Big Update

Well, I owe you all an apol­o­gy. This blog has been aban­doned for four years, and a lot has hap­pened in that time.

Katie is mar­ried, about to fin­ish col­lege, and expect­ing her first child!

I went back to work in 2013! I work from home, but I work full time doing tech­ni­cal sup­port for Apple, Inc. as a Senior Tech­ni­cal Advi­sor. I hope to get back to doing QA, tech­ni­cal writ­ing, or busi­ness analy­sis (see my résumé if you’re inter­est­ed!) but this is a great start. I’ve worked for three years now, so I’ve proven to myself that I can work reliably.

Katie and I have been diag­nosed with Ehlers-Dan­los Syn­drome (hyper­mo­bil­i­ty type), which explains a great deal, like the fibromyal­gia symp­toms. EDS is a genet­ic dis­or­der that affects the con­nec­tive tis­sues and, in our case, leads to loose, fre­quent­ly dis­lo­cat­ed joints and chron­ic pain. (I had asked a pedi­atric rheuma­tol­o­gist about EDS in Katie many years ago but he blew us off.) EDS is a genet­ic dis­or­der and there’s evi­dence of it in two gen­er­a­tions of our fam­i­ly, with anec­do­tal data of it in a third. The fourth gen­er­a­tion has­n’t been test­ed yet but I’m hop­ing she will be.

The symp­toms are still the same, as is the man­age­ment. I’m on the same med­ica­tions for man­age­ment: Lyri­ca, with occa­sion­al opi­ates and mus­cle relax­ants for break­through pain. I stopped tak­ing nar­cotics on a reg­u­lar basis a few years back so that I could return to work. Con­trol­ling stress is very impor­tant, and build­ing up the mus­cles around joints in order to avoid dis­lo­ca­tions is, as well. There’s a lot of doc­u­ment­ed trou­ble with dysau­tono­mia, par­tic­u­lar­ly Pos­tur­al Ortho­sta­t­ic Tachy­car­dia Syn­drome (POTS), which I seem to have, as well. I haven’t tak­en the nasty tilt table test to have con­firmed yet.

But I’m able to work, which is the impor­tant thing. I’m in a sta­ble, sup­port­ive rela­tion­ship with my part­ner Rick, who has no online pres­ence to speak of. We live in metro Atlanta with our dog Har­po and cats Djan­go and Tul­ly and a vary­ing num­ber of kit­tens fos­tered from Life­line Ani­mal Project.

So that’s me. What about you?