--exhausted, weak (like having been in bathtub far too long)
--pain in joints/back/sciatic
--extreme sensitivity to heat
--muscle spasms around ribs and waist
--emotional lability
--short term memory (what am I writing about...I forget)

Every task is a huge expenditure of energy, followed by collapse. An hour's nap required before being ready for another task. And that's how you make it through the next few days. If it gets worse, just take to your bed and drink Emergen-C and wait it out.

This injury of N's (and the fallout from it), added to the usual September stressors and the extreme heat, was the proverbial last straw that broke the camel's back.

I'm trying to keep it together. It helps to write it down, and click Save. It's a way of getting it off my mind, so I can think about something else.

N wants me to visit him at the VA today. Mr. Thoughtful is worried about me, he says, and in the next breath asks me to come visit him. For narcissists, empathy is an act, a learned response, not a feeling.