swollen

I don't recognize this body I'm in.

I've talked a little before about how all this fat makes me feel like a stranger in my own skin, but the past few days seem like another beast entirely. I'm swollen -- puffier, fluffier than usual.

My ankle skin is taut, like a sausage about to burst. I can actually feel it, all the fluid stretching the limits of my outermost layer. A crease has even developed in there. A not-at-all-subtle crease. It's marking the transition from leg to foot (that place where my ankle used to be), and my flesh is horrifyingly bulging above the new demarcation.

Now, I've complained before that my ankles were a little pudgy. When I said that, all I meant was that my ankle bone was a little less prominent than I was used to. But I still HAD ankles! Now they've disappeared altogether!!

I was trying on shoes the other day, and every time I went to look in that little mirror that crops the view to just the lowest fifth of the body (you know the one, the one that highlights with great emphasis this affliction of mine), my heart skipped a beat. It literally went all aflutter at the horror: the state my health must be in for this to happen. And, oh yeah, my stomach turned sour, sour, sour. I was literally sick over it.

I don't know what alarming malfunction in my body is causing this, but there must be a cure. And I'm bound and determined to find it, sooner rather than later.

First experimental treatment to try: exercise. That's right! I'm going to get my blood flowing and my lymph pumping and see if I can't just flush it all away.