March 2022 Health Update

I don't really like writing these kinds of posts, but after letting my blog idle for almost a month when usually, even in bad times, I have some posts queued up, I felt I needed to say something.

In January, as some of you know, I finally had my feeding tube removed. It was supposed to be a great moment. I was finally able to maintain my own body weight without relying on supplemental calories being fed directly into my gut. And though it was a little rockier than I liked, it was mostly working. In fact, the former hole into my gut has headled up pretty nicely. There's definitely evidence that something used to be there, but overall, it looks pretty good.

The important thing was, maintaining my weight. Because I can only eat so much in a day with my now reduced digestive track I have to be really diligent about eating. Gaining weight is hard, and I'd "fattened" myself a bit before having the tube removed so I'd have a buffer for future disasters. ... Which unfortunately did not take long to hit me.

In late February, I was hit with an incredible headache that turned out to be a precursor to shingles... on my head. I've heard it's pretty awful no matter where it is, but the head was pretty bad. I had splitting headaches, even with prescription painkillers, and I'd be awake at 2am counting down to 4am just because I had to wait 6 hours between doses of pain meds. It was so bad I couldn't stand to see any light or computer screens, and I told my family that if they wanted to communicate with me they needed to call instead of text.

Worse, I was in so much pain I really didn't feel like eating, even though I knew I couldn't afford to lose weight. I tried to eat at least a little bit everyday, but still, it wasn't the 1600 calories I needed to maintain my weight. I lost all my safe buffer weight and then some.

As I'm writing this, it's been almost three weeks, my headache is mostly gone, but not entirely. My right eye is no longer swollen shut, but it's still a bit swollen and ends up closing on its own if I'm resting my eyes and not looking at anything in particular. My rash is fading, but still itches. And I'm still under weight.

Which is all to say, I'm a little slow right now. I'll get back to blogging soonish, but that's why I've been gone the past few weeks.