#and i've been having to constantly take my inhaler and do breathing treatments on the nebulizer

[mrsmarlasinger]

FUCK Robotabs. I'm genuinely sick rn, but I accidentally got high and now we 🫥😶‍🌫️🫠😐

[inkybirdy]

I’m kinda worried, you talk about being tired a lot in recent posts. Please take care of yourself!

oh dear - I don't mean to worry anybody, but I really appreciate your concern! It's been a rough year but I'm okay, I promise. I'm working on taking better care of myself, even if the last few months have been fighting against me.

(though now that I'm thinking about it, I feel comforted when I find people with similar situations to mine that are open to offering their perspectives, so if you want an update/some frank conversation on lifelong chronic illness I'll put it under the cut)

I was super sick as a little kid (like, NICU ill, with RSV) and my family has a genetic cocktail of nonsense, so I've never been physically sturdy - and I didn't really have a consistent physician or medical care schedule so I ended up blindsided by a lot of things that got a lot worse as an adult because. Well, when you've always been chronically ill to some extent it's difficult to gauge what's normal.

(please keep in mind i'm absolutely an expert regarding medical stuff, and my medical care history has been... a varied patchwork with a lot of different people doing a lot of tests and guesswork.)

According to the doctors I saw when I started going in for regular check-ups in college, I was living with lungs and an immune system that weren't great to begin with and were otherwise kind of a time bomb. Basically, around the time that I moved out to live on my own and go to college, my health got significantly worse.

For instance, at one point one of my (extremely common) upper respiratory infections turned into pneumonia that lasted for over a month. I had to go in for breathing treatments and had to argue with my doctors against hospitalization because of insurance/school/work, etc. By the time I started recovering I was on a regular inhaler for the first time in my life and my reactive airways were more 'reactive' than ever with then-diagnosed asthma. Anything can set them off - changes in temperature, humidity, a cold, stress, exhaustion, dust, aerosols, etc. It's kind of like I'm one of those classic Victorian waifs ready to waste away from Ill Humor (tm), but I've got shit to take care of so I can't afford to lay around on a fainting couch.

Anyway, it kind of evened out to a new 'normal' for me for the last couple of years with minimal progression, until I got super sick again in December of last year. I never tested positive for COVID, but my doctors were pretty sure I had a fun salad of flu, upper respiratory and sinus infections, and pneumonia that lasted until like. February.

The fun part about being chronically ill and having an immune system that is constantly panicking is that it doesn't really like. Recover. Or, it takes a long time to bounce back. I have long-term damage from the pneumonia I had in college, and this was like that x4 - I've come to terms with the fact I'm going to be sickly for a long a time, and so far there isn't a whole lot that can be done about it.

Another doctor told me that when your immune system gets set back like that it can trigger other, 'dormant' conditions too - for example, a new thing that's developed since The Great Fuckening of December 2021 is a hypersensitivity to vitamin deficiencies and thyroid levels, which is a thing in my family but not something I've dealt with. Further, according to my latest doctor, straight-up narcolepsy. (Which like - I dealt with chronic fatigue a lot in college to the point that became a joke, but it was a lot less funny hearing it while sitting on an exam table.) But, because I'm already taking the highest amount of adderall that I possibly can for my weight, which I'm told is a pretty common treatment for it, there isn't a whole lot to be done about it at the moment to improve from where I already am in that respect.

So, altogether that means that at 'default' I'm very tired all the time, and I get sick pretty easily and pretty often. Like, oh-shit-another-bad-cold-every-three-weeks sick, or worse. It doesn't help that I have a pretty demanding job, which takes tolls on even very sturdy and healthy people that get into it. But. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I've managed to keep it from impacting my ability to do my job too much, but it takes a lot out of me. It impacts my ability to keep in touch with my loved ones, my responsibilities outside of work, my hobbies (I can't even count at this point how many times I've been too sick to run D&D or slept through it, or gotten really behind in my planning because I've been sleeping) etc. I have to be pretty careful about how I budget the energy that I have in a day if I'm trying not to overexert myself - it can be pretty demoralizing.

That all sounds very depressing, and some days are a lot more difficult than others - but it's also not all bad. For example, I was able to pick up writing Crown of Calamity initially while I was super sick, and being able to get into having fun with LoZ again has been great and something I've been able to do without a lot of time pressure.

And, most importantly, I'm an extremely lucky person. My two siblings are absolutely incredible. We have a lot of common ground with our struggles and a lot of understanding for one another, and I'm grateful that we're able to live close enough to one another that we can be there to help when one of us needs it. Not only that - but I have a job, and a place to live, and three annoying cats that I love, and very sweet online pals who check in on me.

So, while things have been difficult with my health stuff and everything outside of it that's been going on, I'm okay - or, I'm going to be. Every day I'm learning a bit more about my new iteration of 'normal' and I'm trying to get into better habits so I don't overwork myself, and I have family that I can ask for help when I need it.

I hope that this wasn't a big depressing dump - Instead, I hope maybe some of you guys can relate to it, maybe take some comfort in the idea that you're not the only one dealing with dumb chronic health stuff that doesn't really have a clear 'fix.'

And, I hope that you guys know how much I appreciate you! Whatever difficulties you're facing in this current iteration of "Oh Goddammit Why Can't We Have A Good Year" - please know that I'm rooting for you, and I care about you, too.

I don't really know how to end this, but - thank you again. Really, truly.