Bork Slowly Borking

 Slowww sticky day today. Today it's mostly a mental health issue. Not withstanding the usual clown car of physical bullshit going on in the background. Didn't want to get up today. Had no reason to get up today. Everytime I woke up I was tired as hell. No joy, no plans, no need, no one cares. Just. Go back to sleep. And oblivion. But sleep is a tricky thing for me these days. It can just as easily fuck me up as help. Work laptop broke yesterday. It's been increasingly shitty for a while. The power input went bad on me again. Third time. And as ever I replaced it. Except this time on opening, I found out why the laptop sometimes hasn't been closing right. Broken hinge. Right on the power input. Which makes the power input wiggle and fucks it up even faster than it usually does. Meh. Well. Ok. Then I looked at the other hinge. A big ole crack in it. Probably from the increased stress due to the other one doing no job at all. Oh. As I looked at it and wiggled it, it fina...

 Hmm. This sounds alarmingly on point. Brain fog, and related malarkey ( CFS ). Long story short. Food is worse than it was. You're fat. You don't move enough. You're stressed. Dehydrated. And inflammation is rife. And stuff like covid seems to add fuel to the fire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoR72-aM4mI

 Not a terrible day today. Not a great one either. But. It's ok. I had a little energy to spend 15 minutes in the garden. Out the front cut the top of my acer tree off, and out the read did a little tidying. And that was me done. Dizzy. Heart thumping. Asthma kicking in hard. Super poor cardio. Sigh. There are so many things I want to do when I get a glimmer of well being. Tidy this. Tidy that. Decorate this. Shift all that. Just. Move on a bit with my life. Everything has been on pause for years. But it is not to be. I think I'm evolving. Or that should probably be de-evolving. Into Homo Beddus. Homo Internettus. Incapable of doing shit except being in bed and possibly fucking around with computers. Perhaps my legs will drop off at some stage, and I'll just be a brain connected to a gut. I need to get swimming again. To do that, I kinda need my ass fixing. To do that, the NHS needs to not be a 2 year waiting list shit show. No holding of breath then. I need to go swimming ...

 I figured I had peaked. Slowly, slowly, my physical health state is depressing again. I've kinda noticed that pattern. It has all sorts of ups and downs. But it can also have this kinda longer up and down, and it tends not to see saw so much as more slowly rise and fall over the longer period. Within that, it spikes up and down in a 24 hour cycle. Have a crappy diagram. This is a rough approximation of what I think the pattern is. A general sawtooth, with a spiky line that follows the saw. The blue line is what it feels like to be normal. Go about your business, no lags, no concerns, no weights. Normal. I never get to that line anymore. I get close. But never get to it. On my very best of days, with the wind behind me for a few hours in a 24 hour period, I feel close to it. The green line is the overall trend, this takes place over weeks. The bits in the troughs can last for months . The slopes up and down tend to be over the course of several days, I'd take a rough guess of...

 Health has taken half a step back today. Still ok. But. Rougher. Woke up with red eyes, dark black bags under them. Uh huh. Went for a walk yesterday with Hazel. Had to stop half way around. Another migraine came in from nowhere on the left hand side. Made me feel blurp. Weird. Spacey. Pain - obviously. It passed fairly quickly. But. Eh. Yeah. Not cool. It made a return late into the evening, this time on the right hand side. Ghosted around then buggered off. My head is really not doing great lately. We related our news back and forth on the walk. Hazel once again professed the desire to "handle Andy". You need a buffer she said. I'll sort him out ! Her eyes glittered. This leans into her personality and her mental health issues. A fight. Part of her lives for a fight. It's the trauma anger monster, happy to be taken out for a just cause and unleash pain on someone else. You have to be careful around that Pandora's box. A bit like a beserker. She got what I was s...

 Maintaining some level of not terrible health at the moment. Despite the ridiculous headwinds. That being said. Another migraine ghosted around my head again last night. Everytime I strained a muscle or moved odd, my head would throb in sympathy. Fragile. High pressure. Clench your stomach muscles, and your head hurts. Hmmm. Anywho. I ate poorly, didn't drink enough, and didn't shift from the computer. It took me half way through the day before I decided to do some work. My interest was piqued, ironically enough, by chatGPT. I asked it to solve a problem I had often turned over in my head. It gave me a sensible boilerplate answer. But it made me dig deeper in the background and try somethings out workwise. Probably time I don't have to spare to be honest, but, it was pursuing best practices. As it turned out it was a day lost. I worked until 9pm at which point after going full circle I realised that the best solution was no longer feasible. Firefox had closed it off in the...

 Doing better each day that passes. My enthusiasm for work however remains zero. Whatever animal is inside of me controlling that has clearly just had enough and packed up. I am waiting to warm up and some sliver of enthusiasm to return. But at the moment. Zero. Hospital phoned me back today. They have no record of a follow up check up being required. This despite me being told there would be one. And perhaps most damning of all, the GP reading out the surgery notes that said a follow up would be scheduled for 60 days time . Clearly, somewhere in there, the executive decision was made to delete that retrospectively. Unfortunately the notes still remain as evidence it was there. This being the case, I have been told to go back through the system and get another referral. Last time that took 2 years. So what do we have here. NHS denial that something was ever the case - despite their own records saying it was. Advised to basically wait 2 years again. *scratches head* I find that my g...

 Today I have pretty much not worked. Despite it being a work day. Andy, perhaps wisely, perhaps busily, didn't talk to me until the very end of the day. I figured to take the day slow. I am still in a lot of ways coming down off a high stress period with a bunch of pretty shitty migraine days rolled into one. I was not in the mood for work. At all. Possibly ever. Everything over the course of the last week - at least - had made me very seriously reconsider what I was doing, where I was going, and that this shit wasn't acceptable. I don't know what a best path looks like. Part of that is because I cannot tell how long I have left. Do I cark it tomorrow. Or in a year. Or in 30 years. It isn't just some idle bullshit speculation, because at times, I feel like it's today. How long you have left feeds directly into. How much money do I need. What am I capable of. Short term or long term planning. But I do know this. I don't want to be spending my remaining time on t...

  https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-60-second-migraine-massage-a-neurologist-swears-by-for-instant-relief?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB Rather hilariously the post says migraine triggers are often stress. *checks notes for the wave of migraines I've had in the last 5 weeks*. Hmmm. The above advice sounds like voodoo. But anything is worth a shot. I need me some peppermint oil. I can kinda imagine that it may be a little useful as peppermint + oil has that cooling effect, stimulates blood, makes your skin feel cool, and that cold in general, via a cold wet flannel, are a tiny bit of relief for migraines. That being said. Cold wet compresses for migraines don't really make much odds for me. They can make it slightly nicer. But they wear off too quick. And when it's bad, they don't do shit. Like trying to bail out the titanic with a teaspoon.

 Yesterday was a little more balanced. Less bullshit going on healthwise. Which isn't a terribly high bar to get over at the moment, it was still punctuated by, dun dun darr, another migraine, and some really not cool other symptoms which I can't be arsed to get into. Just the usual scatter shotgun of shit not right with of late a repeating theme of chest pains. I slept. And didn't do much. And didn't feel terrible. At one point I even felt like I had a bit of energy. Then it evaporated in 30 minutes. There's an interesting difference. When I don't have "the lag" on me, it feels like I can go do stuff. I don't feel like I'm going to collapse or that I really super need a sit down if not a lie down. And it feels like a shadow of my former self. Kinda. Normal. Motivation still comes and goes when in that state, about normal. Then there's the lag. It feels like you're carrying a dozen sacks of potatoes. Everything is heavy. Everything is h...

I'm writing this a day late. My day today has barely started. So, I'll do yesterday. Another day, another migraine. This one fortunately was short, cut off, and didn't get very far. But a migraine it most definitely was. Came out of nowhere, spiked up pretty fast, grumbled off into the distance with the application of pain killers and sleep. Still. Another back to back set of days with migraines. Today I went for a walk with Hazel for the first time in a week. She needed some bits and pieces, I tend to be her grocery and bits and pieces wheels. She had had a bad week herself. Nightmares. Shitty neighbours. Bad experiences in public. Not great. A good deal of screaming, swearing and hostile interactions. It could be coincidence but I've also noted she tends to do worse when I don't see her for a while. I think our little low stress ambles with the mutts do her a lot of good. And I tend to spoil her a little from time to time. A coffee. A burger. Cake. I'm not sur...

 Yesterday was a stressy day. I got up with a general unhappiness about work. It was clear shit was way out of hand again. Andy was back to really just throwing shit at me. And he was dropping the ball management wise. Again. To add insult to injury at the start of the day Andy dumped more shit on me after deliciously ironically me explaining to him I was unhappy with the situation. Shit was out of hand. Long pause. Here's more shit. The clouds darkened. Oh dear. He also had the wrong end of the stick with what we were supposed to be doing next week. Which. I think to be honest was half wishful thinking and half bullshit. I was, to explain a lot of systems to the devs next week, apparently. No. At no point had we discussed this in the last couple of months. We were laser focused on one thing, one project. Maybe I never spoke to you about it he said. I had ranted at him about siloing, he agreed something should be done. But no plans were made. All shoved aside in the frantic tailcha...

 Hello blog. Checking in. Today is a better day than yesterday. Yesterday was shit. After the previously shit day. Yesterday was perhaps the CFS punishment to pushing too hard on Monday. I slumped. Hard. Sleepy. Groggy. I worked hard for six or so hours and then slumped even harder. My heart thumped, my head was dizzy, and, for the umpteenth time, I closed my eyes and thought I was going to die. Maybe you think, it's hyperbole. Always with the death talk. It's really not. It's a headfuck. Each time the bottom looms into view, and my body is fucked beyond all measure, a heart that wont stop jumping around, struggling, and everything going out of kilter, it feels like I am one beat away from a heartattack or a head explode or something. 6.30pm yesterday, I slumped into a horrible doze. For the next 3 hours I felt my heart beating crazily, chest pains coming and going and dreamt this was it. I recovered. 9.30pm. Something slightly more human. Human enough to potter around on a...

 The last few days have been a battle to maintain positive direction. To keep the slow improvement of health on a roll. But. Really. For all my "battling" it's not really any such thing. It's more like denial that it's going backwards again. I refuse to believe it when that rise turns into a fall. When the day wobbles and I start feeling worse. No. Nope. Just. Tired. Just. Need to do X. Y. Just a small dip. Be fine tomorrow. It's fine. No problem. And the next day is more of a struggle. Nope. It's ok. Fine. Let's keep doing the positive things. Make sure we eat right. Hydrate. Get some exercise. But it doesn't care. It doesn't care what I do. What my routine is. How carefully I pick my path. It drags me backwards. Unwilling. Kicking and screaming. And this is the bit where again, I struggle to accept that I have a serious fucking illness. A chronic condition that never leaves, that fluctuates, but always leaves me in a compromised state. The ph...

 Slowly. Oh so slowly. I am having brief periods of feeling a bit better. Don't get me wrong, I am still woozy and screechy and bullshit. But. Perhaps I am just coping a little better. But I know it's not just that. I am at times, managing to reach an... easier to cope with state of bullshit. I even cracked a joke yesterday. And laughed. My bad points in a day are pretty worrying though. I had two kicker headaches yesterday. Both threatened to become migraines. Grazing of the aspirin. Gout be damned. And they resolved out. Today. Another one softly grumbles around the front of my head. I have not taken aspirin for it. This could be a mistake. It has been the signature "mood" of the last 3 weeks. The continual headaches and migraines. The tickling of crawling left side of face at times. A bit of a weak left leg. An off left side. I know. It sounds shit. I mean. Proper, oh, that sounds worryingly coordinatedly shit . Eh what you gonna do. Put up with it is what you'...

 A bad headache ghosted across my forehead in the morning. Oh no . It threatened to turn into a ass kicking migraine. I slept it off. Not easy. It didn't let me sleep too easy. But I did it. By the end of the afternoon, it was back again. Grumbling around the front attic. Making me more spacey. And more dizzy. And more weird. I've had a really "funny" head for the last 2 or 3 weeks now. Ever since the migraines started kicking in regularly. The ongoing shriek of the tinnitus heralds the difficult times. It gets worse when shit is bad. You Should Get That Looked At Mate. Been there, done that, the NHS cannot be arsed. Which no doubt leaves me open to when it has become such a problem that it's too late. But there it is. I have been Pavlov responsed into not bothering with the NHS at all, by and large. The day has wiled its way to a pleasant dusk. A pretty rose coloured horizon, a blue sky, chilly, but not too chilly. A sense of spring in the air. And suddenly. An o...

 Lets start with something a bit lighter rather than the constant horror. First World Problems. Tacos. Today in a fit of minor energy and also the date running out on my smoked haddock, I made myself some fish tacos. Grilled fish, raw red cabbage, cucumber, tomatoes and onion. Stuffed in a taco shell. With a squeeze of lime and vinegar and salt mixed into the cabbage. Good. Nice. Tasty. Low effort. Very quick. Which is good because by the end of assembling it I was ready to fall over again. I've never had fish tacos until today. I hear Americans always going on about them. In fact waxing lyrical about tacos in general. It has to be said I am more of a burrito dude. I find tacos just not fit for purpose. Chaotic. Stupid. Something to avoid. Not because of how they taste. Or how they feel. The crunch and the salad and the filling is great. No complaints. But because they are like an explosion in a paint factory. Like trying to eat soup on a rollercoaster. They are guaranteed to make ...