Tag Archives: Status

Status Update

Writer’s Block and Better Days to Come

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Hi guys, I’ve missed you! Blogging has taught me quite a bit about making unreasonable goals and that because I live with a chronic illness, I often don’t get much of a say in the when and where of my stop-points. I may go more in depth on my Patreon page as to where I’ve been the last few weeks, but the TLDR is that there was major family drama leading up to Christmas and then once we resolved said drama; my mom has been in and out of the Emergency Room with heart attack-like symptoms that the doctors swear they can’t figure out.

It’s been stressful. The stress was so bad that I didn’t want to write. The thought of blogging terrified me. I’m not exactly sure why.

Mom was put on nearly complete bedrest for a few weeks and Hime is only 11. Someone had to take care of the pets and get Hime to school and make sure Mom rested. Being a caretaker is exhausting. I have a new appreciation of SC when I’m not well.

So while I dreaded writing, I went back to the hobbies that kept me sane. I colored for the fun of coloring. I assembled puzzles that made me smile. I joined World Puzzle Days and have completed 3 puzzles for that with numbers 4 & 5 in various stages of completion. I played a LOT of Fallout 4 with the Spouse-Critter. In short, I took care of me.

The sun is showing its face more each day, Mom is getting better, and I have one of my favorite conventions coming up. It’s time to get back to doing what I love, trying out new things and sharing them with folks like myself.

Thanks for reading, and please click the Follow Button under my profile on the right side of the page. To support posts like this in the future, consider joining my Patreon!

Announcements, SC Post, Status Update

Down, but not out

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SC here, Puzzlepaws just got back from her birthday trip.  While she got some awesome stuff for the blog, she brought home an unwanted bit of con swag…”con plague”.  Nothing major, just a miserable cold.

With her disease, her immune system is compromised (it is too busy attacking her body to defend it.)  The “good” news: while she’s sick, she’s not in pain as her Fibromyalgia goes into remission while her body attacks this cold instead of her.  The “bad” news: Puzzlepaws has to take some pretty strong medicine to beat the cold down, so she’s essentially bedridden (and asleep) while she recovers. (Thus why I’m here.)

Thankfully, “pretty strong medicine” is available Over-the-Counter (OTC), with ID.  Why “with ID”?  Puzzlepaws (and myself) are part of the (large) subset of humanity for whom phenylephrine simply does not work.  Unfortunately, NyQuil® stopped including pseudoephedrine HCL years ago (because yahoos use pseudoephdrine HCL to make methamphetamine).  Walgreens® to the rescue!

Walgreens® makes a “Night Cold & Flu” that is what NyQuil® used to be.  (You can’t feel a cold if you’re in a coma.)  Unfortunately, it works just like NyQuil® used to: You take your dose, wait 10-30 minutes, then wake up 10-12 hours later. You feel better, but you lose the night and part of the day.  Rinse, repeat as needed until you can function again.  If you need this medicine, you have to ask for it at the Pharmacy (no buying it online), then you have to produce ID (Federal Law) before they will sell it to you.  (And then you can only buy so much in a month…which varies by state.)

While this is only a cold, it brings up a good point.  Diseases like what Puzzlepaws has are the reason for a thing called “Herd Immunity”.  This is what happens when people who are otherwise well get immunized (Eek, Needles!).  In a well-immunized society, a preventable disease has a hard time getting a foothold because most of the population is immune to the disease.  Thus, individuals like Puzzlepaws (those with compromised immune systems) have a lower chance of getting truly nasty diseases because those around them can’t get those diseases.  So we protect the most vulnerable individuals in our population by being immunized against the diseases that might kill them. (Example: The flu for me is 2-4 days of misery, then all better!  As for Puzzlepaws, she is looking at 10-21 days of misery.  That misery is extended if she gets complications like: bronchitis, pneumonia, or other incidental infections.  Any of these complications could hospitalize or kill her.)

If you’re going to haul out the “vaccines cause autism” (or any other similar argument), don’t bother.  You won’t get the argument you want, but you will get blocked.  If you can’t say something nice…

NyQuil® is a Registered Trademark of The Proctor & Gamble Company.

Walgreens® is a Registered Trademark of the Walgreens Company.

Disclosure: The opinions are my own.  All links are direct; I do not make money from them.

Thanks for reading, and please click the Follow Button under my profile on the right side of the page. To support posts like this in the future, consider joining my Patreon!

#walgreens #nyquil

Status Update

Travel, Illness, Trolls, and the Feeding Thereof.

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So it has been a while since my last posting…Understatement, I know. The latter half of December went more than a little haywire, courtesy of the topics in my title.

Firstly, travel: I got called back to New York for a Happy Family Emergency. I’ll post that separately, as it’s a fun story; but the travel home was hellish. Said hellish travel feeds into the other two topics, illness and trolls.

Illness is self-explanatory, I hope. If not, well, you are obviously not someone with the messed up immune system that most people with a chronic pain/autoimmune/genetic disorder have. If I stress, I get sick, if I’m exposed to crowds, I’ll most likely get whatever ick is in that crowd. If I’m exhausted from traveling, having been exposed to crowds and temperature extremes and being stressed at the same time??? SOOOOO Sick. If I come home from this only to find a disapproving Troll on my blog posting negatively?? Cue Sick and Depression Meltdown!

I’ve spent from December 22nd to January 14th in a haze. Depression is made of suck, and it hits everyone differently. Christmas was a haze of blah, despite everything SC did to make things better. A cold that settled in my chest left me with little energy and Depression ate my motivation and all color. Yes, Depression is capitalized. It’s a proper name; Depression is a monster I battle. It wins a few rounds, mostly because it cheats with stress and pain, or I win a few rounds. It’s a cycle. This time it won 3 weeks of my life. I marathoned 12 seasons of both Ancient Aliens and Forensic Files. Mostly because I didn’t have to think while watching them. I did develop a great theory on Giorgio Tsoukalos’s hair.

Thankfully, I have a good support network of friends and family, both IRL and online. They were there when I started to climb my way back out of the colorless Blah of Depression. This is life. My world has color and purpose again; I want to finish the posts I’d planned for Christmas and start my 2019 posts on National Puzzle Day on January 29th, 2019.

And my Troll? I’m going to face them. I’ve found that I have a lot to say. I’ll feed my anonymous troll and hope they choke. 

 

 

Announcements, SC Post, Status Update

Life reminds us that some things only depart for a while

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Greetings All!

TL:DR – SC had to medicate PuzzlePaws for pain, so the next post will be late.

SC here, PuzzlePaws is feeling a touch under the weather.  She had an ambitious post planned and was about halfway through the initial filming when her knee (which has almost NEVER been a problem before) declared that now was a good time to report Level 9+ pain for no reason (i.e. injury, impact, weather, etc).

She tried to tough it out and “walk it off” with only OTC painkiller and a muscle relaxer, but the knee wasn’t having any of it (9 -> 7).  I caught her at it, dosed her with Rx painkillers, and sent her to bed for the rest of the day.

At this point, PuzzlePaws can’t string two words together and is grumpily sleeping.  She should be fine in a couple of days (or in less pain).

Chronic diseases are like this.  You’ll get some periods of time where the symptoms are tolerable to non-existent, and then…WHAM! Level 9-10+ pain.  You can’t work through the pain, because it is ALL you can think about.  When you medicate the pain, you can’t work because the medications steal your brains.  (For reference, PuzzlePaws’ pain tolerance is about 2-3x higher than a bog-standard human’s.  A “9” on her scale would put most people (likely unconscious and/or vomiting)  in the hospital.)

Posts from me will be rare (other than the occasional snarky edit here and there). I will be posting how-to videos on the Patreon (and occasionally here) when I have the time.

Ciao, SC

Thanks for reading, and please click the Follow Button under my profile on the right side of the page. To support posts like this in the future, consider joining my Patreon!