You Didn"t Just Say That!

Today, one of the secretaries at work said to me, "Are you ok? You look like you"re dying from cancer."

She"s a generally nice person, but I can"t believe she said that to me.

First of all, it"s not true. I don"t look that bad. I actually feel better than I have in a while. I"m maybe a little pale, but I"m always pale. My baseline skin color could be described as translucent pink. I"m still pink. Especially on 40mg prednisone/day. I"ve lost a little weight (ok, I"ve started wearing scrubs all the time because none of my pants fit any more), but since I"ve always been a bit overweight, I"m still fairly round. And besides, with the prednisone, I feel so puffy and sweaty and gross anyway, it"s not like the weight loss is visible.

I have some energy. I"m eating (and eating and eating and eating. The prednisone gives me this primal, instinctual hunger which GI doc says she approves of, but it"s kind of a bummer to wake up feeling like I have to EAT at 3am. It"s disruptive to my sleep). I"ve started working my routine 12 hour days again, and am actually getting some stuff done. I"m about to start running again, meant to last week, but I kept over-sleeping.

So, really, I"m far from looking like I"m dying of cancer. I much closer to my baseline state of round-bouncy-pinkness than I"ve been since May. Health wise, I"m better than I"ve been in months. I got some labs drawn today (GI doc appt on Monday). Hematocrit is finally up to 30, albumin is up to 2.7.

Secondly, who says that to someone? Is it just me, or is that kind of a bizarre thing to say?
I mean, even if it were true, which it isn"t. Especially from someone who, although maybe not quite a friend, has been a friendly acquaintance of mine.

And seriously, how should I respond to that type of stuff? What do you say in response to someone who says that?

Anyway, I"m just sort of perseverating about that tonight. I should go eat something and go to bed.

Also, if anybody has any high-protein midnight snack suggestions (protein seems to fill me up longer than other snacks), I"m all ears, and tired of eating cheese and yogurt and shrimp cocktail (although not together) at 3am every day. Maybe nuts. Maybe I could precook some chicken breasts and then nuke "m for 30 seconds. Seriously, any ideas?