New Pass-time

So lately since I have had so much time on my hands I decided I needed a hobby that I could do while still being sick. So after much deliberation I decided to try some graphic design type stuff. I downloaded Gimp which is basically a free graphics editor much like Photoshop. To make a long story short I LOVE it. I have learned so much in just the few weeks I have been doing it. Plus it is an awesome skill to know and it isn't physically taxing at all since I use my mom's laptop! It's a match made in heaven! So here are some of the pieces I have made. I figure once in a while I'll post some new pics or ideas, but here's a few I've done.

This piece is a gift for a guy on a forum I'm part of and one of the things we do is just swap gifts. This is what's called a signature and it just goes underneath your posts.

This is just sort of an abstract...thing. I don't really know what it is but it looks great as my background ha ha!

Once again just a cool lookin' piece. It also looks good as a background.

I made this for my best friend who just got his mission call to Japan. the symbol in the middle is the symbol of the city he is going to, and the castle seen very faintly in the background is a castle that is in that same city.

This piece is under a category called typography where you make a letter out of other words. It also includes other things but I haven't done any of those yet. This one is just a little bit of what I have experienced going through Lyme.

The Puzzle, part 1

I know this is way past due but blogging hasn't been terribly high on my priority list lately, I've been busy surviving. Let's just pretend the past two months didn't happen and voila I'm totally on top of things. While these months have been incredibly hard they have yielded unexpected fruit, namely a diagnosis! It only took four years to figure it out and it's still very weird to me. It doesn't seem real, like I'm looking at my life through a haze. When people ask what is wrong with me I'm still inclined to say 'we don't know' out of habit, but what I should say is (drum roll), I have Lyme Disease. Maybe it takes a while for these things to sink in, it seems surreal. Anyway on to the meat of the subject. Lyme Disease is an illness caused by ticks who contain a bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi. 

The Devil Itself

The bacteria is extremely versatile and can infect just about any system in your body. It manifests itself different in everyone who has it. Some have chronic joint and muscle pain, some neurological problems, others it infects their brain. It's very hard to know for sure what it's doing to me but my guess would be it is in my nervous system as well as my brain. It is a nasty little bugger, but the good news is there are ways to cure it. I will now be receiving massive doses of IV antibiotics four times a week for the next three months. Hopefully we can kill it that fast, if not it will be longer but the success rate is very high so no matter how long it takes I am very excited. If you are interested in more detail please ask me, I would be more than happy to throw out some technical jargon to try and help you further understand.