Happy New Year!

Chris got home from work and we discussed insurance options for a bit. He could tell I'm really frustrated at our current options and situation. I'm probably going to go with the cheaper option and just hope for the best with getting the proper meds approved, etc.

We dropped it for now though. I want to enjoy celebrating the New Year! Last year he had to work so we didn't get to spend it together, but this year he's off tonight and tomorrow! Yay!

Tux decided that destroying one of my wall vinyls would be a fun project today. I would have been more upset if this one hadn't been falling off already on its own. Which is what probably sparked him to remove it the rest of the way. I have been meaning to fix it, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. Now, it's removed entirely. It opens up another spot to hang some of our gorgeous wedding photos at least!

We ran out and got two bottles of a sweet white Moscato at the liquor store, and picked up some chicken to make some pollo guisado tomorrow.

We have traditions to make!

This is my first New Year ringing it in as an Archeval!

Planning on playing Exploding Kittens and Cards Against Humanity, watching some Netflix, and drinking some wine tonight. Tomorrow we'll spend the day together, drink some more wine, and eat some good food. Sounds good to me.

Whatever this new year brings I have the love of my life by my side, my home, family, friends, and pets.

So long 2015! You were an interesting year! Plenty of challenges, some near-death experiences, but also lots of love and laughs. Here's hoping 2016 is more exciting, but less dangerous!

Between a Rock and a Hard Place...

Bah. I am so worn out, and as a result I've been so lazy. The little bit of stuff I am getting done around the house is taking some tremendous inner-dialogue pep-talks. My Tysabri infusion didn't make my stomach as bad as it had been this time. Thankfully so, the increase in steroids has me starving. I'm constantly hungry. It did make me itchy as all hell though. So.itchy. That's annoying.

I've been getting some serious nerve pain in my right hip/leg/foot the past few days. This is the same hip that I broke in a car accident a few years ago and had major surgery on. I'm not sure if the nerve pain is a result of the slow nerve regrowth reaching a certain point after all these years, or if it's my MS. I hate things like this that could be from multiple things. Especially when there's really no way of telling which. If it is from my MS I likely have a flare starting, which is bad news. Last time I had nerve pain in my leg like this that turned into a flare I fell down a set of stairs randomly when my leg went numb.

Email Palpation?

Flip-flopping through a lot of insurance policies right now. My Geisinger policy ends tomorrow, and I start a policy through Blue Cross on the 1st. In February I'm switching to a policy through Cigna.

A key benefit I've noticed for the new year is long-distance doctoring. For my Cigna policy my co-pays have jumped to $30 to see my PCP, and $50 for a specialist. Considering the number of appointments I have in a week sometimes this adds up quick.

'Seeing' a doctor by telephone, video conference, or even email though is free.

Yeah, go ahead, read that again.

To Drown a Fish...

Got my Christmas presents from Chris in the mail yesterday. So far i've only opened Exploding Kittens, but it looks really fun. I can't wait to play it with Chris later.

Speaking of animals and Christmas, I never did mention what we got the critters.

Funds were tight, so we couldn't get the animals much. We got Daisy a big bag of peanut butter dog treats. She loves her some peanut butter. They almost look like Nutter Butters. Her cookie jar was getting low. Now it's full to the top again.

We got Tux one of those fishing pole type cat toys. He could chase whatever's on the end of that string all day. He gets so tired out eventually because he tries so hard. Eventually I just let it lay on the floor and he'll entertain himself with it. This one has a fish on the end, and for some reason he keeps putting it in their water dish. At first I thought he did it on accident, and I took it out and let it dry, but he keeps doing it. It's kind of gross. I'm not sure if he's trying to drown it or what.

One of the things I got Chris for Christmas is a fidget tactile toy. It's great for stress, anxiety, and quitting smoking. I really like it too, it's hard not to steal from him. I generally have a hairband around my wrist to fidget with, but this is far superior. I've been looking at them on Amazon and already have planned to get a few more. They're really cool and work really well. The one I got him is something like this if you're interested.

The first night we had it he was playing with it most of the night, and then left it in his pants' pocket. Daisy of course fished it out and used it as a chew toy. It's a simlar texture as some of her toys. She broke about three links on it, but luckily it snaps apart so it wasn't too hard to fix. Chris was heart broken at first because he thought it was ruined already. They're really affordable, and there's lots of variations of tactile, stress, and fidget toys available online. They work wonders for anxiety, seriously. Check them out.

Monkey Business

Chicken noodle soup last night got really good.

Got up this morning and did a few things around the house. I felt like crap. Being sick is kicking my butt. Shortly after I got up I headed off to my Tysabri infusion with Chris. I took some of my homemade candy with for the staff.

There's a new girl during my infusion time slot. She's pretty cool. Has a lot of stories. She works two jobs still, one full time and one part time. Her MS isn't very advanced yet. She's been doing Avonex, but started to have some cognitive decline and switched to Tysabri to nip it in the butt. Plus Avonex came with weekly flu symptoms. She has eight dogs, they're small, but still! She also has two mini-pigs. I don't know how mini a sixty pound pig is, but they're cute. She used to do exotic wildlife rehabilitation and had mini-deer, various types of monkeys, etc. She's full of stories, so it'll be pretty fun to have infusions with her. She's actually one person that I could see myself getting along with. Most of the others I don't have much in common with besides MS.

Campylofuck

The mix-up with my prescription today seems to have came from my name change. I didn't change my name with my cardiologist yet, but did with the pharmacy, so when they got the fax in my married name they were all 'That's not our patient!' and scrapped it rather than following up with the pharmacy. Meh.

They called it in though, just waiting on the pharmacy to fill it now.

This whole name changing thing is a pain in the butt. There's so many places that you have to change it at, and when you have a memory like mine after awhile you start to forget where you actually changed it. I still haven't even changed it with the social security office. I need to get that done.

Appointment with my rheumatologist today was rough. He was running behind as usual. Between that and how long my appointment took we were there over two hours.

Bubba Wubba Wha?

Today has been very busy already, but very productive. I got up when Chris got up for work and started on things around the house. Straightening up, dishes, cat litter, garbage & recycling, freezing some extra holiday treats, etc. I've been running around most of the morning doing something. Finally took a break and sat down, and I find myself tinkering with my tablet now instead.

Downloaded Picasa on most of my devices and I'm figuring out Google Photos. It's pretty handy. It let's me easily upload images from any of my devices and share them between devices effortlessly, and it makes it really simple to upload them to my blog. Which in turn makes it easier to share with you guys.

Chris just came home from work about ...seven hours early.

I was all who's in our house? And he walks into the room looking like death warmed over. Apparently he threw up everywhere at work and got sent home. From one sympathetic puker to a potential-nother, I'll spare you the details. He needs a doctors note now to go back to work since he's in food service. He doesn't have health insurance yet so we'll be making a trip to the hospital later.

Having to use the hospital like a PCP is one of the many things wrong with our broken healthcare system.

I'm surrounded by sick people.

Doom.

Seriously though, my immune system gets regularly nuked, and is about to get nuked some more tomorrow. Everyone around me is acutely sick with a petri dish of crap. This does not bode well for me.

My Uncle Keith gave me a DVD of our wedding ceremony when we were at their house on Friday. I have plans to upload it to YouTube so that I can share it with those of you who would have liked to been there but were too far away.

I have to go see my regular rheumatologist today for a follow up, and then I suppose it's off to the hospital with Chris. Later I'm going to make a homemade chicken noodle soup. I can always go for a good hearty soup, and it's good for what ails you apparently.

Last night, it was hilarious, I snatched Chris' pack of cigarrettes away from him and I was holding them behind my head. Suddenly I got a spasm in my hand (yay MS!) and dropped them behind the couch. Hahahahah. I laughed so hard for about twenty minutes. Chris was far less amused, but it was funny. I guess you had to be there.

Our family likes to have fun.

In example, these hilarious pictures from Christmas 2014:

And this hilarious picture of my grandmother from Sunday:

Playing phone tag currently trying to get ahold of my dysautonomia medication. My pharmacy put in a new prescription request to my doctor last Wednesday because I ran out of refills and never got a response, and I am out of meds. Fun.

It's not like it has warnings all over it not to suddenly stop taking it or anything. *cough*

Anywho, time to get ready to get out of here!

....Not Even a Mouse

When Chris got home from work on Saturday we had Christmas part three! We headed over to his brother Clyde's house. Clyde was one of his groomsmen in the wedding. We took over their presents and hung out for awhile.

Clyde and Janelle gave us a pretty ornament for on our Christmas tree, and a handmade candy cane pin. Both were really pretty.

I even got to see two of my new nephews for a bit! They had lots to say about Star Wars. I really need to watch the movies so I have a clue what any one's talking about. I haven't seen a single one yet. Everyone really liked the candy I made too!

We hung out there for about two hours, and then headed home. Chris and I finally got the WiiU set up, and I finally got to work on writing these blog posts. We stayed up until about 2am. Him playing video games, and me watching as I blogged. I fell asleep a few times in between though.

...Not a Creature Was Stirring...

This time of year with all the hustle and bustle of the holidays it's easy to put yourself on the back burner. While for the average person a few days of over doing it generally isn't the end of the world, not every one's that lucky. Please keep an eye on those you love this time of year and make sure they're still taking proper care of themselves. Almost losing my Pop the other night was terrifying. Hell, I'm even guilty myself. Most days lately I finally take the time to eat a meal around ten at night.

Chris had to order my Christmas presents online. He got me Cards Against Humanity and Exploding Kittens. I've been wanting some more games for our game collection. I'm hoping his next paycheck we can afford to get the bookcase I've been eyeing up for our game room. We're in desperate need of the shelf space with the new game system and new games.

....And All Through the House.....

So, like I mentioned before, when we got home from Christmas Part One I went to bed and pretty much immediately passed out.

Somehow Chris stayed awake for awhile though and was watching some shows on Netflix and playing some games on his tablet.

It was a good thing too.

Around 12:30 our house phone started ringing. He was trying to find it, and I was all "Nooooo.", not realizing what time it was and who was calling at said time. He found it and answered anyways. It was my grandmother, who asked us to come upstairs right away.

I was still half asleep and fumbling around, walking in circles proclaiming that I needed pants! Chris found my pants and threw them at me and said that it was serious and I needed to hurry. I was all, "What'd she say? How do you know it's serious? What does serious sound like?" I had no idea what time it was and assumed it was early in the morning and she wanted something silly. Chris was all, "Serious sounds like your grandmother telling us to come upstairs at 12:30, hurry up!" That woke me up a bit more and I got dressed and fumbled out the door the best I could.

I don't sleep well because of where my brain damage is, so the medicine I take at night really knocks me out. It's hard to shake out of sleep once I get to sleep deep enough.

We got upstairs and the door was standing open, we walked in and found my Pop soaking wet sweated sitting in bed. That woke me up instantly. My grandmother was panicking and didn't know what to do. I could tell right away it was his sugar from his symptoms and used his glucometer to check, his reading was 31.

Twas the Night Before Christmas....

Wow! I know the holiday season is busy, but this has by far been my busiest. It didn't help that Chris got paid only three days before Christmas, and my family grew exponentially. I have many more people to spoil and share the holiday with now.

Hell, we're still not done. Both Daisy and Tuxington are insisting on laying on me while I blog. It's making things interesting. Chris is working on setting up the WiiU my Mom got us for Christmas while I blog. It seems really cool so far. I'm excited to play some of the games she got us. I'm not a huge fan of open world games, or many of the newer games in general. I like the old fashioned side scroller games, Mario, Donkey Kong, etc. I looooove me some Yoshi. Chris is the bigger nerd of the two of us though, and I have some serious blogging to catch up on so he's earned the privilege of playing around with it first. We have to get more controllers for it.

This year for Christmas instead of my usual cookie assortment I made variations of chocolate crack and chocolate peppermint fudge. Both got really good. I found tons of coupons for the ingredients I needed which was helpful, and I made it at my Gran and Pop's house because they had more table/counter space and a bigger freezer. It took over ten hours to get it all done, but I made a ton. Over three-hundred pieces of fudge and who knows how much chocolate crack. I made up a tray of fudge for Chris to take to work, kept a tray for us, and gift bagged and tinned the rest up for family, etc. We did the shopping for ingredients on Monday after he got off work, and I got all of it made on Tuesday while he was at work.

Kitty Convict

Daisy and Tux are great at stealing my seat.

And Chris' seat. 

Any seat really. 

They run the house.

Tux's new collar came in the mail today. He's now part of the Kitty Convict project.

It runs on the basic idea that when people see cats outside they just assume they are outside cats, rather than considering that they might belong in someone's home. Instead, you pop an orange collar on your cat signaling that if someone sees them outside they are in fact an escaped convict and should be returned home. I had to take the bell off of Tux's collar or he would have gone on a murder spree. I also ordered an engraved tag for on his collar and it only had three lines of engraving rather than four. So I had to email Amazon about that. It looks pretty handsome on him, but he just refuses to stay still long enough today for a proper picture. 

Today has flown by. I can't believe it's less than four hours until Chris is done at work. It's finally warming up in here, but all that's doing is making me want to take a nap. 

If you want to see the wedding pictures you can check them out on Tania's blog: here!

Ceiling of Hell

I made breakfast for dinner last night. It was really good. Bacon, corned beef hash, fried potatoes, dippy eggs, and toast. Neither of us could eat it all. I saw a recipe floating around for tater tot waffles I want to give a try next time I do it.

Yanno, every time I've ever had a legit fire in my apartment my smoke alarm didn't go off. But my cooking, it acts like it's on the ceiling of hell. It's so annoying. I like my bacon crispy smoke detector, geez! I'm not burning the house down.

No clue whatsoever what I want to make for dinner tonight. Today's pay day for Chris. This is the only place I've ever heard of giving paychecks on a Monday, but whatever.

We have some serious shopping to get done before Christmas. He's none to thrilled about it. He hates shopping; he hates it even more when he's worked all day. I'm expecting him to whine the entire time. It's a neccesary evil though. I'm going to try to just get a bit of it done tonight and do the rest tomorrow with whomever will take me out while he's at work.

Tania's almost got her blog of our wedding day ready to share. I'm so excited to see it and the pictures. She shared this gem with me last night:

How freaking adorable are we?

I love my husband.

Not entirely sure what I'm going to do today. Got a bit of stuff done around the house. Should make some phone calls to various places, but I'm not much in the mood for it. I have to meet Chris at five at his job to go deposit his check and commence shopping.

I want to attempt to paint my grandmother's nails for Christmas, but I doubt she'll let me. We shall see.

Tux was busy last night. He put nonsense in my shoes and slippers, moved their water bowl into the middle of the kitchen. Now he's cuddling with Daisy sleeping.

It's chilly in here this morning. I may crawl back under the covers for a bit until it warms up.

Mystic: Chapter 1 – Trauma & Bewilderment

Mystic: Chapter 1 – Trauma & Bewilderment

Mystic is a fictional story written by me. I reserve all rights to this story.

“Damn it, Rob!” I laid there on my back on the cool ground, eyes shut, and my head spinning as if I had one to many drinks.

Rob was a new stable hand for my horses. My horses were my life. I left him alone with Duchess just long enough to run into the ranch house to get a drink. As I was coming back out Duchess was tossing her head back and forth, clearly frustrated.

Idiot must have put her bit too tight. Guess I should have checked his references.

 I sat my drink on top of a fence post and hustled over. Rob was standing there pale as a ghost.

Has he even seen a horse before? Figures.

Just as I went to grab Duchess’ rein to console her, she reared up. Next thing you know, I’m laying here.

I left out a heavy sigh, eyes still shut. The ground beneath my hands felt weird. I opened my eyes and saw above me beams of light sneaking between the cover of trees. “What the hell!” I sprung into a sitting position. It felt as if my head weighed ten pounds more than usual, and my ears were ringing. I was sitting in a bed of pale green moss, beneath a mask of large trees.

Be My Patron?

New Feature, Be my Patron!

I made a profile on this website: https://www.patreon.com/Boots

that allows you to pledge $1+ a month towards my writing, and it lets me offer various rewards for your pledges. The money gets paid to me via PayPal. I haven't listed rewards really as of yet, but if I find enough interest in my book/patronage I may add more!

I linked the site to the top of my blog.

I'm going to be releasing a fictional book I've been working on chapter by chapter on this blog, and am offering to remove the ads from my blog if I reach & maintain a certain level of patronage per month.

My book will be released in partial segments. I'm going to be creating a link on the top of my blog titled 'Fictional Writing' that will take you to a quick link guide to the related blog posts.

Smudge

Yesterday wound up being pretty quiet. My Pop visited for a bit and surprised me with a turkey sammich which was cool.

I got a bit of stuff done around the house, and then went to my grandparents and ate dinner with them and my Mom. They gave me a plate for Chris when he got home from work so that saved me some effort last night. Went out with him to fill the car with gas. One tank usually lasts us two weeks, but we ran extra out with looking at Christmas lights. We watched a bit of TV and crashed as he had to be back at work at seven.

Today was a super lazy day for me. I got a few things done around the house after he went to work, and sat down in the TV room. Forgot the fireplace was running, and fell asleep. Story of my life lately.

At least I get to spend time with Chris today, as he actually works the same shift tomorrow so we'll have more than eight hours before he has to be back at work.

I just made my last coffee. This is a problem. I must restock.

Fasting Fail

By the time Chris got home from work last night I fell asleep. Not surprised.

He crawled in bed with me and we watched two episodes of Burn Notice. And by that I mean he watched two, and I watched most of one and fell asleep, and woke up towards the end of episode two.

All I ate yesterday was freaking animal cookies. I was going to snack on something with him when he got home, but I decided since I was on a roll I'd just get my fasting labs done in the morning.

Yeah, that didn't work out so well. Woke up with Chris this morning and saw him off to work. Went up to my grandparents to steal a ride to the satellite lab, and by the time we get there they closed. We were thirteen minutes late. Fail. Why the hell do labs close so early on a Saturday anyways? You'd think it would be a prime time for people that work M-F to get their shit done, especially since most labs are closed on Sunday too. Irritating.

Doctor's Orders

I went out to Philly last week to get an musculoskeletal ultrasound done on my hands. They're the only place in the country really that does it so far. It can be even more detailed than an MRI for some things. They found a lot thickening of my joint linings in my hands, but luckily no bone damage.

I'm back to trying to get off steroids again, and paying the price dearly as usual. Steroids are an interesting thing. They can vastly mask the symptoms of a great number of things; making you feel pretty okay. Even if you're very much not. When you're on steroids for a long period though your adrenal glands stop making steroids of their own. Tapering off steroids can make your body literally go into withdrawal if your adrenals don't 'wake up' quick enough. You get sweaty, nauseous. It's pretty much a 24/7 fight or flight response. Put that on top of whatever symptoms of your disease the steroids have been covering up.

I've been on steroids for so long, it's debatable if my adrenals will wake up. So slow and steady is the key, which is hard when all you really want to do is get it over with.

Why stop something that has such great benefits and such crappy symptoms to stopping? Artificial steroids are bad for you. The amount of steroids your body needs is far from an exact science, and changes throughout the day. An excessive amount of steroids in your system causes all types of crappy side effects. Major weight gain, bone thinning, organ damage just to name a few.

Dousy!

This blog is going to be a dousy indeed. I've realized I have many pictures to share! It look so long to upload them all. Our internet has been weird lately. We upgraded to a faster speed, yet it seems to be slower than what it was before. I need to check it and talk to Frontier about it.

This blog was going to be written last night, but do you know what happened while I was uploading the photos? Yeah, I fell asleep.

Then, it was going to be written earlier this morning. I got all cozy, opened up the website and fell asleep.

It's a problem. This time I am armed with coffee. Do something now autoimmune fatigue! Actually, please don't. You're probably resilient against caffeine.

Over the course of a week or so I got all of our Christmas decorating finished. It seems I haven't taken pictures of the outside yet. I've learned the key to doing things is moderation, taking breaks, and not trying to conquer the world all in one day. I take on all my daily chores throughout the day, and add some type of project in on top of it usually. I spent about three days on my bathroom project rather than hammering it all out in one day and exhausting myself.

By taking my time and doing it in spurts our Christmas decorating got nice rather than rushed by pain etc.

I spent a lot of time on our windows. Most of them aren't too hard for me, but the lower ones are. It didn't help that while I was crouched down doing the lower ones Tuxington decided to ride me like a pony and refused to get off.

Heat Miser?

Today was a good, productive day. Chris worked 3:30-Close; I'm blogging as I await his arrival home.

It was nice having the day with him yesterday, and he even helped me work on some of my project list. He took the door off of our entertainment room for me. It served no purpose other than being an eyesore blocking some serious wall space. I'm planning on putting a bookcase there now with our video games, DVDs, VHSs, and board games. It'll be really nice. First I need to save up the fundage for the bookcase though. The one I want is only $35ish at WalMart which isn't bad at all. I have the same one in our sitting room for our books and it's really nice. Other priorities are first though, like Christmas!

Yikes!

I've been seriously slacking in the blogging department. In my defense life has been crazy. Shortly after my last post Daisy was attacked by another dog. She had to get emergency stitches. She's healing up nicely at this point. Chris was also in the ER for kidney stones.

I've taken up some major redecorating and reorganizing projects in our house that have had me pretty occupied. While I should be documenting and sharing them with all of you, it's been pretty exhasting just getting it done.

My rheumatologist is switching me back from Rayos ($12k+ a month) to prednisone (a few bucks a month) at my request so I can once again try to cut my ties with steroids. It's not easy, and I've found that now my sugar is crashing again in the middle of the night. Nothing can ever be simple.