Health: In a nutshell, I'm not doing well. (On most days...) The first half of each day is painful but manageable, but as the early evening hours start to approach, things start to get so bad that I'm getting worried that the waters may have topped the levee...

(What I mean by that is that it appears that each day is just slightly worse than the last, without any days of improvement thrown in. And I'm in the longest stretch of that happening since all this started in January.)

...These later hours of the evenings have consistently been very trying. Most evenings I haven't been able to stand for longer than a few mins. Random, sudden stabbings in any given part of my body have been very consistent. I fall in the shower when it suddenly feels like a hammer out of nowhere smashes the top of my foot. Or the sensation of a rod being pushed through my calf muscle or eyebrow while in REM sleep during the night. There's been so many scary moments like that lately. Also the ringing in my ears is still on full blast without any let up. The shingles I had on my head healed months ago yet since then, the pains still lightly lingered, until last night... Last night the shingles pains in my head came back and suddenly hit without warning at an 8 level pain for a solid hour! Then at a 7 level for the next 2 hours. My doctor says this is normal (which is so frustrating) and has still, also settled on the label fibromyalgia and is only concerned with treating symptoms. Unfortunately, that isn't even working. When the pains came back full force months ago I was already on the max daily dose of pregabalin. That led me to believe that whatever I've got attacking me is completely immune to any meds we've tried. With that in mind, I told him I was going to wean myself off of those chemicals that seem to be doing nothing for me. I did that, but then it got worse, ugh! So now I've worked my way up to the max dose again mainly because I have art shows coming up that I absolutely have to be at. And if the meds are helping even a little then I need to be on it. I can't keep cancelling shows or we'll be broke real soon. I recently was finally able to get the extensive iGenex Lyme disease test done, but it showed I was negative. I've been doing what a lot of you all out there have suggested. I'm being smart and careful with what goes in my body. I'm doing Qigong each day and getting back into Zen Buddhism. I'm staying positive and trying to convince myself that things will improve again one day. I'm going to do as little as possible until I need to leave on Friday for the Peter Anderson art fest in Ocean Springs, MS. 

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I'm also a little concerned about a stomach issue that seems to have returned. I was an "avid beer drinker" for many years. I loved IPA's the most until they started giving me stomach pains the in the days after drinking. This got really bad and I was able to quit cold turkey on March 11, 2024. But for some reason those very unique and distinct stomach pains seem to have started coming back in the past few days. Maybe it's nothing, but it's not fun either and I'll have to stay extra careful with what I put in there. But even that brings me back to how with ALL of this that's going on the common theme is that my body seems to be over reacting to any, and almost everything that happens to it. I can draw some thankfully, but then random muscles  involved eventually and suddenly get attacked in strange ways. Fighting through, but also listening to my body.