A month full of suckage

And just who am I kidding? it’s been far more than a month … August, and so far most of September, have just been what seems to be the largest concentration of it … I’ve been so lost in a world of suck that I haven’t even written here in the past six weeks

Starting with having to put Orion down a mere three days before my birthday (which, subsequently I didn’t even want to have), August went straight downhill. I had planned to finally go see Phantom of the Opera in Vancouver, since I’ve been waiting literally every bit of fifteen years to see it … of course, without the move to Parksville, that got squashed with all the typical reckless abandon an elephant on speed.

It gets better though. On the night of the 19th, I was suffering fairly harshly with what seemed to be a chest infection. I’d been coughing for several days, and was extremely congested. The morning of the 20th, I woke up to find a spot about the size of a quarter on the left side of my mouth was tingling … thinking I was having a stroke, I had dad take me into the hospital … enter the game of Fortunately/Unfortunately …

FortunatelY: The doctor in the emergency room checked me out and said that I definitely hadn’t had a mild stroke, but that my blood pressure was a little bit high, and that she wanted me to go have a follow up the next day, as the stress of the morning and the cold were likely factors.

Unfortunately: The next 48 hours following the incident resulted in worsening symptoms, including nearly complete, but temporary, paralysis of my left cheek, hypersensitivity to sound in my ear, decreased tearing, and passing phases of severe vertigo which often left me feeling as though I were going to vomit (sorry Shivers, I know fully understand the hell you went through with vertigo, and God willing, neither of us will ever have to go through that again) … Having read much about Bell’s Palsy from following professional wrestling and the affliction of WWF commentator Jim Ross, I suspected that all the symptoms on the list pointed to it, and my doctor confirmed this suspicion. Apparently, it is extremely common (as common as 1 in 4000, according to some reports), and is caused by any number of stressors which cause inflamation of the VII Cranial Nerve … thank God it is often temporary, and most have a full recovery within 2 weeks to 3 months … mine seems to have gone away now, but not without causing a huge amount of anxiety, especially where my flute playing is concerned. Of course, the one area that my doctor was most concerned with was that one of the most common causes of Bell’s Palsy is diabetes, which runs heavily in my father’s side of the family … this has meant several tests over the past few days (inculding today), which I have yet to receive the results of …

Anyway, that pretty much summed up August, and I figured September had to be better, but so far it hasn’t really shown all that much promise, as my Computer recently blew its hard drive, taking with it all of my essays from college, my writing from the Other Press, many years of saved chat transcripts and graphics … even my resume. With the help of my parents and a few hundred dollars more debt that I really couldn’t afford, I will have a new computer by the end of the week, and thanks to my old boss, I will be able to obtain a hard copy of my resume which he had kept on file, but all of the data I lost is a monumental blow … I even lost nearly 4000 MP3 files, which I had painstakingly taken the time to encode from my CD collection …

I wish someone could show me what exactly I did to piss off Madame Universe … her wrath is really starting to wear on me