Duct Work

I've been having some kind of  attack of the Sphincter of Oddi for the last ten days. The main issue is it disrupts my sleep with all the spasming. The first few days were also kind of pancreatitis-ish with the only relief found in being upright. I told my husband, at this point, we just need to accept that we will be buying a craftmatic adjustable bed sooner as opposed to later.

Why does sleeping upright solve all the problems?

Asthma likes it. Sphincters like it. GERD likes it. Pancreatitis likes it.

Clearly I am doing it all wrong by trying to lie down at night.

I don't know what's going on. I'm frustrated. I started taking the muscle relaxer the GI gave me before the gallbladder removal. It never seemed to do much, but I'm desperate to sleep.  It seemed to help last night. The spasms didn't stop, but they were less intense and I could sleep through them.

And yes, it does hurt. My main complaint is not pain, though. I'm more interested in sleep. With sleep all things are possible.

I have a GI appointment coming up so maybe there are other meds we can try. As usual, there are comunication issues, though. Their 'mychart' program has disabled my account and my emails to tech support have gone unanswered. I received a notification of a message in my email, but I can't log in to read it. For all I know, my appointment has been canceled.

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I've been exercising since we returned from vacation and was pleased to find I'd retained enough muscle/fitness to not be at -50 on the fitness scale. I'm ready for 5 miles or more on the bike, but am still having issues with the seat. I bought a new one, which has offered some improvement, but it could be better. I might buy another one to try.

I feel like the Goldilocks of bicycle seats. I've got too hard and too soft covered, but I can't seem to find the 'just right' one.

The pool closed, which was a bummer. One nearby city has one week left in their pool season but a) their pool is cold as the arctic sea, and b) it has a strong current due to two massive water slides. This makes swimming either too easy or too hard. We went once and I'm not sure if we'll go back. I guess we'll have to switch to swimming at rec centers that have indoor pools.

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Writing...

1. Finished the first draft of my latest project and starting edits today. The first hard copy is printing as I type.

2.Authors continue to be weirdos and are in full life raft mode, meaning they're gathering together who they trust most and leaving everyone else to drown. I think authors win the prize for 'most cliques in a single industry.'

I somehow made the cut into a super secret group. I don't know why though. Most everyone in the group is making so much money, they don't need anything I do.

For instance, I read through a thread where people were trying to figure out what to do with their extra money after they maxed out their retirement contributions. As in, they have so much money, they don't know what to do with it all. As I read it, I was like, these are not my people.

I am not at that level. Not even close! I could be, if I wrote faster. For every one of my books that sells well, they have 3 or 5 because they churn out full novels about once a month.

But I am slow and speed is money in this industry.


I don't like the clique shit. I'll hang with anyone and I'm big on helping out people who are still chasing success. The only social editing I do is to cut out users and abusers or people who, while perfectly nice, don't work well with others for whatever reason (which can be something as simple as their genre doesn't mesh with mine, which can make marketing less effective).