busybee fluffy rambles

Whoops, it’s been a little while since I’ve posted here. Well, okay, here’s some of the stuff that’s going on.

Some folks wanted an update and didn’t see the webmention-based updates on the last entry. I discontinued the Effexor and the concerning symptoms subsided throughout the day, and I only had minimal withdrawal symptoms (basically just a few hours of extreme nausea and some really intense dreams for a couple nights).

I’m annoyed that this didn’t end up being a workable solution but I’m still holding out hope for the vestibular rehabilitation, as well as some other things I’m trying, and whatever happens I’m determined to survive and thrive, regardless.

The only theory that anyone’s come up with for my vertigo issues that holds any weight is that they’re possibly vestibular migraines, so my neurologist put me on Effexor, which can help treat vestibular migraines.

It can also treat anxiety, fibromyalgia, and ADHD (which makes sense, as they’re all fundamentally dopamine dysregulation problems, and Effexor works primarily by regulating dopamine), so maybe this will be the magic bullet that helps me with everything. Several of my friends turn out to be taking it for their fibromyalgia and/or anxiety and they say it helps them somewhat, so, we’ll see.

Here’s some stuff about stuff.

The last few days I’ve been having yet another awful chronic pain flareup. So it’s been one of those time periods when I kind of wish I didn’t have a body, or at least didn’t have to exist so much.

This time I don’t even know what brought it on, it just kind of came out of the blue, after a whole week of being too fatigued to do anything substantial.

I’m trying to finish up my remaining commitments for strawberry jam although everyone waiting for music from me is understanding and not in a huge rush. There’s one piece I want to get done today because the team is trying to wrap up development today but they also waited until the last minute to give me a specification for what they wanted so I’m not feeling too bad if I can’t get anything done for them, I guess.

Today I somehow managed to tweak my back, right before I was going to do some gardening. I ended up doing the gardening anyway. This was, as it turns out, not a greaet way to help my back to feel better.

I got yet another letter from Social Security today, which I was expecting to be one of:

• Outright denial
• Yet another “adult function report” to be filled out by hand at great length/pain
• Yet another “work history report” to be filled out by hand at great length/pain

Instead it was a notice of yet another “psychological function evaluation.” On the plus side, at least this one is going to be done via telehealth, which is at least an improvement over the last time. On the minus side, it means they’re still trying to deny me based on ADHD as my sole disability, an given how the last one went I’m guessing that the ADHD screening is also going to be incredibly reductive and not actually reflective of what ADHD actually is or how it interacts with my other disabilities.

My big fibromyalgia flare seems to have finally subsided, so I’m back to working on music, yay.

Right now I’m working on recording “Sunny Again” for Transitions. The Transitions version has ended up being somewhat more complicated than I was expecting, so this will take a while to get finished. But I really like the arrangement that I have, and I hope that I can pull it off.

I’ve been having another major pain flareup, or rather the pain flareup that started a few weeks ago has continued to get worse, and it’s super difficult for me to do anything right now. Typing hurts, my brain is in constant fog, and there’s no freaking way I can work on music or art right now.

I’m super frustrated by this, of course, especially feeling like I’m so close to being done with Transitions as well as my new music website, but I gotta take care of myself so that there’s still a me to do the things I want to do with.

I ended up handing off one of my video editing projects to someone else so that at least takes some pressure off, and I’m just giving myself permission to nap, a lot, which my body has been craving.

Pretty much I only have the spoons for basic self-care right now, and that’s gonna have to be enough for a while. I’m also pretty much stuck at home because I don’t feel comfortable driving (or leaving the house, really) and even if the stuff I wanted to do were accessible by transit, I definitely don’t have the spoons to manage transit right now.

Also today I realized it’s been a year and a half since I started my disability claim, and it just keeps on getting blocked by bureaucratic nonsense.

John Oliver’s overview of the situation only scratches the surface of what I’ve been having to deal with.

Wednesday night I had a massive pain flareup towards the end of choir practice, due to some stressy situations that were developing all at once on top of my continued lack of sleep due to working on Transitions. This had me basically incapable of doing anything for several days, and I spent the next few days mostly just lying on the couch and smoking weed.

Yesterday as I was coming out of that haze I learned from my next-door neighbor Joe that my back-yard neighbor Rick died, also on Wednesday night.