State of the Skeleton May '24 - Sinus Infection Fun!

First thing's first, we missed the 9 year anniversary of this Patreon! May 1st 2015 this account was opened and SSFF was officially born! It's easy to forget about little milestones like this when work and real life keep you so busy. But thanks to everyone past and present that's supported this channel!!

Ok so, this post is mainly going to be about health issues I've been working through basically this whole year. I mentioned this on twitter but, 2023 was the year my family and my dogs all got sick, 2024 is evidently the year I get sick! We all struggle different but we all struggle.

TL;DR version - After being sick for months, I went to an Ears-Nose-Throat doctor last week and my sinuses are super messed up and will require surgery. I'm on giant horse-pill-sized antibiotic for 2 weeks, at which point I'm getting a CT scan to see just how bad it all is. I've also been having brain shocks and dizziness that according to some bloodwork is not a vitamin deficiency. I may need to see neurologist to figure out why that's happening. I've started going to the gym again and that's also helped. UDUG voting tomorrow!

But you deserve to know where your money is going so here's the long version if ya nasty,

In January I got a sinus cold. Which I tend to do, my sinuses have always been messed up. But this one was a little more intense with inner-ear congestion that made me very dizzy and drowsy. I hadn't planned on taking January slow, but I was out for about a week. I was able to rally on the 13th for the Faceball 2000 16-player test! This is a project I've been working on since 2022 and talked a lot about, but here's some pix of the faithful night!

I can say with confidence that is the first time the number "16" has ever appeared in Faceball 2000! And that weird black box with all the switches and cords coming out is the thing that makes it happen (as well as a few other things).

But for the rest of January, I'm doing shots of NyQuil and DayQuil until this sinus garbage goes away. February I'm feeling better, and it's all hands on deck for the Densha de GO video. I'm working with SoberDwarf on editing her chunk of the video while I'm writing / recording / editing the back half of the video, that actually turned in the back 3/4's.

But by the end of February I'm starting to develop a really rough cough. At the time I thought it was another cold, now I'm convinced it was the same cold that just never fully went away and relocated to my lungs. I have inhalers for allergies and asthma but I honestly don't use them too often. But I was using them constantly now just to get through the day. By March, Grace has gotten it too and we're both just sick, coughing messes. We scramble to get my inhaler prescription renewed, go through Costco sized boxes of Mucinex, bottles of NyQuil, and I'm shoving a Netipot in my nose every night. One Sunday, after Grace has a really bad coughing fit at the grocery store, we go to an urgent care. We're able to get antibiotics, which can take up to two weeks to work.

While this is going on, I'm crunching to get the Densha video finished for an ad spot. The original deadline was end of February. Then it was middle of March. Then end of March. Somehow we were able to negotiate it to middle of April. We asked if we should call it off completely but our guy was able to keep the deal going!

Also while this is happening, my cohorts on the Faceball 2000 project are in touch with the Midwest Gaming Classic to take the show on the road, to have the first public 16-player Faceball game on April 5th! I've been working on this for years, I NEED to be there to film this event! I'm able to sweet talk my way into getting flown out there... so long as I can show a rough cut of the documentary I'm working on. A documentary, I had not in earnest started making yet. I had the whole thing outlined, all the footage logged and labeled, tons of prep! ...but no actual production. So by March I'm suddenly super late on the Densha de GO! project, have promised another huge project, and I'm taking antibiotics for a sinus infection.

A week before I leave for MGC, Grace makes me go to a spa for my birthday. I get a massage and I sit in a wet, super hot sauna for several hours. It's the most I'd rested in at least a month. First week of April, the finish line for the Densha video is on the horizon but I have to start work on this Faceball doc I'm supposed to show. I pull two all-nighters, I write the entire documentary and shoot it all on my phone at my desk. It's the quickest I've ever made anything in my life! My flight is 6am Friday morning, I don't sleep and instead start editing. I quickly pack and tell myself I'll edit on the plane. It's a 4 hour flight, I can crap something out quickly! ...I fall asleep through most of the flight. Though I'm able to get some editing done!

I land in Milwaukee, get to my hotel, and jump right into editing, still in this delusion that I'm going to somehow finish a freaking documentary in time. When reality finally sets in, I text the guy running the show (who's legit one of the chillest and coolest dudes I've ever met) and tell him it's not gonna happen. He says "Ok, no worries then. Well, can you just do a presentation? Just talk?" Which absolutely I can do! I load up on water and those vitamin C tablets you can put in water, head down to the con only to see that the stage wasn't even up yet, the TV's where they would've shown the doc weren't setup either, and that the show itself had JUST opened so there weren't a ton of people there yet anyway.

So it was all for nothing BUT honestly, it was such a relief! It was something to light a fire under my ass and finally get that project rolling. But now that I didn't have to worry about it I could just hang out at the booth with my friends, and talk about and play Faceball 2000 with people. I filmed a bunch of stuff but it was honestly a bit of a vacation. It was great seeing some youtube friends and meeting fans. That I was able to come at all is a testament to how chill and open MGC was. But anyone who met me that weekend, no doubt saw me coughing like a maniac and drinking as much water as I could.

But when I came back home and I still had to finish this damn Densha de Go video haha. I get back on April 8th and despite my best efforts, my body forces me to rest. I work through the weekend and finally finish the Densha de GO video. Before all this though, I had an appointment with an Ears-Nose-Throat doctor scheduled for the 29th. Another thing that had been really slowing me down are these electrical shocks in my brain. It feels like withdrawing from my antidepressants, except I haven't stopped taking them. Sometimes when standing up I get really dizzy and these shocks in my head make me foggy. One thing that's not helped all of this is I haven't been exercising while being sick - tend to sleep better and feel most rested when I've worked out. My energy level has just been abysmal. I was thinking that just resting after finishing up with Densha would help, but it hasn't.

This brings me to last week when I finally went to see an Ears-Nose-Throat doctor. She squirted some awful tasting stuff into my nose to numb me and then shoved a tiny camera on long, metal prong deep into my face. It was unpleasant as you can imagine. She pulled out immediately and says "Oh yeah, you need surgery. I can't even hardly get in there you're so messed up. Get a CT scan and come back." She prescribed me antibiotics that the pharmacist informed me are the heavy duty kind and will probably make me sick. Thankfully they haven't but they're maybe the largest pills I've ever taken! I see my general doctor a few days later about my brain shocks and she sets me up to get some bloodwork to check if other meds I take for my acid reflux are causing vitamin deficiency. Tests came back Friday that, no they are not. So I'll probably need to see a Psychologist to adjust my antidepressants or a Neurologist because "brain shocks" could be almost anything.

Also, after the Densha video was finished, I made an effort to start going back to the gym. I've only been able to go once a week for the last 3 weeks because it's left me super sore for several days afterwards haha, I'm so rusty! But I'll get back to where I was. And It's already improved my sleeping and my foggy head. Though it could also be the horse-pill antibiotics I'm taking, who knows. But feeling any sense of improvement is very much needed.

AND SO! If during the Densha video, or the last few UDUG video's I looked or sounded a little off, that'd be why. If you didn't notice, then NEVERMIND! Everything is fine, haha. I genuinely cannot believe it's already May, I had huge plans for this year, and I still am working on those plans, but I thought I'd be further along on them. But I'm working as hard as I can without killing myself. Sorry for the dissertation here, I wanted to wait until things were settled down and I'd had the chance to see doctors before coming to you.

UDUG voting will be going up tomorrow!

Thanks as always!

Uncle Derek