bruceb

I've decided to go ahead and leave iChat off on an ongoing basis for a while. The absence of pressure to be alert to stuff coming in on other people's schedules is a noticeable relief to me right now. I notice myself feeling much more at liberty to go off and rest whenever the urge strikes, for one thing—it's not that I think any of you were demanding my presence at the keyboard, but expectations build up and become a confinement of their own sometime. I'm just happier right now exchanging both fluff and substance via e-mail rather than via a long buddy list.

I'm also doing some more LJ friends list pruning, and like that. The more I learn about the nature and magnitude of my current situation's problems, the gladder I am of energy and attention harvested to focus on it.

And that brings me to what is, in its odd way, good news.

I wouldn't rush to call life-threatening vascular problems good news. Nor any of the other things they're testing for. But here's the deal. They're not all manifestations of my existing immune trouble. To the extent that bad circulation is causing my fatigue, for instance, autoimmune reactions and lymphatic disfunction are not causing it. And so on down the list. Each thing that has a separate cause becomes not part of the Big Problem, and the Big Problem becomes that much Smaller. It means that as we can tackle and remove or address the separate issues, what remains will be more manageable than I have thought.

I still don't see a cure anywhere on my horizon. (That is to say, in the next decade or two.) But what I see this week is the possibility of much greater containment than I'd suspected for a very long time.

Back when I set up the New Horizons research, writing, and playtesting schedule, I built in a month's worth of slack time, figuring that inevitably I'd have health-related or other troubles that would keep me from work some weeks. Well, this is that.
If you just read the New Horizons reports, you can bounce back and catch my general health news in this public entry

I'm really just not thinking very much about pulp or history this week, because I'm busy preparing for the overall goals discussion with my counselor and waiting for test results and researching specialists to discuss with the doctor. And then next week I'll be dealing with what I learn this week. So I figured, don't fret it, just take the time off. I'm going to take the current crop of research reading back to the library and take some time to get my bibliography updated, and figure out where to proceed once I'm through this medical-focus stretch.

Comments are on for this one, since it's an unusual and unexpected entry.