To my True Friends and Original Followers:

This is where you can find me now. I'm finally getting to tell *OUR* story. The story of the everyday person hit hard by illness in the US. Today's video is uploading. I love you.
ASPIRING YOUTUBER!

So tired

I’ve gotten this far. Took a chunk of medical bills down today. Several more to go. My health has improved but ever time I recover there’s the added stress of seeing bills trickle in. We need to stop punishing people for being ill or infirm. I am so sad that this is how we treat our most vulnerable fellow humans. 😢

HELP AGAIN, PLEASE!

VERY IMPORTANT: CAN ANYONE WITH $1 GO TO MY BLOG AND TRY THE DESTOP VERSION. YOU CAN DONATE TO ME AND I NEED IT TO MAKE IT THROUGH UNTIL MY ADVERTISING IS UP AND RUNNING. TIA!
(THIS IS SO SO HARD ON ME. AND NOW I HAVE A CANCER SCARE TO BOOT. :(

HELP

I NEED ALL THE RAINBOWS I CAN GET! Please send them. Prayers, hope, any love appreciated I’m scared.

Another Manic Monday!

I can't wait to sit down and write more, but it's bill-paying day. My disability $ comes in on the third of every month and then I scramble to pay all the bills and then no more $ for a month. But that's all about to change, I know it. My blogging career is hopefully taking off and my partner just landed a permanent full time job in his chosen field. Part of today's agenda will be looking at houses to rent! Instead of this tiny apartment! :) :) :) Happy Monday!

Bipolar Life

I'm hoping that lots of people who have Bipolar Disorder of any type will end up here. I have been through so much including inpatient psych stays and being admitted for medical problems under what I call a "soft psych hold". I hope you ended up here and can use my experience as a guide to help yourself, or to share your experiences with me. (in the form of comments on this blog or emailing me at ereanderson@gmail.com) I will do my best to see what you send me and send a personal reply.
The worst thing that happened to me in my most recent admission was that an RN tried to draw my blood in the middle of the night and HIT A NERVE in my arm. She was even using a butterfly needle. it hurt so much not just where she was poking but in my shoulder as well. I couldn't straighten my arm for a couple of days afterwards. (Or maybe longer...I was too manic to remember it all perfectly.) I will also say this-I'm a former RN turned patient with a photographic memory. So you can believe my memories are fairly intact. I also have an amazing partner who is willing to help fill in the details...but he has to sleep some time and wasn't in the room for the nerve poke. I of course told him all about it a couple hours after it happened but it has given me a needle phobia like you would not believe. And I have a surgery coming up. If they get my IV in without me being doped up on Xanax I'd be amazed. But anyway...love to all my fellow Bipolar humans. I see you, I love you for making it this far, and you are not alone.

Gasteroparesis

I can't wait to blog about how my Gasteroparesis is doing. (or GP for short) It's probably the diagnosis that impacts my life the most, or maybe second only to Bipolar Type II. But after seeing a specialist at Northwestern last January, I'm EATING AGAIN! I was inches away from getting a feeding tube for a whole year. My GI docs would ask at every appointment if I was wanting a tube or ready for one. I feel so incredibly lucky and I'd love to share all this with you because even if one GP-er has their life saved like mine was it will all be worth it.

My first piece of advice to anyone with GP or chronic medical conditions in general-save as much $ as you can. As much as I love you for coming here, please don't reach into your own pocket for me and think very carefully about donating to a fellow ill person. You *will* be sick enough (if you live in the US especially) to need medical bill help. It's guaranteed until we have a different President. In fact, a book I'd like to write if I had the time is called "How to Bust Trump". But instead all I had time for today was having Chris take me to my favorite park (where I saw these somehow adorable beer bottle tops) and a couple hours of Zelda. 😊

Google AdSense

Yes, I'm still awake, still here, posting plenty of content all over this blog (and AlwaysAmbidextrous.blogspot.com) and sharing each post in all my social media platforms. But I've been waiting what feels like forever to hear whether I qualify to have ads on my blog to start getting paid to write. Putting ads on this page and being paid to do what I love would be the best job on earth for me. And I think I have a lot to say and a lot of good advice for others.

Profession: Blogger!

Profession: Blogger!
This pie chart shows how much professional bloggers make. I don't feel like a professional yet because I am in the category of the 17.6% of people who make nothing. I have not been paid even a dollar to blog yet from any monetizing source but I have high hopes! I've wanted nothing more than to be paid to sit down and write since I became an adult and started having so darn much to say and not enough time to say it! I'm going to go to sleep again soon but I do hope that one person donates to PayPal so I can wake up and call myself a "real" writer. :)
And my overall page views are only 17,000 since I started this 11 years ago...so yes, in terms of traffic...I've got a long way to go. That's why even just clicking on my blog and being here can help me and part of why I appreciate you all so much.

Super (Bowl) Sunday

Okay my post titles are just getting ridiculous now. But legal weed is almost here in Illinois so I had to try out a pot pun. But anyway, I can’t sleep tonight not because I’m manic or don’t feel well, which can often be the case with my medical issues…but I am not sleeping because I am excited about “my” new house. The reason this has to be in quotes is that my house isn’t even mine yet. I have my current lease until July 31^st, but with Chris’s new job and my SSDI put together we can definitely afford to rent a whole 3 bedroom, 1 bath house!! And I have so many plans for it! I wish I could post a picture from street view but I worry that it still won’t happen even though I have my heart set on it. It has a fenced backyard so my daughter’s new dog could come stay any time he wanted to! Or Chris and I could get a puppy! Actually it’s more likely that we would adopt an adult dog, but it would have to be small and get along impeccably with kids and other pets. Anyway, the possibilities are truly endless for me to have a service animal of sorts…a companion dog for anxiety. 

In the place I lived before this I lived with a rescue named Bobbi. She’s a pit bull mix. A beautiful, loving dog who just happens to be too big for her own good. She is the sweetest pet you could own, and kept me safe in my room all the time, but she wasn’t socialized very well because her first 9 months of life she was a stray. Anyway I could wax poetic about dogs for another several hours but instead I’m going to do something else. 

On my to-do list:

-register my business (Limited Liability Corporation) with the state

-find out what it takes to submit 501©3 paperwork…I know I will be tax exempt every year of my life from now on being on disability but I don’t know if any business income eventually need to be taxed.

-ask primary care doctor for Imitrex in shot form for home use because I cannot wait two hours for these horrible migraines I’ve been getting to stop

-see surgeon on Tuesday and convince him that I’m healthy enough to get cleared for my labral tear hip surgery

-watch more Better Call Saul-it's educational!

I wonder which one I’ll choose for the rest of the night. J

Almost Sunday

Another quick post. I just got my business PayPal account set up and linked at the top of the page. Even if you can only spare $1, that is so much appreciated. I have spent a lot of my life paying medical bills and can and will always be able to use the help. At some point this blog may run ads as well but I haven't been approved yet nor do I have enough traffic to sustain them. Also I will be promoting more posts in the future for a dollar or two a day once I can afford it. I've only promoted two so far for a couple of dollars but every little bit helps. 💕 to all.

Sublime Saturday

Today was truly the best day I've had in a long, long time. I didn't see my kids today, but it wasn't my day to see them anyway and they were happily spending time with their grandparents and friends so I knew they were safe. And being able to text them thoughts and pictures (even with my 6 year old who isn't reading fully yet) is life-changing. I'm sure I'll be able to see them in real life or by FaceTime tomorrow. Even if all we do is eat unicorn pudding and play youtube videos together.

I started the day out waking up. And every day that I wake up, especially a day that I wake up feeling physically and mentally well, is already the best day of my life. I met my amazing neighbor, Leslie (aka LL or Cheechette), outside for our morning “smoke break”. It does not always involve smoking anything, but we love taking fresh air and sunshine breaks together. She had already gotten out her favorite bowl to cut fresh salad greens for us to eat. I couldn’t wait to get inside, and I was able to tolerate standing long enough (and using the wheelchair a bit) to make a 6 egg white omelet full of tender, fresh, young greens. They were done when they hit the pan practically. And I only added 4 ingredients. Then I had leftover chicken curry that CB had made me the night before for lunch. Basically I’m spoiled and I eat like a king. There isn’t much that I like to eat that isn’t available to me. And next Saturday I have plans to hit the farmer’s market first thing. I can even use my food stamps to buy fresh veggies and fruit and even meat and other things. 

Finally, I got to take an awesome nap. Let’s just say that Chris’s first full-time work week took a log out of both of us, and after some much needed alone time we each slept for several hours. There’s no way I can pick just one picture so I’m attaching a bunch. Hopefully you can tell what they are of without captions because I’m too tired to add them. But you can always comment and ask a question and I’ll do my best to see it and answer it! Love to everyone reading this right now. You all keep me going, facing each day, and I can't thank you enough for that. 🌺😊