I'm hoping to reach out to people individually, but for now wanted to let people know I need to take a hiatus for the next two months.

Currently for the past 2 months I've been dealing with a miscarriage that unfortunately would not resolve on its own. One of the reasons why I planned to not attend any cons this year was because we expected that I would be pregnant and focus on my family for the rest of the year. Now it'll be just focusing on getting healthy and taking care of myself for awhile. It has been constant doctor's visits and dealing with depression for both my husband and I, as I found out things were not viable almost into the second trimester. That was probably the most upsetting part because I definitely had pregnancy symptoms, and we were literally going to tell our family after the first ultrasound checked out ok. I was exhausted for several weeks on end in the beginning. After finding out, it's been extremely stressful and impossible to keep up with my work and I've fallen terribly behind. For his sabbatical we had planned on telling our grandmas about the news, and I planned on finishing all of my work and settling in for a well-earned vacation. Unfortunately we can't even cancel the trip as we booked with a very inflexible airline, so we're hoping to just treat the trip as a fresh start.

I went in for a d&c procedure with local anesthetics that did not go how I expected - the procedure itself was about what I expected to tolerate/endure in terms of the discomfort/pain, but the worst part was not knowing the lidocaine with epinephrine would give me a screaming headache. It was so painful it felt like my head was being crushed on all sides and I had to put intense pressure on my temples with my free hand to just have something else to focus on. I had to rate it a 10 on the 1-10 pain scale, that paired with the muffled hearing/heart racing (which is 'normal'), and I genuinely thought I would not make it out alive. Even now I have no answers as to why that happened. No doctor I've spoken to so far has ever heard of that reaction. For the most part afterwards I felt ok - but the day after I started getting an extremely painful headache. Thankfully not as terrible as the one I experienced, but it was also paired with increasingly worse neck pain and light/sound sensitivity. I went to urgent care on Friday to rule out meningitis, and the doctor thinks I have a tension/migraine headache. It could be caused from the trauma/stress of the procedure, the stress of all the work I have to do, it could be hormones post-procedure, or even a rare reaction to the antibiotics (in some people it causes cranial fluid swelling that could even damage your optic nerves?!). Adding insult to injury, this whole time I've been extremely unhappy with the medical staff. They love to not tell you *anything* and treat you very ignorantly. Any real education I've gotten about what was happen or would happen I got from googling and reading other women's stories and experiences. The doctor told me nothing about side effects during the procedure, they would dance around very specific questions, I don't even know what I am paying for, and it is unfortunately a lot because our deductible is so high.

I thought with the d&c it would be all over and I could just move on, but it's just one thing after another, and even tonight I'm having a scare that hopefully won't get serious, so that's another doctor's visit in the morning. The neck pain has been so severe I can't fall asleep at night, but I am so grateful ibuprofen at least takes the edge off. I hate this feeling of just being unwell and not being able to do work, but what got me in this state was probably not fully resting and just shutting off my work mode brain, and I just really overdid things. I'm just a mess right now.

So please be patient for a bit, I just really need time to fully heal mentally and physically. Thanks everyone. T-T

-Kitsumi