Selenay's Ramblings

I assume that at some stage I'll look at the calendar on January 26th and not be thinking about where I was at this time N years ago. This isn't that year.

It is now officially two years since was admitted to the ER for emergency blood transfusions due to (then) undiagnosed severe extensive ulcerative colitis. I'd lost half my blood volume and couldn't sit up or stand up for long without feeling faint and dizzy. I was having unexpected 'naps' regularly, getting winded walking anywhere and the nurses were frankly amazed that I was still conscious with my numbers where they were.

I've mostly got past the bit in the saga where the urgent care clinic docs insisted there was nothing wrong with me. It happened and it sucked but it won't happen again because Awesome GI Guy keeps a close eye on me.

What still blows me away is that somewhere out there are three people who donated blood and saved my life. The nurses assured me that had I not received blood when I did, I would have been unconscious by the following morning and dead a day or two after that.

Those three units of blood literally saved my life that night.

I've been able to thank the doctors and nurses who worked on me that night and the doctors who have treated me since. The researchers who developed the drugs (and are still developing new, better drugs) that have kept me going since then are people I'll never be able to thank but hopefully they know how important they are to the lives of patients like me.

But the most important part of January 26th 2011 was the three units of blood I received.

Due to my medical history I can't donate blood or bone marrow. I'm signed up as an organ and tissue donor, but there's a good chance that they won't be able to harvest much from me when I die. So I've got no practical way to give back to the donor system that helped me and will probably help me again in the future.

The best I can do is this: giving blood saves lives. I'm living proof of this. If you can give blood, please do it and know that those of us who are unfortunate enough to need it really do value your gift and we thank you from the bottoms of our still-beating hearts.

I lost the whole of yesterday to the nastiest migraine I've ever had. I'm not even kidding with that. It's time to discuss some kind of suppressant with my GP, I think, because the 36 hours of torment was just not worth anything. Usually I can at least take Migraleve and sleep off the worst of it: this one, not even touched by Migraleve and there was no possibility of sleeping.

Ugh. Today I'm dealing with the hangover from it but that's much nicer than the actual migraine. I may just spend some time editing the ridiculously daft fic that I wrote last week and then retreat to my Olympics coverage and a nice book (I've finished the newest Mercedes Lackey and I'm onto John Scalzi's latest).

I may also be spending some quality time with scifigrl42's botfic that has now been finished and is on AO3 for your downloading pleasure :-D

I expect that the ridiculously daft fic will go onto AO3 on Wednesday. I want to do an edit today then I usually leave it another day before posting so that I can do a final typo-catching read. Except tomorrow after work I'm spending quality time with my hairdresser and her Big Book of Colours, so Wednesday.

( Cut for medical stuff )

As a treat for enduring Thursday's medical visit and yesterday's migraine, I've bought myself Harry Potter on Kindle so that I can reread when I've finished the other books that I have queued. I really know how to indulge myself :-D

( Cut for health winges )

In other words, I am ouchy and uncomfortable. Please send tea and chocolate.

I have been doing the stats on my June reading and working out what my July priorities are. I think they can be summed up as: finishing reading the damn Hugo list.

( Cut for more book details )

August will, I think, be lots of books that I've been saving as my reward for finishing the Hugos (new Mercedes Lackey, new John Scalzi, new Mira Grant book, Wolf Hall) and probably a fair bit of fanfic. I'm going to try to be good for the next three and a bit weeks and curtail my fanfic reading so that I concentrate on Hugo reading.

Expect some flaily arrgh yay joy on July 31st :-D

Yesterday I finally got around 2,000 words of Thing 4 written that I did not actively hate and declared that Thing a wrap. Woo! Now I get to write Thing 5, which should be much easier and lots of fun :-D I'm thinking that this entire fic will weigh in somewhere close to 10,000 words when I'm done which is the longest fic I've written for two years. Go me!

No PR Manager Deserves The Avengers is being edited and polished and I'm intending to get it onto AO3 by the end of the week. I apologise in advance for the insanity levels displayed in it. This was my way relief from the process of rewriting Thing 4 at least three times (I lost count).

I've got a kind of outline worked out for my marvel_bang fic and I want to start that next week. It's got alternate reality dimension jumping, two Coulsons, vampire!Clint, weird super soldier serums and plenty of hijinks. It's either going to be tremendously fun or the fic writing equivalent of a living nightmare.

Let's hope for option two, shall we? And remember that I can always take a short crack fic break if I need to :-D

So, tomorrow I finally have my appointment with the rheumatologist. There three potential outcomes from this, listed in the order I feel represent the probability they will happen:

1) The guy will say nothing is wrong, I'm hypermobile and should expect increasing pain, stiffness and inflammation in my joints due to that.
2) The guy will confirm Awesome GI Guy's suspicion that I have ankylosing spondylitis.
3) The guy will confirm that I have some other form of inflammatory arthritis.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up about a useful diagnosis and treatment plan. Annoyingly, my back has been behaving relatively well for the last couple of days (so it's not been stupidly awful, just s bit achy and stiff) and it's my hip that's been the bigger problem. Ah, well, all I can do is hope something useful comes out of this.

I know one definite outcome: total exhaustion. Ugh.

Well, my meeting with the GI Guy went a bit better than expected. I'm not in remission, but it's not bad yet and he's happy to give non-steroid meds (a 5ASA one) a good go. Woo! So, more meds but not the nasty steroids. I'm going back in four weeks to review, sooner if I deteriorate, and we'll probably conclude that Humira will need long-term help. He isn't giving up on it yet, though, and is happy to call Humira plus a 5ASA med keeping me in remission a victory so we'll see how that goes. Phew!

I'm finding Perdito Street Station very good and compelling, but also somewhat endless. It does finish at some stage, right?

I have to say, after a month or so of being rather naff and dull Holby City has rather picked up again. Between Frieda being awesome, Dan being an idiot (in a more interesting way than he was with Malick), Jac being totally awesome and my continuing fear that cardio-thoracics may really go away, it's all got lots of stories that I'm invested in. Now I just need to find time for this week's episode and Spooks among all the rugby I'm watching.

Oh, yes, and Glee and Gray's Anatomy and CSI:NY. Telly box, you are so lovely.

At some stage, I also need to watch Xena, Sliders, and all the other new stuff on Netflix. And finish old Spooks, The Tudors, Leverage and all the other stuff I've been meaning to watch.

Damn, telly box, you are lovely but you have too many options. And there are all those books that I need to read, too! The new Mercedes Lackey Valdemar book is on its way to me (and Mum will be confiscating it until my vacation, per my instructions) and there is a 500 Kingdoms book due out next month and...

Jeez, how do people find time to be bored?

Oh, Humira, you fickle thing. Some weeks the injection barely stings, other weeks I have to question the maternal status of local canines out loud.

Guess which was this week's experience?

I have so totally earned the chocolate peanut butter ice-cream that I'm treating myself to tonight.

In other news...

I have set up a savings plan to pay for flights, accommodation and spending at Worldcon 2014. With a small weekly put-away, I estimate that I'll have enough for a very pleasant time indeed. Look at me, being all responsible and stuff.

I am quite disappointed that tardis_bigbang does not seem to be happening this year. It would have made me actually write my Orient Express in Space story rather than piddling around with files of notes and not actually writing anything.

Still, the Doctor is back on Saturday so maybe I'll finally start putting pen to paper. Either on that one or the adventures of the cross-dressing inter-species lesbian lovers. Something has to work otherwise my entire writing output this year will be yuletide and that's just really, really bad. Someone suggest a way to make myself write?

I don't really think that I can contribute any useful thoughts on the riots back home. My sister is fine and keeping us updated on her situation: she lives in Hackney so last night was rather nerve-wracking for us. Otherwise I vacillate between fear for the people getting their lives disrupted and destroyed and anger at the mindless violence behind it all.

In the middle of that, the Twitter-organised #riotcleanup (love the #riotwombles tag as well) reminded me that there are good people out there and restored some of my faith and hope. I don't care that the majority of people out there with brooms and tea are middle-class folks who can afford to take a couple of days off work to do it. In fact, that's maybe part of the point. A lot of the locals can't take the time off to do it, so shouldn't those who can do it be out there helping out?

In other news...

( Cut for migraine discussion )

During my post-migraine recovery yesterday I may have (re)watched the first two episodes of Spooks on Netflix. And now I may need to mainline all the other episodes ever. Oops.

Also, I may have watched the first two episodes of The Tudors. It turns out that if I pretend it's a fantasy with no actual intention of bearing any relation to the real history, it's quite compelling.

And my Fringe S1 watch is going nicely and I'm very sad that I gave up on it as early as I did. I'll never ignore f-list recommendations again.

Finally, is there any discussion yet on which new things may be worth investigating when the fall season starts? I'm breaking up with House and The Event has been cancelled so my Mondays look very empty. I'm keeping NCIS, Glee, CSI:NY, Bones (well, it's on probation for now) and Gray's Anatomy, which on reflection looks like a lot but hey ho. Still, I need to at least give one of the new things a go this year even though my ability to predict what's going to be good has so far resulted in Flashforward and The Event being my picks and, yeah, my prediction abilities suck so much.

For the interested, I'm doing Castle, Private Practise (OMG the crack) and Fringe slowly via DVD. And considering doing the same with NCIS:LA and Hawaii 5-0. These are followed as funds and library holds permit.

Oh, god, I really am a telly addict, aren't I?

( Cut for medical stuff )

< / moaning >

You know what I'd really like? A long vacation. I'm getting very tired out from all the medical stuff and I really just want to curl up somewhere and read for a very long time right now. Except it's not a good time to take my vacation and I can't really justify even a couple of days of sick time because I'm not actually sick-sick, just worn out and fed up. Eh, I'll get over it.

This week has been filled with meetings, stress and a lot of hurry up and wait stuff. Thankfully I've had some great Tour de France racing to watch in the evenings and today the race hits the Pyrenees, which is going to be amazing.
I'm most of the way through the back of my new shirt, so hopefully tonight I'll get that finished and can start the front, which has a nice little lace motif in places.

Also, I have ticked to Harry Potter. Saturday evening. It's going to be excellent!

Had a lovely quiet weekend and even had an unplanned nap on Saturday afternoon. Drat Kate and her kitty-sleepy-vibes!

So far, I'm getting very tired and starting to get some low-level cramps, but that's about the extent of things (other than the blood-loss). My aim is to get through this without time off. We'll have to see how viable that plan is, though, and I concede that I can't push myself too far. I see Awesome GI Guy on Wednesday and I'll talk to him about what dosage of prednisone I should do, and for how long, if I feel that things are getting too awful.

I'm frustrated with my body now. Why can't it just behave and cooperate with the meds?

That aside...

I'm reading a very long Harry fic on my Kindle. Very long. Nicely plotty. I want to re-read all the Harry books now and I'm getting a wee bit excited about the movie next month. And to add to that fun, there is now the prospect that I'll finally be able to have Harry on my Kindle in the next few months. Never again will I have to figure out how in hell to hold up Order of the Phoenix because that thing is just too big for comfortable reading!

Not that I'll be getting rid of my paper copies. Nu-uh. I just want to have the added convenience of ebooks for travel and bedtime reading, while still having the lovely book-ish-ness of my paper copies to curl up with at times. It's possible that I'm obsessed....

On Saturday, I finally got round to watching last week's Holby.

( Cut for length and excessive Olly appearances )

I less-than-3 the Archive of Our Own so much. Specifically the ability to download in .mobi format and put things on my Kindle. It is so much love. Last night, after checking that my bank account hadn't been emptied and doing a bit of house-keeping on some stuff, I decided that what I really needed was some lovely long plotty fanfic.

I now have the first few stories in a long, plotty Harry Potter thing. And a long, fluffy X-Men:First Class thing (what? sometimes I like fluff too!). Plus the next part in a lovely long, plotty Glee femslash fic that I love like pie. They're all on my Kindle and it is fabulous.

By the way, why are there so few long, plotty femslash things? Even fandoms with big femslash pairings tend towards shorter stuff. How does femslash always end up short and often less-than-plotty, while slash, het and gen all have tons of gorgeously long, plotty fics?

Somewhere in my brain I have fics. They will not transfer to paper. I have the Orient Express in space story (Eleven, Amy, Rory, slightly psychic little girls and murderous Egyptian goddesses) and Five Time Jenny Rescued Madame Vastra (cross-dressing interspecies lesbian romances FTW!) rattling around in there but I cannot seem to put all the bits and bobs together into coherent stories. Why is my brain so stupid?

Perhaps being dead tired from back pain is a partial cause. If I could just get some sleep...

( Cut for health and exercise stuff )

New!Boss came to our office for his regular bi-weekly status meeting with us. He works in the next province and has to go past a great market on his way over. Last time, he brought exceedingly yummy donuts. The good kind, that are a plain ring covered in sugar. This time he did not bring donuts. There was much woe. We may complain in our meeting this afternoon about the lack of donuts.

Thankfully, my disappointment in the lack of donuts appears to be a good sign that my appetite is coming back. Yesterday was, er, a day when I probably wouldn't have broken 1,000 calories if I hadn't needed to make supper for Mum. She's going to be a good influence on those days, I can tell.