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So in the past week, three actually good, pretty queer, TV shows have completed their first seasons.  I had forgotten in the years since the actual play just how gay The Mighty Nein was, but am glad not only that the adaptation is very well done but that they kept it up.  Pluribus was just a very good bit of speculative fiction.  And I think that Heated Rivalry managed to improve on the book by editing out the unnecessary.

 

Otherwise, meds change is kicking my arse.  It has been a bit over a week now and is still completely taking me out.  I have never done recreational drugs, but this is what I assume being stoned is like - though I assume being stoned must be a more fun version of it or no-one would do it.

 

I spent Christmas day with Midget and her family.  Her daughter, my goddaughter, is 11.  I am so used to seeing her in public where she is fairly proper and so well behaved she makes me feel like I am not up to standard.  An afternoon of her in her home environment reminded me just how 11 she is.

 

Back to dozing and achieving nothing.  Stupid med change being awful. 

Bah and also humbug and some other miscellaneous antifestive sentiment

When I saw my GP a couple of my meds dosages got UPed.  One because I was on the wean-up dose so the next step was just what does prescribed so that was what I started pretty much straight away.  After fifteen days of that without any problems I started that first stage of the other.

 

The one I was supposed to do a long time ago.  Finally going to the dose the specialist had originally set that I was supposed to get to of the replacement painkillers from when I changed them a couple of years back.  I remembered I would get electric pins and needs when changing temperature so had put it off until summer (and summer last year I got distracted by the whole realising I still had cancer and the hospital knew but wasn't telling me thing).  I had forgotten until a couple of hours after taken the first of the higher doses how much it leaves me feeling completely exhausted and sleepy while I adjust.

 So for the last few days I have done almost nothing but doze.

I did have to leave the house on Sunday night though for my family doing family Christmas early with dinner at China Palace in South D and then present and dessert at my mother's.  It was all a bit much.  So glad I get the actual day without my family.

Why wasn't I an only child? (no further context needed)

I think I forgot to mention the seven weeks of trauma informed yoga classes I was doing that finished Monday before last.  It was mostly weird and uncomfortable because groups.  I am not about group settings.

While I am not sure I learned much yoga, I learned a bit about my trauma triggers - more by having an irrational fear response to someone else in the group rather than by learning to listen to my body - so I guess it counts as a win of some sort.

And completely inappropriately, once the guy who spooked me stopped turning up, I started noticing one of the other guy was distractingly attractive.  He looked like a less fit cross between Cassim from the Aladdin sequel and Instagram's Plant slant guy.  And I was possibly using a greying hair distraction to avoid putting the mental effort that I was supposed to into 'listening to my body'.

The whole opening myself up to my trauma part of therapy doesn’t agree with me.  It may be why I get therapy hangover but no sign at all of any positive effects.

 

On Thursday I had dinner with David, Simon and Joe to celebrate Simon and Joe having returned from foreignistan.  They were pretty out of it with timezone hopping and lack of sleep, but it was mostly pretty nice.

 

Otherwise, what with getting older and the approach of Christmas I have seen too much of my family so my sister is grating my nerves.  Her utter lack of self awareness while constantly criticising people for imagined faults is exhausting.  That and her self-righteousness about things she knows nothing about and arguing inane points from a position of complete ignorance but still being completely convinced that she is beyond correction.

Advanced decrepitude (TW: medical body horror)

Embarrassing health issue of foreskin dermatitis healed up pretty quickly, confirming my self diagnosis had indeed been correct.  But after the discussion with my doctor I think it may be the more embarrassing outcome than it if had been a UTI.  I mean technically the cause is probably the same either way.  The meds I had started the quarter before had a bunch of warnings about both metabolites in the urine and general changes to the chemistry of what is going out and made it clear I was to try and avoid any contact between my urine and my skin, even my foreskin.  I guess at some point I had slightly failed at that.  Thus contact dermatitis so bad that the healing process lead to scales of skin so dry it cracked and bled.   Winning.  So much winning.

 

Otherwise my life has mostly been trying to sleep off an ongoing therapy hangover that doesn't want to move on.  Last weeks therapy session ended up just being about how completely emotional exhausted  I still was the small amount of talking the 'the thing' we had done at the session before.

Too broken for therapy.  Go me!  I'm a fucking champion. 

 

What else is up.

I got older.  I spent the day of my official getting older at my goddaughter's ballet recital.  Many hours of children doing ballet.  I am not a fan of amateur ballet.  I am possibly not a fan of ballet at all.  It was not fun.  But what a good godparent I am.

I have done late night venting my crazy at a close friend while he is in Switzerland and thus awake when I am being extra crazy in the tin y hours of the morning.  To "make it up to him" I am choosing to believe he has somehow bumped into the one Swiss camwhore I know of in the street so has at least had impressive eye candy.  Have I mentioned that I am a crazy person?

 

And the sort of dating situation I stumbling into is... ummm....

I can't tell if it is fizzled or in holding pattern.  He turns up to use me for my TV and food but, probably because of my not sleeping with him, he has been pretty actively hunting hookups on the apps.  So I assume it isn't just me who doesn't think we click.  Though he will occasionally come on very strong with is uncomfortable and doesn't fit with his behaviour the rest of the time, and I am too conflict avoidant to call him out on it.

That'll make ACC happy, except that don't actually care and I just get anxious about it for nothing.

After more than a year of weekly sessions, I briefly got onto the topic with my therapist of the topic for which he is actually funded by ACC for me to talk about for the first time this week.

It has left me feeling physically sick and exhausted.  Because brains are stupid. 

 

I am kind of glads my plans for today cancelled on me, even though they meant I hadn't ordered groceries as they had clashed with the only available delivery slot when I looked two days ago.  So my flat is low of food, especially the sort of food I would really like today while feeling both unwell and unsettled.

Not sure if my possible UTI is actually healing up.  I am being impatient about it regardless.

Awkwardnesses stacked

Yesterday was three medical appointments.

 

The first was at Te Kāika, a medical clinic I only vaguely knew existed.  Seeing it in action and realising how much it was stolen from the Maori health autority when the Nats shut it down and repurposed it (very awkwardly) to both take some over flow from the hospital and also be a Ministry of Social Development centre.  The building really wasn't designed for the way it is being used.

Appointment went fine though, if longer than it should have been as the machine was having issues with me.  So a robot voice kept saying "No eye located" while flashing a green light straight in my eye. And thus the technician had to prod at the eyelids a bunch (without warning).

 

The latter two appointments were at least both at my GP's office.  A nurse going through lifestyle stuff with me and congratulating me on my vastly improved HbA1c, and also poking my feet.

Then for the expected awkward awkwardness with the GP.  Who mostly agreed that what I had self diagnoses as dermatitis healing badly did indeed look like that, and showed no signs of any sort of infection - but as my meds have fungal balanitis pretty high on the side effects list I have been given antifungal hydrocortisone cream to use just to be sure.  The examination was not only awkward in itself, but there had to be a health improvement practitioner in the room (though, fortunately, on the other side of the curtain).

 

That is probably enough medical oversharing. 

HDL up and LDL down, I guess that means I am making good choices.....

Life is lifing.
I am barely.
The guy I am sort of maybe dating has been hanging around a bit.  The company is sort of nice, but the differences in our approach to the world are very obvious and may be become problematic if any attempt to do more than just hang out comes up.

Contact dermatitis situation healed poorly, so I have a doctors appoint booked for this week (and they used it as an excuse to get me to update my blood tests first - the couple of results they have listed in my online records so far are improved on recent rounds).

Which also means the sort of dating situation has been entirely PG.  Because no-one is touching cracked badly healing skin.

And I still have absolutely no idea what I possibly could have come into contact with that could have caused the reaction.

On the more entertaining side, I have not just watched the episodes of The Mighty Nein but also a lot of the reaction content to it in the vague hope that helps move the algorithm toward encouraging the show.

And I read some Rachel Reid novels in preparation for Heated Rivalry dropping, and watched the first couple of episodes.  I have views that are complicated.  The portrayals are problematic.  The show especially makes it feel like male gayness being exploited for a female take on what is still very much a 'male gaze'.  Whereas the book series repeated pattern of having a significant size difference, and the taller/larger man being somewhat abusive in his behaviour leans heavily into toxic heteronormative behaviours poorly masked with the use of a woman-stand-in character.

Yes, I am overthinking bad light entertainment smut.  Maybe because I don't really enjoy the smut factor of it all. 

 

 

And my stats on here are mental at the moment.  So many hits from Singapore and Hong Kong that I am pretty sure must be bots.  And what looks to have been one very bored person in Mexico nosing through a lot of entries. 

Not sure why the very boring ramblings of a very boring person would be of interest to strangers anywhere, even bots.  My English is not eloquent enough to be helping train anything. 

Convincing myself that contact dermatitis is actually fournier's gangrene, because....

So I have not been good at writing, because I am losing at mood management and sad Matthew is bad at doing thing.  Low level depression leads to a lot of just not getting stuff done.

I was supposed to be about to start another round of housesitting, but over Labour Day weekend Catsie passed - so there is no longer a cat I need to housesit to look after.  It was pretty sad being the closest to a pet I had had in my adult life, having spend quite a considerable amount of time living over in Wingatui looking after it in recent years.

The almost dating a Middle Eastern closet-case situation I had been somewhat dodging because the guy seemed both overly dramatic and a bit flaky resolved itself when he very much confirmed all my negative suspicions about him and then made it pretty clear then even the friendship we had build was only of interest to him if I was eventually going to be sexual available to him.  So it turned out I had been giving him a bit too much benefit of the doubt while feeling bad that I was judging him too harshly.

And it seems more recently I have accidentally fallen into dating someone else, who I am still a bit uncertain about but does seem genuinely nice and well meaning, which is a bit of a change of pace for me. So we will see if that goes anywhere, and if so where.

Otherwise my life has been pretty quite.  Not achieving a lot.  Too eh to do anything much, so nothing noteworthy to note on.

I guess there is the whole my sister running for city council, and then getting nowhere near getting in thing.  But that wasn't me doing anything just stuff happening near me. 

And I spent the weekend convincing myself I was seriously ill with something that was going to end is serious permanent injury.  By Monday morning when I could easily ring my doctor's office it was pretty obvious it was just been some nasty contact dermatitis  - though I am uncertain what could have triggered it.  As someone allergic to basically everything I am pretty familiar with contact dermatitis.  But sometimes anxiety disorders and the priming that can comes from medsafe warnings can overcome logic and familiarity.

 

Also, do not google the term in the title of this entry unless you have safe search on, the picture google brings up is nightmare body-horror material. 

Note winning at writing in this thing

Between the fatigue and low mood, writing had just seemed like too much effort and spoons that I do not have.

In the basically three months since last properly writing I have done another diabetes study because Dr Andrew Reynolds asked me to, and once again not go the reward of seeing him in the process.  I have to stop doing things in the hope of objectifying pretty academics, it never works out.  It just leads to dealing with postgrad students who are generally somewhat annoying, and in this case having a couple of weeks of keto diet that made me extremely flatulent.

I also had another round of house sitting while Simon and Joe spent a couple of weeks in Trump’s Americastan (they kept to California, so I guess it was mostly unTrumpy).

Otherwise, RimWorld put out new DLC so I have played a bit too much of that.

I have started doing the Bradcliff breathing method with a physiotherapist.

The clover growing as a weed in my mandarin potted plat has become huge and in filling my window.

And I am mostly too out of spoons to do anything.

And wearing the knee brace again as winter is making it play up again, I guess it wasn’t fully healed after all.

I did go to the Oli’s birthday trip away.  Small children infected me with a nasty head cold and weeks of snot.  And it wasn’t the most fun time even before the germs, I am getting far too old for the sleeping conditions.

I have not been sleeping well at all.
So much insomnia.
Hours of lying awake each night.
It is not making me very functional or likeable.

As such, I have not been up to a lot. 

Boardgame lostory

This weekend for the first time in about seven weeks I went into the weekend not having plans with midget that she cancelled on me, instead I had plans to boardgame with Jerm and Dalton.

So I went out on Saturday and ate their food, and lost their boardgame (which was a nice change as I have beaten them embarrassingly at it before), and absorbed the heat of their heat pump while I mostly don't user mine as much as I probably ought.

Life makes a liar of me

On Monday I changed out my summer duvet for my winter one.   After the weekend had featured a bit of sleet and the cold had started to really get to me.

I miss my thyroid and being able to keep warm just by my own body heat.  Stupid losing part of my homeostatic regulatory system.

I also had a GP appointment where I told her that I was back to me regular levels of chronic fatigue and had beaten the post-COVID thing.

I followed this bu sleeping almost 11 hours that night and then still spending much of Tuesday napping, as all that sleeping had left me exhausted.  So either the fatigue is still hanging around or I had severely overspent spoons on Monday. 

My body is awful. And I just shouted a bunch of abuse at my phone almost simultaneously with marking "0 - does not describe me at all" to a health survey question asking if I am often "touchy", and realised that may possibly count.  Raging at the tiniest technical difficulty of an interface might count. 

 Got home this morning after a 25th night away.

 Currently doing laundry to try to minimise the amount of cat hair migration between locations. 

24 nights away

I have just stayed 24 nights looking after Catsie for Simon and Joe while they were overseas.  They have just returned so I am probably returning home today, assuming Simon is awake enough to drive into town.

Most of a month in Wingatui hasn't practically increased my social isolation, it has just made it more obvious.

Also the cat is a bit of an arsehole.

He is toilet trained fine, but two weeks in he had a day when he suddenly decided to just pee on the floor instead of his litter tray.  Twice.  Though he vomits on the floor fair regularly, so cleanup was an ongoing feature anyway.

I am also fairly allergic to him.  Maybe ginger tom cats really do trigger allergies more than other cats, and he has covered everything I have in floof.  So much floof.  My clothes come out of the wash still visibly covered in cat hair...

Not having pets is a wonderful thing.

Especially not having pets who require fed multiple times a day and are vocal about it being at specific times. 

 Maybe my chronic fatigue being a bit worse than usual has made dealing with the cat's breakfast ritual a bit more of an ordeal this time than it has been in the past.

He has also been adorably clingy, feeling the need to watch me most of the time that he doesn't spend sitting on me.  Often jumping onto the computer desk and trying to sit on my keyboard if I was being to rude as to try to play Stellaris when I could have been patting him.  I miss when he stayed at floor level, and when he was pretty ambivalent about humans as anything more than a supplier of food.

I also had a friend's father's funeral to go to along the way.  My social group seems to be shedding parents recently.  The funeral was very nice.  Though my bad-personness was running at 11, when I got all distracted by a distractingly attractive middle aged stranger in attendance - because that is appropriate funeral behaviour.

I may be having the fun of being enough in therapy that I am more sensitive to all my baggage but not remotely dealing with any of it yet.  I have been having a lot of nightmare disturbed sleep, sometimes followed by four am panic attacks.  Best use for 0400 to 0600, being very awake and hyper-vigilant.  Not at all adding to my general exhaustion.

I hate sleeving cards

 I spent today sleeving cards.  It is literally all I did all day.  Sleeving the many many cards of a game that was delivered this morning.  One of the many kickstarters I regret kickstarting (pretty much every kickstarter I have partaken in).

 

I now have Super Boss Monster in the Big Box.

 

I think I only did about 800 sleeves.  When it arrived I was chastising myself for having ordered extra packs of sleeves when the default 'Ultimate Starter Pack' pledge came with multiple packs of sleeves.  But as the sleeving went on it turned out I needed all that I had ordered.

 

Though why did I order another boardgame at all.  I never play the ones I have because I don't really like having people in my flat.

 

 

Also, I have not written here in a long time.

I have been sleepy with the post-COVID fatigue.  Which has also spiralled into good old-fashioned depression which leads to a lot more of not doing anything much.

So I have a lot of nothing to mention.  Just being unwell and making choices that are probably making it worse.

Shitlord is visiting my city again

 Post-infectious fatigue continues and is bothersome.

I am doing very little but dozing and a bit of reading (and a bit more of that as listening to audiobooks).

Saw my GP about the possible return of my carcinoma, and got the expected feedback that it is probably back but the hospital multidisciplinary team responsible says not to worry.  It is small, they don't know where it is in my body, and any treatment would do far more damage than just leaving it be.   Apparently even the isotopes used for locating it would be higher risk than just leaving it be.  I was even given the excuse "medicine isn't very good at small, slow-growing cancers if we can't just cut them out".

So I guess that is just part of how I am for now. 

As this fatigue may be if it keeps going, a few more weeks and I think it might start to qualify as long COVID.  Which I am not in favour of.  It is not as bad as it was in the first month, so I am hooping that means it isn't going the long COVID route but it is still proving a noticeable addition to my health burden.

And today the app I keep on my phone to warn me of just this thing, shows that Shitlord is in town - with the little travelling icon showing he got here in the last 24 hours.   Hopefully he won't be here for long enough to chance seeing him anywhere.  I am disappointed that the many venomous creatures of Australia have failed to bite him to death - what are they for?

So post infectious fatigue from COVID stacked with my chronic fatigue.  I have spent the last month dozing and doing basically nothing.

My house is a disaster.

I haven’t played the computer game I had planned to over the summer as I haven’t been awake enough to play.

I haven’t even finished my reading through of all the Discworld series - I still have The Shepherd’s Crown to go, one of the two I hadn’t read before in the series.  I thought I had read Raising Steam but discovered a bookmarked only a short way in which was in fact as far as I had got when it came out, and I sort of understand why.  The momentum was not as good as his earlier books, and based on how fuzzy my memory of 2013 is I am not sure how great epilim (sodium valproate, I believe it is spelt) was for my cognition.

Fortunately brainfog is finally seeming a bit less of a thing after only six weeks, so I am hoping that means I dodged the bullet on long COVID.

Such germ

After writing the last entry I contacted my GPs office to try and get antivirals.  I was declined, apparently I was right on the line for qualifying but didn't quite meet the threshold.

So since then I have been sick.

And that is all.

I am getting better but nine days later I am still sick and still turning a positive RAT, though fainter each day and at this point a very faint positive.

It does mean I am missing cousin Jimmy's wedding today, as I am selfish and refuse to share my Rona.  So I do not get to see him do his southern hemisphere re-enactment of a wedding that already took place in Canada to the woman he left the mother of his children for (when said mother of his children developed a chronic illness, because he is classy).

Also this morning I got a message from one of the six non-family members I have seen in the past three weeks to suggests they have reason to suspect they may have been an asymptomatic carrier.  So I guess I can't blame my family Christmas.

Novid status revoked

I came down with lurgy a few days after Christmas.

I assumed it was the cold my sister had at Christmas, as she had been coughing a bunch.

RAT tested a few times over the days as sinuses got more blocked, making me more miserable than seemed fair for what the symptoms actually were.  Otherwise just a bit of a scratchy throat, slight cough and some snot.

Was only today when I was feeling fair recovered, just cough and much snot now that the test was suddenly as instant and strong positive (repeated for certainty).

The Rona has got me, and probably had me for several days on stealth.

Which does explain why all I have done in the past five days is doze.

Have been too tired for even basic entertainment things.  I kind of assumed it was just festive season depression combined with the lurgy.  Seems it was probably the COVID all along.