I skipped a month. For the last eight years, I have posted on this blog at least once a month. I did so because I enjoyed it. I loved crafting my thoughts and feelings into words and phrases. I still do. But for the last several months, perhaps even longer, I have been struggling to …
June 13th, 2009 began as an ordinary day. There was perhaps a little extra excitement as I drove to a Giants game, expecting an evening of baseball and beer. Then everything changed. That day, my world was turned upside down. My life—everything that I had created for myself, all of my future aspirations—began to fall …
This year has been one long push. It began with selling our house in Tuolumne and finding a new one in Vallejo. My health hadn’t been so good in 2021, but by February of 2022, I found myself taking my first long road trip in a decade, even using some of my limited strength to …
I love the holidays for many reasons. They give me an excuse to eat as much of just about anything as I want. The holidays also involve simultaneous gift giving and gift receiving, which is always a good thing. They even give me a feeling of timelessness, as if the magical season will last forever. …
It’s that time of year again—time for carving pumpkins, picking Halloween costumes, and eating lots and lots of candy. But it’s also time for something else, something unique to the chronic illness and disability communities, something far more sinister and frightening than your neighborhood haunted house. I’m talking about the October Slide, a spooky phenomenon …
It’s eight in the morning and I haven’t slept yet. In one corner of my room, I can hear the low rattle of my desktop mini fridge. In another corner, I can see the piercing green light from my air purifier. These, among other things, do not help me sleep. After more than a full …
The last few months have been rough. If you follow me on social media, then you know that I have been going through a brutal intake interview for In-Home Supportive Services, which provides me with caregiving hours. You may also know that the intake interview did not go well. I’m in the process of appealing …
In the more than a decade that I’ve been sick, I’ve experienced just about every level of my illness. At various times, I’ve been near death. At other times, I’ve been well enough to function almost like a healthy person. I’ve also been stuck in the middle, as I am now, wondering what will happen …
There was a brief moment, as I lay in the back of my mom’s van, when it seemed like moving to a new house was going to be easy. Or if not easy, then it seemed like the move might at least be manageable. But soon after, things became increasingly unmanageable. The process of moving …
It all starts with a Lyme bullseye rash. Well, not always. In my case, and many others, Lyme disease began more mysteriously. For me, there was no Lyme bullseye rash or even a detectable tick bite. (The last tick bite I had was ten years before I was diagnosed.) It was almost as if my …