April Odds and Ends

This is going to be a more upbeat post than my March 2022 Health Update so I wanted to title it something else.

But for those wondering about the health stuff. I'm on nerve pain medication to manage the remaining damage the shingles left me with. It may take months for it to heal, which I figured since I'd already gone through nerve damage due to both my chemotherapy and my surgery. So the medication I'm taking isn't new to me. It's just... well... I wish it wasn't necesssary.

The rash is still visible on my face, and while I itch a bit, I think it's more from the nerve damage than the rash itself, since the medication also makes the itching go down (though it doesn't entirely go away). My scalp sentitivity has even made me part my hair differently because I can't stand having my bangs falling down on the nerve-damaged skin.

But on the bright side, shingles fatigue is gone. I'm eating more. I don't always manage it, but sometimes I can squeeze in more than 1600 calories in a day, so I'm hoping to gain more weight (since I'm still under what I was).

Though nothing I've played in 2022 has appeared on my blog yet (Rose in the Embers really got stretched out with my illness), I'm still playing games when I get the chance. I'm not going to do a blog post on it since it's not an RPG or visual novel, but Hungry Hearts Diner is a lovely free to play mobile game about running a neighborhood diner that ends up having a tearjerker of a story, and you never have to watch an ad if you don't want to.

I'm woefully behind on others forms of entertainment. Usually I watch some anime or read some books, but I haven't finished a single one of any of those this year. Some of it is likely time lost due to shingles and remaining medical issues from my cancer, but also I think my attention span just hasn't been where it needs to be for them. Maybe I'll pick them up again as the year passes.

And finally, I've started writing a new short story. It's been a long time in coming, and it's not like I never had ideas while sick, but finally putting new words down on the keyboard has been something I haven't started until recently. I hope it all turns out all right. Writing is supposed to be like any muscle where if you do it regularly, it becomes easier, but I've definitely been out of practice. We'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!