Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, Brave New World, Connections, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Health, Humor, Machado-Joseph, New Horizons, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Society | Tags: art, arthritis, ataxia, balance, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, fasciculation, genetics, guns, health, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, Machado-Joseph Disease, medicine, MJD, MMJ, neurology, neuromuscular disease, pain, peripheral neuropathy, SCA3, Science Fiction, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, St. Cybi's Well, travel, vertigo, Wikipedia
For about 30 years, I’ve been a conservator of rare books & documents.
That came to an end yesterday when I met with my last institutional client and explained that I need to retire officially as a practicing conservator. Since they follow my blog posts and social media presence, this did not come as a surprise.
As I was driving home from the meeting, I was working through a fairly predictable mix of emotions. Guilt, because I know that this means that important works in their collection won’t get the treatment they need anytime soon. Relief, because now I won’t worry about accidentally damaging some important/valuable book or document. Loss, because my career was now over. Pride, because I know that I have done good work over the years, and made a real difference. And disorientation, because for some 30 years a big part of my identity was being a Book Conservator in private practice — something almost as rare as many of the items I have worked on over the last four decades.
I think anyone who reaches retirement age probably has some mixed emotions about actually retiring. But for most people, they’re ready to retire — to live life on their own terms, to travel, to just get out of the office, to get away from annoying co-workers.
The problem is, I wasn’t ready to retire. And I had already arranged my life so that I lived it largely on my own terms. I’ve traveled. I didn’t have an office I had to go to. I don’t have co-workers who annoy me. I had honestly expected that I would continue to do conservation work until old age claimed me, since the work is typically not strenuous.
MJD had other ideas, as I’ve noted.
So, officially, I am no longer a Book Conservator.
Yes, I am still many other things. An artist. A writer. A cool, handsome guy who is just 64 and certain that he’s still a babe magnet.
OK, maybe not that last one.
But the point remains that there are still many facets of my identity that remain, even though I have of necessity set aside the title “Book Conservator”.
I suppose “Retired Book Conservator” still sounds pretty cool.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Amazon, Connections, Feedback, General Musings, Kindle, Marketing, Predictions, Preparedness, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff | Tags: Alzheimer's, Amazon, BBC, care-giving, caregiving, Communion of Dreams, direct publishing, Her Final Year, Kickstarter, mathematics, More or Less, Science Fiction, St. Cybi's Well, statistics, writing
This past weekend a broadcast of the BBC show/podcast “More or Less” caught my ear, as it was discussing the economics of conventional trade publishing. I would encourage listening to the entire thing (about 9 minutes), but the basics are:
- Of about 50,000 new titles published in a year, just 0.4% will sell more than 100,000 copies
- To ‘break even’, a title needs to sell about 5,000 copies
- Some 86% of all titles sell fewer than 5,000 copies
- Something like 15% sell fewer than a dozen copies
Whoa.
I knew the numbers weren’t good, and that I had been relatively successful with self-publishing my own books (after years of trying to land a conventional publishing deal), but I had no idea that they were that dismal.
For perspective, all three of my books broke that 5,000 threshold the first year that they were available. And two went on to break it again the second year. Total downloads (ballpark numbers) for each of my books so far:
- Communion of Dreams: in excess of 50,000 downloads from Amazon, with another ~25,000 downloads of the prior pdf before that
- Her Final Year: in excess of 11,000 downloads from Amazon
- St Cybi’s Well: in excess of 9,000 downloads from Amazon
I’ve been mildly disappointed in the performance of St Cybi’s Well, but that is largely in comparison to Communion of Dreams, which was published a decade earlier (and which has continued to see strong sales/downloads each year). This kind of puts that into perspective.
One thing I want to mention: free downloads. Yeah, that skews the numbers a bit, but not as much as you might think for the two novels. For those, free downloads account for about 15% of SCW and about 20% of CoD totals. HFY saw a much larger percentage of free downloads, but that was because we saw the book more as a public service to other care-givers than a moneypot.
Oh, and “best seller”? Other info I’ve seen indicates that about 50,000 copies is typically considered a best seller in the trade publication industry. Now, that’s for one-year sales, not cumulative sales over a decade. But still, it makes me feel pretty good about how CoD has done.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Book Conservation, Brave New World, Connections, Feedback, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Guns, Health, Machado-Joseph, Predictions, Preparedness, RKBA, Science Fiction, Travel, Writing stuff, YouTube | Tags: art, arthritis, ataxia, balance, black powder, blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Communion of Dreams, fasciculation, genetics, guns, health, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, Liberal Gun Club, Machado-Joseph Disease, medicine, MJD, MMJ, neurology, neuromuscular disease, pain, peripheral neuropathy, SCA3, Science Fiction, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, St. Cybi's Well, travel, Utah, vertigo, wabi-sabi, Wikipedia, www youtube
Recently I drove out to Las Vegas, for the first post-Covid national meeting of the Liberal Gun Club (I can be seen at several points in the video, wearing a red & white flannel shirt). It’s a drive I’ve made previously in two days (about 12 hours each day), but I decided that it would be wise for me to split it up into three days each way, to better reduce my stress and better accommodate the unpredictable episodes of MJD symptoms (since I didn’t want to take any of the painkillers or MMJ stuff that help me manage those episodes while I was driving).
It was a good decision. When I had an flair-up of symptoms, I knew that I could take a break without feeling a lot of time-pressure.
And it gave me more time to think.
To think about this past year, and where I’ve found myself. To think about the LGC event (particularly after it was over, and I could reflect upon what happened there). To think about the near-term future.
As I noted yesterday (and in this series of MJD-related blog posts generally), it’s been a challenging year. And there’s nothing like going naked (in the sense of not taking any meds) for a prolonged period of time to show you, honestly and clearly, what your real condition actually is.
Mine isn’t bad. But it is perhaps a lot worse than I had realized, in my day-to-day life. That’s because being able to take things that help manage it means that I can largely ignore the symptoms. Without those meds, though, the truth tends to be a little sharper edged (as is the pain). While teaching a black powder workshop I had hand spasms that were so bad I couldn’t hold onto the gun I was using at the time, let alone manage to load it. So much for the idea that being focused on a given task (which I was) would be enough to set aside that symptom. I verbally walked my students through the process, and we got on the other side of it fine. But it was a sobering moment.
A moment that drove home the idea that it was time for me to make some changes. Specifically, that it is time for me to pretty much completely retire from conservation work. As I noted in this blog post last May:
As a conservator, I can’t afford to celebrate my mistakes. There will of necessity come a time when I need to stop doing conservation work, out of respect for the items entrusted to my care. That time is rapidly approaching; indeed, it may already be here.
I think I crossed that line sometime this summer. So the time has come for me to (mostly) stop doing conservation work altogether, at least in terms of being hands-on.
That’s a big change for me. I’ve largely defined myself as being a book conservator for 30 years.
* * *
Western Utah is stunning. But also bleak. And more than a little alien to my Midwestern eye.
I think those vistas, and the mental space I was in on my drive home, helped me realize something else.
That I’m ready to start writing a sequel to Communion of Dreams.
I hesitate even mentioning this, since I had so many people after me about the long delays in writing St Cybi’s Well. But I decided to share it to help offset the seemingly ‘bad’ news that I need to retire as a conservator.
So here’s the deal: don’t ask how it is going, or when I expect it to be done. I’m at the very beginning of the whole process, and it is likely to take years. I may occasionally mention things about it. Or not. But asking me about it is not going to get any additional information beyond what I volunteer, and will just annoy me. You can wish me well with the writing, but leave it at that, OK?
Thanks.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, Health, Machado-Joseph, Predictions, Preparedness | Tags: arthritis, ataxia, balance, blogging, genetics, health, jim downey, Machado-Joseph Disease, MJD, neurology, neuromuscular disease, pain, peripheral neuropathy, self care, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, vertigo, Wikipedia
As I’ve mentioned, I’m in a long-term project to repair and repaint our 1883 historic home. Most days I put in several hours of work on it, according to what my symptoms allow.
The pic above was from yesterday, just as I was getting to work on painting the ceiling of our large carport. The six-foot stepladder is sufficient for this chore, though not ideal — I need to hold onto the roller pan or paint bucket while I work above my head. Well, just as I was getting started, I went up the ladder … and promptly dropped the roller pan. It just slipped out of my hand.
Now, like everyone, I’m occasionally clumsy. Always have been. And I’ve made bigger messes than that shown.
But in the past, my clumsiness has always been related to some other factor. I was distracted. Or I was doing something I knew was marginally safe/balanced. I’d drank too much. I had a migraine. I hadn’t slept. Et cetera.
Not this time. I felt fine. I’d had a good morning, getting in my walk and exercises. I’d had breakfast, and was sufficiently caffeinated. I’d set up everything properly to paint, and the ladder was stable. There were no unusual or unpredictable factors at play.
Except MJD.
And that was enough. My hand … just let go.
As I picked up the roller and tray, and cleaned up the mess, I was pissed off. And feeling very, very fragile. It was a rude reminder that I have a disease I can’t control. All I can do is manage the symptoms to the best of my ability.
In the end, it was just an hour or so delay before I got to painting. And a lesson in not taking things for granted I have always taken for granted.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Connections, General Musings, Health, Machado-Joseph, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Society, Survival | Tags: arthritis, ataxia, balance, blogging, cannabis, codeine, dystonia, genetics, health, jim downey, Machado-Joseph Disease, marijuana, medicine, MJD, MMJ, neurology, neuromuscular disease, pain, peripheral neuropathy, restless leg syndrome, RLS, SCA3, science, self care, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, Tramadol, Tylenol 3, vertigo, Wikipedia
This morning I picked up my monthly meds. Basically, the same set I have been taking for almost a decade.
And as I was going through and organizing things, I realized something interesting: I’m taking *way* less of my opioids (Tramadol and Tylenol #3) now, thanks to my Medical Marijuana.
The growing MJD symptoms had started cutting into my small reserve of the opioids which had been more or less stable for years. I mentioned this in one of my first posts about MJD:
But of course, being aware of — even moreso paying attention to — more pain is, well, painful. Distracting. Annoying. So in terms of my perception, my ambient pain levels have gone up significantly in the last few weeks. I noticed recently that my use of my prescription pain meds (Tramadol, Tylenol 3 with codeine) that I’ve been on for about a decade for an intercostal tear has ticked up recently. Now, that happens, particularly when I am doing some strenuous exercise/project. There’s a sort-of natural ebb & flow to it through the year, with some months being a little higher usage, some being a little lower usage. But since we finished installing a new stamped copper ceiling in the kitchen, I haven’t been engaged in anything very physically demanding. That was six weeks ago, and I should have reverted to something closer to baseline. I haven’t.
By the time I got my MMJ card two months ago, I had pretty much used up the small reserve I had. That was a little nervous-making, since I really didn’t want to increase either the power or amount of opioids I took.
Well, in just two months of having access to MMJ, and about a month of understanding how I can best use it for my needs, things have changed. A lot. Like, I’m now taking half the amount of opioids I was (same for alcohol intake). In this short time I have already replenished my reserve. I could probably cut that further, but I’m still just using the MMJ products in the evening (very mild dosages) and overnight (mild dosages).
This disease, and the version I have, is progressive. With luck, however, I should be able to manage the symptoms, and particularly the annoying pain issues, without increasing my intake of opioids for a while. We’ll see — it’s all about learning how to manage things.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Health, Humor, Machado-Joseph, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Survival | Tags: arthritis, ataxia, balance, blogging, cannabis, CTE, dystonia, genetics, health, humor, jim downey, Machado-Joseph Disease, marijuana, medicine, MJD, National Organization of Rare Diseases, neurology, neuromuscular disease, NORD, pain, peripheral neuropathy, restless leg syndrome, SCA3, science, self care, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, testing, vertigo, Wikipedia
Eight weeks.
8
Which, on its side, helpfully looks like the infinity symbol: ∞.
Because while it’s been eight weeks since my blood sample was drawn for the genetic testing for MJD, it feels like I’ve been waiting an eternity for the results.
Of course, it took a full month for the Neurology Clinic at the local large-institution university hospital which shall remain nameless to order the test.
And I waited two months before that to get in to see those neurologists, because I thought I needed a referral.
And I waited three months before that in order to get in to see my GP in order to explain why I wanted the referral.
Yeah, count back, and that means I have been waiting all this year in order to get a diagnosis for the disease I’m reasonably certain I have. Little wonder that NORD (the National Organization of Rare Diseases) says that typically, a correct diagnosis for someone with a rare disease (such as MJD) will take upwards of five years. I’m already most of a year in, and I even KNOW the disease actually runs in my family. Imagine what it would be like if it was just a random mystery disease, and we had to start from scratch to determine what was going on.
>sigh<
Yes, it’s frustrating. Friends and family keep asking (just being supportive, not annoying), and I keep telling them the same thing: no results yet.
Meanwhile, I continue to just deal with the symptoms as best I can. And things do continue to evolve. Balance issues are now fairly routine. Hand & feet pain and Restless Leg/Arm Syndrome less so, but seem to be happening more often. And I’ve started to experience occasional vision difficulties (focus/double vision problems) that I can usually ‘reset’ by changing my point of focus to something far away, then shift back to a closer item. It’s not an actual double image, but rather the sort of thing you experience when trying to look through the wrong part of progressive lenses, then shift your vision so things slide back into focus.
The good news is that the MMJ does help most of these symptoms quickly, and I have cut my mild opioid intake by about 50% since I figured out what worked for me.
Meanwhile, I wait. I check to see whether the results have been posted to my account on the diagnostics site or my patient portal for the local large-institution university hospital which shall remain nameless. And I get on with life.
While waiting.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Health, Machado-Joseph, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Society, Survival | Tags: ataxia, balance, blogging, genetics, giardiasis, health, humor, jim downey, Machado-Joseph Disease, medicine, MJD, neurology, neuromuscular disease, pain, peripheral neuropathy, restless leg syndrome, SCA3, science, self care, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, testing, vertigo, Wikipedia
I just spent about 20 minutes sitting on a toilet. And so far this morning, a total of about an hour doing that.
TMI? Yeah, sorry. But I mention it because it has demonstrated a truth of which I was only partially cognizant of previously: there is no immunity from other illness when you have a chronic disease.
I mean, I knew this, but until you live with it, it’s not something you think about a lot.
See, a couple of weeks ago I started to notice a pattern of gut-grumbles I don’t normally experience. And about ten days ago it resolved into something I thought I recognized: giardiasis. Twenty+ years ago I had a bout of this, likely picked up from tainted water on a camping trip. Where I got it this time, I have no idea.
But after recognizing the symptoms, I contacted my GP clinic and got in to see a doc. Who did the necessary exam, discussed options with me, ordered the appropriate tests, and prescribed a powerful antibiotic which is the standard treatment for giardiasis, and which cured me the last time. I’m now in day 7 of that treatment, and while there are *some* indications it is working, well, I still wind up sitting on the toilet with nasty spasms every 6-8 hours or so, unless I really load up on OTC anti-diarrheal treatments. Even so, I don’t dare get very far from a bathroom for very long.
Of course, through all of this, I am still experiencing the random rotation of MJD symptoms. Joy. Now I have TWO reasons to compulsively check my health/testing accounts: to see if the MJD test results are in, and to get confirmation of the giardiasis. Because yeah, even though tomorrow will be seven weeks since the genetic test samples were collected, I’m still waiting on those results.
No one who has lived with a chronic disease will find any of this surprising. They know that it just goes with the territory. Hope you never have an opportunity to experience it for yourself.
Me, I’m going to take some pro-biotics and get a nap. Maybe the test results will be in after.
Jim Downey
Edited to add several hours later:
Spoke with my GP’s office. Turns out I did have giardia, but happily there was no sign of c. diff, which was a possible concern. So after a week of taking Flagyl, I can now stop that (that alone was probably part of the ongoing spasms & diarrhea) and work to get my system working normally again. That means increasing my probiotics, getting back to normal eating habits (with my relatively high fiber diet), and taking it easy just to let my body recover.
So, no news yet on the MJD test, but at least this other problem should resolve in the coming days.
JD
Filed under: Connections, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Health, Humor, Machado-Joseph, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Survival, tech | Tags: arthritis, ataxia, balance, blogging, cannabis, CTE, dystonia, genetics, health, humor, jim downey, Machado-Joseph Disease, marijuana, medicine, MJD, National Organization of Rare Diseases, neurology, neuromuscular disease, NORD, pain, peripheral neuropathy, restless leg syndrome, SCA3, science, self care, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, testing, vertigo, Wikipedia
Tomorrow will be five weeks since the blood draw for my MJD genetic test.
I just checked (for the fifth time so far today), and neither my patient portal for the Neurology Clinic at the local large-institution university hospital which shall remain nameless now the diagnostics lab that handled the test has results back yet.
>sigh<
I don’t really have much to say that I didn’t say two weeks ago in this post, other than the fact that it’s been two more weeks of waiting. Everything there still applies.
But I wanted to whine a bit.
Not that it will do any good, other than allowing me to vent my spleen.
Which sometimes is enough.
Barely.
Jim Downey
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Ballistics, Connections, General Musings, Guns, Humor, movies, Predictions, tech | Tags: ballistics, BBTI, black powder, blogging, firearms, guns, jim downey
[For the AI’s own inscrutable reasons, Facebook considers my ballistics blog “spam”. Unable to get it resolved, I’m going to post partial info about new blog posts over there, here, so people can link it off FB. Please just ignore if shooting stuff isn’t of interest.]
Last week I posted about a little Liegi derringer that I finished and did a laser design on. Well, over the weekend I got together with the BBTI gang and, among other things, had a chance to shoot and chrono the little gun.
Here’s a short slo-mo vid of shooting the Liegi:
[The entire post with pics of shooting this little gun can be found here.]
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, Failure, Feedback, General Musings, Genetic Testing, Health, Humor, Machado-Joseph, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Survival | Tags: arthritis, ataxia, balance, blogging, cannabis, CTE, dystonia, genetics, health, humor, jim downey, Machado-Joseph Disease, marijuana, medicine, MJD, National Organization of Rare Diseases, neurology, neuromuscular disease, NORD, pain, peripheral neuropathy, restless leg syndrome, SCA3, science, self care, spinocerebellar ataxia type 3, testing, vertigo, Wikipedia
It’s now been three weeks since my blood samples got to the testing lab to do the genetic test for MJD.
And I’ve just checked, for the fourth or fifth time today, to see whether the results have been posted to my account on the diagnostics site. They haven’t.
I’ll check a few more times today. And though it’s unlikely that the results would be updated over the weekend, I’ll probably check several more times tomorrow and again on Sunday.
Not that I’m obsessing, or anything.
No, really.
It’s just that in an era when I have literally a dozen 15-minute tests for Covid in my bathroom, when a standard blood panel workup will be done in a couple of days, and when almost any other test results I can think of would be available in a week or so, waiting three weeks seems … excessive.
NORD (the National Organization of Rare Diseases) says that typically, a correct diagnosis for someone with a rare disease (such as MJD) will take upwards of five years. So I suppose I should just consider myself lucky that I know what to look for, and to have the resources to push for the test and get it ordered. A few weeks of waiting for the results are, in the big picture, a minor annoyance. But still, it *is* an annoyance.
Several friends have asked me what the next step is, once I get the results.
That depends on what the results are, of course.
If the genetic test shows that I fall in the zone of either possibly developing MJD (an intermediate number of CAG nucleotide repeats in the relevant DNA segment) or over the threshold considered to be definitive for MJD, then I’ll find a local neurologist who will be willing to work with me to monitor and manage the disease. No, there’s no way in hell I’m going back to the Neurology Clinic for the local large-institution university hospital which shall remain nameless, if I can avoid it.
If the test comes back and rules out MJD (I consider this unlikely, but it is possible), then I need to think about what to do. I just turned 64, so a year from now I’ll qualify for Medicare, and it might make sense to just wait until I have that before starting a series of additional neurological tests. Particularly since if I don’t have MJD, there’s really only one other thing that would explain my symptoms over the last year: CTE. That’s a diagnosis that can only be made during an autopsy, and I’m not ready for THAT test just yet, thanks.
Either way, I’ll probably continue to just manage my symptoms as best as I can, and get on with life. I’ve now experimented with enough different MMJ products to have a handle on what helps and what doesn’t, related to method of ingestion and dosage. Turns out that smoking/vaping has little or no benefit for me in dosages low enough to not trigger all my MJD symptoms, but both tinctures and edibles do have some therapeutic benefits. Small dosage edibles help me sleep longer, with less use of opioid Rx meds. And a mild dosage of tincture seems to very quickly stop Restless Leg/Arm Syndrome (as a friend said, most people don’t understand just how miserable RLS can be). Just figuring out these two things has made a significant difference in my day-to-day life already. And my balance & flexibility exercises continue to help with those issues.
Just checked: still no results posted.
>sigh<
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 