the_siobhan | meatsuit update version doodly-pip (Reply)

I got good news from two medical professionals this week. The dentist tells me that I am not going to lose any more teeth. Not only that, but that the bone in my lower jaw is actually healing to the point that in approximately two years we can look at implants to replace the missing ones.

A note for anybody who has never had the space between the roots of the teeth and your gums cleaned out. Fucking ow.

The second bit of news was from a glaucoma specialist. My optomistrist sent me to him because I have some nerve damage in my left eye but after a bunch of testing it was decided that it is not glaucoma and whatever caused it is not getting any worse. So yay for that.

You know, I'm a lot more even-tempered about all the issues I have with my eyes than pretty much anything else, even though screwing them up would probably impact my life the most. I know that if I had been born 50 years earlier I would already have been using a seeing-eye dog for about 10 years by this age. I've been expecting that I would eventually go completely blind since I was a kid. So seeing that date continually pushed back - it gives me some perspective. Pun intended.

The diet changes have made a huge difference in how much daily pain I have to deal with. Like holy shit. Not eating meat = no gout/arthritis pain. Not eating wheat = no stomach pain/GERD. Last summer Axel was still helping me to put my boots on because I couldn't bend my knees or hips without yelping.

And last but not least, I finally have a drug combo that works on the brain weasels without making me fall down. My shrink has released me into the wild with instructions to stay on the meds for another nine months before trying to fly solo. She also gave me a referral to a program that teaches you techniques to help ward off future bad craziness episodes.

The only down side is that I still get dizzy if I don't get enough sleep, and I need eight hours of sleep or face the consequences. I also have a hard limit of three beers or I feel like death scraped off the road the next day. Seriously, that forth beer hits me like the Hammer of God. So I will be the relatively sober one at Convergence this year. Not a bad thing necessarily, but it's taking some getting used to.

Next on my list is the flipping asthma. I expect my breathing will get a lot better once the house is less dusty. We're setting aside a dedicated exercise space in the house that will not immediately get filled up with crap so I can work on increasing my lung capacity. I am also planning to collect together all the meds I have been prescribed over the last 15 years and I am going to spread them out over my doctor's desk and we are going to have a talk about what is not working and what we do next.

With all the good things that have happened in that past six months I really feel like I can beat this one too.

So in other words, things are really really good. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me going whenever I hit the point of feeling like I'm being nibbled to death by ducks.