My temporal processes hurt.

Or, did. On Sunday, I felt something I have felt before, and I didn't like it one bit. The first time I felt it, it was a sign of Chicken Pox, which can reappear years later as Shingles. The second time I felt it, there was suspicion of Lyme Disease, although I have since been told that Lyme Disease first expresses itself as a hot, painful joint. On Sunday, when went to take my hair down from a pony tail, my hand grazed the crest of the bone behind my left ear, and OUCH. It hurt to the touch. I checked the other side: same thing. Relieved that it wasn't one-sided (symmetry is always a useful ruler-outer of the more vile, evil illnesses that I won't go into at this juncture), I still wondered: was I about to come down with Shingles? Or was this a nasty case of Lyme Disease that the Doxycycline I took two weeks ago didn't cure? Or was it...nothing?

Well, it couldn't be "nothing". Having been schooled in the Two-Week Rule by my Radiation Oncologist six summers ago, I decided to wait and see if it resolved on its own within two weeks.

It didn't last two days. My resolve, that is.

Yesterday, after I came home from practice, I felt grumpy and exhausted. I wrote about mood swinging yesterday. The Good Doc warned me against blaming Second Series for everything. But I chose to blame Second Series anyway. At the same time, the tender temporal processes were gnawing at my fears. It didn't occur to me that perhaps I might have a low grade virus going on. Whereas I should have made the connection between feeling like crap and having tenderness where there are clusters of lymph nodes, and come up with "low grade virus", I decided ignored my malaise, blaming it on Second Series, and assumed that the tenderness behind my ears was either Shingles or Lyme Disease. Or cancer.

After chatting with a doctor friend of mine, who reassured me, but (responsibly) only enough so that I could calmly call my internist, I made an appointment to see Dr. A in Scarsdale. Nice guy, Dr. A., but getting to the village of Scarsdale is a royal pain. Worse than getting to the city for practice because there is no pleasurable payoff at the end. At the end of the journey, it's just about putting on a gown, getting blood sucked out, enduring poking and prodding, and willing my blood pressure to stay its normal low despite that I am freaking out.

Woke up this morning and couldn't even fathom practicing. I assumed I was just sore and achey.

Why do I never realize that soreness and acheyness at that level is NOT a normal byproduct of practicing yoga?

Anyway, sometime before my appointment with Dr. A, I realized that the inflammation behind my ears was all but gone. I still didn't feel good enough to practice. But I realized that I had been sick, not just tired, and that I had "swollen glands", not a serious illness.

Puh puh puh, Kinehura and all that.

Later on, I even did Five and Five and Bhada Padmasana.

Tomorrow is another day...

YC