Status Update~
Hey y'all! Thanks for your patience in waiting for new pages. I know it sucks being stuck on a cliffhanger without new pages, and I know we're all excited to see what happens next. No one is more frustrated than I am! So why not more pages?
tl;dr: I have new tools to monitor my health and I have been using them to help me understand how to treat my body better, thanks to a fatigue flare.
Regardless of the lack of pages, I am very glad to be taking my health seriously! This is the whole reason we switched to an "as available" schedule!
Longer explanation, in bullet points because brain go weee:
For those that don't know, I have struggled for a very long time with fibromyalgia (24/7 random pain (and other things)) and chronic fatigue (constant flu-like exhaustion (and other things)).
All of the hard work I've done on my health so far has alleviated a lot of the fibromyalgia — I am now at a 2/10 every day instead of a 6/10 every day. That's awesome!
The chronic fatigue is what I struggle with the most now. Some improvement there, but not enough.
Recent studies connect chronic fatigue with a malfunctioning circulatory system: the blood doesn't hold onto enough oxygen, so the heart goes insane trying to get enough oxygen, which imitates excessive exercise and poisons the system.(Probably a bad paraphrase on my part, but that was what I took away lol do your own research kids)Edited to better summarize: A recent bit of research into chronic fatigue/long covid connects it with a malfunctioning circulatory/muscular system connection: the microcirculation that delivers oxygen to muscles breaks down due to autoimmune issues, so it can't get enough oxygen. The heart goes insane trying to get the oxygen to the muscles and poisons the system. (again, paraphrased on my part, do your own research)
So I picked up a smart watch to help monitor my heart rate and wouldn't you know it, my HR jumps 20 points just getting up to go to the bathroom. And that's not even something as daunting as a shower, which nearly doubles my heart rate.
What's worse, my sleep isn't restorative, so I barely recover night-to-night.
The way my husband described it, most "normal" people have a well of energy that is devoted to their "engine": the physical upkeep of their bodies and normal daily existing. Then there's a "reserve" tank for things on top of that: hobbies, physical labor, what-have-you. I do not have a reserve tank. And my engine tank sits at about 30%.
The watch has a "body battery" score that takes into account stress/activity/rest/hr/etc. I set myself a goal that any day over 50%, I can work on Tamberlane. So far, I have struggled just getting over 30-40% daily, despite resting as much as I can.
This is apparently common with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome folks using this watch so it's not just me!
So, long story short, I'm experimenting and trying to find ways of resting that actually recharges me reliably. Taking notes, trying new things, etc. Since mental/physical/social/emotional energy all draw from the engine tank for me (e.g. doing mental tasks physically exhausts me; had to take a few breaks writing this lol) it is hard to find things that isn't "sitting still in a dark room for an entire day" that restores me — though I am trying that tomorrow because I am fed up with low battery lol
Anyway all to say thanks for the patience. This work is setting me up for long-term health and keeping the comic going for a long time to come. I say all this not as an excuse or for sympathy but because I feel better when people know why it's taking a while, and there's only so much I can fit in a little status report on the site.
How long til next update? Dunno. I wanted to have it done for the 10 year anniversary (!!!!) on June 11th but that's definitely not happening at this point unless a miracle happens lol
Sidenote we have a booth at furality this year (June 4-7); there's a discount code if you want to order stuff from our shop o7 It's a virtual con but I probably won't be there for aforementioned reasons.