(no subject)

I am just so miserable right now that I had better note it down, since in the past I've had to look back at it later.

Ear...better? The tinnitus is still there, but either I got used to it or it's not as bad. The jaw just never got better, though, and it goes snap crackle pop every time I open my mouth. This has been a recurring problem for years (at least since college, maybe since high school), but I'm usually not as aware of it as I am right now, where it's just constant pressure. Usually it's on my right side (which was the fucked up ear side) and right now it's focused on the left. I might try the ear wax treatment on the left ear and see if that helps the jaw at all.

Hands are...well, the hands are mostly fine, to be honest? I've had worse finger pain in the past than I do now; mostly I don't have any finger pain. I was for a while the past week having some pain in my left wrist but haven't had much today. Mostly what I'm getting is up and down my right arm -- not stabbing pains, nothing centered in one place. I'm still really worried about tennis elbow, because I am getting some issues around the elbow joint, but I'm also getting a bit along my forearm and more around the bicep, some in the wrist. I do sleep in wrist supports and have for the past seven years -- since last year I've been sleeping in a wrist brace with a splint on my left hand, and last week upgraded to a splint on my right hand too. (I use this one, super padded, super comfortable. Can't wear it for anything but sleeping, but that's fine.) So it could be related to the fact that I've got a new brace there. I also usually sleep in earbuds since I use a meditation app to fall asleep (after years of taking hours to fall asleep, Headspace is the only thing that knocks me out within minutes, so I pay for it), but since I was dealing with the earwax thing for the last week I was using my phone on speaker rather than earbuds. The earbuds mean I sleep on my back. Without them in, I tend to sleep on my side, which happens to be my right side, so it could be that I've been falling asleep on my arm. (A few years ago, before I started sleeping in earbuds, I actually had this problem with jaw pain -- I was at home and kept sleeping with all my weight on the left side of my face, for some reason. Stopped doing that and the jaw pain went away.) I'll try going back to earbuds tonight and see if that helps.

Normally at the computer or when I'm having wrist problems I wear soft wrist supports, no splint. I ordered new braces with splints for both wrists, as well as an ergonomic vertical mouse in case that's part of the cause -- like everyone else, I'm spending more time than usual on the computer lately, and all in the same spot and mostly on the same computer, instead of moving around or doing intensive school typing on the Surface at various Starbucks tables.

I'm also just extremely tense right now -- obviously being a person in the world right now is super stressful, plus I have a major deadline which means I'm even more stressed than usual. (Prospectus went to my committee last Wednesday, defense is September 3.) Historically most of my tension settles in my shoulders and jaw, and hoo boy, are my shoulders tight at the moment, so it's possible that that's traveling along my arms -- I'm having trouble believing this is injury related rather than stress-related because it all happened at once, and while jaw and ear are connected, jaw/ear are not super connected to my traditional tendinitis issues. But, I mean, it could be? Human bodies, how do they work.

I did also go slightly overboard on knitting over the past month, which is what I had initially thought caused the wrist/finger problems -- I usually know better than to keep knitting for any extended period of time, but I was just very stressed. And I started doing things other than socks for the first time in years, which is different hand/wrist motion and weight (hat/cowl on circs rather than socks on DPNs), so I thought that could be it. But I put the knitting aside for now, so it can't be causing the current arm issues.

I'm trying to spend, at the very least, slightly less time on the computer -- I don't love getting on it first thing in the morning (afternoon) but have been doing so usually because it's at my dining table and I've mostly been reading ebooks, and haven't set my new Kindle up so have been doing all that reading on the Kindle app. The past couple days I've been keeping the computer off and doing my morning reading in hard copy, which tbh is better for my nerves, too -- Twitter first thing after waking up is a lot to deal with, especially these days when it's not even majority cute fannish stuff even with everything under the sun blacklisted. I got into a rut of not cooking, so I'm trying to do more cooking too -- which at the very least means slightly different hand/arm/wrist motions.

But I'm also just currently in a really bad headspace lately -- I'm exhausted so I've been sleeping more than I'm happy with, I've been crying all the time (I was crying less often before I started having ear/jaw/arm/wrist issues, but now I feel like I'm staring down the barrel of my tendinitis rearing its ugly head and cutting off all my coping mechanisms), I've got this huge deadline that will determine if I pass to candidacy and if I continue to receive funding, there's a pandemic, the U.S. government is an actual nightmare, my father is still stuck overseas, my mother lost her job, I'm really, really homesick and was homesick even before lockdown, I live alone so I never talk to anyone in person aside from grocery store checkers and people at the farmer's market, I haven't seen any local friends (of which I don't have many) since March. I'm just completely miserable right now. And now I'm miserable with health problems, fun.

Also I wrote this entire prospectus without physical library access. I want an award. (I think I have access now -- for pick-up, anyway, stacks aren't open -- but the prospectus is in.)

I've been really hesitant to call the health center about any of it because it's such a weird batch of stuff, but, uh, I guess at least none of these are covid symptoms? So at least there's that. And I do have to pay for university health insurance, and I guess they could either count in or count out tendinitis/tennis elbow/early onset arthritis (my other big fear, because I have a family history of it), so I should probably call them within the next few days. I'm just so miserable lately. And everyone else is miserable too, but..ugh, I don't know.

I'm also supposed to be at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim and Disneyland this week, and Dragon Con next week, and was supposed to have spent the rest of August in Washington. Unhappy. I desperately need a vacation right now but lol all I get to be is trapped in my house! Like everyone else so I feel bad complaining about it.

I'm also now slightly drunk because I went for alcohol since ibuprofen hasn't helped at ll and I was hoping it would make me relax slightly. Like, I will take moderate relaxation, okay. (Jaw does seem less aggressively bad after the application of most of a can of hard cider, but it's still poppy.) At this point I will take any kind of advice, tbh.