Ok, I think it’s time for a bit of an update on why I haven’t
been posting much of anything. Back in February of 2016 I went on disability
due to dizziness and migraines. It started off slowly with an episode once a
month or so but it became worse as time went on. Finally I could no longer do
my daily job and had to go on disability. I was unsafe driving, it felt like I
was drunk but without all the fun. I live in a small town and live forty miles
from my job in the most dangerous state to drive in the U.S., Montana. So the
fact that I can’t drive makes it hard to do anything. I could manage sitting in front of a computer
for about an hour maximum, usually way less than that, before I’d get a raging
migraine.
The next several months I spent in and out of hospitals and
doctor visits. Test after test and even an MRI (by the way, I think I know
where dubstep came from, if you’ve had an MRI you’ll know what I’m talking
about.). I felt like an alien ship came out of space and abducted me and they
wanted to run experiments on me. I went through several hours of physical therapy,
trying to determine what makes me dizzy. Nobody had an answer for me. I was
told, ‘Dude, you’re fucked in the head and we don’t know why.’ Granted, they
didn’t tell it to me quite like that but that’s what I took from it. I even had
one doctor say “fascinating” maybe for them but that’s not how I feel. Hell, I
could have been on an episode of House…other than I’m not dying but it feels
like I am some days. Through all of this I was put into classifications that
only some of my symptoms fit into. This made things worse because I was given
medications that helped one and intensified the other.
After almost six months I was finally diagnosed with some
kind of inner ear disease, but they weren’t sure which one because they can’t
really run tests. They told me the disease caused vestibular migraines. Sounds
fun, right? Wrong. I’m constantly dizzy with a fun upswing of dizziness that I
have no clue when it’s going to hit me or for how long. I can feel people
walking by me through the floor, kind of like in an old house, but I get the
same feeling on concrete too. A car can go by or someone opens a door and
changes the pressure in the room I’m in. These are just a few examples on what
can make me dizzy for hours before I’m capable of functioning normally again.
Heat kills me, and I was miserable all summer long. All of this is just the
dizziness, the migraines were just as complicated.
The first medication I was given for my migraines got rid of
them almost instantly. However, it felt like I had pins and needles in my hands
and feet. Like lying on your arm too long and that feeling of numbness taking
over but this was constant. I felt like a zombie shuffling through my house and
the dizziness was taken to another level. A month or so went by before I
realized what was going on and I hadn’t done anything. I don’t remember much
from that time frame either. Thankfully my neurologist put me on a new
prescription. I still get the migraines, just not as frequent. I’m able to sit
in front of a computer now for longer periods of time but not to the capacity I
need but we’re getting there.
My first physical therapist retired so I ended up with
another one and we had to go through a lot of the same things again but now
with a diagnosis we’re moving in the right direction. Recently I was told we
are going to reprogram my brain to handle the dizziness (the Matrix popped in
my head with images of tubes and wires running in and out of my head) because
it isn’t going to go away. The doctors are saying I will have to deal with this
for the rest of my life. “Well, why don’t you take a motion pill that helps
with dizziness?” Asks everyone and their dog and cat. I’ve taken several and
they help take a slight edge off but never helps the upswings. It’s like
scratching a mosquito bite, it feels good for a moment but it comes back worse.
Anyway, how has this affected my writing? Well for starters,
like I said before, I can’t sit in front of a computer for too long without
getting a migraine. When I’m super dizzy I can’t think straight so it makes it
hard to write. Let’s put it this way, in the beginning of 2016 I had, at max,
about ten chapters left to write. I don’t write like George R.R. Martin either,
before this, ten chapters would have taken me at most about ten weeks. However,
I didn’t finish writing it until late August. My medical issues have added on
an additional six months to the writing process. I was hoping to have my second
book published by now but nooooo my head gave me the finger and said “suck it
fool.”
Good news though, I have finished writing The Books of
Azric: Truth, Volume 2. For those of you thinking, why not the middle, it could
only be called the middle if I only had a trilogy going with this. But my
characters added on a few more books because of what they decided to do in
their past, present and future. I’m currently in the editing phase, wow, I
actually eye rolled when I typed that. If you don’t know how much I loth
editing, you can find out about it here.
I’m slowly getting better as time passes. I try and write
once a day, even if it’s only for an hour but it’s still something. I’ve
started writing a new story that has nothing to do with The Books of Azric,
that I know of anyway, my stories tend to write themselves. It’s moving along
slowly. If I push myself too hard I’m down for one to three days, unable to do
much of anything. But that’s where I am and why I haven’t posted much of
anything over the last year.
On a different note, I’ve grown a pretty epic beard that I’m
happy with. So there’s always that.
