of that old Twilight Zone episode called "The Midnight Sun", where the earth had somehow gotten knocked out of its orbit and was moving closer and closer to the sun, causing everything to heat up. My body has never really responded all that well to extreme heat; I’m okay up to around 95, but anything above that causes my body to rebel and get sick.

The shoulder impingement also has something to do with it, I’m sure. Back in December 1999 — yes, eight months ago — I must have injured my shoulder somehow, and simply not let it heal. In June it finally started hurting so bad that I took myself to the doctor who pronounced, "Impingement". Basically, my shoulder bones — which are already oddly shaped, apparently — are coming too close together, irritating all of the surrounding tissues and causing a constant pain which feels something like having a vise grip on to the joint itself and squeezing. Hard. Constantly. I started physical therapy to strengthen the muscles in the area and reduce the inflammation, but it didn’t seem to help. The doctor injected cortisone into the joint, and that provided some relief, even though there is still some pain.

The pseudo-migraine isn’t helping either. It’s not really a migraine, I’m told; the pain in my shoulder is causing all of my muscles in my upper back and neck to tighten and this is causing migraine-like symptoms, from sensitivity to bright lights to nausea. Very little of the food that I eat actually has managed to stay in my body lately.

And the insomnia. For some reason I’ve been unable to get more than three or four hours of sleep per night, maximum, for a couple of weeks — normally, even less. Last night I think I slept for an hour. Here I am at work now, not finalizing the report codes that I should be finalizing, wishing for coffee, worried that if I get some it won’t stay down and knowing that coffee tastes really nasty coming up and wondering if I could get an intravenous caffeine hookup.

A planet spinning in space must be a dizzy thing; maintaining constant acceleration to remain at a steady distance from the sun which maintains a steady gravitational pull to keep the planet in place. All the while, the planet rotates on its own axis, at thousands of miles an hour, and if its own gravity did not hold it together, it would fly apart into a million pieces of interstellar dust and tiny rocks.

These feelings of mine right now are a funny thing. I’m barely in touch with the earth. One wrong push and I’ll go flying off into space, losing orbit, falling into the sun…