Official "Oh fuck, I'm very sick" post -- Delays incoming! (Patreon)

So, as many of you have seen me post around here, on the Secret Club, and on my personal Twitter, I recently became ill after being diagnosed with what is most likely to be kidney stones as brought on by calcium supplements I took a few months back as recommended by my dentist. (Thank god I only took them for a short amount of time!)

---- Content Warning for this section, I talk about medical procedures and urine ----


That said, this month on the 3rd I was in a lot of pain, I passed some "sand" and at that point I though, "Okay, cool, this is over" -- that was not the case. Tuesday this week, driving home, I got the same kinds of pain again but this time, I didn't pass anything, I was just in a lot of pain, extremely poor appetite, and couldn't sit up or stand for long periods of time. So, work was off the table pretty immediately then.

Thankfully, one of my roommates was kind enough to drive me to the doctor, I got tests and again confirmed, "This is probably kidney stones due to calcium supplements, uh-oh" and now I am on a regimen of LOTS of water and ""FLOMAX"" which is a drug that relaxes the ~smooth muscles~ meaning I piss so much pee, my god. I also have to strain my urine (very common in these situations) in hopes of catching ANY kind of stone to make sure it was the calcium and nothing more.

I don't have any symptoms that would need me to go to the ER, suggesting that this probably isn't that serious-- but when I went to get an ultrasound yesterday, they did say my bladder and kidneys were retaining small amounts of fluid. (Meaning, they aren't draining all the way, which is indication that SOMETHING is in those little tubes making that difficult.)

---- Medical stuff ends here --- 

Today I am finally feeling well enough to sit up, shower, maybe do my hip stretches, and MAYBE do a bit of work, within reason. My appetite is returning but the thought of cooking still makes me ill, and I've needed a lot of assistance from my extremely kind partner, Niku, and all of my roommates. They have all been so kind and helpful! 

Going forward, I just have to keep up treatments until either a) I pass something major b) the pain stops and I'm cleared via ultrasound or urine test, or both.

So, as of right now I can't really say how consistent I will be with my usual updates. I am pretty sure I can still get 2 Solanaceae pages done each week, and I'm pretty sure I can finish Liar's Maze before Halloween.

The problem with kidney stones is that the pain and sickness tends to come "in waves" -- I can go from feeling %100 good to feeling %100 bad in an instance, and it already happened 2 times this month. Who knows when it'll happen again, it's all a roulette wheel of bullshit and pain. Not only that, but my ulcerative proctitis (fun surprise if you didn't know, I'm technically chronically ill my meds just work GOOD most of the time) decided to kick the fuck in a little bit today so uh, BOY HOWDY, that's exciting! 

So, while I'm guessing what will be most effected by these delays, it could eventually become like, EVERYTHING, that's effected... oof! Let's hope not! 

Stuff I know is already delayed by this is:

-Cavemate finishing, proofing, printing, all of that. The book is not coming out as soon as I could have liked. Let's expect a LATE November release, or possible December release.

-Commissions in general. I'm gonna e-mail all of my clients.

-Other stuff I don't think I've predicted quite yet. I'm on a pretty rigorous update scheduale and I never realize how intense it is until something comes along and upsets it, so... sorry for any future delays!

I know this is very out of my control, but there's still a part of me that feels "guilty" in a sense, I think that's just uh, capitalism and self worth problems though, and again I wanted to thank all of you for being so kind and patient with me during this frankly fucking wild time in my life. 

I'm doing what I can to take things slow and to eat and sleep and DRINK PLENTIFUL WATER so I can recover as fast as possible and get back to working and making fun stuff for all of us to enjoy.

For now though, I will just do what I can within reason.

Oh! And as a last note, I had considered giving myself a mini-vacation after Cavemate was done, but had ultimately veto'd the idea... but now I'm... considering doing that again. I wanna make sure my ducks are in a row before I do it though, so I will give all of you a heads-up before I do that. This will most likely happen in October. (And in December I will likely give myself my yearly Christmas break as well... I... I need it;;;)

Thank you all again and I hope you are fairing better than me!