Hiatus For Now: Phoenix and OHS Both · 5:46pm February 29th
Hello my lovely readers,
I'll keep this short so I don't take up much of your time. After some careful thinking, I have decided to put both of my ongoing stories on hiatus again, pending a resolution of my current health issues. Recently I mentioned a probable diagnosis of fibromyalgia, something that has now been confirmed by several doctors. Unfortunately the lack of energy and chronic pain effects this has had has put a major damper on my ability to be creative, and so as not to waste your time and/or leave you all hanging, I have decided to put all current stories on hiatus.
I want to stress this is a temporary pause, and not a cancellation. I intend to manage my health issues, find a way to return to some form of normalcy, and resume when I am able. But I also don't want to leave everyone wondering when the next update will come, and continue to make posts promising something might be right around the corner when it won't be.
Thank you for your support, everyone, and with any luck I'll return before too long. And I'll try to keep you posted.
EDIT: I am also no longer taking commissions for the time being, just to be clear.
Get better first :) We'll still be here to read when you pick it up again in your own time.
Take all the time you need! I hope you feel better soon.
take your time ,,health is always number 1.
Hope you feel better soon
As editor on Phoenix, I'm 110% onboard with this. I know we all love our space-faring ponies, but I love health and well being even more. So focus on you, Dewdrops! We got your back out here.
Good luck!
Get well soon!
I hope you get well soon at that your you find effective treatment for your fibromyalgia.
I just want to say that I appreciate all of your hard work and great stories that you have provided us good luck.
Health always comes first
Get well soon
Take your time and sort things out. I was the same way when I was diagnosed with kidney disease. It felt like my world was crashing down. Two years on, I've found a new balance. I have less time to myself, but I treasure the time I do have more. It gets easier over time. Just take it slow.
Health first, get well soon
Unfortunately we're still trapped in a time where such conditions can't be cured instantly with the push of a hypospray. Take time to get better, pushing yourself to write for our sakes will only result in you coming to dislike it, and I, for one certainly hope you continue to log Sunset & Twilight's journey through the Final Frontier for a long time to come
(also the other thing too I guess but I haven't read that one yet) anyway focus on feeling better, we'll still all be here when you get back 
We'll be here waiting~
Ready when you are!
I'm here for you, Dewdrops. When you do post again, I'll be overjoyed. Until then, I'll be patient.
I think that line goes for many of us.
*hugs with warmth
Get healthy, Dewdrops.
We’ll be here when you get back.
Focus on your wellbeing first and foremost.
A cautionary note about fibromyalgia: It isn't one single disease. It's a term people use for a set of symptoms. And the symptoms are the same as for Lyme disease, which is more-common than (any other kind of) fibromyalgia. (I think it doesn't make sense to call fibromyalgia a separate disease from Lyme, because "fibromyalgia" is just a word for a set of symptoms, and they're the same symptoms as Lyme, making Lyme one specific and well-known etiology for fibromyalgia.)
I think doctors prefer to diagnose fibromyalgia rather than Lyme because they know that if they tell you you have Lyme, you'll want antibiotics; and doctors hate to prescribe long-term antibiotics, because they're very likely to have their licenses revoked for doing so.
You can get tested for Lyme, but all of the tests are extremely unreliable. Doctors will usually only give you the ELISA or Western blot tests, which have a false-negative rate just under 50%. The PCR test has no false positives unless the lab is contaminated, but has a false-negative rate which depends entirely on where the bacteria is in your body. Doctors are under the impression that a negative PCR test is a definitive "no"; but this is completely wrong in the case of Lyme, because the Borellia bacteria burrows into cells and is invisible unless you get a tissue sample of those cells--which is difficult and dangerous in the case of Lyme, which lives in heart, brain, and cartilage.
Having the symptoms of Lyme is a more-reliable test than any existing laboratory test. Lab tests often give false negatives, especially if you've had the disease more than a month, and/or if you've taken any antibiotics effective on gram-negative bacteria. Because of this, if I had Lyme symptoms, I wouldn't even bother with the Lyme tests, because I wouldn't believe them even if they came back negative. I'd immediately buy black-market amoxicillin and doxycycline and try each for one week at the usual dose (see here). If that doesn't have dramatic effects within one week, it isn't Lyme. You theoretically don't need to adjust the dose because the bacteria in you initially is all in the blood, and most people have about the same amount of blood (tho if you've had it for a long time, it will have gone into your heart, brain, and cartilage.)
I say "black market" because doctors would ABSOLUTELY NOT prescribe you antibiotics without a positive Lyme test, bcoz they're worried, partly about worsening antibiotic resistance, but mostly about losing their licenses. As far as antibiotic resistance, amoxicillin is used every day, indiscriminately, in the feed of cattle who aren't even sick, to make them grow larger. It is a crime to deny Lyme victims amoxicillin when about (order-of-magnitude guess) 6000 times as much amox is used on cattle as on Lyme patients (1 to 10 million cattle treated daily at 10 times the dose, vs 300,000 Lyme patients treated for a median of 1 week).
There is a powerful and very real conspiracy against treating Lyme effectively. I don't understand why--I suspect it's because the original researchers who discovered Lyme hold the patents on the immunological tests, and the conflict is really over the effectiveness of immunological tests. (The immunological tests don't work at all for chronic Lyme, because the bacteria have then been cleared from the blood, which is what is drawn for those tests, and because they may also give a false positive due to a previous infection for which antibodies still exist.) But the attorney general of Connecticut issued a ruling about 20 years ago against the Infectious Disease Society of America, saying their Lyme policies were set by a corrupt review panel which was deliberately stacked to give the desired outcome and deliberately ignored all evidence to the contrary. They ordered IDSA to change its recommendations in 2006, and IDSA still hasn't done so. The whole thing has blown over, and the attorney general's report no longer exists; it seems to have been destroyed after a change of administration. You can find a brief report on the report here, and I have the AG's press release somewhere. Unfortunately they never published or posted the report; it was an internal document. That's how things often went before government agencies got web-wise. And I became absolutely certain the conspiracy was real when I read Gary Wormser's rebuttal to the Conn. AG in a medical journal, because it was full of deliberate evasions which would be obvious to anyone who'd read the AG's press release.
The CDC has finally changed their website, which used to say that people claiming to have long-term Lyme were crazy and science proved no such thing exists, to say "The state of the science relating to persistent symptoms associated with Lyme disease is limited, emerging, and unsettled."
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I should add: There are a lot of people advertising herbal remedies for fibromyalgia, and for Lyme specifically. These can be worthwhile if you don't have Lyme, or can't get antibiotics (but you always can if you try hard enough). But do not believe the claims that herbal remedies are "safer" or anywhere near as effective as antibiotics. The herbal remedies are more-dangerous, because nobody's studied these herbs much and they sometimes interact with medications; and they're much, much, much less-effective than antibiotics. Don't be one of these "but antibiotics aren't natural" people. For one thing, they are natural; but more to the point, they work, while herbals basically don't. Taking herbs for Lyme is like taking aspirin for a broken leg. It helps, a little, but it's not a cure.
It was two weeks ago that I had the opportunity to read your two stories inspired by Danganronpa, I joined a little late to be able to make theories about the culprits and the mastermind jajajaja
They are extremely deep and intriguing stories, I had never before stopped to read the same chapter several times just to find out if I had overlooked any clue, I totally admire the dedication you are putting into "Super Danganronpa 2: On Harmony's Shores" and also the art is a detail that makes this story stand out above many others. Take all the time you need to recover, mental and physical health come first. Good luck