Just a quick health update since many of you are so kind enough to ask.
I saw another hematologist today and it seems my chronically abnormal blood count may be related to my Graves’ disease (which is in remission) and not to the CFS at all. I’ll be getting a JAK2 test soonish, which should tell me whether I have some kind of myeloproliferative disorder that my bone marrow biopsy didn’t rule out. The part about this I find fascinating is that just five years ago, when I had that biopsy, this test wasn’t even available. It’s a good reminder to those of us with chronic illness that medical science is advancing all the time, in all kinds of ways.
Meanwhile, though my Graves’ is in remission, I also have Graves’ ophthalmopathy, which means eye disease and is really fun to say. If you can imagine Barbara Bush or Marty Feldman with their eyes bulging inside their skull instead of visibly, that’s me, although thankfully not nearly as severe. (Damn my eyes!) Mostly I get headaches. This week, though, it decided to flare up pretty badly. For two days I couldn’t move my eyes without any pain, and on the third day I woke up with my right eye all better and my left eye hosed. I still can’t move it without pain, and my vision in that eye is darker and blurrier than the right. I’ve also got this new best friend, a giant floater that sits smack in the middle of my vision and makes reading or writing difficult and unpleasant.
So that kind of puts the kibosh on all that writing I was planning to do, for now. I did get my submission to TAM out before this happened, at least, but I don’t know how productive I’m going to be until this gets better. Also my ophthalmologist who specializes in Graves’ has apparently moved out of state, just like my shrink who specialized in young women who become disabled by chronic illness. Seriously, was it something I said?
Since we’re talking about blood and stuff, I’m sending you off with a video that might gross you out if you don’t like watching beautiful happy raptors eat breakfast. Enjoy!
I’m not taking a break from writing — far from it. I’m taking a short break from the blog so that I can focus my energy on a couple of posts that I plan to submit to some great new ventures, as well as an application to present a paper at The Amazing Meeting (TAM), the “skeptical convention” held in the summer. And on top of all that, there is the excellent game that I have been working on, Paradox! the Musical, for which I am long overdue on a really fun project.
