I keep trying to write a post but then Things keep happening and now oh gods there’s too much…

Remember those turtles from the last post? Yeah, so not four days after I wrote that, I found myself in the ER in the middle of the night, hooked up to monitors, getting my blood checked to see if I was having a heart attack. Thankfully it wasn’t but, as it turns out, it was very like an early warning shot of

*insert drum roll*

Shingles. On my face and around my left eye. Did you know that this is one of the most dangerous places to get shingles and requires a grueling medication schedule for weeks in the hopes that you don’t lose the sight in the eye that it’s around? Well, now you do. (Side note: it is possible, however, to get shingles and not have it be screaming agony, which is also a thing more folks should probably know. The itching is still A Lot, and it is so gross, but it’s better than pain.)

-10,000 stars, do NOT recommend.

Still, a bit over a month later, the rash is gone, the weapons-grade itching (like poison ivy on steroids) is mostly cleared out, and I’m able to wear my glasses full-time again. Still have some mild neuralgia, tire easily, and have some new and exciting scarring on my face but, most importantly, I still have use of both eyes. Or at least as much as I had before, at any rate. Thank gods. Getting shingles on your face has a high risk of it also showing up on/in your eye or developing a secondary infection, which can cause you to go blind. Happily I avoided that, but it was *very* close, and involved a pretty grueling medication schedule for several weeks to pull it off.

I’m definitely making some major lifestyle changes, because this last month has been a helluva wake-up call that I need to start taking much better care of myself. Listening to the turtles, dammit. Hydrating and sleeping more. Getting outside when I can. Taking my vitamins and adding more healthy foods into my day. Setting aside time to just relax and exist for a bit. Remembering that wearing a headscarf mitigates a lot of the neuralgia and learning ways to wrap them.

So yeah, still here. Not dead or blind. Working on building healthier way to do things. Got a new little drawing done and up in the shop, and back to working on getting the studio set up to do my own stickers. Trying to navigate the ever-increasing dysfunctions that are the social media sites these days, and looking at ways to start existing in meatspace more, despite the fact that I live in an area that makes that really hard. Hell, trying to figure out what a meatspace existence looks like for my kind of work in the first place.

Always an adventure…