Update March 01, 2025

I've been feeling so 'blah' lately.  

Migraine
It's been a good month in migraines for me. When I last posted an 'update' I was starting a migraine that ended up lasting seven days.  The last three days of it were severe enough that I couldn't have worked.  After that was eight days without a migraine and then a 4 day migraine in which one would have been severe enough to not work.  Then it hit. SIXTEEN DAYS WITHOUT A MIGRAINE!!!!!

I think this shows me just how impressive the Qulipta is.  January ended up having 16 migraine days with half of them being unable to work through.  February only had 9 migraine days with 3 being unable to work through.  

I had a follow up with my normal neurologist and February 11th.  He seemed happy with the improvements I've been having but in the end said I should continue to follow my new neurologists plan.  In other words, he didn't prescribe the next step.  I called my new neurologists office and got a follow up appointment set for the end of March.  

I'm incredibly hopeful that I might be on the back stretch of this migraine nightmare that's been ongoing for three years now.  If I continue to have months like February, I could return to work.  My life would begin to look 'normal'.  And both neurologists have more possible treatments so I might even be able to have better future.  

Mental Health
It's kind of hard to self evaluate how my mental health is going.  Since my last update I've been feeling more and more 'blah'.  Not depressed and certainly no thoughts or ideations of suicide, but not happy either.  I don't believe I need more mental health help and can instead focus on the physical side effects of my medication.  I'll cover those in Physical Health. 

One other thing I thought of about these 'blah' feelings is that it might be Seasonal Affective Disorder.  I mean, I'm almost always a little more down or blue at this time of the year.  It's just hard to compare feeling blue without medication and feeling 'blah' with medication.  

Physical Health
I've got three things going on physically right now.  Side effects of my mental health medications, big changes in my sleeping, and slippers.  

When I got 'used' to my mental health meds I had a new side effect.  Muscle tremors.  I couldn't hold my hand out flat without trembling.  That was the easiest way to demonstrate the tremors, but I actually feel them all over my body.  This started way back in December and when I mentioned it to my mental health NP, she prescribed Cogentin for it.  Before I could start the medication I had my first visit with my new neurologist and he suggested I hold off on the Cogentin while I taper off the Depakote as one of Depakote's side effects are muscle tremors.  Now, that's not the only reason he had me taper off of Depakote.  Coming off this anti-seizure medication leave room for me to start a different one that might have more effectiveness in preventing migraines.  But anyway, I held off the new med while I tapered off Depakote. 

Coming off of Depakote sadly didn't do anything for the tremors, so after another visit with my mental health NP, I started on the Cogentin.  It was a two step taper to get up to the 1mg daily dose.  When I was on that dose I noticed the tremors being less aggressive, but they were still there.  More egregiously though was the fact that I had two new side effects, both which are listed as possible side effects to Cogentin.  Dry mouth and difficulty urinating.  

The trouble urinating was incredibly frustrating as I just started Flowmax to fix that problem.  I had a few weeks of feeling like I could take a piss normally.  Now I have a LOT of trouble stating urination and once it is started, it's a very weak stream.  I don't even feel like I can empty my bladder.  The dry mouth is just as bad.  I'm a mouth breather when I sleep so when I wake up my mouth is normally a little dry but now my mouth literally feels like desert dry.  I can scape my tongue against my teeth and it feels like sandpaper and it takes a good few hours to get any better.  It's even changed the way I eat as my mouth is so dry that it's not wetting down the food as I chew it.  It's gross.  

I sent an electronic message to my mental health NP and she agreed that it sounded like the Cogentin and had me step back down to the 0.5mg dose.   That was about two weeks ago and I haven't noticed any improvement.  I see her next week so I'll just keep going and see what she wants to do in person.  

Oh, and the whole reason I started the Cogentin, the muscle tremors, is still going on.  I have no idea what she'll want to do, but I hope its to come off the Cogentin and try another medication for the muscle tremors.  

Sleeping.  My sleep has been all over the place for about a year now.  I'd sometimes sleep for 7 hours but my average was lower than that.  It didn't help that I was taking hours long naps during the day.  I wasn't too concerned about it as I didn't really have anything going on.  I figured I'd get back to normal sleeping habits once I was doing more during the day (like work).  But starting on February 20th, my sleeping habits changed dramatically.  

I'd say my lifetime sleep average is about six hours.  It's always hard for me to sleep longer than that.  But on the twentieth, I slept for twelve hours.  TWELVE!  The next day I did the same thing, twelve hours of sleep.  The next day was even worse as I slept for a full twenty hours!  

Every night since then, I've been sleeping excessively.  Eight hours (after only being awake for like 6 hours) then ten hours.  The next three days were eight or nine hours, but I was using an alarm to wake up.  I only slept for six hours this past night, but I woke up with a very sudden need to use the bathroom and that's the only reason I got out of bed.  I was still tired enough to go back to sleep but I forced myself to stay up.  

I'm going to mention it to my mental health NP and see what she thinks.  

And finally... slippers.  Last year I had a very bad case of planar fasciitis.  I'd had planar fasciitis before in one of my feet at a time.  But last year it was both feet at the same time.  It wasn't like debilitating type pain, but it was still difficult to deal with.  I did my research and realized that going around barefoot (or with just socks on) can aggravate planar fasciitis.  As I really never go outside, I haven't been wearing shoes for over a year now.  So, I got slippers.  

Doing my normal research I found that there were a lot of recommendations for a particular pair of Ugg slippers. I could see why as these slippers were made more like shoes, just with a fluffy warm interior.  I tried to order a pair at $100, but even though I got my shoe size, they were ridiculously small.  I couldn't even get my feet into them.  I gave that pair to my nephew as he fit into them.  I didn't want to have another $100 failure, so I found another pair that evidently was good for planar fasciitis and tried them out.  These ones were too big and actually fell off of my feet as I was wearing them.  Feeling upset at buying footwear that I couldn't try on, I went to a local store and found a $15 cheap pair of slippers that worked fine.  

Fast forward a year and a few nights ago I work up with really bad GERD.  I puked quite aggressively and much of that vomit ended up in my slippers.  After a years use, they were already quite ratty looking.  Not bad enough for me to want to replace them, but bad enough that I didn't want to put any effort into cleaning them.  In the trash they went.  

As I've gotten quite accustomed to wearing slippers around the house, I went back to the Uggs.  Instead of getting my normal size 10.5, I got a pair of 12s.  They fit well and I'm now wearing those.  It's strange how used to something you can get as walking around in my socks alone felt truly weird.  But, I've got the slippers now, they fit fine, they feel fine, and I'm back to my new norm.  

Finances
My long term disability (LTD) is at it again.  I find it appalling that they are sending me for ANOTHER independent medical exam. I got approved for LTD with information from my one neurologist at the time.  After 4 or 5 months, they didn't agree with him, so they sent me to an independent medical examiner.  Understand that with a diagnosis of migraines, there is no objective proof.  Any neurologist would look at what I report and say I'm either disabled or not.  No blood pressure, x-ray, blood work would prove it.  

That was last February, and while they initially cut off my LTD, they eventually came around and gave it to me including back pay.  In January I met with another neurologist who agreed with me.  Then lo and behold last month I was sent for ANOTHER independent medical exam.  With all four neurologists I simply state what I've been going through including symptoms like brain fog that prevents me from working.  So far as I know, the neurologist agreed with me, but I'm now waiting for them to get the paperwork and make a final decision.  

I guess the part that really pisses me off is that I want to pay off Layla.  I picked Layla out based on price as I had enough in my savings account (from the last time LTD cut me off) to pay for her.  That's about $22,000.  BUT, if I pay off Layla and end up having to fight my LTD for back pay, I will need more money to bridge that gap.  That would mean digging even further into my depleted 401k.  And of course when they inevitably agree and pay me back the back pay, I'll get all that money back but I won't be able to put it back INTO my 401k.  So, sadly the only thing I can do is not pay off Layla so that I have the money on hand.  That means paying the interest on that car loan.  

Fuck, I hate this.  

Family/Friends
The family is doing good.  It looks like everybody has recovered from the COVID outbreak that we had.  

I haven't spoken with A or E lately, but during our last back and forth we talked about visiting Austin (where E is moving) in March.  So... maybe a trip later this month?  

Entertainment
I feel like I'm having a great spurt of good music.  

The first big hit since my last update was the New York Times pointing me in the direction of Lady Gaga's latest single.  Abracadabra.  This is such a great Jam to crank it up to while driving:

A few days after getting that song I saw a TicToc of a woman working out.  The video wasn't particularly interesting, but she had the Wonder Woman theme playing in the background.  Not the new one from Zach Snyder movies, the one from the 70s TV show.  I've of course heard this before, but it struck me as really fun so I downloaded it and added it to my playlists:

And finally, yesterday I came across this fun TicToc of a couple dancing together.  They were obviously at a class and the tag for the video said the dance was entirely impromptu:

I wish I could find the video of the dance to share, but it doesn't look like it's on YouTube.  The song is Me Too by Meghan Trainor and I just really dig that groove.  

For television viewing, I've basically stuck to watching The Rookie.  I don't think I could ever call this a great television series as it's just to damned predictable, but they do everything right in it.  Great acting, fun stories, good cinematography.  Ironically, I'm now about 2 episodes from being caught up on it.  Since it's still on TV and in the middle of the season, I'm going to have to now watch all the new episodes as they come out each week.  

New Tech
I got the charging stand for my phone and watch and it's working out great.  Nothing else tech wise is cool or new.  

Writing
I haven't been writing.  I still hope to write and finish off this part of Gamer Gurl, but any time I'm set for it I just fall all over myself.  I'm wondering if I should try writing something else just to get Gamer Gurl out of my head.  

Michigan Football
I'm hearing more and more about how the Big Ten and the SEC are setting the terms for the playoff and it sounds like they are going to do different auto bids for each conference.  They'd up it to a 14 team playoff with both the B1G and the SEC getting 4 auto bids.  The ACC and the Big 12 would each get two auto bids.  The highest ranked Group of 5 conferences would get an auto bid and there would be one extra space for a wild card.  

I personally don't like this.  Who's to say that year in and  year out both the SEC and the B1G would be good enough to warrant 4 auto bids.  Don't get me wrong as it would be an awesome end of season with both the B1G and the SEC hosting their championship game (both teams would be automatically in the playoff) and then having their number 3 team face the number 6 and the number 4 facing the number 5.  

But then again, I'm a college football nut and I'd LOVE watching those teams all facing each other.  

Computer Issues
I think I'm near the end of the Apple Music problem.  I might get one or two songs that lag each day.  

The weird thing is that I got a major update to Windows 11 and the wallpaper problem came back.  BUT, it went away after only a few days.  I'm still scratching my head as to what's causing the problem and what's fixing it.