Personal Health Update (Patreon)

Hi folks,

I wanted to take a few minutes, and give all my lovely Patreon supporters an update on a more personal level. If you've in the Discord server and you read it actively, you'll have already heard this. And, if you read my journals and Christmas stories, then much of this shouldn't surprise you. But I know not everyone who supports me on Patreon is in the Discord server, or reads every story and update I post.

So for those who don't already know, I've dealt with chronic health issues for the majority of my life. Without getting too into the weeds, it concerns the failure of my bone marrow, partial recovery, and subsequent development of a secondary bone marrow disorder. The gist of it is, I don't make enough blood cells, and my immune system attacks some of those I do make.

Now, that's been ongoing for a long time, and with the help of an incredible medical team and supportive family we've been managing it well enough for a while. I have to go in often for IV infusions of a specific medication that helps prevent my immune system from attacking my blood.

However, some of my blood counts have been slowly but steadily declining over the last 6 months or so. For a while this year, I was sort of in a gray area where it was getting low enough to be concerning, but not so low as to require immediate intervention.

Well, that finally changed last week. Okay, so it probably changed sometime in the last two months, but last week was my most recent lab work, lol. But things had gotten low enough now that I had to go in the following day to get a couple units of blood transfused. In fact my doctor first called me and recommended I go to the ER right away, only for me to tell her I was actually still in the Infusion area, having just gotten my usual medication infusion. So she came by to talk to me about it, and determined that I was okay to go home so long as I came back first thing in the morning to get blood.

While that's stabilized things for now, it is unlikely to "fix" the problem. It's far more likely I'll continue to need semi-frequent blood transfusions until we get it figured out. And, there's no way to know when that will happen, or even what the diagnosis will be. The doctors have some theories, but until things start getting ruled out, they're just theories.

Now, I don't want to worry anyone unnecessarily. I am not currently hospitalized. In fact two days after the transfusion I was wandering around the Renaissance Festival. But, that said, there are likely to be an unusually high number of medical visits in my future for tests, consultations, blood transfusions, etc. The possibility remains that one of my doctors may determine the easiest/best thing to do, is to stick me in a hospital bed for a bit while they figure some stuff out. Right now, I just don't know, and won't for a little while yet.

To address the elephant in the room, yes, this may impact my writing schedule quite a bit. In turn, that may impact my ability to get you your monthly chapters. Again, I just don't know yet, but I wanted to give everyone a heads up.

It's already messed with my schedule for this month. I have one chapter that's...well, it's not quite where I'd planned to end it, but I think I'm going to call it good. That way I have at least one chapter to give you this month. In fact I may just post it after this update, so it's done with. The second one is probably going to be late, but if so, I'll try to get it out early in May. And, I'll try to get May's two chapters up in time as well. I just can't swear that I'll be able to hit the deadline all the time, right now.

I will do my best, however!

So that's that. Just wanted to give everyone an update in case my writing schedule ends up getting really screwed up, and things start getting really late. In which case, I'd certainly understand anyone who cancels or downgrades, should that occur.

I will also try to keep you folks updated on my progress and so on, as well.

If you're not already part of the Discord, that's probably the best place to get up to the minute updates. I talk on there all the time, and so everyone in there gets updates first. If you're not already there, feel free to join us!

Anyway, that's it for now. Thank you again for all your support!