Number of people I told about el lumpito in the first week: 6

Number of people I e-mailed to ask for prayer after el lumpito refused to shrink in the face of a week’s worth of killer antibiotics: 41

Number of people on my church’s prayer chain who received the request: 54 (a few of them may overlap with the list of folks I sent it to directly)

Number of atheist friends who received this “prayer request”: at least 2

Number of nervous, “I don’t know how to act around you” smiles I received: only 1 (!) I was sure there’d be more . . . but maybe that’ll come later

Percentage of my workday spent Googling possible causes: between 30% and 60%, depending on the day

Number of times my shrink has told me not to Google it: 30 or so

Number of magazine articles about cancer that I’ve “randomly” come across in the past ten days: 1

Number of times in the past ten days that I’ve turned on the radio and “randomly” heard people talking about their experiences with cancer: 4 (two times was the same person speaking on two consecutive days)

Number of times in the past ten days that I’ve heard a radio program about a hypochondriac who always thinks she has cancer, but doesn’t: 1

Number of answers to my Yahoo! Answers question asking, “is there any possibility that this could be something OTHER than cancer?”: 4, so far

Number of cutesy chick-lit books on living with cancer that I saw at Target but didn’t purchase: 1