The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

13 Dec The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

I’m barely keeping my head above the water with health issues that just won’t stop. Before I get to that ugly, let’s start with some good!

A project that I worked on for much of 2022 and 2023 is finally live! StopConversionPractices.ca is the most important thing I’ve ever worked on after the federal conversion “therapy” ban. As a survivor in a health care setting, I helped to create many of the resources on the website. One of the things that drives me in life is to make sure no one else ever goes through what I went through.

I got my first royalty payment for Crip Up the Kitchen. Thank you to everyone who purchased and told others about it. It makes a great holiday gift, hint hint nudge nudge wink wink!

Ziggy recovered well from surgery. Archer has his surgery in January. I will get around to giving people a way to help with those costs, if they want. It’s just that I’ve barely had a chance to breathe. You can also buy my book for yourself and as a gift for someone you love!

I was asked to be a regular guest on a cooking show geared towards helping autistic children, and other disabled children, learn their way around the kitchen and a recipe. I will share more about that at a future date. We are still figuring out those details.

I had an amazing first visit with my new endo and we are trying some new things to fix some pituitary hormone issues.

Now the Bad and Ugly.

I’m hesitant to say the following because it is the kind of thing that fuels antivaxxers and conspiracy theorist, but it is also a thing that has been quite common amongst people who have severe forms of certain autoimmune disorders, like me.

After the bivalent Pfizer mRNA COVID-19 booster, I had a severe autoimmune reaction and developed erythrodermic psoriasis. I invite you to click the link because I’m not going to explain what it is beyond it is extremely bad and potentially life-threatening. It is stressful knowledge to have, so I’m going to let you have control over whether or not you want that knowledge.

And now that I have this very extremely bad type of psoriasis, my life is dramatically changed forever. I now have to worry about life-threatening flares for any illness or undue stress, instead of only the rare complications I experience for things like the common cold. The result is some substantial life changes. I have to go from being extra vigilant in avoiding all triggers, to extremely vigilant.

I feel defeated. I am A++ when it comes to compliance. My diet — as in what I eat in a day, not dieting — is great. I exercise a lot a lot a lot. I’m compliant on my meds. I do the vaccines to protect myself from COVID. The irony. It was doing the thing to protect my life that put my life at risk. Like WTF! Utterly defeated. I’m just glad the pharmacist recommended against me getting the flu vaccine because I’d probably in hospital right now if I did.

Which leads to, my GP now recommends that I skip the next COVID vaccine, at minimum, until there is more research into these reactions. What exists right now is just a bunch of, “we are observing these reactions, but we have no idea what mechanism is causing them, so more research is needed.” And maybe they will develop new vaccines that mitigate these risks, or I’ll forever be SOL because any “boost” to my immune system is life-threatening.

And that means we have to go from being extra vigilant in all of our infection disease mitigation to extremely vigilant and it’s been over four years since I’ve been able to hug my kids, and I just want to hug them FFS!!

Anyway, I’m currently on four different medications to treat this flare and we are hopeful that I will avoid hospitalization, thanks in no small part to catching it early and having a dermatologist who saw me immediately upon a drastic change in presentation. We have a plan of action for the next few weeks and months.

So, I’ll be focusing on my wellbeing and starting a new project in January and hopefully work updates to this blog into my low-stress schedule. I also have to figure out how I will change my commercial photography business to accommodate my new reality. This all just sucks and at the same time, I’m hopeful.

And that’s my news.

The featured image is a stock image from Unsplash.