Wish me luck.

Photo copyright Aji, 2023; all rights reserved.

Pale peach sky in the east.

Tonight.

Like the green sky, it's another phenomenon of late fall/early winter here. Even though it doesn't feel much like winter; it got up to 61 today, which is easily 30 degrees too high for this time of year.

Today was one of those days, where all my time is spent in appointments, errands, or just waiting around with regard to both. That's why everything is so late. There are, however, changes afoot.

My DX was updated today. Officially, it's been lupus and inflammatory arthritis; I had markers for rheumatoid arthritis that had been considered inconclusive, apparently, but no more. It's now lupus and [seropositive] RA. Which, I mean, we knew, even without the markers; it's one of the reasons my pain levels are so completely out of control, and why my joints are in such terrible shape now. But the pain today has been a whole other animal, the worst I've had in a very, very long time, and so next week, I start a new regimen.

I'll be keeping all the same meds I'm already on, but we're adding one that is intended to address the possibility of long-term after-effects from that targeted antibiotics regimen I was on earlier this year. I'll also be taking daily methylated folate [high-powered folic acid], and that could turn out to be for the rest of my life. Because at long last, they're putting me on chemo.

It's not the high-end stuff; there's no affording that bullshit.  Between seven grand and twelve grand A MONTH? Are you fucking kidding me? Of course they're not kidding; they're just greedy. But anyway, I'm not all that sure I want to risk those side effects anyway. So we're starting with the lowest dose of methotrexate [my request; we could've started higher], which is a very old, very well-known, no longer at all expensive chemotherapy drug that was initially used for cancer but is now long since a basic therapy in autoimmune diseases. It's now in a class called a DMARD [disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug], and the idea is that it will suppress my immune system [more than it already is] sufficiently to lower my inflammation levels, which in turn, we hope, will loower my pain levels enough to make it manageable.

Wish me luck.

Through it all, I still have to make sales, of course. We've had a couple of them over the weekend, but we'll need to sell a lot more between now and year's end, obviously. My Patreon for the month is down ~$250 at the moment [that's how much it was short on the December 1st payout for subscriptions for the month of November, and so far, all of those still haven't been paid]. My guess is that those won't materialize later in the month; that will be the penalty [or one of them anyway] for taking a vocal stand about the genocide being perpetrated against Palestine and its people now. Of course, we haven't brought in anywhere nearly enough sales all year. It's grim.

And aside from all of that, I also need to bring in at least $6K in sales between now and year's end to cover tax prepayments, and we haven't hit the $1K mark on that yet. Normally, I would've been paying them quarterly, but not this year; we haven't had enough sales to do that, and I'm behind on everything else, too, all while my illness worsens seemingly by the day. Until those prepayments are off my desk, I can't relax, can't do anything other than push to get them covered. I really need help. As always, all the links are listed below, and sales are the most important:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (the liquid soaps I had on the list are now refusing to ship to us, so I've replaced them with two others, at the top of the list, for now, and they're the current priority [or Amazon cards, and I can order them myself]); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

There's lots of fabulous work on the site, and there will be much more in the days to come. The way this year has gone, things will still be grim for a good while and the holidays are already here, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.