https://bsky.app/profile/teadragon.bsky.social

Just in case that's how anyone prefers to get their content and/or you liked Xwitter but that platform dies ^^;

(Side note, I keep reading bsky and thinking biscuity...)

...I mean, aside from functional immortality, would be that my day is 4 hours longer than everyone else's.

Finally I could keep up with all the things my brain wants to do without fear of adding to the information deficit I suffer as the world gets more complicated around me.

...it'd be a whole lot faster.

Honestly, I wish I could draw better. I wish I could be more interesting and entertaining and engaging. I want to produce stuff that is worth remembering and sharing and thinking back on for years to come.

But I guess this is as fast as my brain can go. It makes me sad, but it is what it is.

That explains why I have a lot of matching symptoms then.

Well, it's fine. I slept a bit last night, I'm hydrated, I'm eating. Feels like I have the winter flu, more than anything. Big sinus ache and tiredness. Actually got some of my energy back an hour or so ago, but it came with the trade of turning on all my sweat glands, so I guess there's still some bumps to discover :')

But at least I can stop wondering why this 'cold' has knocked me around so hard!

But it's fine. Mostly feels like a cold - which is what the omicron symptom list is, if you don't go to hospital with it.

More annoying than the sleepless nights and headache is the absolute lack of lateral flow test kits. They do not exist. I can't get them in a pharmacy, nor can I get one mailed to me - been trying since xmas because this was bound to happen eventually. The drive through sites are also only admitting people for delta symptoms - which don't even overlap with omicron.

So I've had to order a PCR test kit, which arrives today, but I probably won't have results from until next week. Until then I'll have to do the responsible adult thing and stae at haem, because I can't say what I've caught, only that I have caught something.

I'm sure I can have a productive day on 30 mins sleep, right? Right???

Yup. Not really sure why or how, but my wrist is hypersensitive to touch and any pressure on it lights up the nerve from my elbow to my hand bones.

Good news is it's mostly not positionally triggered; I can move around pretty much fine, but I can't let anything touch my arm. Like... a desk. Or the surface of my drawing screen.

Hope this one heals quickly :/

<at>Nekozji - safe for work
<at>SpicyNekozji - not so much

You'd be surprised how happy it makes me whenever someone follows either. Thank you :)

(Also you'll get more WIPs, alts, and a slightly faster release schedule there.)

Abandon it and move on to the next thing?
Persevere, 'finish' it, even when you're sure it's going to be underwhelming and annoy you?
???

Just organising; now folders for Oviposition and Size Differences. The latter sure has got more in it than I expected... turns out it's a thing I draw a lot.

...is that while they're wonderful inspiration, eventually I just wind up completely fucking intimidated and not wanting to draw because I feel like a total fraud who has no business engaging with this hobby :/

Just me?

So, went for a stress-echo test today. Basically you run on a treadmill while they keep an ECG attached to you, then quickly leap off for an ultrasound scan at the highest heart rate you can manage.

Turns out running for 10 minutes while wearing a face mask is... hard work. Feels like every breath gets 25% tax taken off the top. Nonetheless, despite the beta blockers I'm taking, we got up to 160bpm and could get the scan done. Things we learned:

1 - my heart seems to be structurally and electrically sound. Muscles, valves and nerves are doing what they should at rest and under stress.

2 - I have a strong awareness of ectopic beats. Having worn a 72 hour monitor before, I accurately marked a number of them on the timeline. This is basically fine; everyone gets these. They're annoying things, but they aren't dangerous (unless like Sand People they come back in greater numbers).

3 - while my heart can sometimes accelerate after meals, this doesn't seem to be originating within the heart itself.

These things are good news - of a kind. Not a lot of things can kill you quicker than a heart problem, so ruling it out is reassuring. However, the symptoms remain, they are real, and the question is; if the engine is in good shape, what's opening the throttle?

The answer to that was a little less forthcoming. The cardiologist referred to vagal nerve stimulation - which can be caused by, for example, eating a lot. I am however really not eating very much, and have lost 3kg in the past 2 months. Still, it has always seemed linked to meals so... maybe.

The advice I've come away with is basically keep taking the pills to suppress the symptoms, and other than that, try not to worry about it. It may turn out that in some months I can stop taking them and not have a recurrence. He talked about the rise in anxiety and stress levels within his patients, and that pretty much everyone is dealing with some levels of it right now.

All in all, I'm not entirely sure how I feel now.

So after another rough morning, I cracked and took a taxi to A&E, and straight up asked "I've had intermittent palpitations for 7 weeks, my chest hurts and I look like my grandfather when his angina was playing up. Do I have that too, now?" It's actually the most me thing I've done since this all started and I feel a bit better for doing it. Action is always less stressful than inaction and knowledge is always less stressful than ignorance.

TLDR they did an x-ray, and some more blood tests, and an ECG, and 6 hours later said no, almost certainly not angina, also none of the chest pain today was a heart attack. In fact it would be shockingly rare for a patient to show up with unstable angina without any history of exertion-induced angina, and they consider me very low risk for heart problems. Which is more conclusive than anything else I've had so far and reassures me that the last 5 days of intermittent achey chests weren't cardiac events either.

They apologised for not telling me what it was, but at least I have some clue what it is not; i.e. life threatening. There's a possibility that the pain is just random and poorly timed muscle inflammation between my ribs. Wouldn't be the first time.

Which is of course, good news.

One of the doctors even asked if the palpitations are linked to eating, to which my answer was yes, definitely, but my GP seems very suspicious about the link and I was starting to doubt my own belief in it. They nodded and said it's common. Which is also interesting, although it does make me want to press my GP for a referral to cardiology so's I can talk to someone who's heard of the problem. The only thing similar I'm aware of is vagal aFib - which would be unpleasant, but also not a death sentence. I've dealt with enough medical dramas in my life to recognise that aFib is something to be managed, not something to give up on life in despair because of.

Meanwhile, beta blockers - they do work, as long as I take them every 12-15 hours or so. Gets a little bumpitty if I leave it longer than that and there's anything particularly stimulating happening. Still, any effect that can be suppressed is logically not irreversible, and as such I have some hope of a normal life again at some point in the future.

It may be some time off, it may take a lot of effort to get there, but I can at least imagine a day when it might happen. That's... better than yesterday, at least.

Only 3 hours this time, at I'm back at a not ridiculous time to go to bed, but still... I don't like it when my heart decides I'm jogging while I'm sitting down, and seems to skip every 10th beat.

Of course, it was over an hour between onset and actually getting seen by a medic, and almost annoyingly, ECG and blood tests all came back normal again. This is good, because it implies no detectable damage to the heart, but it doesn't tell me anything either. It seems unlikely that there's a narrowed artery or aneurysm, there's no associated chest pain, and no event to date has done me any permanent harm - other than to make me even more nervous about future events.

Guess I'll try to get an urgent doctor's appointment tomorrow and ask where do I take this now. I can live with a diagnosis of anxiety and I can learn to handle it if that's what's going on, but I do need need to be taken seriously when I say it comes out of nowhere and I need to make sure we're not burying a physiological issue under a psychiatric diagnosis.

It's going to end up scaring me into another ambulance call out, if it recurs, it really is :(

Phonecall with my GP turned into a 40 minute evaluation of my mental health... which was probably useful. TLDR, I score very low on depression and moderately high on anxiety.

Which I sort of knew already, but doing this has now opened the door for discussions about management strategies, talking therapies, CBT, and medications. Info pack is on the way and another discussion next week.

This was of course largely kicked off by the events over the last couple of weeks, which I do have to suspect were standard variety panic attacks brought on by an annoying but non-threatening physical symptom - but it was a discussion I wanted to have because the last few years have exposed me to more conversations about such things and I was already coming to suspect that not everyone has to deal with a brain that whispers worries to them. It came home to me in the eval when one question was about how often I feel like something horrible and catastrophic might happen, and I had to answer "literally every day, but sometimes it's just once and sometimes it's every few minutes".

I mean, there's nothing new in this... I've managed to be a functioning adult for the last 2 decades, but I'm starting to feel like I've normalised my life around things that other people wouldn't consider normal - largely because I have never known better. If it turns out that I don't actually have to put up with the way my brain behaves when its alone in the dark, then that's something I'd like to explore.

So... 2 days after the A&E debacle...

Yesterday wasn't great. Sufficiently un-great that I spent an hour of the evening with an ambulance crew. Again, ECG normal, blood pressure a little high but normal for me, pulse 55-60 by the end of the time.

Which doesn't change the fact that I made the call because I felt light headed, cold fingered, had a pounding heartbeat and a looming sense of doom. Which I accept is all listed under 'panic attack', but is still... disquieting. As I said to the doctor, I'm not sure the person with that feeling can tell you whether or not it's anxiety to blame. It's a very physical feeling and it comes not so much out of nowhere, but usually about 20-40 mins after eating. The ambulance crew suggested that this may be a false positive, or that I've managed to associate food as the trigger because that's when the first one happened. They may be right. I didn't feel great when I woke up this morning either - not as bad as the previous night, but obviously that wasn't an after food thing. So far today, couple of low-key pounds, but no big sessions like last night turned into.

Fortunately managed to get hold of my GP with an urgent request, and hopefully by this evening will have a prescription of something I can take if I feel the onset of a bad one such as had me calling 999 yesterday.

A few of my neighbours also checked in with me this morning, having seen the ambulance last night. That was... definitely kind of them.

But I'm a bit... baffled by the whole thing. I didn't feel like I was particularly stressed or anxious prior to onset of any of them, but I will admit to being a worrier in general, there's constantly something health-related on my mind, and with the current state of the world, it's possible that I've just got too much bubbling under the surface and something finally snapped.

Or something else is periodically flooding my body with stress hormones. I guess that is one I'll be working out over the next week. 6 days wait to get an on-site ECG, and we'll try to trigger it to be at its worst when I get there, then a debrief with the doctor afterwards.

Conclusion: surviving. Not very comfortable, but surviving. Think I've moved on from the idea that the problem is a cardiac issue, and am leaning towards something else is telling my heart to go a bit nuts now and then. It's not nice when it does, but I haven't even spiked over 100bpm yet, and it's well within my safe sustained range even at its worst. The challenge now is to work out what's kicking it off, rather than ponder whether I'm about to suddenly fall over.

Well that was... not the day I had in mind.

Short version, round about midnight, my heart decided I was running a marathon. Up from my usual 55bpm to 95 and clattering against my ribs. I know enough about anxiety and panic attacks to say "you know, all of these symptoms fit that, and I don't have any extras". But still. I've never been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and it was really not much fun while it lasted.

It abated quickly, as such things are known to, but left me with a lingering "holy cow my heartbeat is so loud" feeling and a lot of adrenaline. By 4am, I called the health advice line, and at 5am they told me to get in a taxi and go to A&E.

From whence I have only just got back. They took two ECGs, listened to my heart, and did some blood samples, and concluded... there's nothing underlying that they can catch or diagnose. As the doctor put it, sometimes hearts just go into different patterns for a while, sometimes ectopic beats happen, and both are usually harmless unless they're happening a lot. But yes it can feel disturbing at the time.

I'll probably get a monitor to wear for a day in the near future, but otherwise... I just have to kind of deal with it and hope it doesn't recur. But if it does, go back to A&E.

Meantime, pushing 30 hours since I slept... sooner or later the adrenaline is going to wear off.

Does nobody here draw as a hobby because they enjoy it anymore? Is it just me? =(

*edit* I don't begrudge anyone the ability to make money from art. If you can, if you want to, that's fine! But I'm not a fan of how FA sometimes feels like it's 50-75% YCH reminders. Sometimes I'd like to browse and it's just hard to spot the finished pieces amongst the melee.

Hey peeps, just letting you know that I'll also be posting my furry+dnd filth as [at]SpicyNekozji so if you like having such things in your feed... why not give me a follow? :)

No memes, no shower thoughts, no political commentary; just home-grown porn like momma used to warn you about.

Perhaps the wrong time to ask, since the mighty Twit might close its doors to adult content one day in the future, but while it lasts, would you peeps be interested in following me there if I made an nsfw account? I have no idea whether folks these days prefer a feed or to go browsing for stuffs :)

Dawn happens. Sunrise continues for 7 hours. Now it is dark again.

Why my distant ancestors ever migrated this far north I cannot image. It's just uncivilised when over 50% of your waking life is in the dark! It makes no sense to me that a pre-iron society would ever choose to live here! What did they DO for all those hours of cold darkness? :S

A few of you lovely peeps have asked in the past if I have any kind of Patreon - which I don't. But since FA now has a tipping section, that's now there for any who care to use it :3

FWIW, I habitually re-invest art-related money into more art, with past commission pieces funding my current drawing screen, plus a subscription to some Udemy art tutorials ^^

Thanks for letting me know you need a dentist on easter fuggin friday...

Fortunately alcohol shuts you up. One and a half days to go I guess.

Geez I'm sick of dental work this year. I don't even care anymore what goes and what stays, I just want to be able to stop thinking about my mouth for a while.

...no really.

Apparently I have a slightly swollen mandibular gland, and her advice was suck sour things like lemons to give it a workout and see if it settles.

Modern medicine at its finest.

So after one broken tooth, 3 filled, and 1 removed... I might be done with the dentist.

Maybe.

There's a possibility that the remaining twinges won't settle after the socket heals over, in which case I'll be back for possibly another extraction, after which I'll definitely need an implant to fill the double-gap, but in theory if everything heals cleanly and stops hurting... I'm done.

These last two months have taught me about why you should always find time+money to get dental checkups. This would have been quicker, cheaper, and less painful had I stayed on top of it, rather than waiting for something to clue me in that my mouth was a wreck. I did not need to have this gummy gap in my face, I let that happen because I was too lazy to make an appointment and too tight to pay for it.

Do yourself a favour and learn from my lesson because my 2019 has had a horrible start and it is entirely my own stupid fault. I haven't eaten solid food for 8 days, I probably have another week of mush to go, and I've lost 5kgs since January because eating is terrifying now. It sucks, and I can only blame myself.

Prevention > cure.

Turns out the discomfort I've been having along my jaw the past month was (probably) down to a dead tooth.

Which meant root canal for £1200, extraction, or clean it and pack it and take a little bit of thinking time.

So it's gone now, because I did not want to think about that for any amount of time.

Already had thought about it, really. My teeth are kind of crowded and wonky and can't be straightened because there is no space for them to move into. Losing the 2nd-from-back molar won't change my smile, and it does give some space for the wisdom tooth behind it to straighten up. It's been sitting there at a 30 degree angle for the past 10 years, it'll probably thank me.

Wisdom tooth on the other side to be drilled and filled next week - if that one has to come out, at least there will probably be general anaesthetic options.