July Thank Post (Patreon)

Hey! I’d just like to give a little... general update on My Life™ as concerns my ability to do the stuff you’re here for.

In case you’re not aware, I have Crohn’s disease. It’s a chronic autoimmune disorder that affects the digestive system, and I’ll spare you the gross details, and just tell you that it goes through periods of remission and periods where everything sucks, and you don’t have energy for anything, and you can’t leave your house for very long, you’re more vulnerable to infections, and it’s just a bad time.

Across the early months of 2021 my symptoms started slipping. My trip across the country to get vaccinated in March was significantly more fraught and complicated than going home for Christmas. People had started noticing that I was coughing a lot. But I was busy, and the comic layouts needed to be done, and an animation was due, and I’ll just... go to the doctor next week. Okay actually next week, there’s a thing this weekend. This is around the time that I was only doing one sketch stream a month.

Things continued to worsen throughout May, with a spell of pneumonia, being unable to get blood tests that would have saved me a lot of time because of a cyberattack on my country’s health service, and an increase in my medication that actually made my symptoms worse - I wasn’t eating for several days a week, and some days I’d barely get out of bed. This culminated in finally getting blood test results in front of a consultant about two weeks ago, which prompted them to call me into hospital for a week - which is what had me missing Galaconline.

The good news is that my spell in hospital really turned my condition around and I’m feeling fit as a fiddle. In fact I had no idea how sick I’d become until I got home and saw the state of my apartment. I’m sure my friends were all very worried about me, and I’m sorry for doing that, but relevant to this post - my illness affected my professional obligations to you, my patrons. Now, illness happens, and I’m sure you can understand that sick days are just a necessary part of any lifestyle. However, what I did was unnecessarily push myself to ignore it in the hopes that it would just go away, which has meant that I’ve been doing a half-job for several months. It was irresponsible, and for the sake of professionalism and just... my own wellbeing, I’m gonna try not to do that again.

Anyway, that’s been my ramble about how things have been for me for a while. I’m incredibly lucky to have an audience like you, and I wanna do right by you. So sit right there and boy howdy now that i’m back on all cylinders i’ve got some shit cookin’ up