It’s been a while. That’s my own fault, I should keep people updated but it’s rough for me to do. I have a pile of things that I know I should upload but I keep putting it off in hopes that I’ll have more to show, more completed things to show. I don’t know, when I don’t have a lot to give it feels like I’m failing my fanbase, the people that enjoy looking at my work, all of that.

I’ve had it a little rough lately, in terms of symptoms cropping up. I finally had my upper endoscopy this past month and they didn’t find anything but mild gastritis, and yesterday I had my followup and they scheduled an appointment for a colonoscopy. That will not be happening until November 23rd. Until then, I’ll just have to deal with whatever’s going on inside of me. Though that’s not really been the worst part as of late. In terms of physical pain, I mean. There are more things that are cropping up and it makes me panic because I don’t know what’s going on inside of me. And it’s been so long that I focus on it and worry, and this isn’t something that I’ve talked about too much publicly. My friends have been amazingly supportive and they’ve heard an earful about this. They take good care of me, do everything they can for me, and it means the world to me. I feel bad about the amount of stress I possibly put on them, it makes me feel a bit like a burden. And that’s what’s hard to talk about.

The emotional stress that all of this physical nonsense causes.

It puts you in a really negative frame of mind, one that I’ve had a tough time addressing. Instead I just go silent and pine for days when I could work more consistently, when I could do things I was inspired to do without being limited by one thing after another going wrong physically. It feels like this one really shit event is gonna hold me back forever. And my friends have been really good about helping me through that, making me believe that there’s a light at the end of that tunnel. I’m holding on to that through all of the junk that’s going on, everything that’s happened. It’s just really scary.

More recently, my back has gotten worse and a chunk of my heel on my right foot has gone partially numb. A sort of surface numbness. It’s only half of my heel so it’s not circulation related, which can only really leave something with nerve issues, at least I’m presuming that. This is the same leg that I was having intense nerve pain in. I’m still waiting to hear about an appointment to get this looked at from my Primary Care Provider. I don’t mind my PCP, she’s the best that I’ve had so far, but sometimes I feel like she doesn’t want too much to do with me. She doesn’t really look at me. She’ll listen to my symptoms and instantly just tell me to go to a particular specialist and I’ll get a call with another appointment. I just want someone to sit down and really look at me, talk to me, figure out what’s really wrong with me. What I have now is better than what I had before but it feels like I should be getting better care, or at least that I should be feeling better. I don’t even know if I’m still anemic, or what caused my anemia. I asked if I should be still taking my pills or getting my blood tested as I’ve been on this massive amount of iron for more than half a year now, and she just shook her head. My gastro doctor ordered the blood work because she was concerned for me, and she’s just a nurse practitioner. She’s honestly been the most helpful yet.

What really bugs me is a few months ago, I mentioned chest pain in the right side of my chest. Sometime in winter. My PCP just said it was probably just vascular and that was the end of it. But it’s still there. It happens off and on, moving around doesn’t trigger it or anything, it just happens. That on top of shortness of breath and occasional heart palpitations, and you can see me internally freaking out and keeping it to myself because I don’t want to worry anyone. At some point it just got to be difficult for me to talk about what’s happening with me because if feels like people are sick of hearing about it, like I should stop complaining and that this should be over already. But it’s not, and there’s nothing I can do about that.

The big thing that’s keeping me from working currently, is the pain in my drawing arm. It’s something I’ve mentioned a lot over the years and it’s come and gone. It was at it’s worst after the fire, I’d gotten tugged out by my arms so I assumed that was probably the issue and they did some testing that never got back to me and that no one can track down on the nerves in my arm. Before it was pretty bad, it was numb and I couldn’t feel my upper arm and my fingers were clumsy, so I rested it and wrapped it up in a heating pad and just dealt with it till it felt a bit better. Recently, it’s been more of a pain issue that goes all along my arm from my outer two fingers up to my elbow and sometimes my shoulder. Usually I’d just sort of work through that pain and take breaks as needed. But then my fingers started twitching and it’s pretty difficult to hold a pen when that happens.

I’m not supposed to be drawing at all till they actually look into what’s wrong, but that’s literally not an option, so all I can do is work when I can. But being physically unable to draw is so difficult for me, it’s like losing part of myself and my identity and it’s really emotionally stressful. All I want is to work, to have things to show to people. I’ve wanted to go back to working on comics for a long time, I had one I was storyboarding after the fire. that income would help take off a lot of stress and with it I’d be able to clear my massively piled owed commission plate, but that’s the catch 22. I need funds for the time to make a comic. So that’s dead in the water. And there’s nothing I can really do to break that cycle, in my current state. I can only work when I can and hope that people don’t mind.

I don’t like living like that. I wish there was another option. I wish that this was all over with and I could just be healthy and happy and work consistently and be more normal. I’m so tired of struggling, tired of having to turn to my friends so often, as much as they don’t seem to mind it. And I’m tired of having nothing really positive to share with everyone, nothing to show for being laid up in bed for so long. All I can do is drag myself along and keep hoping that things will turn around and do what I can in terms of work. I know my health comes first, everyone reminds me that my health comes first. But I still have to go on living, making money for bills, all that. There’s no alternative to that.

This has all been really tough for me to write, but I felt like I needed to acknowledge it, and catch you guys up on the goings on. Sorry if it’s a bummer to read. I just wanted to be honest.