Just Trying to Unlock the Quest

-- see, no, it's not that I don't want to start that treatment,it's that I haven't unlocked the questline yet!

When I started, I was really glad that my character RNG'd an actual DIAGNOSIS, right? Like, I feel really, *really* bad for the folks playing characters without even a diagnosis! That whole starting area just sucks. I got to skip the I'm Not Crazy, I'm Sick quest. Thank fucking goodness.

So, anyway, I began the main quest-line in the zone, Find Care Providers. I got the Rheumatologist right away! I did slack off a bit at that point, and didn't do the Interventional Pain Management quest until a lot later. And I really really WANTED to do the Medical Cannabis quest, but it was faction-locked for me for a while. (My starting faction had Gold-Tier Health Insurance, but was locked to an employer who monitored my healthcare and didn't allow some things. I mean, it was a tradeoff, and I knew that from the start, and I don't regret my choice - EVERY faction has its ads and its disads, right - but it did faction-lock some stuff.)

After I completed Rheumatologist, it was time to grind faction with him and my PCP (primary care provider.) I got ultrasounds, MRIs, and CTs. I had labs taken. After all of those, I got the Immunosuppressor buff! It gave me a +1 to Stamina and a +1 to Range.

My Rheum had also given me the prompt for the next area, Podiatry. I struggled with the first quest, Find a Podiatrist. In my character creation, the RNG gave me Fat, which I really like but I understand it's not for everyone. What I hadn't realized, though, is that in the game it's a fucking debuff!! The first two Podiatrists I tried to faction were very hostile to my Fat. I eventually found a Podiatrist who was neutral to Fat. After I completed the fetch quests - X-Ray, MRI - she sent me on the Orthotics quest. That was actually pretty decent. I did the mainline quest, but I liked the buff I got from the reward, so I did the extra level. And??? The item and the buff are AMAZING. I got AFOs, which in addition to a massive range buff (and +1 STA) gave me a +2 to armor!! I spent some Development points and taught myself to knit socks, so now I have over a dozen pairs of knit socks that fit under the AFO and protect my skin from chafing. It's fantastic.

At this point my faction had shifted enough that I could finally to the Medical Cannabis quest!

***

dangitall, y'all, now I want this to actually be a video game.

JFC it was the 'TISM

One of the main skills I had in college was Being Sober when we were all drunk, stoned, or tripping if someone had to talk to An Authority Person for any reason. Ranging from, you know, buying cigarettes at the gas station to explaining to the security guards why we were up a five story fire escaping at 11:00 at night.

I now think that this is because I'm fucking AUTISTIC and was just masking all the time ANYWAY.

I think I'm skipping Yuletide this year

I'm a pretty cheerful person. I perpetually, some might say obnoxiously, see the upside or humor of any given circumstance or event. But the last few years have really been kind of a shitshow.

I'm not doing Yuletide this year. I think it's my first skip in over a decade? Maybe?

Because, and here's the thing. The thing is, there are always different ways to narrate any sequence of events. You could say, oh my god, my day has been nothing but awful, I ran late because my kid hid my work bag, and then I got into a car accident on the way here! Or you could say, I feel so lucky, my kid made a card for me and snuck it into my work bag, and one the way here a car ran a red light and hit me, but it just took of my bumper and no one was hurt! Both are true.

I am incredibly fortunate. I have a home I love, a spouse and kids who love me and who are present in my life, I had a great career and retired early, I have friends and extended family, hobbies and interests, I live in community and I even like the weather here! All of those things are true.

I also wake up every day and assess how much I hurt. On low pain days I make a plan to get as much done as I need to as early as possible, and take pain meds as soon as I can. On high pain days I delegate or skip as many tasks as I can and just take the meds. All of the meds I currently have access to make me loopy, get me high, make me stoned - at least for a few hours. Which is lovely in that I don't care about the pain for a bit, but shitty in that I can't function. I can't drive, I should NOT make important decisions or have emotionally complex conversation. I can't mask my autism very well, I get confused by what people say and I can't mirror their emotional state. I have trouble forming complicated sentences and thinking of the right word. I can't track people's conversation for more than a couple sentences. I forget everything. I forget everything.

I had hopes for my retirement. I imagined travel, going to SF/F cons around the country. I imagined spending time with friends in other cities, people I've barely met but know way too much about. :grins: Instead I have chronic illness and disability, my immune system is three badgers in a minivan and there are a number of raging pandemics all of which are far far worse for the immunnosuppressed, my spouse has chronic illness and disability, our kids are tentative young adults who occasionally crash and ask for some help, and the national and global news is in year eight of the sort of nightmare I used to read about in the science fiction section of the library.

I am on so many drugs. I need so much infrastructure to travel. (Though I am so goddamn grateful I no longer have a tracheostomy!!) My spouse's illness means I often am needed at home. I am so helplessly angry about how she has been treated by the medical establishment that I daydream about that Denzel Washington movie where he holds a hospital hostage to get medical care for his son. I am depressed, even through the med I'm on. I am slowly trying to recover from autistic burnout, from masking without letup since I was fifteen years old, from knowing that everything about me was wrong and that I was a horrible person who did nothing but hurt the people I cared about unless I was eternally vigilant and never ever let them know who I really was. I am trying to learn what "feelings" are, trying to learn what I want in the absence of shaping myself to fit a hole in the life of someone I loved. On a good pain day my feet hurt, and my ankles, and it gets in my knees a bit. On a medium day it's the feet, ankles, calves, shins, knees, hips, and the bit of sciatica that the nerve ablation didn't quite catch. On a bad day it's in my shoulders, elbows, and hands, on top of everything else it's in my hands, hot sand grinding inside all the small joints of my fingers, a deep ache in everything until I move and then a sharp whufff of inhale as I unfocus my eyes and wait for the fucking knives to pull themselves out.

This isn't what I'd hoped. In so many ways.

And even now, depressed and stoned (but not so stoned that my feet stop hurting, no,) I think, but I can breathe and let me wish this for you, Gentle Reader, let me wish my wish for you that you never spend a night half-awake in the Emergency Department hallway wondering if the next time your twisted stump of epiglottis falls into your trachea and throttles you, will you be able to cough it out or will you need another tracheostomy in order to live, will you make it through the night until surgery in the morning or will the overnight surgeon have to save your life in the hallway -- may you, Kind Reader, never experience that. This is my wish for you.

But, I can breathe. I have a pension and savings and investments, I do not currently worry about money. I have a home I cherish. I have family and friends who care for me and I for them. I have good doctors and great insurance. I can breathe. I have a diagnosis. And I can breathe.

I am deeply fortunate, and deeply grateful. And I am depressed, burned out, and in ever-present pain.

There's always more than one way to narrate a series of events and circumstances. Always more than one opinion to hold, point of view to have.

At any rate, I think I'll be skipping Yuletide this year.