This last year has been full of change. Quite a lot of self protection has had to be put in place, from removing myself from what became toxic situations to repainting my workroom as a place for me. Some have been to allow myself a better quality of life on another level.

After my second infusion of antibodies (I’m not a cyborg but I do have antibodies from human tissue and grown in a mouse-hamster mix so that makes my body an awesome science demonstration) I got very sick, as you do. This is hard line intervention preserved for those who really need it. And RA, AS, and various blood cancers all get the same label of “really need it’ when their symptoms are not controlled by other also hard line approaches.

Most of my summer was spent in bed, in summer(!) with icepacks and a low grade fever. That slowly passed.

Then I found myself throwing up after a meal once a week, then twice, then a few more times and I realised even more issues where beginning to become more ovbious. In this case medication to prevent Gastric Reflux (from the meditications over the years) was preventing food from leaving my stomach. Six hours plus in that state everyday lead to me first weaning off the proton pump inhibitors.

Now I am mostly okay.

But that issue lead to malabsorbtion of certain nutrients and so I have had to look in to more easily invested protein and that has also had a benefit. Still long terms struggles but I can already see exactly what I hoped for in terms of muscle building and cellular repair.

All of which is to say I do indeed try everything I can to help myself. But it’s a task for more than one person. There is my medical team who do work in unison to look beyond my main diagnosis.

And to that I have to limit certain chemicals that affect me so badly. Epoxy resin hols a place in my costumer’s heart for letting me build costumes I know will outlast me.

But it is potentially shortening my life with repeat exposures to the cured and uncured product.

I need to find a few ways to finish projects started with it and then be done.

So I am quite happy making Elsa the best I can, finishing my SPanish gown of Doom, a few armour projects with a stash of PVC pipe, and start getting those smaller UFOs finished.

I’ll do a proper photo update, but this was the serious stuff out of the way.