Wednesday, January 4th, 2022, 22:01

Mood: Drained

What a mfing day omg y'all. First of all we had a substantial pressure drop, I'm talking like .7inHg, in 24hrs. Pressure drops are hell on EDS. When the weather is highly variable like it's been--and, well, like it always is here in the Midwest--the drop in pressure causes tissues to expand and become loose. For EDS folks, this causes increased dislocations, migraines, and other problems. So I spent the whole day just in terrible pain in my SI joints, my shoulders subluxing, migraine. It was really awful. I have honestly been wondering if perhaps we have already had the coronavirus. I am leaning towards no, but you just never know these days. Today I found out that multiple people in my life, one of whom I was in close proximity with not long before symptom onset, did test positive. Fortunately everyone's cases were mild, but I must still be so cautious with my EDS.

Today was a good reminder that I have a chronic and incurable genetic ailment that will always affect my life and my health. It's to the point where my meds and lifestyle stuff have really gotten a lot of my symptoms under control. Compared to where I was upon diagnosis, I am a changed woman. My RHR is normal, my labs are normal, and I actually have so few migraine and headache days that I have not met diagnostic criteria for chronic migraine for the better part of a year on and off. I find it really remarkable. Sometimes, I forget that I can't just cure my EDS with Tae-Bo and vegan food and, lol, today was one of those days. I am not invincible. I still have innate autoimmune-related stuff and I must be so cautious about the coronavirus.

Besides which, my bipolar has just been crazy lately. I have been in mania, which affects my sleep, which affects my decision-making and judgment, reinforcing the cycle. Etc. etc. It just hasn't been great. Siren has also been struggling lately, though I think--and desperately fucking hope that my issues with antisocial and bipolar escape her. There has never been any question that she is not autistic, and really that part of my neuropsychiatry doesn't really disrupt my life very much. Unfortunately, Siren is already demonstrating symptoms of anxiety, and it's been really affecting her quality of sleep lately. I was about her age when I developed chronic insomnia too, and me and Sam really need to come up with a game plan how to address it in a more holistic way than my parents did when I was growing up. We don't want to encourage her to become dependent on sleep aids, but we also really can't have her walking around in the world on just 5-6hrs sleep/night. It's no good for her education or her immune system to be going on like this. My poor girl. I hate that she suffers period, but I especially hate that she suffers in a way which I have. I reckon we'll try her a bedtime routine for the same time each night, even on weekends. We really need to treat insomnia as a serious chronic health problem in this culture, because it's so disruptive to so many things.

Since it seems like I'm totally relentlessly complaining, I should probably talk about some good stuff. Me, Pat, Sam, and Siren all did something super fucking cool today which I cannot wait to share on here, but I will keep it under wraps for now. Circa Survive postponed their Indianapolis stop, which I have tickets for. This is actually amazing, and I sobbed big buckets of tears of joy whenever they announced it. This is because, like I said, I need to be cautious with this omicron stuff because of my EDS--but I really didn't want to have to miss Circa's Blue Sky Noise tour. It's one of my favorite albums. Now I don't have to make that call! They're doing such a good thing looking out for their fans like this. I also found out that I'll be working with a really cool first-year grad student on the class I'm doing my teaching practicum next semester.

So, basically, I may not be fortunate to have good genes, but I am quite fortunate to have great days.