An unpleasant couple of months.
So I haven't bothered updating in quite some time on here. Last time I wrote was February 18th, when I was just sick with some bad cold/virus. I checked & checked over & over again, & it wasn't covid, but I never really did quite bounce back from that properly.
As soon as I felt better from that, I started having gastro-type problems, from the uh... Well, it's too gross to put in writing, but frequent um.. Bathroom trips that are not at all pleasant, to abdominal/stomach pain/cramps. February 27th was the first day I really had an issue, & it has not gotten any better. I've gotten lab work done multiple times, checking for all sorts of things. No signs of infectious colitis or whatever it was, & I guess no sign of Crohns either. I even had to do the stool sample thing twice. I did it once with ConvenientMD when my doctor couldn't see me for a week, which I regretted doing because I didn't realize it would take two weeks to get the results. After stupidly taking antibiotics when I didn't need to after a visit to ClearChoice while I was sick, they had a guess as to what might be the issue, but that came back negative along with other things they checked for. I just did it again with my regular doctor after he wanted to double check it & make sure nothing was overlooked/missed. Thankfully those results came within 24 hours, not two weeks, but they were still negative across the board. I just can't get any answers as to what's wrong with me.
I've since been referred to a gastroenterologist, & I got a call back yesterday about setting up an appointment. Unfortunately, the soonest I could be seen isn't for another month, & that's even by doing a stupid Zoom appointment. I asked to be seen in office & was told it would take until June, so.. Not happy. If this somehow doesn't magically go away on its own, I'm spending all of spring & into the early part of summer at least dealing with this, so I've been starting to panic again today. I want to be back to normal, especially for the summer months. It's not fun feeling so crappy/in pain all the time & having to make sure I'm constantly close to a bathroom.
Tomorrow is the Peter Steele tribute night at Duff's, & I can't go mostly because of my health stuff. Instead, I'll be chancing a trip to the movie theater for the extended edition of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. I haven't seen any of the LotR movies in a theater since they were first released 20+ years ago, & RotK is back out to celebrate it turning 20 years old this year. (Although it was sometime in December of 2003 when it actually came out) I'll be going with Doreen, Mary, & Jason, so hopefully a mental distraction like that will help me feel better.
I haven't done much of anything the last couple of months because of feeling crappy. I missed out on Subtronics down in Boston back in February because of it, when I was first sick with whatever cold or virus I had. I had to sell my Static-X ticket for the show that was supposed to be March 21st, which was the rescheduled date from last year. Super sad I missed them, but again, tummy/gut issues. I'm not going to New York, I haven't gotten much in the way of concert tickets... All I have for certain right now is The Sisters of Mercy at the end of May, which I am PRAYING I somehow feel better by then since my appointment isn't until May 18th just to even talk to a doctor. The other is Subtronics in June, plus there's the NHRA race in June.
My first time actually leaving the house to do something fun was when I went to see John Wick 4 with Kyle & his girlfriend Emily, back on March 26th. It was a good movie, too! April 1st, some of my work's D&D group as well as a couple of other people went to go see the Dungeons & Dragons movie. That was also fun. Olive Garden after the movie was a big gamble, especially because I badly wanted something flavorful after weeks of a shitty bland diet, so I ate some breadsticks with alfredo sauce. Eric wanted to go see John Wick, so last week we went & saw that. I even returned to Music Bingo at the Hen House last week, although I had to be careful with what I ordered for food & couldn't have any drinks. We saw the movie after that. Then this past Saturday, the 8th, Alan wanted to go see the D&D movie so I ended up seeing it again. We followed up with a meal at the Longhorn, since they had a salmon dish I thought would be tummy-safe, & then played Pokemon Go for a while after that. That's about all I've done for fun stuff so far.
Unless you count my distractions. Since getting sick, I've finally started to watch a couple new things. I finally checked out The Last Of Us on HBO Max after seeing several TikToks about it, & I loved the show. So much so, it made me curious about the video game. I had to wait until the PC port dropped back on March 28th, but I snagged it for my PC. I lucked out & managed to avoid most of the bugs that people encountered, with the only issues so far coming up when I was in a tunnel with spores. Suddenly everything went purple-pixely, like glitter/sparkles, so I didn't totally avoid the bugs. But yeah, that show was good. I started to watch it back in February, when I was first sick. Another show I watched was The Legend of Vox Machina. Nick & Natasha showed me one episode one night when we didn't have D&D, & it took me until last month to finally get around to watching more of it. I loved it, & binged it like crazy until I hit the end of season 2. Now I desperately want more. I've given Stranger Things some space, but mostly because it reminds me of last summer so much & all I can do is think about how I used to be normal health-wise.
Fanfiction has helped too, when I've had the energy to sit up. Once I'm done updating this, I'm going to go read the last chapter of one I've been LOVING called Dream On (Oh, It Went By Like Dusk To Dawn) by KissJupiter. It's another Steddie/vamp Eddie fic, since I can't get enough of vamp/Kas!Eddie to begin with, & it's been a real fun read. The first chapter was posted February 13th, & the last chapter (chapter 27) was posted at 4:37 this morning, so it's literally been there with me throughout all of this stuff going on. I'll be real sad to finish this fic because I always was eager for updates, so I'll have to go back & re-read some of my old favorites like You're Divine or the Mixtape series, as well as maybe try to find something new to read. There's also been weird little fic-like videos on TikTok that I've been watching. Well, two anyway. One of those gets updated each night, so that's good for a very quick little read. The other one, not as frequently, but still a good read when it does update. I started reading those right before I got sick, so that's been a big help through things too.
Other than all that, not much else has been going on. Not much to update when you've been cooped up at home with gut issues. One doctor I spoke with thought it could be a post-viral gastroenteritis, which apparently could take several weeks to clear up. It would be nice if this somehow did, because I hate feeling like crap. Even on the better days where I feel mostly decent & have little to nearly no gut pain/discomfort, there's still the bathroom issue that reminds me something is amiss.
Time to go. I want to get to that fanfiction.