Figured I'd do a little life update. Not much has happened, but I feel like talking.

I feel like I'm starting to really come out of my little grief rut now, but I'm still not super in the mood to talk to a lot of people. I actually ended up severing ties with some friends, and I'm trying to rebuild connections with old friends with whom I fell out of touch. Smooth sailing so far. With time, I'll want to actually talk to people more, but I'm certainly not as depressed as I have been.

I finished my David Cassidy portrait commission, and I got to do it my way instead of how my mother wanted it done. I got paid, and my neighbor is pretty thrilled with the result. He doesn't need it until the end of the month, which gives me time too look over it and tweak it as necessary before getting it printed. As for my other commissioner/customer/client, he and I are still waiting on some details that are out of our control. We're starting to get more comfortable with each other, which is good, because he seems to want to keep me around for the long term. I may actually end up with a stable client, which would be lovely. In the meantime, I'm working on a portrait of Michael Jackson to keep me in good spirits. It's working.

We had to put my dad's dog down on Monday. She was 14 years old (turning 15!), and we had her for about a decade. Basically, her organs were failing, and there wasn't anything we could do to save her. She lived a very spoiled, very long life, though, so there's that. My s/o came down to be supportive, and he even helped my dad and me pick her up and put her in the back of the car. Then he stayed home with me while I sobbed. I didn't go with my parents, because I was worried about fainting in the middle of the vet's office. I've done it once before, and that would've really been a very bad time to do it again. My dad was an absolute mess when he came home, but he seems to be doing alright now. My parents don't want anymore dogs, but my dad says he's willing to make an exception if we happen across another German Shepherd or Shepherd mix. The house just feels so empty without her.

I saw another cardiologist today. He said he has no idea what exactly is wrong with me, but he does know that I won't need a pacemaker. The symptoms I have aren't anything that a pacemaker could fix, but apparently medication also isn't doing the trick. Apparently, people usually have a very clear and singular reason why they start fainting, and it's almost always a simple fix with either medication or lifestyle change. I don't have a singular, clear cause, which makes this really complicated. Until we know what's the biggest issue, he doesn't feel comfortable trying to throw possible cures at me. Also, he has no idea what sort of medical cure he can give me since I've exhausted all my medication options, and surgery doesn't seem like it'll do anything. For now, he's gonna have me do another tilt table test, and he's gonna have me do an echocardiogram to see if there's anything structurally wrong with my heart. My mom's side of the family has a very strong history of people dying of heart attacks before they reach 60, so this doctor wants to make sure that there isn't something organic happening like my heart weakening or some other structure issue taking place that isn't caused by my blood pressure issues. He's going to see if he can get ahold of my old tilt table test and echo results, and then compare notes to see if he can figure out just how I'm doing so far. He also wants to check up on my mitral valve prolapse, because no one's paid that any attention in about 7 years. If all else fails, there's a doctor out in Toledo, Ohio who apparently is like...THE guy to go to for things like this. Apparently he's responsible for the tilt table test being a thing? So hopefully he hasn't retired, and my parents and I can take a trip out to Ohio to see what's wrong.

He did bring up the possibility that I simply might not be curable, and I'll be living with this in some form or another for the rest of my life. I try not to think about it, because the idea that I will have to spend the rest of my life like this is less than ideal. He ALSO said that there is a possibility that I could just magically get better on my own, but since my hormones are "within normal range" and therefore not the problem, that's not really a likely outcome.

I feel like that's part of my issue. All my tests seem to come back "within normal range", but something CLEARLY isn't normal. If my tests just came back with something conclusive, then they could take care of it. It's just really frustrating being disabled by something that doctors aren't even sure what the main problem is. If I weren't on the medications I'm on, I'd think I was somehow faking it. I admit that sometimes I'm STILL not convinced I'm not somehow faking it.

But yeah, that's pretty much everything on my end. I need to go out and buy some Valentine's Day cards to mail out for the pen pal exchange and stuff, so hopefully I'll get that done soon.