Some Health and Musical Stability, At a Cost

The turmoil of November is yielding a tiny bit of stability in December. However, as the title of this post says, it hasn’t come cheaply. There’s been money spent, but there has also been pain and stress paid out. In return, I’ve been able to go outside, and I’ve been able to return to writing music for short periods. It’s been a long time since I’ve been physically and mentally able to do either.

Keep in mind that all of this has been made possible by my work with Dr. Andrew Konen of Dallas. We’re nowhere near done with treatments, but he’s helped me get this far, and for that, I’m thankful. Ask my wife or myself, though, and we’ll both tell you that we’ve got a lot more to do before we can close this out, if we can ever close it out. That much is questionable.

Now, let’s start with the music. I’ve had days where my pain levels have been steady enough for me to get up and be active, and my head has been clear enough to think about music. I need to keep my Voting Membership eligibility with the Grammy organization, so I need to put out an album by April 2018. Thanks to the stability, I’ve been able to work on that. However, I’ve had to make an investment in a new piece of gear, shown at the top left of this post. It’s a Focusrite 2i2 Generation 2 sound module. My 2i2 Gen.1 still works, but the 2i2 Gen.2 supports higher sample rates and better stereo separation for monitoring incoming sounds. The base price was $149.95, but when you figure in the State of Texas’s taxes, I forked out just over $162 for the new box.

I have plans for the Gen.1 box, though. You see, I used it to compose and record the new music for the new levels in Gearbox Software’s Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour. If you’d like a genuine piece of gaming history, you can get it by buying my Gen.1 box! I’ll autograph the original shipping box it came in and the 2i2 Gen.1 box itself. All I’m doing is looking to recoup $60 or $75 of the original box, since times are tough and my medical bills this year have been high enough to break my catastrophic deductible level. I’ll set it up so that it works for an extra $10. If you’re interested, let me know. We can start via the comments or the Contact page, but we’ll have to work out an exchange of funds from there.

If I get no takers, it goes on eBay.

The other part of the stability, obviously, has been my health. This one’s a bit trickier. I’d say my health has only been stable for about the last five days, with one hiccup when my pain level shot up to an eight for a couple of hours. That was just a matter of getting used to the new system Dr. Konen has laid out for me. It’s also a part of the price I’ve paid for that stability. I predict more hiccups, but hope for not many more.

I still haven’t had my epidural steroid injection scheduled. I’m starting to wonder if they’ve forgotten about me on that. A phone call would be in order.

All in all, the month has been more interesting than November. I just hope it ends better.

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