Sidelined By Surgery
July will be painfully slow for me work wise.
Exec Summary: not gonna die, but will be laid up four to six weeks, so I gotta shake my tin cup at the end of this.
Update: 2025-06-20 Looks like I’m going in July 2nd. I received half of the $300 needed on Amazon right away, and only a little bit of the travel expenses via some new subscribers thus far. I’m OK as far as getting there, back home, and the first week or so of being laid up. Could really use some additional assistance and if it doesn’t come in until after the 1st that would be just fine.
I have what has long felt like more than my share of health troubles. Lyme disease stole what was left of my youth in 2007. The post-treatment grief I’ve had has evolved to type 2 narcolepsy, albeit with a different origin than most who have this problem. An insurance exam picked up polycystic kidney disease around the turn of the century and that required surgery nine years ago.
I got my brain back in the fall of 2023, thanks to Noopept, the cognitive fog is gone. I get to be as awake as other adults and able to focus on stuff when I am awake, it’s just that I am utterly non-Circadian, and that makes having a traditional job impossible. The kidney surgery was another magical restoration, but PKD is progressive. This will kill me eventually, but not any time soon - my kidney numbers just finally crept a tiny bit out of normal bounds last fall.
Yesterday I saw a surgeon, who’s going to open me up for more work on my plumbing. Once this is done I will have some additional latitude with my blood pressure. I’ve got an appointment with a sleep specialist and I’ll be able to try some of the narcolepsy remedies, perhaps Xywav.
This is what narcolepsy looks like for a month from the perspective of my Garmin fitness monitor. The sleep duration is based on the Garmin expecting a normal adult; I can tumble straight into REM sleep the instant I close my eyes, wake up in sleep paralysis where I’m alert and coherent but incapable of movement, and there are a number of other weird zombie mode things that can happen. Seven hours is closer to reality, but it’s seldom actually restful.
And this is a whole year of it.
Due to stalkers I won’t be posting any current medical stuff, but here’s the details from the first surgery, back when I lived in Santa Barbara. This is just the cyst draining, I can’t seem to find the details on the laparoscopy that followed, but I’ve got the cutest half moon of half a dozen poke holes from pubic bone to breast bone on my right side.
What needs attention this time are some aneurysms - this is a common complication with polycystic kidneys, and if you know how to interpret those hemoglobin and hematocrit levels, there’s obviously something not right here. I adjusted some things after this blood work and stuff was much better for a while - I thought I was getting ahead of the problem, but the diagnostics earlier this month showed that to not be the case.
So that’s that, it’s serious enough that they scheduled me right away, for July 2nd. Apparently if I take a tumble and land wrong I might have serious trouble. So OF COURSE on the way home from the doctor’s office I found some loose gravel while cornering. Luckily I have padded gloves and a helmet …
I have something lined up to cover rent for July. I have a recurring client that will produce a $250 DoorDash gift card in the first couple days of the month. I am otherwise at loose ends for July. I am going to keep after Shall We Play A Game? and the related AI/ArangoDB/Maltego development. I have a couple other things I’m herding along, but they’re just good ideas, not billable hours yet.
I filled up my Amazon shopping cart with digestion related OTC stuff, I will not be as mobile as normal, and that means I can not get into some situation where a ten mile hike is the cure for what ails me. The total is $305.48 and that’s the pretax number. Increments are fine here - there are several $10 items, a couple $20 items, and one $80 fancy probiotic. This also feeds Fluff Warrior for the month - she has little patience when the wet food supply runs low.
Other than the Amazon stuff I will probably use much more ride share than I normally do, and that’s also something that can be handled via Amazon. I would guess … $100 here, and a similar amount for BART, because travel for follow ups, etc.
So there you have it. I can use Amazon gift cards in any denomination. The founder’s signup for this Substack is $255 for the year, but it’s set to allow smaller amounts. Even those $5/month subscriptions are great - covers the cost of a BART trip, it’s quite helpful to see those small amounts turn up at random intervals. The only other thing I can use is Monero, please contact me if you’ve got some coin to spare.
Thank you guys so much, I know I’ve gotten into several furballs the last few months, but this one is kinda exciting. Once this issue is fixed, I can try some things related to narcolepsy, and maybe … just maybe … get back to a proper adult sized paycheck for the first time since 2007(!)
