Bork Slowly Borking

 Cold is definitely on the way out. Voice continues to drop deeper, cough is still kicking, but, seems like we are on the way out. I'm feeling a bit better all round to be honest. The pains are quiet. The continually dead hands and arms have almost gone away entirely. The nausea is taking a break. The exhaustion has not shifted. It dogs me. And after a few hours of doing anything - even just playing a game - I can feel it kick in and put an ever increasing weight on me to just sleep. My eyes have been variable. At times absolutely awful. Occasionally better, really not good, but eh, better. My mood is a little better to go with the lifting. It's not saying much. I still find myself tearing up at times. Because of Athena. Because of feeling sorry for myself. But. A little better. I find myself with a complicated mix of emotions and thoughts. A little clearer. A little more... resentful. A little more willing to say shit like, no, that's not good enough, you treat me like shi...

 August. Already. My "cold" is both better and worse simultaneously. The coughing is horrendous. The feeling of gunk is horrendous. But at times it clears up a little. Sleep - and the very dubious dimming of the flame that happens to me during it - is awful at the moment. It - and everything else - gets a lot lot worse after I've been sleeping. Good stuff. August sticks in my head a bit. At the start of this year. The end of last year. I had considered that August would be a loosely predicted tipping point. I had thought it probable that I would lose Athena in August.  Due to heat. Summer. Everything. ( I lost Ares in August, my mom in September ). I also thought that I too would struggle to get out of summer. August - the end of summer - had the feel of a bit of a death month. As it turns out, Athena passed earlier. Although. I still. Struggle with how sudden and stupid and how that happened. I .. don't... dwell on it overly much. Because. It's an active source ...

 The "cold" seems to be getting worse. Uh huh. Didn't sleep much yesterday, so was doubly rough for work. I am taking it easy this week at work because of this. Swollen throat is slowly getting less severe, but, it's now started settling on my chest. The asthma meds are helping. But. Stuff sitting on my chest is no bueno. I sorted through a bunch of pictures today. Just weeding out a lot of "spam" of board games from the pub from many years ago into their own folder. Along the way I found many pics of Ares and Athena hidden amongst the boardgames. After a while I stopped sorting. The pictures were lovely and sad. The one thing that comes across in them - pre 2020 bullshit. I am a lot happier. A. Lot. Happier. And. There's a reason I was so strongly tied to my mutts. They are adorable. They are always looking to me. Or snuggling me. Forever interested in what I am doing. Forever good natured. Clingy good natured babies. This is not true of all dogs. At al...

 Over the course of yesterday my swollen throat got better... only for it to once again flare up overnight badly. A closed throat that hurts a lot when swallowing and a stuffed feeling in the back of your throat like something is stuck there. Eh well. I didn't feel too good today, as in, under the weather. In the scale of things it was nothing. I've fared far worse. It layered on top of my exhaustion and other bullshit, but the other bullshit took a backseat. A little calmer. Perhaps. Because the immune system has a genuine target rather than just targetting me in general ? Who knows. Today I have done arse all. Barely left bed. Slept. Watched TV. Got a little food. Spent some time on the computer. I have felt my usual exhausted and also that under the weather tiredness on top. I felt like I could just fold into the bed and never get up again. It crossed my mind to do just that. Just. Don't leave bed. Give up. Stop talking to people. Finally given in to that slow, dozy, unc...

 Blocked ear, blocked nose. I figured I had picked up something of a cold yesterday. No doubt from the pool which has become infested with kids. Kids are always a prime source of disease. It's just how it works. Today I have woken up with a very swollen throat, which is new to me. Difficult to swallow, partly closed up. It is uncomfortable - constant feeling that I have a pillow stuck in my throat, which makes me want to continually swallow. Goes without saying it hurts. Ho hum. I've had worse. Bloody kids. Today browsing imgur, I came across someone posting their loss of a dog. It happens on imgur from time to time. People posting the passing of their dogs. The lady writing it had an outpouring of love. Long, in depth, with many pictures. So much love. Admitted that the loss of her other dog at the end of the last year was brutal. That she had been plodding through life until today. And then she lost her other one. She was distraught. In pieces. More than her best friends she ...

 Follow up appointment with the GP yesterday. The good one. The one that hopefully will become my "regular" GP. We see eye to eye about a "methodical approach" to my problems. It was, he said, his job to do that. If you say so doc. Few others in your profession seem to have got that memo. He has prescribed me some gout meds to see how that goes. If it makes things worse, tell him. If it does nothing. Tell him. And we will see how we do. He asked how experimental I was willing to be. All the way. Do whatever you think is best. So here we are. He admitted trying to discover things via specialists would take a year or more. And possibly get nowhere. Or we could just try stuff. An admission that the system doesn't work, but, lets see what we can do from here. He's a nice guy. And it seems willing to work with me. So. Good. I doubt the gout meds will do much. But. You never know. We both agreed that it could be behind a number of my pain flare ups, and, my dodgy...

Anxiety seems like a permanent thing at the moment. Occasionally it takes a morning off. But it doesn't stick. And I can feel there is something very wrong with my mental state. It is hopeless. Athena of late sticks in my head. 2.5 months since she was here. And now I am finding it harder than ever to get over it ? It is not that it makes me wail into tears anymore. That at least has dulled. Although. I don't push at it. But a deep sense of loss has settled into me. A dozen reminders every day. She is gone. I am alone. It is very heavy. I often catch myself thinking that Athena would have enjoyed something. That Ares didn't see this. That Athena couldn't have experienced that. I miss them greatly. And their zest for life. Their character. Their antics. Their judgement. Dogs have such characters to them, and boxers, are up there as the most characterful. Losing them is terrible. Today as I trudged down the stairs the thought floated across my head that if I am not enjoyi...