Changing the Way I Look at Things

I didn’t intend to take off yesterday, but here we are, and there it is.

I’ll get to the TL;DR part first so anyone who wants to skip out the rest can. I have to adjust how I do things. I took of yesterday, and I’ll be taking off tomorrow to get myself on more solid ground. I’ll be back on Thursday and Friday with reviews… probably. I will definitely be back this weekend with calls for submissions, and next week will resume the normal way of things.

No biggie, yes?

I apologise if it seems like I’m getting into theatrics with this, but I honestly want to share this but don’t know how to go about it. I’m not looking for pity, and it only has a relation to zines rather than being about zines. In the end, though, I want this to be a conversation rather than a random spit out of information and reviews (as fun and lovely as that is). I want to tell you about the not-necessarily-zineish things that are going on in my life.

The past few weeks have been an assortment of tests and appointments with my doctor. After plenty of discussions, we were both all but convinced that I had lupus. That’s what everything pointed to, so we waited until I had a ‘flare’ of symptoms so we could do the relevant blood tests. Blood tests that came back negative. (With the exception of microcytic anemia, but that’s not an indicator of lupus.)

So we went over my history again and came to the conclusion that I need to start doing what I can do for fibromyalgia, ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis – commonly known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome but is so much more complicated than that), and restless legs syndrome.

Fibromyalgia and ME have come up as possibilities many times in the past ten years or so, but they are “diagnoses of exclusion” and I have never pursued the relevant testing. (I don’t always stick my head in the sand, but when I do…) Turns out that it took a mere ten years, and we’ve done all the testing to come around to the conclusion anyway.

What does all of this mean?

It means that, while these symptoms have been with me for many years, now they have a name. No I know it’s not just all in my head, that I’m not just lazy, and that I can’t keep operating as if it will all go away.

In many ways, this is a relief. I’ve never been good at taking care of myself, and having names for the faces, so to say, means that I feel less guilty about self-care. I’ve been going slower, going to bed earlier, sleeping in, puttering rather than mad rushing, and educating myself about the conditions. (And let me tell you, just keeping my feet and legs warm at all times has made a heap of difference.)

If I have my way, nothing will change here – other than I will endeavour to stop apologising for late posts or days when I don’t post. What will change is how I look at things, how I organise my time – especially my rest – and how I go about my days. Mostly things you won’t see or hear about.

Like I said, though, I want this space to be one in which we have conversations. Conversations that include what’s going on in my life even when it doesn’t focus on zines.

I wish you all the best for your week. I’ll be back with reviews on Thursday and Friday (99% sure that’s going to happen), calls for subs this weekend, and next week I will have a fresh happy mail post for you.

Until then…