somniloquence

Happy Christmas Eve Eve, if you celebrate! I had big plans today to take advantage of the fact that there was no rain predicted for once (if you're unaware of the recent horrific weather in the PNW, check out some news to see the flood and wind damage we've experienced for weeks now) and go up to the clinic for a blood draw, since my primary care physician wants to see how my thyroid levels are doing now that I've been on the thyroid medication for a couple months. But I've been trapped here waiting for UPS to come to deliver my main chemo drug; I have to sign for it so not only can I not leave till they come, I can't even take a shower.

I'm extremely unhappy with UPS now for a lot of reasons, most of them still including the fact that I'm out $700+ because of the returned laptop that some asshat didn't bother to scan in. There are no options that will help me--everything requires that the tracking number be in the system, which is the very problem I have. The pickup person didn't put it in the system. And the company that it's supposed to be returned to won't do anything, either, so I'm just...screwed. And now I'm stuck here in my house waiting for my meds, which were supposed to be here this morning (they always wake me up early). Booo UPS.

I was feeling pretty low last time I posted, and I think I haven't really improved in terms of my mood. It's mostly the financial issues, but also the health stuff, and what next year will bring. I've been trying to find out about financial assistance for my chemo med that costs $23k a bottle (the one I'm waiting for) but it's looking like I won't qualify because of how much I messed up my taxes this year, or at least, I've been looking at the thresholds and it seems like because of what I screwed up on, I'll probably be just over the limit. I did sign up for the Medicare thing where they cap out of pockets/copays to $2k and allow you to spread it around over time, but I also signed up for that last year and the Part D drug insurance I had never did that. I basically blow through all my deductibles and copays right away, because when I get that first bottle of obscenely expensive Pomalyst pills, the $3k copay wipes out all the remaining balances. So I'm not sure what to expect in '26. And also I have a feeling, since that two thousand dollar cap was put in place under Joe's administration, they're going to do everything they can to get rid of it. America!

Sometimes I find myself feeling so bitter about all the lucky people I know who are able to get out of this country. There's nowhere for me to go, no place that would take me since I'm not rich (which would overcome my disability and age issues), and I just wish so much I could go somewhere else more sane. But I also think, good for them, get out while you can.

And while I was dealing with all the money stuff, it was like, I got a notice that my Dreamwidth account was expiring, and then my Editorial Freelancers Assn. dues were...um, due, and I was like, sure. Why not. Of course. But some really lovely person out there gave me six months of paid time, and I wish so much I knew who you were so I could properly thank you. It really came at such a perfect time, just struggling with that hopeless feeling, and reminding me that there are so many nice people out there. Thank you so much, friend! I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.

I know I should not be putting more stuff on my credit cards, but I have decided that I'm going to Escapade next year again. Fortunately it's not ridiculously early like this year, and hopefully I won't have to drive home from the airport in a blizzard, but while I'm still physically able, I want to at least see some of the folks who will be going and just be in Southern California again. There wasn't a lot for me to do fannishly this last time, but just being around folks is enough.

For a while I wasn't able to continue with my reading, which bummed me a bit since I had been excited about catching up on books, but I'm back to it at least for a while. I left off The Golem and the Jinni about 1/3 of the way in, so I restarted that, and I'm also hoping that even though I'm not doing Yuletide again this year, I can go through the archive this time and find some fun stuff to read (last year, I somehow missed reading Yuletide entirely). I'm not doing anything as usual on actual Christmas, except I'm going to try to bake the ancient anise cookie recipe that no one else likes that Dad and I used to make. It's very challenging even when you're healthy, and I found it very physically taxing last time I did (2 years ago), but I feel determined. mlyn helped me with the cutting out and baking part, but since it's the actual holiday, I figured I'd be doing it myself. It could be very interesting.

And then I need to schedule an appointment with the endodontist after the holiday, because my worst fear came true and I will have to have a root canal for the tooth I had a crown replaced on last year. She warned me it might be a possibility, but still...everything was going great till a few months ago. The oncologist has stopped the infusions of zometa because of the necrosis of the jaw risk, but NGL, that whole thing still scares the shit out of me! Though I managed to walk out of chemo a couple weeks ago without getting my new chemo schedule, so I don't even know how soon any of it can happen!

I hope those of you celebrating this holiday have a great time. Thanks for listening to me whine this year, I really hope things will be a bit brighter this year for all of us.

A while ago, minim_calibre asked me if I'd read any Kate Atkinson and I said I had, but it was very long ago--I read Behind the Scenes at the Museum and the first Jackson Brodie book after I fell in love with the Case Histories TV series with Jason Isaacs. She ended up buying me two books she'd read, Life After Life and A God in Ruins, and I finally had the chance to start on the first one, which is like four inches thick so felt pretty daunting. I'd been so busy with work (some truly awful, awful books [mygodihateYAsomuch] and one really good one that I wasn't sure I could do it, but I really wanted to keep my reading streak going. It's been so wonderful to reclaim the reading part of my life, I can't even tell you. It's also hugely inspirational to my own writing when I'm reading really good fiction--or heck even nonfiction.

If you've never read Life After Life, I can highly, highly recommend it. It'd be easy to say it's essentially a time loop story/multiple timeline tale, where little decisions or events have history-altering effects both personal and global, but that barely touches on the story. I just loved it and I'm looking forward to the related book about one of the characters, I hope it's as un-put-downable as Life After Life.

I discovered there was a BBC four-part limited series of it a couple years ago, on Prime in the US, and it was...okay. It should have been at least six episodes, though, because a book that sprawling requires a lot more time--there were significant cuts to the story that I think any fan of the book would be a bit twitchy about, and a major change to the ending. Still, a lot of good actors and it was nice to see some of the characters come to life.

It's just so nice to feel like I can read again after all these years. Like when I have my nose in a screen, it's because it's something that adds a little value in my life, rather than the horrible garbage of everyday life.

Yesterday, a friend and I went to a pumpkin patch and U-pick farm, because she's very into the gourds and cucurbits for art, and I wanted to have a nice outing. We lucked out and got the most spectacularly perfect, sunny day in the 70s, and I found a couple of beautiful pastel pumpkins (one kind of a mottled salmon and blue-green and the other a pale blue) as well as a starfish-shaped gourd to buy, even though I've never been into Halloween at all. I'm not sure if I'll put them out on the back porch or the front, the front's pretty crowded and small, but I think that's the "obvious" place for a Hallloweeny decoration. I also bought some apples from the farm's produce side, and the best sweet corn on the cob I have ever tasted in my life. It was so good we were texting each other about it. If I didn't live over an hour away, I would have driven right back there for more corn.

Everyone always says fall is their favorite season, but I think if you live somewhere where it is relatively dry in October, and the leaves change early, sure, it'd be fine, but in the PNW it's just suddenly cold, super wet, and miserably gray. The leaves are just soggy masses, so you don't get to wander outside in piles of dry leaves, wearing your woolen sweaters and scarves, feeling the sun on your face while you drink your punkin spice bullshit drinks. Nope, instead you have to wear your Gore-Tex jackets and waterproof shoes and hope your street won't flood when the heavy rains have nowhere to go because everything's clogged with slimy leaves. Bleh. Give me spring any day.

My numbers have been holding steady at a place where it looks like remission, though no one wants to say it is. I could have a bone marrow biopsy, and may still do that, to determine whether I really am there, but honestly, then I'm just going to be doing pretty much the same thing I'm doing now, because I'm essentially doing what Dr. Li does for maintenance on people who've gone through stem cell transplants or the new hotness, CAR-T cell therapy. I am sure there'll be some fiddling with drugs, but considering the nightmare of the insurance situations right now, I don't know what will happen.

I had a mammogram today and a DEXA scan (which just seems so nuts to me, as it's for osteoporosis and I feel like having bone marrow cancer means that osteoporosis is kind of a silly thing to worry about), and next week I go to the dermatologist, and hopefully I will get some of these things done before the nazi pricks can take everything away.

As always happens, at the mammogram, the technician, who was nice and did a pretty good job of not hurting me, mentioned knowing someone with multiple myeloma who's had it for 18 years now. I cannot tell you how often someone tells me about their family member/friend/co-worker who has it and who's lived with it for X years, and I just...I have to smile and say oh wow. I HATE IT.

It used to be a death sentence, but until just recently, there were new drugs being approved constantly so the survival rates and times have been increasing constantly, but it's by no means an easy survival for most, and there is no such thing as a "cure" where it disappears completely. It always comes back, and I've been confronted a lot lately with that because some people in our support group have died, both of whom had lived with it for a long time, going back into treatment each time it returned. It always does. Ugh, I wish people would shut the fuck up about it. I know they think they're being positive for me, but it's just not as simple as they think.

Otherwise, I just keep plugging along. Blues is definitely getting pretty frail and fragile, but his appetite is great, so I'm hoping he hangs on for a while longer. He has a concerning thing on his lower jaw that might be a cyst or might be cancer or anything in between, but it's in a tricky spot, so all we can do is watch it for now.

I know there are other things I wanted to talk about--including my rewatches of everything from the X-Files to the Good Place--but I'll save that for another post, this one's long and boring enough!

Hey, would any of you know why a bunch of my Dreamwidth icons suddenly won't load? I noticed it a few days ago when replying to someone's post, and the icon I chose just had a question mark in the middle and didn't seem to show up, even after I hit post. It's happening consistently with certain icons, and when I went in to look at my list of icons, a bunch just don't show up or they have the question mark. There's nothing different about them, I have a paid account and am under the icon limit, but they just abruptly don't work.

When I first went freelance, I did all the sosh meeds you're supposed to do to make sure your business is out there where people can find you. Of course that included twitter, but I always hated it and only kept it so that I could read a few people's pages, especially after they started making it hard to read without an account or being logged in. When that fucking slime mold took over, I wanted to delete my account, but they made it impossible for me, and for months I've been trying to get into it so I could remove it. I finally got in and deactivated it, and did set up a bluesky account, although I'll probably only use that as much as I used the bird site. I just don't love having this tiny character limit, and it's such a noisy interface compared to the aspects of tumblr that I like. The less said about FB, the better.

But anyway, if you want to connect there, I am under my wallet name, and since someone beat me to my preferred handle, it's not as simple, but it's my first name + the first three letters of my last name + B. (I used the B--or b, since everything's lowercase I guess?--because when my sister and I were born, we were going to be adopted, so for about five days, our birth certificates were just Baby A [her] and Baby B [me]. I still have these, and there was a period where I couldn't find my named birth certificate, but I had to replace my license and boy howdy, did no one like the fact that it just said Baby B. That was an ordeal, let me tell you, even with my social security card and everything else.) I'm definitely wary about that space, and I'm only following a few people so far since I don't know who all is over there. But if you are and want to connect, I'm there!

Ugh, god, I was so looking forward to sitting down and sorting out my thoughts on The Bear, especially season 3, and writing out my (as minim_calibre called it) Grand Unified Theory of Season Threes, and then this weird technology hell vortex swept me up and spit me out somewhere I had no access to the interwebs.

I got fiber optic a number of years ago when it first became available--I hopped on it immediately, like the sales people came to call and I was just like "yes, now, set an appointment immediately" and they were baffled and didn't know what to do without spieling their spiel. Century Link put in this giant hole in the side of my house, where the cables ran through into this big, heavy black box, which I never really knew what it was. I just thought it was the box that gave me internet. The first weekend, because I'd moved the black box slightly to clean up the mess the hole in my wall left, I lost internet because it turned out they used this janky, old-style system of like...speaker wire, if you know what that used to be: little copper lines all twisted together, covered by plastic, and then you twisted the uncovered copper end around a screw that carried the signal from your amp or whatever, or you poked the copper ends into a hole and locked the speaker line in.

The black box had about eight of these janky little teeny tiny microscopic speaker wire-type lines, and a bunch of them came loose that first weekend, so I had to have a repair guy come out and fix it. That should have been my first clue, I guess, that it was unreliable and chintzy, but all these years, I just was super careful never to touch that black box unless I had to, and it's such a short cable coming into the house anyway that it was easy not to move it, because I almost really couldn't.

But a little over a week ago, the box started beeping at me every 13 minutes, and I kept pressing this button and it would stop, but resume at the 24 hour point. So I decided to look at the box and despite how heavy it is and the super short cable, I could see that it was saying my battery was dying, but there was no way for me to change it. Unforch, by examining it, I pulled--you guessed it--the stupid janky wires loose and I could not for love or money put them back in. So I was only able to use my phone for cell data, because everything else in my house, including my iPad, is WiFi only. I asked minim if her spouse, who is an A/V god and has helped me before in weird situations, knew of any tricks, and they ended up coming down that night after dinner, and he brought his nifty incredibly tiny tools and this magical lighted magnifying visor, and put the wires back in, and I had interwebs again! They are honestly just the best. ♥

I also found out that heavy black box is actually a battery backup itself--and there's no way a regular person can change out the battery, which is basically like a car battery. He also told me that CLink stopped using it as the conduit for the fiber cable, because their household didn't have that when their fiber line was installed, even though he'd done all this prep for it.

But lo, the next day, the hellscape universe I live in decided that the line was going to stop working altogether. So CenturyLink, because they suck, told me, after over an hour waiting for customer service, that they would have a tech out in 9 days. I was supposed to just survive without internet for 9 days. The thing is, it used to be a luxury, but it's no longer something you can call a luxury, especially when you are self-employed and have no one to rely on for IT help. It's basically your life blood. Someone told me about hotspots, but I didn't totally understand it, so I set about trying to understand the concept and how to use my cell phone as a personal hotspot (the library checks them out, yay! but the Hold list to check them out is over 1,200 long, boo!).

And I could have happily gone to the library or Starbucks for a lot of things (I didn't have any new fanfic on my iPad! All my books had somehow been subsumed back into the cloud instead of downloaded! Tumblr on mobile sucks because it's a resource hog and I don't have xkit or adblockers on it!), and because I have been lazy as hell, I still had DirectTV satellite so I could at least watch some TV since streaming was out. Except...my iPad sucks for typing on and even if I use a bluetooth keyboard, it lags and is just generally awful, and of course, the night min and her hubs came down, my laptop had died.

Or at least, it was trapped in an install loop, which had happened to me once when I first bought it and it put High Sierra on and apparently there was some kind of problem for a lot of people where it would just try to install over and over again, but never get there, and you couldn't do anything to stop it. For some reason, even though I'd only set it to install a couple of minor, minor updates, it decided to reinstall High Sierra and was stuck there. So I couldn't take my laptop anywhere to get WiFi and do some basic stuff, including some unusual work stuff. I wasn't sure how well my desktop computer would do with a personal hotspot phone, but I was going to try when...it magically started working.

All of a sudden, the WiFi was working (just after the little IT-business guys I use when things go haywire came and took my laptop away). Like, I just didn't understand--all the lights were still lighting on the black box, etc. I was like, okay, well, I will wait to cancel my appointment until the day before, and just be good with that, but then as soon as I got my laptop back (all nicely updated on the OS as far as it would go for that much older model I have), and settled in to finish the streaming movie I'd had interrupted and scroll through tumblr, it went out again. The modem was lit up with all the right lights, everything seemed like it should work, but it wouldn't. So back to personal hotspotting, but at least now I could go to the library or Starbucks and use theirs, if my gastrointestinal issues would allow me out of the house. (That's been honestly one of my biggest problems: something I'm getting as chemo is just causing constant GI problems, and it tethers me to the house in ways I really hate because I can't always trust I'm not going to have a humiliating accident.)

Anyways, it annoyed me that the lights on the modem indicated things were okay. So eventually I unplugged it, and of course, as soon as I plugged it back in, things worked again. I'm keeping a weather eye out for it all, though. I did cancel the appointment for the tech person, because at the beginning, when I found out it would take them nine fucking days to get here, I called Quantum Fiber, which CLink is forcing customers to move to eventually anyway (I found this out after a whole other customer service issue a month or so ago, CLink sucks), just to see if they could come install a whole new thing anyway and skip the CLink drama, and they had the same time frame. But I was so disgusted and upset that I decided to go ahead and just do the Quantum thing, so they'll be here on the 3rd. It's not ideal, if this keeps going in and out, to be stuck like this for the next week, but at least now I have different workarounds and my precious old laptop is back.

I warned the Quantum people about the big black box, and I really don't think they understood what I was talking about, so a part of me is kind of...doubtful, I guess, that it will really be installed, but if I can pay less for slightly faster fiber optic and get out of this fucking shitstorm with CLink, that's what matters. It's amazing how hard it is to rely on cell data only (even if you have unlimited, they will throttle you over a certain amount of use) when you're trying to do video calls to your doctors or therapy or whatever, or hope there's nothing interfering in your signal when you live in an area that's notorious for cell problems.

Anyways, I still plan to sit myself down and write up a conversation about The Bear (and my Grand Unified Theory of Season Threes), but man, I am just...I am le tired. So, so tired, both emotionally (I literally burst into tears when the customer "service" person said nine days!) and physically (everything about treatment is just draining the fuck out of me). I am way too Old and non-technical to be dealing with this shit.

The past few weeks have been...interesting, to say the least. Shortly after the last time I posted a real entry here, I was having some bad GI problems, and could tell it was going to make me pass out. The last time I passed out in the bathroom, after I'd had some really horrific bleeding during Moh's surgery on my face for skin cancer, I severely injured myself (my bathroom's the size of a postage stamp), and so this time I was like, I will get down on the floor so I will be there when I pass out. I knew I couldn't make it to the bed.

Except, of course, I started to white out and then my ankle snapped out from underneath me, and boom, I figured I'd broken it. I couldn't put any weight on it. I managed to drag myself to my bed, and had preventively unlocked the front door for my friend Keith, because he was coming over. When he got here and *finally* heard me yelling to let himself in, I made him get my antinausea and antidiarrheal meds, and once I figured I could make it to the ER, had him take me there. Stupidly, I went to the one I went to last time, because I know it, I guess. It took over two hours to get x-rays, and then they made me get an EKG because I'd mentioned almost passing out (and instantly regretted it), and then they wanted to draw blood and get a urine sample (which...is almost impossible for people with female-type equipment to do with a busted ankle), and I begged them not to put in an IV because it was my week off chemo. They had a lot of trouble getting blood because I was so dehydrated by then, but god, was I glad I had stuck to my guns when after six and a half hours, there was no sign of seeing a doctor.

I have MyChart on my phone because of my situation, so I'd seen that no fractures were detected on x-rays, and some other people we'd been kind of camped out with, who'd come in before us, still hadn't seen a doc either so they were starting to leave in small groups. By the time one guy urinated on himself, his seat, and the floor, I was done. It really annoyed me because I didn't know what kind of soft tissue damage I could have, and the nurse had actually said, "We're more concerned about your almost passing out" but I was like "I'm not! It happens all the time!"

I did manage to get in to see the sort of floating internal medicine guy in my NP's department on Tuesday, miraculously, and he said there were probably some small tears in the tendons but he felt good about my lateral and forward/back movement. When I had my treatment appointment the next day, I mentioned all this to the ARNP, and she told me that it was actually very good that I'd told them about the almost passing out so that they would know it wasn't a "pathological fracture." Which...I was like "what."

Apparently, myeloma patients, since we have fucked up bone marrow and holes in our bones and stuff, can just get random fractures from things. This disease is so much fucking fun. Anyway, all of the medical professionals kept telling me it would take a longer time to heal, which is sort of true. I did my best to keep it wrapped and elevated and stuff (the RICE thing has really been rethought by a lot of people in the field), but of course, it was my driving foot and I live alone, so that was a lot of begging for rides and things, and using Instacart (which I hate, because my orders are always wrong) and food deliveries. I couldn't even go outside and water plants! (Too many stairs.)

I'm still plateaued on my myeloma lab work numbers, and have been wondering about what it looks like to just stop treatment, what happens in palliative care, etc. And trying to figure out when/how to broach that subject with Dr. Li. There's just so little I can find, everyone is desperate to stay alive no matter the cost, and whenever I think I've found a good "stopping treatment" post, it turns out to be about stopping treatment of Drug X. So it's a conversation I probably need but I got pre-empted by Dr. Li last week when he said "We should probably talk about next steps." That is NEVER a good sentence when you have cancer.

He wants to use a different drug to shake loose the holdout, really strong myeloma cells. He'd told me before that my M protein spike (the magic number thingie they look at to determine remission status) went down super fast because those were weaker cells, but now I'm stuck at 0.2 because those are the really strong cells that keep replicating and are much harder to knock out. He wants to use Cytoxan, which I am extremely familiar with because I watched it destroy my mom, my sister, and a friend. Like, the brutality of what it did to my sister is just...it's really hard for me to talk about. I can't even talk about my twin without crying, anyway.

He said it would be a low dose, but it sounds like a lot of pills to take at once, and the side effects are still losing your hair, extreme nausea, and extreme fatigue. As shallow as it sounds, I don't want to lose my hair--I'm too ugly to rock a bald look, and when I was losing my hair last fall from the shock to my body of treatment, I was surprised at how much it affected me. I had so many flashbacks to my sister sobbing uncontrollably in the shower as her hair came out in clumps, and I was unable to do anything to help her. And you know, I'm already dealing with nausea and fatigue, and I have to take care of myself, there's no one here to help me and being so fatigued I can't get out of bed...well, how the hell is that supposed to work when I have a house and a cat and myself to take care of.

I don't have to make a decision right now, but I have no idea what to do. I'm so fucking tired. In my last post, I talked about that, but I'm just...so sick of going there week after week, and nothing changes, and I said at the beginning I didn't want to prolong my life at the expense of suffering and I was assured that treatment for this disease wasn't like it is for other cancers, so I wouldn't be "losing your hair and barfing your guts up" but here we are.

Anyway. Today is the worst of all holidays, Independence Day, which no one calls it that anymore, it's just Fourth of July but I always think that sounds so much dumber. It's just a holiday for assholes, so I'm girding my loins for all the exploding shit and finger-losing, eye-losing, house-burning shenanigans tonight and trying to make a cozy hiding spot for my little decrepit old man kitty. (I will of course be doing my annual ID movie watch of the first two Captain America movies.) At least we have something to take the edge off things--I'm glued to the UK elections. I hope the fucking Tories get obliterated, though I know they probably won't. The problems, like ours, are far too deep-rooted now after all these years to fix easily even if someone decent gets to be PM (which clearly Starmer isn't), but I feel a little more hope for you guys than I do about our tire-fire clusterfuck over here.

I really want to talk about The Bear season 3, does anyone else want to if I make a post?

It is hot as balls here in the PNW, and with the way so many of the drugs I'm taking dysregulate my temperature, it's even more fun than the usual PNW heat waves. I'm lucky in that I have a window A/C unit, unlike so many people here, but the only place I could put it was in the kitchen, which means that most of the rest of the house doesn't cool down much. I've tried using a box fan to blow the cooler air out to the rest of the house but...it's not super successful. It's especially bad on weekends, because I not only have treatment, which makes me feel crappy, on Fridays usually, but I also take a big-ass dose of steroids on Saturday so I sweat like a pig regardless of weather.

Anyways, lots of stuff going on lately, it seems. I was beyond thrilled that I managed to feel good enough to make it to Barbie with minim_calibre and her fam, the first movie I'd been to since the pain in my neck/shoulders started way last fall. I can totally understand the complaints or issues that people have with it, and yet I do not care at all and I absolutely loved it.

( Some good changes )

( Some not so great changes )

Has anyone else watched The Bear? I am just bananas about it and yet I've only been able to prod a few people to watch it. I thought at first I would hate it, because it was so much stuff I can't stand in the first couple episodes, but then somewhere along the line I just started to really get into it, and when season 2 dropped recently, I actually binged it in one day, something I never do because I hate binge-watching. Especially episodes 4 and 7, I was just so moved by them and their quiet, emotional beats and character studies...it's just the best show. I want Carmy to have nice things.

(Subject refers to a picture of Isabella Rossellini on the Tom and Lorenzo fashion site a number of years ago, where she wore a gown that had Madama Butterfly printed on it in letters. The way the dress folded made it look like it said DRAMA BUTTER, and in my head, this entire stupid story has me shouting DRAMA BUTTER all the way through it like some gibbering, jangling jester.)

Well, I definitely fell down on the updates part of dreamwidth, and then on the "post about something fannish for once" part. In my defense, it has been A COUPLE OF WEEKS. Just...so much. I'll try to organize in bits so you don't have to read all of it. Like I said, I've been wanting to use this as not just a vehicle to communicate with friends, but also to keep track for myself.

I was supposed to finish radiation treatment Wednesday April 19...[John Mulaney voice} AND THEN I DIDN'T! Instead I went to the emergency department (what they apparently call it these days instead of emergency room) at the nearby hospital for 8-1/2 hours.
( The entirely not fun way to get a rush MRI )

( But then the real rollercoaster began )

( Finally finished radiation )

( Now the next chapter begins )

Thanks again, my wonderful pals, for listening and helping and all the everything you've offered me. You are the best.
💜

It has been a few weeks since I updated and wow, lemme tell you, it has been a wild rollercoaster of a ride. I almost don't even know where to start, so much has happened. So apologies for the long post, but it's been pretty eventful.

Starting off with some amusement, I suddenly got two comments on my Kings story from Yuletide, which was so weird and unexpected because hardly anyone read it and even fewer left a comment and so to get two comments within a couple hours on a story that has been largely ignored was such a funny surprise. I couldn't even get my Kings-fan friends to read it! But it was nice because it was like they knew I needed something--they both arrived the night after I had the bone marrow biopsy and I was in a lot of pain and feeling kind of miserable. Fandom!

Also fandom! I had my appointment with the radiation oncologist last week (more about that later including the weirdest and most interesting alien sex tech stuff) and was whining at killabeez and a couple other people about having to drive every damn day up to First Hill, where for some goddamn reason Seattle decided to locate most of its hospital and medical offices within a three-mile radius. It's not called Pill Hill for nothing. They're also tearing up and rebuilding Madison, the street you take to get to most of these places, and to say it's a confusing nightmare is putting it mildly. It's been going on for years and will likely be going on for more years, so having to go up there is no bueno and I often won't be feeling great.

So killabeez organized a GoFundMe to collect some money so I could take Lyft when I wasn't feeling up to dealing with it, and to say I was overwhelmed is putting it mildly--I burst into tears when she told me. I have an extremely hard time asking for help and an even harder time accepting it, and I'm just so moved that so many of you were willing to help me out, even though I know times are really tough for everyone, especially with runaway global inflation and corporate greed. YOU GUYS ARE SO KIND AND GENEROUS. I'm really grateful, because I will also be going up there for infusions while I'm doing radiation as well, and I can definitely imagine there will be days with that where I'm just not capable of making that commute--it's really technically only 9 miles, but it's hella awful freeways + Madison Street Nightmare, and knowing I have an option is just incredibly wonderful. Thank you all SO MUCH. Just so much.

( Riding the Tilt-a-Whirl and rollercoaster at the same time )

People keep telling me I'm being very practical and handling this so much more calmly than they would, but honestly, once I got over the initial shock with that inhumane way of telling me this, I've just been in full research mode because no one tells me anything, and it just...is what it is. I'm not happy about it, and it sucks beyond reason and I thought having colon cancer and skin cancer repeatedly was enough for one lifetime, but I guess I'm just a cancer magnet and it's gonna be what it's gonna be.

The thing that really makes me cry is when people are kind to me, that's when I lose it, and so the thing that's made me weepy is the gofundme and people offering to drive me places and even the ACA Navigator ladies telling me to send them any insurance stuff I don't understand or know what to do with and they'll help me. I was raised in the no-touching no-crying family, where I'd get berated or sometimes whacked if I didn't do things myself and bootstraps yadda yadda, so people caring is very emotional for me.

Sorry for the long post--sometimes I feel like this is where I can write it all down, so I don't forget everything. I'm already forgetting stuff that's happened in the past few weeks--it's overwhelming, to be honest, and it was exactly only one month from my first visit with the doc to the one last week about the muscle spasms. It's nuts how fast this is all happening.

It's been almost two weeks since I posted about my weird Schrödinger's terminal illness, but I haven't had much to report in terms of forward momentum, though things are starting to happen not so much all the time.

( Where I am now is not much different from where I was before )

On the nicer side, belmanoir knitted me the most beautiful shawl! It's lavender and has this lovely pattern with different stitches on two halves, and they're so intricate and pretty, and the merino wool is as soft as angel hair. I developed a wool allergy a while ago, and can't even wear my finest, priciest cashmere or merino or alpaca without something underneath it,, but this is so snuggly and cosy and has the softest hand. And a three-year-old friend of hers suggested that it needed to have a heart-shaped button on it, because that's how three-year-olds roll, you know, and she was absolutely correct--there's a button in the middle of it and I love it.

I am just in awe of people who can knit and crochet and needlepoint. I'm so lousy at that sort of thing, and how someone can follow a pattern and knit these delicate, artistic stitches is beyond me. I want to sit down with my copy of Sailor's Delight, a cup of French breakfast tea, and my shawl and read.

I need to finish Reverie, especially if I'm gonna have a limited lifespan left, but I also now want to write the Groundhog Day story for Kings that I'd been thinking of writing for Yuletide before bel whacked me on the head and brought me to my senses that it wasn't doable in my state. Though judging by the complete lack of response the Kings story I did write for Yuletide got this year, I'm not sure if that's worth the effort. It was perennially kind of a popular Yuletide fandom, but apparently that's not true anymore? Or maybe it was just me. I still love my poor tortured gay baby, though.

One of the things about this awful neck/shoulder thing is that I'm having to do a lot of my morning routine stuff on my phone while I try to sit somewhere my head can rest against something, unlike my desktop computer seating. There's really only one place in my house where my neck and head and shoulders are supported; the curse of being tall is that everything hits me just under my scapulas. So I'm trying to read and respond to emails, check the websites I read first thing, etc. on my phone and that often includes Dreamwidth.

I had to get a new style because my old one was unreadable on mobile; I don't necessarily love the new one but I also was not in the mood for my normal preference for bright colors or pretty pastels and went with a gray and dusky purple theme, but I'm having trouble getting used to reading white text on dark. I have never liked that much, there's not enough contrast, and I'm going blind. (Did I mention that here? I don't think I ever did. Ugh, that's another whole awful story that I don't have spoons for.) It's also pretty much impossible to make an entry on the phone; the type is so utterly minuscule that I can't use it until I can get enough stamina to power through on my laptop or desktop. I wish DW was a bit easier.

Yuletide is definitely a mixed bag this year. Gift receiving-wise, it was fantastic, with two stories in a fandom I've asked for for years and a Madness treat as well, but gift giving-wise, it's been pretty soul crushing. The recip said she'd come back with a comment and just left a placeholder thanks, but hasn't been back, and there've been almost no comments, just people clicking the "meh" button, even though this was one of those longtime Yuletide stalwart fandoms. I was happy with what I wrote and thought it turned out quite well, considering that I was in excruciating pain while writing and editing it. But I may be one of the few who thought it was decent.

I haven't read more than one story, myself, for a variety of reasons, but most especially because I've been working. My author wanted to know if I could get her manuscript back to her around the beginning of the month, so I've just been toiling over that instead of scrolling through the archive. Someday! Eventually!