I was at some event where I met Questlove Jenkins (Philly musician who’s Jimmy Fallon’s bandleader) and told him my cousins lived downstairs from his parents. He thought that was cool and invited me to follow him along that day, which I did. Lots of parties, etc.

I’m in a big house and there’s a lot of old furniture in the attic. I decide things have to go and I’m talking various other people into removing pieces. It’s looking a lot better, but then we discover all these animals in the house, which have gotten in from outside. (I forget all of them, but one was a big rabbit with floppy ears.) I am appalled. I find a large hole in the foundation wall of the basement and see that’s how they’re getting in.

So I talk my father (not my real father, the father from “The Middle” who used to be the janitor in “Scrubs) into going to Home Depot and picking up some mortar and cement to fill the hole. We have a brief discussion about whether to use the mortar or cement for such a large hole, and come to the conclusion we just don’t know.

THEN another scene: I’m in Manhattan, wearing a gold lame pants outfit and driving a luxury car when I get confused and enter ongoing traffic. I end up driving through the inside of a large store; I finally park the car and get out. I’m walking around, talking to people with whom I’m apparently supposed to be be working on a project of some kind. Then I see Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue, and go up to talk to them. “I can’t remember who it was who told me to say hello to you, but someone did,” I say. Then I see Phil’s face change into that of my niece’s boyfriend.

Then I woke up.

So the cortisone shot I got in my knee did help with the tightness, but now I have actual pain. Ironic, huh?

Worse than that, I am now getting HORRIFIC cramps in the leg where I got the shot (think worst charlie horse you ever got times ten), so bad that I can hardly sleep.

I hate not being able to sleep.

Turns out this is just one of those side effects that are worse than the thing they were treating you for in the first place. Remember, the doctor told me the worst that could happen was that the shot wouldn’t do anything. He was wrong.

My physiatrist is frustrated by this problem I have with my left knee. It feels like someone put a giant strip of adhesive across the front and I can’t move it freely. It feels really tight, and nothing (yoga, massage, a previous cortisone shot) seems to help. (Oh, and it can be pretty stiff when I first wake up.)

So he sent me to this radiologist, who was going to do an ultrasound and see where the trouble was. I went today; of course I’d lost the prescription, and had to make a last-minute call to the physiatrist’s office. They scanned and emailed me a copy.

Turns out the ultrasound shows all kinds of osteoarthritis in my left knee, and the new doctor was trying to figure out what to do. He thought about giving me a shot of artificial synovial fluid (possible side effects, still controversial) or a combo shot of cortisone and anesthetic. “What’s the down side?” I said. He told me the cortisone might not do anything.

“So what’s the upside?” I might get three to six months’ of pain relief and movement in the knee, he said.

“From the non-existent pain,” I said. He told me he couldn’t believe I didn’t have pain, that I must have a really high pain threshold. “I do have a really high pain threshold,” I said. “But I’m telling you, I don’t have any pain.”

My physiatrist told me this back when I first started seeing him: That you can’t really base your treatments only on the tests. “I get people in here who are in agony, can barely walk because they’re in so much pain — and nothing at all shows up on the MRIs. I get other people whose MRIs show all kinds of problems — herniated disks, arthritis — and they’re fine. You have to look at the function, not the tests.”

I got the shot. Maybe it will help. But if it does, it’ll be kind of like voodoo, because they won’t know why.

I was in a big house I was fixing up with my ex-husband, and he shows me a drawer filled with flat, dead cats, like the skeletal remains you see of pets they find on those hoarder shows. We look through the box and find some tiny, tiny, live kittens that are barely alive. I start to cry and tell him we have to put them down, we can’t take care of them. I wake up feeling very sad.

Have some cake!