It's raining, it's poring...

About a month and a half ago, I was thinking about how when it rains, it pores. At the time, I'd only been freelancing about a month and wasn't really making any money at it yet; I had a number of large bills in quick succession, however, as my cat, Cleo, got sick, and my glasses broke, requiring me to get new ones. Somehow, I managed to wade through the extra expenses, but they severely tapped my extra resources.

Now, it seems we have another rainstorm ahead of us. Michael has been having back pain for the last few months, but during the last four or five days it's gotten dramatically worse. All this weekend, he wasn't able to sleep more than about six hours at night, because the pain was so bad after lying in bed for that long. He knew he wouldn't be able to make it to work today, so he called in late last night. Early this morning, I awoke to him gasping in pain as he turned the wrong way in his efforts to get up. He was obviously in a lot more pain than usual, so I got up with him. It's lucky I did, because he fell in the kitchen, nearly passing out from the pain. I helped him get back up and eventually persuaded him to get back in bed, from where he called his doctor's office.

I'm really concerned. Michael is now showing some rather alarming symptoms, such as alternating chills and hot flashes (when he nearly passed out in the kitchen he was sweating and said he felt like he was burning up), numbness in his left foot, ice-cold extremeties (particularly his feet), nausea (when he nearly passed out), and uncontrollable shaking, almost to the point of convulsions (he kept hitting his head on the cabinets right before he fell in the kitchen, and kept shaking for some time afterward). He's been to the doctor's several times already, but at the time it wasn't as bad. His doctor's office has been assuming it's a pinched nerve (which is what he had thought, too), but since it wasn't bad last time he was there (which was Friday, by the way), they were hesitating to do an MRI, and instead were pushing physical therapy. Now, I'm afraid that they have tunnel vision, and will have a hard time seeing how much worse it has gotten, practically overnight.

Michael has a doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon, but he's considering going to the emergency room, depending on how bad it gets. Alas, this will probably be another impediment to my freelancing. I guess if we do go to the emergency room, I'll have plenty of time to kill, so I'll be sure to bring my laptop, a book, and a couple of DVDs. At the very least, I can finish a smaller assignment and draft a query or two while I'm there.