1799 Romantic.

For two days I was feeling relatively good. I was up and about, cleaning stuff, and trying to get things sorted out so I can eventually go back to having a bedroom and an office again.

Actually let me go back a little farther. I went to the ER a couple of times. Once last week and once the week before that. The first time I was having an anxiety attack that was so insane I couldn’t handle it, which is pretty bad because I’ve been handling them for many years. It was about 2 AM when it happened and I debated going for two hours before I finally accepted that I couldn’t fix it myself. My father drove me there and they eventually gave me some Ativan, which made me feel really good for a few hours. Unfortunately it also gave me intrusive thoughts about 4 hours in and kept me off balance for a couple of days. It helped, but caused a whole other series of problems including, but not limited to: insomnia, confusion, & extreme memory loss. I ended up going back to the ER because these weird symptoms persisted well after the stuff was out of my system. They checked all my parts both times and found nothing wrong with my heart or anything obvious that would be causing me harm. Mostly they seemed to think it was all stress related and mostly in my head, and the second time they figured I had a bad reaction to the Ativan, which is not uncommon for me and drugs that alter brain chemistry. Lexipro, you may recall, made me have waking visions. They gave me some very strong antihistamines which knocked me on my ass for the better part of two days.
Of course they also made my terrible allergy symptoms abate, which made it possible for me to sleep better than I have in a long time. The dizziness I feel almost constantly also lessened considerably while they were in my system. They seem to make my heart rate increase though, which I’m not sure is common or not. In any event a few days later my doctor’s office called and said they wanted to run additional tests based on the ones they ran on the ER. My blood has very high iron content so they sometimes draw off some for medical reasons I can’t remember. It’s caused by my sleep apnea and it gets better when my cpap is working and I can sleep. It was borderline the last time I went to the doctor so they didn’t draw any off. Erring on the side of me not needing it done. Anyway I rushed over to the doctors to have the new tests done because they made it sound like they would decide what to do right then and there. After they drew blood they said they would have to send off the labs like usual and it would be a few days. This was on MLK day. I was very tired after that and slept most of the rest of the day and some part of the next, but before I went to bed I replaced all the attachments for my cpap: mask, hose, & filter. The hose is heated so it doesn’t blow freezing cold air in. The mask is the same ill fitting one as I always end up with, but it was fresh, so the rubbery bit had some life left in it. The filter is just a filter, but it’s clean. A couple of days of sleeping with those changes I felt great. So much so that I thought that maybe a big part of my problem was not getting a good seal on my mask because the apnea can cause all the symptoms of anxiety or make existing problems worse. Basically because I choke in my sleep and the panic of almost dying, and lower oxygen levels, make anxiety much worse.
Now I’m not sure about the whole thing. I’ve been up and about, as I said before, but it comes between bouts of feeling unwell. I sleep at random times, my muscles hurt so much sometimes I can barely function, my foot swells up, then it’s better, I feel sick to my stomach then I’ll suddenly be fine, then the cycle starts over. I think I have an infection in my ears or my jaw, or something… Sometimes it seems like how I’m sitting causes problems. When I sat down to write this post I suddenly had this weird spasm that make me feel like my breathing was out of sync with my heartbeat, or something. I don’t know. It just seems like someone should be able to give me some idea of what my problem is after telling a handful of medical professionals about everything that’s going on. It really seems like as soon as I say I have anxiety they just think it’s all in my head, but it can’t ALL be. Once I sorted out the cpap the better part of the anxiety just stopped, but some of the other stuff kept happening. I don’t think counseling is going to help with the muscle tension issues. I can’t find a place to sleep that allows me to get the right kind of rest anymore. I had to dismantle my little sleep coffin, as it has come to be known, and haven’t been able to replicate it.
I’ve been sleeping in my parent’s bed the last few days and it just doesn’t work. It’s super soft & causes my sternum to ache so much. My chest just kind of folds in half when I go fully to sleep. Which is why I made my little J.T. horizontal sleeping stand originally. Basically I like to sleep like a piece of toast snuggly inside a toaster. I also like sleeping on my right side & since I’ve been sleeping on mom’s side of the bed I’m oriented incorrectly. I really resisted sleeping in their bed but finally just gave up because since mom is always gone the dogs all want to sleep wherever I am and the bed is easier to deal with than being in a big pile of me and dogs on the floor. The dogs can’t get along or settle down either. Everything is such a power struggle with them. It’s less crowded now that Solomon died, but that’s the only silver lining there.
In any event I’ve managed to keep updating by working in the moments when I suddenly feel normal. They come and go at random, so I drop everything as soon as I realize I’m operating closer to 100% than whatever percentage has become the norm, and work as fast as I can. It may be a while before anything dynamic happens again in the comic since I’m struggling to draw people standing around talking. That’s about the minimal baseline for sequential art. If you can’t do that you better be really fucking funny, which I am not.

In not complaining news I bought a tiny fan to blow on my surface while I work. It goes in the USB port, is very quiet, and works well. I have to be careful while I do stuff because it’s just bare blades on a cord. Since the overheating thing happens randomly and without an obvious cause the fan seems to be a good solution for now.
The other day I took my old Surface power cord and hooked it up to see if any part of it was working. The part that was broken was the main square bit. So I saved the plug part. Not sure why because I doubt I’ll ever need it, but you never know.

Nintendo sent me an email about Dragon Warrior Builders, or whatever it’s called, because there’s a demo for the Switch now. I was interested before, but since the downloading is so much easier on the Switch I decided to try it. I kind of assumed that it was already in the shop but it’s not till next month, which is a shame because I really liked it and wanted to play more. It’s basically Minecraft with a Dragon Warrior skin, but not exactly. There’s more goal oriented play which I like. I also like the classic DW score. Minecraft has always been lacking as far as music goes.