October 2022 archive

Before I forget to make this post in here today…

So for those of you that don’t already know this, Amanda “Mandi” Manarin passed away last month.

She was the creator of Kuma Crafts jewelry, which I know that my friends enjoyed if not owned pieces of.

This was announced a few days ago by her husband, and some of her friends that she had gone to conventions with made a GoFundMe to help him more easily be able to take care of their young children as he navigates through what needs to be navigated through to deal with this and to continue to deal with it. Without going into a whole bunch of detail here, her death wasn’t expected. She had been due to open her shop (Kuma Crafts) back up and resume selling the jewelry that she makes, and I’d been wondering where she was at for a little while since I am a fan of her jewelry and wouldn’t have minded getting some of it for Christmas or my birthday two months later. And then I saw the posts that her husband began making to some of her social media accounts letting people know of her passing begin coming up on my cell phone.

I know a bit more about what happened because some of her supporters, myself included, found her husband’s Twitter account, where he had been open about… what had happened in the days and weeks following her death, especially because this put him in the position of having to find childcare to continue to work and suddenly take on all of the parenting duties that both of them had been taking on up until that point. However, I’m not ever going to post that much of it here out of respect to her and the entire situation — I’m also not going to link to his Twitter account or give any hints as to how it can be found. What most people need to know about what happened, the GoFundMe link included, has been included in the posts he’s made to her social media accounts letting everyone know of her passing. It’s still a shocking, sudden thing.

This is just absolutely devastating news.

I was going to write a post about something else in here, but right as I pulled WordPress up to start writing I saw the GoFundMe for Kuma Crafts (Amanda Manarin) come across my phone through the Instagram app.

I’m devastated by her loss.

I actually own a few pieces of her jewelry, the Eternal Sailormoon brooch necklace and Sailorjupiter star necklace that were gifted to me because of when my kids’ birthdays are — Bub’s birthday is on June 30th (Sailormoon’s birthday), and Monster’s birthday is really close to Sailorjupiter’s. The necklaces are kept in a nice, safe place in my room along with the other necklaces that I’ve managed to collect over the years. When her shop opened back up in 2022 (which never happened because of… you know, her passing), I intended on adding several more pieces of her jewelry to my Christmas wish list since that seems to be an easier thing for people to shop for when it comes to me. Still though, I am thankful to have the necklaces that I do have.

I’m feeling better than I was at this time yesterday!

Although I’m continuing to have to take pain medication in addition to having the lidocaine and steroid shot to the back of my head that I did (whose name I will eventually, for the life of me, remember… I know it’s the one that begins with dex), I’m not quite as miserable as I was leading up to yesterday… or after I got the actual shot when it didn’t almost immediately take away the majority of the pain like it usually does right then. I think I’m going to stick with the lidocaine and steroid shots for as long as they are useful, conceding the fact that they have begun to grow… less useful over time, although the RFA (radiofrequency ablation, “the probes”) seems like it’s more of a miss than a hit to me, and especially not a direct hit unless you hilariously count one of my nerves being nicked by the needle in the process of numbing. That really hurt!

Fioricet is also beginning to work less than it was, or less than it had been, so I know that I’m starting to round the corner on that medication. And that’s a damn shame, because for awhile it worked phenomenally when needed. Now it just… doesn’t. So that’s one less useful medication for me. And I’m not even going to begin to think about the possibility of using opioids right now because we’re still in the War Against Pain Patients, even when the patient’s history of having tried everything under the sun is conveyed over the course of years of her medical records. I mean, what other options are there out there? Other than one of the most obvious ones if not the most obvious one, which is “this pain is never going to become well-managed”.

Sigh.

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