It's been a little while since I did a Diary of a Spoonie blog post and I feel like things have started to change in my life and in my health. I've spent a large portion of this year being annoyed and frustrated with myself and my body because things have been changed and not in the way that I had hoped.
One thing I've started doing is taking on UGC and more paid content work so I can help to supplement my income because when you're forever chronically sick, it starts to affect your work life and your income so I've been trying to do this more and more to help bump things up for me. Ideally I'd love to half my nursing hours and be able to supplement it with income from my blog, social media and UGC.
These last couple of months, I've been trying my hardest to ignore the fact that my hearing wasn't what it used to be and it finally got to the point where I was really starting to struggle so I bit my tongue and went and got my hearing checked. I'd like to say to my surprise but really I wasn't surprised when they said I had moderate hearing loss in one ear and moderate to severe hearing loss in the other ear so I now have two hearing aids to help and I'm not going to lie it's been an adjustable because you don't just put them in and magically hear perfectly, there is an adjustment period whilst your brain relearns things. I've also been struggling with sensory overload which has lead to fatigue cause I'm not used to hearing all the noises so my brain is in a state of sensory overload from hearing all the noises, all the time. I've already had a little check up and found that they're already helping massively and I really notice now when I don't have them in. However with my migraines, I have to be really careful and I haven't been able to tolerate them during migraines because I get really sensitive to noise and these hearing aids obviously enhance it all.
Now I won't lie, the migraines have really been getting me down and it's been going on at such a tough frequency that it's really hard to see the other way out and some sunshine, especially when it's up to a 12 month wait to see a specialist. I'm trying my hardest to pace myself but I'm finding it harder and harder not to beat myself up because I'm not able to do things as I usually do. What I've trying to do now is use my to-do list but have my tasks massively broken down so as I do small parts of the task I can tick it off and get a small sense of achievement and it makes it easier to get some tasks done.
It's getting to that time of year where everyone is talking about how productive they're going to be for the last couple of months of 2024 so it sounds strange but I'm ignoring that and just trying to make as much use of the time I have without burning my body out and leaving me in a state of flare up where I'm barely able to function.
How have you all been lately?
Speak to you next time!
