Things To Do on my Sister's Birthday.

1) Stare at the wall on the right side of my bed until the pain forces me to roll over.

2) Roll over.

3) Star across my room at the far wall until the pain forces me to roll over.

4) Repeat as needed.

It actually started sometime Wednesday with a constant pain on the inner side of my right knee. This, after 48 hours of pain and swelling in my left foot, both caused by the same fluid buildup I'm taking diuretics to treat--part of the cocktail of blood pressure meds I've been on since July.

I was still able to move around on my own early Thursday morning, but by noon I couldn't stand or stand any movement or pressure on that knee. My world shrank to a twin bed, my TV remote, a jug of store-brand "Kool-Aid," and a bottle of Ibuprofen. A couple of those every 6 hours seems to be taking the worst of the pain, but it's still the single worst pain I've ever had, even including that aortic dissection. I've been through it before, this fluid buildup and inflammation in one knee or the other, several times a year since 2006. Got it covered: bed rest, fan, electric blanket, hunker down till it blows over. I can tell how far along it is by how hot my knee is over the inflamed spots and how long I can lie on one side or the other before having to roll.

Things were bad enough last night that I floated through an entire showing of "Scary Movie 4" on Comedy Central. I'm pretty sure that it sucked as badly as I thought it did, but several days worth of little sleep have left me pretty loopy.

Much better this morning; I was able to stand and totter around a bit for the first time in 48 hours.

[Update--what's it got to do with Big-C Cancer? I originally had this post under "Blood Pressure" thinking that it had some link to the BP troubles I've been having. It does, but only in that the BP troubles are caused by that golf-ball-sized "mass" [a freaking tumor, but the doctors don't like to call it that] in my right kidney. Now it'll be grouped where it belongs.]