Archive of ‘personal’ category

10
Sep
2020

I’ve started this habit, and I do not regret this.

categories: blog maintenance, personal; word count: 322 words

In between migraines and… living the slightly busy life that I do with my kids, I’ve started to queue up posts, and with very few exceptions, I do not regret getting into this habit. This means that if I am having a day where there is a lot of migraine activity (and to get the diagnosis of chronic migraine disorder, you have to have at least fifteen headache days per month with at least eight of those being migraine days, and I have that diagnosis… on top of that, mine are intractable, which means that medication does not easily “put them down”), or Bub and Monster are keeping me busy, I don’t have to worry about missing days posting on here. Having posts queued also helps in the event that my server actually does suffer the downtime that I mentioned last month, because when it does manage to come back up, the posts that I had queued will automatically publish… or, at least, that’s how they have so far, but the first, last, and only downtime that I actually saw my site have lasted over the course of one night, and then I had to fix the SSL that I have here.

I am continuing to titrate down on Trokendi, having been on topiramate in some form for awhile now.

Like I’ve probably already mentioned(, using social media so much that I have to ask myself “have I mentioned this here?”), if I am having migraines at the frequency and severity that I am, the medication that I’ve been on the longest… might not be the one that’s working. I did feel it when I dropped down from 300mg to 200mg, but once I got over that hurdle, I felt no difference. And it wasn’t even so much as more migraine activity than I felt the side effects — or lack of some, if you want to be technical — of dropping down 100mg.

08
Sep
2020

When my site crashes, it’s like third baby crashing.

categories: blog maintenance, personal; word count: 328 words

Another thing that I didn’t mention in here was that last month, for the better part of one evening and… through the following night, my site actually crashed. Part of this was due to my site’s host, although they were good about letting me know this when I submitted a ticket. For some strange reason, the other part of this was due to my SSL, which I was able to fix the following morning once my site’s hosting came back up. In the interim, it was like my third child had crashed, though. However, I attribute it to the nortriptyline that my neurologist has me on for migraine prophylaxis that I was more mellowed out about it than I would otherwise have been — at the very least, my blog crashing for several hours would have upset me more than it actually did (and I mean, it did bother me that my site was down for roughly twelve hours, but it didn’t distress me). But at any rate, I do have some really nice SSL going for my blog now due to it, which is good.

I think it would actually bother me more if Instagram crashed for a long time, because for all intents and purposes I should be the world record holder for most pictures taken on it (116,000 and counting… and yes, that is how many pictures I’ve actually taken on there). My account there is private right now, though I would be willing to open it up and keep it open if that would allow me to actually get the world record for that, heh.

Since I’ve been uploading most of my Facebook videos to our YouTube account, who knows though… maybe I’ll inadvertently get the world record for most videos posted over there since all of those have to be public by default. I might trip and fall myself into a world record. It’ll happen before I know it. At some point it has to.

06
Sep
2020

So that I don’t actually forget to mention this…

categories: personal; word count: 298 words

When I got my economic stimulus payment, I was one of the individuals who did not get “dependent pay”.

I figured that I would be one of the ones “screwed over” by the current administration and IRS, left it at that, was thankful that I had even gotten paid to begin with since it had been months since I had filled out the Non-Filer form and gotten that automated approval e-mail from the IRS, and went on my way spending it.

So imagine how surprised I was to wake up one morning and find out that I had gotten my dependent pay.

Several days later, I began to see news agencies covering it. Apparently I was part of a “programming glitch” that omitted all dependent pay from those who got their economic stimulus payments, and that had been rectified so that those individuals got the dependent pay that they were supposed to get when their initial economic stimulus payment was issued. Again, being extremely thankful that I had even gotten my initial economic stimulus payment in the first place, I began to spend it on some of the things that I had not been able to afford or would have had to save up for months for since it was actually there. I began to do some Christmas shopping with it, knowing that if I began to get that out of the way (or as much of that as I could out of the way with what had been disbursed to me), I could buy Bub and Monster some nice things over the remainder of the year with their regular sources of income. Some of my friends joke that I start birthday shopping and Christmas shopping earlier than most people to begin with, so I mean… why not?

05
Sep
2020

Don’t underestimate prednisone’s efficacy. At all.

categories: personal; word count: 357 words

Because I’ve needed prednisone as much as I have, it’s managed to do a number on several of the organs in my body (liver function, weight gain), and has affected my body in a myriad of ways (A1C of 5.8 on some examinations, elevated cholesterol). The newest side effect that seems to have been exacerbated by my need for prednisone seems to have been the gum infection that I mentioned in a previous entry — it’s beginning to look less like a gum infection and more like the beginning stages of periodontal disease, although it happens to be over a bridge in my mouth that I had placed when Bub was extremely young (so it couldn’t have started in a better place, and I mean that, because it is not “over” an active tooth). But the bad thing is that it looks like it is the beginning stages of periodontal disease, because the doses of and frequency at which I have needed prednisone to suppress problematic symptoms of asthma have lowered my immune system that much, and that was one of the trade-offs that had to be made to better my health.

I wish that this was not one of the trade-offs that we had to make, but it appears that we had to make it.

Fortunately for me, the bridge is still cemented into my mouth and does not appear to be showing any signs of “giving”, which is good. Things would be a whole lot worse if the bridge were compromised because of where it had to be placed in my mouth, and it’s not. And the fact that nothing has begun to spread beyond this point is also extremely good, because that is one less thing that I have to worry about. I continue to brush my teeth two to three times a day and use mouthwash, especially “the purple mouthwash”, which is suggested in this situation, and I do try to stay off of prednisone when I can avoid it… but I also acknowledge that in cases like mine, prednisone is a necessary evil, and there’s absolutely nothing that I can do about it.

1 … 241 242 243 244 245 … 286