Health Update! Plus Extra Chapter(s) This Month!

Hello folks,

Another not-so-quick update for you.

I'd love to say my health has improved to start the new year, but it hasn't. In fact, it's been even worse. At the very beginning of January, I finally caught Covid for the first time. As a friend of mine put it, it figures that I managed to dodge it for four years, only for it to finally hit me when I'm already dealing with so many complicating health factors. I'd been to conventions and hosted room parties, went to a wedding, wandered through airports and shopping centers, drank at bars and ate at restaurants, and managed to avoid it all those years... Only to randomly pick it up around town at home.

Lucky me.

Because of my underlying health issues, I ended up in the ER twice while I had it, because it knocked my already low blood counts down even lower. And because I couldn't get into my usual doc/transfusion center for blood transfusions as needed, due to being covid positive. I was also advised that I should get a head CT, when I had a horrible headache, due to my low platelet count indicating it was possibly a brain bleed. ( It wasn't, thankfully. ) But because of my low counts, they did stick me in the hospital for a few days to get me stabilized.

It took me 3 whole weeks to get over Covid. My usual covid symptoms were pretty basic, lingering cough and fevers, sinus congestion... But the first few days I had the horrible headache, which also left me throwing up a lot. So that was fun...

Finally, three weeks later, I was testing negative again. Hooray! Which meant I could finally get back to see my regular doctor, to talk to him about the stuff my liver doctor had told me just prior to Christmas...

And he immediately put me right back in the hospital because my white cell counts had bottomed out during covid, and not yet recovered. So, I spent another week and a half in the hospital, getting bone marrow tested, getting white-cell boosted shots, getting blood and platelets now and then... until eventually, they had to let me go...

So that I could go to the other hospital's outpatient center, to get an infusion of medication they can't get easily at my main hospital. It's obscenely expensive, to the tune of being one of, if not the most, expensive medication in the world. There are only a couple places in the entire area that have a program for it.

So I remain free and at home, since then. My white counts have improved slightly in the meantime, but there are likely to be some difficult decisions ahead in the long term. I see the doctor again Thursday and may be doing so weekly for a while...hopefully avoiding further hospitalization for as long as possible!

If I do end up in there for a while, I may end up picking up a new laptop so I can work on writing, and also get things posted from the hospital. I dunno if their wifi blocks Patreon or not but I can always hotspot my way in from my phone, lol.

In better news!

Since I've been out, I've been trying to get as much writing done as possible. Which means you're getting at least one extra chapter this month! Possibly more.

I've already posted one new chapter of Impure, and I also have ready...a second Impure chapter, and a Sins of the Father chapter! Returning to a character we haven't seen in a while... I'll post one of them today, and the other soon after. And if I get another finished I'll get it posted before the end of the month, as well.

So enjoy them!

As always, thank you for your support!