Metapost: Ana's Activity Report

Content Note: Ana's Personal Health Issues 

I posted last week that I was being moved to a new work area that had limited internet access and no telecommuting capabilities. A very great concern of mine was that I would have a physical breakdown with my back problems.

There is good news and there is less good news.

The less good news, to get the bad out of the way first, is that the parking lot is as long as I remembered, the stairs are as steep, the laptop bag is as heavy, and I've had a pretty rough week of it. I very strangely feel like I have bone spikes sticking out of my back in a sort of X-Men mutant way, but not in the cute "is able to pass as a human and/or adorkable" but more "scary and therefore automatically evil" way. Ah well.

The good news, however, is that Best Friend (who works in my new area, and this is all kinds of major pluses) has tirelessly worked to get my telecommuting privileges moved over and they shall henceforth start tomorrow and continue at least until the end of May. So that is very, very good. I'm in dialogue with the medical board at work and hope to maybe have access to medical parking and the access-restricted elevator sometime in the next few months. (My doctor has been lovely about filling out the paperwork; now I have to go justify myself to a medical board. Which may or may not be easy to do.) And in important non-physical news, I really love my new co-workers and the actual work I'll be doing.

The content note stuff however, is as follows:

On May 29th, I will be going in for surgery again in the hopes that this spinal fusion will "take" and the vertebrae won't fill up with useless-and-dangerous scar tissue this time. I do not know that this surgery will make me any "better"; right now, the scenario is that it's going to keep me from getting worse. I'll be apparently out of work for about 12 months, at which point my doctor believes I can return part-time.

How does this affect the blog?

To be honest, I'm not sure yet. I'm trying to stockpile posts in advance, as you can see in my HANDY BLOGGING SCHEDULE CHART.

Yeah, that's not looking so great right now. We'll see what we can do. I've got a few ideas in my head for keeping content fresh (tell me again you'll never tire of Twilight! LOL.) and there have been polls. (Fun polls!) I'm not too worried about content, to be honest, because I really think I can make it, but you'll probably continue to see me not be as active in the comments. That makes me sad, but it's a bit trickier to comment in real time versus having a really productive Saturday and slamming three Twilights out of the way.

In less concrete news, I may be a little moodier, tired, or incoherent than my already not-so-stellar record. Pretty much every Friday between now and May 29th has a surgical pre-op procedure scheduled including a REALLY FUN ONE next week wherein they trade out some of my spinal fluid for an imaging fluid and slap me into a not-an-MRI-because-Ana's-spinal-rod-is-ferromagnetic scanner. I've had one of these before and I've got to say it was one of the few times in my life where I went from chatting nicely with a nurse to howling in bestial rage-fury-pain at her in less than ten seconds. I apologized after, quite embarrassed, and she cheerily told me "oh, that happens to everyone". Fun!

I tell you this not to ruin your lunch, mind, just so that you will all hopefully forgive me if I misunderstand a comment online in the future. Preemptive apologies all round!

And now I've ran out of things to say, though I was quite sure there was more, so I'll just hit "post" on this baby. Thank you all. :)