and as for you

Right.  My face.  It just got so bad.  I took pictures, but they're too horrible, and I decided I can't post them, so you'll have to believe me.  With my face all blown up like a baked potato, and stinging so bad there was no relief from the burn, I decided to head to the ER and just see what a professional person of the medical arts might say.  They said a bunch of stuff, shot me up with an IV of lord-knows-what and saline, and sent me on my way with a couple of prescriptions.  Boy am I glad I embarked upon this quest for health and wellness!

Thankfully, the prednisone took the swelling down pretty well, but my skin still appeared red and hella-chapped.  Yes - so bad I said hella.  I decided to head to VT on a whim last Saturday
night, too, and thinking it would be an in & out job, brought naught more than the clothes on my back...but I got stuck.  The blanket I slept under irritated my skin badly, and I woke up with fresh bruises from scratching.  Then I got a flat tire, and in my attempt to change it, I dropped the car off the jack.  When I finally managed to get it back up off the pavement and put the donut on, I spent the rest of the morning driving around looking for an open tire place to no avail, so I took the boy to P-Pie and resolved to stay an extra day.  Alas.  It would have been perfectly alright to spend another day visiting in VT, eat another Coffee Corner breakfast, say hey to folks we met along the way, but I didn't bring the little blue bills that apparantly kept my 'sunburn' in check (our waitress did in fact ask if I had a sunburn), and the burning Itch was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.  After another mostly sleepless night, we struck out first thing Monday morning, got a new tire, and headed South - into the flurries, which were just flurries as we headed out of Montpelier.  By the time we were done winding our way along 107 towards Killington, the pavement was white, and I was crawling along at a white-knuckle 20 mph, praying the semi that was stopped at the crest of the hill would move before I had to hit my brakes and lose any momentum I could have counted on to get myself over that hump - with another semi coming in fast in my rear view.  I didn't make it.  The semi behind me kissed my back bumper and came to a stop, while I fishtailed my way up the last few hundred yards of snowy slalom to pull in at the gas station and break down in tears, while gulping in huge breaths of air, my first since the long moments when I saw that truck coming up behind me.

We got some snacks, took a potty break, and sat in the car until the snow appeared to taper off a bit, and I'd seen a few plow trucks go by before I attempted to slide down the other side of the mountain to our certain doom.  I started off slow, mindful of my traction and the cars I passed on the shoulder with their hazards on.  I managed not to have a heart attack or hurtle us into oblivion over the edge of a cliff, and I found that as I pulled into Rutland and turned onto 7, that we were going to live, and even get back to Woodstock this very afternoon, that I could count on a shower in T minus 2 1/2 hours.  Once we hit the Thruway, it was smooth sailing, and I was under the boiling hot water by 5pm, dosed on a blue pill, and breathing my relief into the steam.  Now, 4 days of liberal slathering of moisterizer later, I feel that I've really had just about enough of this facial catastrophy I've been dealing with, fully acknowledging that I did it to myself, but who knew and all that, and it's moot at this point.  It's looking much improved right now, even though it was threatening to come back in force, which makes me think I'm on the 'better' side of the whole experience, yay team (blue pills and moisterizer).