Above all shadows rides the sun. Let's just stare at the sun.

I've been delaying my blog postings out of a perfectionist desire to deliver nothing but good news regarding my health. Today was the day the realization that this was an absolutely stupid idea dawned on me. I went out of town this past weekend and was feeling quite good the day I left. Over the past few months I've been riding a bit of a roller coaster of minor health issues: colds and infections, some severely unpleasant treatment side effects, etc. So on Friday I thought, "I should write a post when I get home! Before something happens again and I end up with only mediocre news to deliver and feeling like that little cloud that follows people around in antidepressant commercials."

I swear I'm not trying to inspire this emotion and drive you all into the arms of Zoloft.

And then I woke up this morning with two very sore and moderately inflamed eyes. 

I have no explanation for why this happened. Things are definitely much much better for me now, but still a little unpredictable. Suffice it to say that I'm a bit tired of constantly reporting my symptoms. It's just, well, depressing! I don't like depressing. As proof, I will offer up the tidbit that my favorite Shakespearean play is As You Like it. You know, the one that the starts with a banishment and after a few disguises and some hanging of poetry on trees, ends with everyone getting married? Sometimes realism is overrated and you just want a reason to smile.

In a similar vein, my most beloved part of Lord of the Rings (the movie - this line was a rewording of the book) is when Sam says:

It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo, the ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end it's only a passing thing this shadow. Even darkness must pass.

Well, I like the part where they destroy the ring too... But you get the point. I like heartwarming things! It's time to start skipping the darkness and danger in my story. It's getting tedious and while Tolkien may have been able to lead readers through three really long books before the happy stuff, I am not he. I would rather focus on the funny, the ironic, and the happy parts of my tale - as was my original intention, though I got a bit lost along the way. It's guaranteed to be more fun for everyone and it also ensures that I won't feel like a constant bearer of gloom who then needs to hide from her blog in shame. I will, of course, provide updates if anything very awful happens - which it won't! I am much improved from where I was this time last year. Or, if anything very amazing happens - which it probably will! Because remission seems very very close!

So in honor of this restated theme, the description under my blog title is being edited from the old, "a fight against dry eye, cicatricial pemphigoid, and autoimmunity," to what it now reads.

As Frodo says, "that's what I like. It makes me laugh."

Me too Frodo. Me too. 



This post was inspired by a Ukrainian Orthodox Easter weekend full of far too much food and apparently, so much fun that my immune system got a little excited too.