This is going to be a lot of info dumping.

September thru December were a bit rough for me mentally. Most of September I spent on a temporary high from all of the jobs I was applying to and interviews I had. And then the first rejection came in. Then the next. By then it was November and I just gave up. Burnt out from the interviews, so I said I was done job hunting. Started to save money and limited purchases to gas/groceries only outside of my monthly debt/rent.

Prepped for the literal worst case scenario of unemployment and how long we could manage with me on UI. I was then worried about how shit the job market would be since everyone else around me were starting to have layoffs as well. Would it be for a few months? What if I got super fucked and couldn’t find anything for longer? The stress fucked me up real bad + my osteoarthritis in my knee was flaring almost daily at work and at home.

November also saw some hardships. Bucky was starting to have more and more noise induced seizures which was also triggering noise anxiety for me. It was pretty rough a few times but then one weekend he spent all day puking and having diarrhea. He also wouldn’t eat anything at all. Joe took him to the ER on a Monday and I left work early to go be there with them. Vet saw a mass near his kidney/liver and that this was likely the cause for his symptoms. He also lost weight which I felt so guilty about as he’s a chunky guy and I always pet/held him every day. But I guess in hindsight it was more loose skin and less actual fat. Since he was already 15 years old, they asked us how to proceed. We decided we wanted to do comfort care and took him home with us.

We had some antibiotics along with an appetite stimulate to give him. He didn’t get any better. The next day he had the worst seizure he’s ever had and it felt like any progress we could have had were wiped out with that encounter. He made it another 19 days at home. We had him go to sleep on December 1st. I am so glad that I was able to be with him unlike Dodger in 2024. But it was the most emotionally painful thing I have ever experienced. The loss of him was so extreme and I was even more upset because I knew he would be there for me for after I got laid off and would be home all of the time.

I deeply miss him.

10 days later work had a new job listing up that was FT for days and as luck would have it, I was qualified for the role. I applied to it at like 6:30a while already at work lol. The next day the supervisor came in to chat with me about it and a day later I had an interview for it. Within a few more days I was offered the role and I accepted it. Started the new job the week after Christmas.

I’m different now. My previous role was really affecting me mentally and the physical impact was at it’s worst. But now I’m no longer on my feet 40hrs a week or having to deal with customers. I have been enjoying the job. I’m confident in my work output with having my ADHD meds. Having it be very routine is also a plus as I really strive in that type of environment since there are always ways to improve and be more effective.

But best of all is my chronic knee pain is essentially gone. For the last few years I’ve relied on tons of OTC pain management for it on a daily basis. Lidocaine patches and roll-on, NSAIDs, tens devices, KT tape… But for the last 3 months I’ve not used anything after work. I was using lidocaine patches for the first few weeks at work due to more sitting and the outer edges of my knee were really struggling with adapting to that angle for that length of time.

I haven’t had to do any pain management since the new role. Not only that but I’ve even had a lot of the swelling go down enough that I’ve gained more mobility and range of motion. I can actually keep my right leg straight, I feel like pain when walking on inclines, I can almost bend my knee further back than 90 degrees. Something I haven’t been able to do it years. This also means that kneeling is much easier as-is squatting. However, there is very obvious muscle weakness and lack of activation in them as I do often feel dead weight with lifting.

However, there’s been one thing I’ve put off for a long time. My hearing. I’ve had tinnitus since the end of 2017. I started to notice hearing loss in 2021 when I was still at a Starbucks DT. I was having a hard time hearing words in my right ear with the headset we used at work. Prior to that I never had any problems since my right ear was the one I always used for the headsets.

It became more apparent that something was off because I tried to listen to music in my right ear AirPod only and it sounded tinny, underwater, and like a radio station not quiet in tune with the proper frequency channel.

With the new role I need to be able to hear patients clearly and had been struggling for clarity when there was a lot of background noise. A colleague had finally gotten hearing aids for herself and it was seeing her happiness that motivated me. I made an appt with the ENT and in the first week of March I had the appointment.

I had an audiogram done. Ear buds were placed into my ears and then each ear would hear a sound at varying frequencies and I needed to press the button when I heard anything in that ear. She did my left ear first for the baseline. Then came the right ear. I barely heard anything but I could hear the louder frequencies. The next was listening to spoken words at varying frequencies with and without background noise in the opposite ear. Left ear heard everything. But the right ear I struggled to understand half of the words spoken because it was like how a broken speaker would sound. Words at higher frequencies were understandable to a point.

Once we finished up the test, the audiologist showed me the graph of my results. My left ear hearing is normal and has a tiny bit of hearing loss as expected with age. My right ear has profound hearing loss. She then said I could only hear at the max frequencies. We briefly went over a CROSS hearing aid and cochlear implant. Saw the DR and she checked out my ears and said my ear drums were healthy. We talked about my symptoms and then she also checked my face with me smiling and lifting eyebrows. She then said she’d be sending a referral for an MRI to check out my ear.

I ended up getting the MyChart appt results later that night and read through my ENT’s notes. I have sensorineural hearing loss in my right ear and only 50% speech recognition. Then the MRI would be to check out the internal auditory canal to rule out retrocochler pathology. Fun huh?

Anyway. I really love where my life is at right now. Somehow I always stumble onto a new path for my life when I least expect it. I’m genuinely happy.