Be the change you want to see.

so it's two weeks tomorrow that the dratted thing softened and ruptured and started oozing.

i started "managing" it by squeezing and massaging the ooze out of it.
the ooze is called keratin, it fills most epethelial cysts with some sebum or skin oil.

uhhh after four days of massaging and hot compresses and bandaids i researched these cysts and one of the things all the websites agreed on was NO TOUCHY but OOPS TOO LaTE and it was feeling tender and i couldnt tell if it was sore from me poking at it (and it hopefully trying to heal) or maybe from starting to feel infected? so i made sure to clean it thoroughly again and bandage it with neosporin...

then last weekend i was reminded about hydrocolloid bandages, and using them was fascinating. as it draws material out, it makes the surface of the bandage look like soft contained pus. Like ready to squeeze. only you CANNOT squeeze because it's a bandage.

seriously given my long storied history on poking picking and peeling, these hydrocolloid bandaids are a gift from the gods. i can massage over them but cannot actually poke the healing wound directly. i get the fun!pain but not the infection risk!

score!

and then like just night before last i finally really read the box for the hydrocolloid bandages, along with recommended use instructions. i had been peeling them off at the 24 hour mark, but it turns out you don't have to. they say since they're waterproof and seal in place that you can leave them on for literally DAYS. they say you can leave them off till they basically FALL OFF when their job is done. "product is designed to fall off on its own" it even says!

I actually was able to go in the hot tub yesterday with this waterproof bandage, and it felt really good.

so it's been on for ~48 hours now, and the cyst isn't aching anymore when I shift from vertical to horizontal and vice versa. That's a nice improvement. Been massaging the hard edges of the cyst, partly because fun!pain and partly because massage has been easing the pain.

I have great faith in massage. it's changed my life. sure it won't fix EVERYTHING but it's helped me so much over the years. and I've also previously resolved a crazy painful cyst on my inner labia by way of a massage technique, the same technique I describe in my previous cyst related post.

so i have this bandage, and a hard ring of tissue that's the margins of this cyst. It makes sense to me that cysts return after surgery... if you miss even a little bit of the keratin (which is the hard protein stuff in fingernails and claws and horns) of course the body would encyst it again. Plus the trauma to the skin and flesh that is having surgery... one of the risk factors for making cysts get bigger was trauma, soooooo.

so i'm feeling better, less pain in the thing, less itching and annoyance, and i'm curious about how it will resolve.

gonna hydrate thoroughly this morning (afternoon? whatever), maybe get a warm compress on it again, and have a relatively mellow rest of my afternoon.

i have a book club book to read for four, let's see if I can finish it. ;)

This is going to be a quick stream-of-consciousness kind of post, so I apologize for any typos or missing punctuation. I've been saying for years how annoying it is that I forget to eat. just in the last year or so after many years of taking metformin, I discovered that one of the side effects of metformin as an appetite suppressant. I got reminded of that because one night last week I forgot to take the medications before I went to bed. And then the following night when it was dinner time I think I ate twice as much as normal. I had one section of leftovers, and then went back and finished off the Chinese food as well.

I was off my meds for a day. The thing is, I actually had a hunger impulse that day and that is one of the things I am disconnected from more days than not. And I know that failing to eat affect both my mental health, my optimism, my energy levels obviously, and my ability to think clearly. So one thing I want to try and figure out is if there are other things available to treat my kind of diabetes than metformin, and whether we need to do anyting particular in order to try a different med.

My health as a general case oh, it's pretty good, I feel. Barring of course they ridiculous coronavirus shelter-in-place and quarantine, and bearing in mind that I have pre-existing conditions that really seemed to me like they will get triggered really hard if I catch this particular virus. So physical health related, I'm working out twice a week I feel pretty good as far as painless go I am not experiencing a lot of my usual muscle tension and pain. I do miss my mom, my sister and my niblings, and I should have may be arranged a screen type visit with them over the weekend. Benjamin just graduated from high school in so far as you can graduate from high school in 2012. and as of I guess today or maybe yesterday it sounds like he is off having adventures in southern California with a couple of his high school friends. Which on the one hand good for him and on the other hand f***. Because I'm going to have to wait and see whether it's possible that he has caught the virus before I come back up and visit. Although I know he's smart enough and self-aware enough to know that only too self quarantine when he comes back before he goes to see Mom. Mom has said he's been very assiduous and so has Ainsley about mask-wearing and being careful around her so that makes me feel better and a little bit safer for myself as well. At some point I would really like to go see them again?

But I just have to be really freaking careful. I cannot. Not. Afford to catch this virus, before we have antidotes reliable treatments, or a vaccine.

Circling back to the food question, the mind question: the ability to think when I cannot manage to feed myself very reliably. It makes it very difficult to get anything done. I can have the best of intentions and between the ADHD and not enough brain spoons it just does not happen. My Oblivion is actually very good for me in that regard, which is that when I feel myself starting a shame spiral I shove everything into the oubliette and then I don't have a shame spiral anymore. Of course I also don't have any niggling little reminders of those things that I intended to do.

I have tasks I meant to do before Christmas and haven't gotten done. Things I wanted to put in the mail. And I haven't done them. More things I wanted to put in the mail when we started shelter-in-place. I haven't mailed those either aside from about 8 at the very beginning. Have made one mask. That's it and now my sewing machine is jammed and the troubleshooting for that is beyond my current capacities. I'm not even depressed about this or ashamed or beating myself up or anxious or even tired. It's more numb. Some of that is due to the fact that I know I'm hungry even though I can't feel hunger. But I can tell based on how my brain is and is not working. I think I'm going to ask friends for help. Maybe I can subcontract out some of the brain work we'll have to see.

I hope you all are as well as you can be and staying as safe as you can be I'm thinking of you and I'll try to get back with everyone when I have a temporary likely resurgence of spoons.

I have an appointment for a video meeting with the audiology department at Kaiser tomorrow because I might be a good candidate for hearing aids. It's finally gotten to the point where it's enough of a pain oh, enough of an inconvenience and honestly the tinnitus is really bugging me. So wish me luck with that!