[Isolde's Scrapbook] Flowers and Cobwebs

[Isolde Seibold]

Ah, hello!
If anyone's surprised by the theme and the brightness, don't be! Isolde will probably only ever have really dark templates to go on, like all death and crows and stuff like that (cobwebs, ya know), so I decided that I wanted at least the first (and perhaps only) post of this to be all colorful. Hence, flowers! ^_^

Anyways, my name's Shae (technically that's my middle name). I'm not certain what exactly I'm supposed to do with this scrapbook, but I figured if I thought up stuff to post (about myself, or Isolde, possibly Kyo) I'd put it here. So, without further ado...

Some music!
(Despite the flowery happiness of the colors here, the music is... not, exactly. Ah, well.)
I think I came across this band when I was either creating Isolde, or had just begun posting for her. I don't usually do musical associations with characters or assign them theme songs or anything; it wasn't until the last year or so that I become interested in music at all. But these three songs always reminded me of her, after that.

Hurricane by MS MR
Bones by MS MR
Dark Doo Wop by MS MR

I was just going to post them as mp3's but I couldn't figure out which sites worked with that, so... did links instead. >.>



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[Isolde Seibold]

Part I:

So yesterday night I was fleshing out Isolde's past a little in her character journal. I'm not quite certain what functions the journal will encompass in total (perhaps if --when-- she ever gets to writing poetry or taking notes on things --geology, construction, herbalism, cartography-- those will also be included in her journal's contents). Currently, I'm using it as a record of the people she knew best (loved best) in her past. I've decided she writes down bits of information on people she's met, especially if she thinks she won't see them again. Eventually PC friends and allies (enemies?) might end up in there, too. Really, it's a way to keep her from losing people completely. From forgetting those she's cared about most.

Anyways, yesterday night I finished an entry on her childhood family. She had two parents (a mother and father, like usual), and a whopping seven brothers (she was the third-youngest in the family and the only girl). I submitted it and didn't really think anything much more about it, until this morning when I realized that Mithryn is probably full of Isolde's distant descendants.

A little history: she was born in the year 363 AV (I've had to adjust this because I misread the lore the first time through; fortunately it doesn't affect Isolde's story line at all). The lore states that Mithryn was created approximately fifty years after Syliras, and Syliras is about 200 years old (though more like 205 nowadays). Based on this, Isolde would have been within the first generation of farming families in Mithryn.

Considering the amount of siblings she had, and the fact that likely at least half or more of them would have stayed in Mithryn to raise their own families and work the fields, it seems likely she has a ton of great-great-great-nephews and -nieces living there (or perhaps in Syliras) nowadays. Which, I think, was perhaps why, in a recent thread with Orin where he spoke of his ill-treatment by some of the families in Mithryn, she was so bothered by it. Maybe consciously she hasn't yet recognized that she still has some sort of family out there (not that they would accept her, considering her Nuit-ness), but I think she suspects it deep, deep down.

This is really interesting to me. Sometime I might go to the matchmakers to see if I could find some Mithryn-ers who might want to be related to a Nuit. ^_^

Part II:

I probably should have done a bit of a bio in my first scrapbook post but I didn't, so I'll do it here instead. Better late than never, I suppose.

Name: Shae (but you can call me caelei or Isolde or whatever you like).
Age: 21.
Location: A small inconsequential town called Sterling in IL. It's a rather dull place I'm afraid. If I could, I would move to SD; I have family there on my father's side and it's a lovely state. Or to CA, just because I've always wanted to go there... or to MA, because the Patriots (my football team) are near Boston.
Occupation: Currently nothing, sadly. I was studying to be an engineer and I'll probably pick that up again in the next few years, gods willing. I earned my AES in 2014 (which is pretty much a baby engineering degree based on two years of study), but unfortunately I've had this unidentified chronic illness for the last... 4 years or so. So I've been on break for a little while now.
Other: I have another PC named Kyo who's down near Riverfall. Kyo's much more difficult for me to write than Isolde (getting better though). I do really like him. I really love Kelvics.

My family consists of my parents and my two brothers and sister. Most of us in the family like writing, to some degree or another. Though not my dad. He's so terrible at spelling.

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[Isolde Seibold]

Sorry to my RP partners for not being around as much recently.

I realize I've been pretty lazy with posting for the last few days, maybe even weeks; it all sort of blurs together for me. I think it's been at least a week, maybe two.

Anyways, I'm going to take a quick break, say one more week, to try to get my head on straight. I'm really really sorry for the delays, so I'll post as soon as I can. If I can post earlier than the week deadline then I will.

Health Explanation :

The ennui I've been feeling has to do with my health. Just Friday I finally got a diagnosis for this mystery illness that has been plaguing me off and on for four years now. I have something called POTS-- not kidding, that's its name. Short for Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. (I'm not even going to mention the Grinch Syndrome I might have, although I guess it's too late for that now. My heart --or parts of my heart-- could be two sizes too small!)

Basically some of the automatic systems of my body don't work right. Any illness that includes the dysfunction of those systems is called dysautonomia. In my case, the dysautonomia affects my heart rate and digestion, though it might affect other things I don't yet know about.

What it boils down to is that changes in position --like going from sitting to standing-- are difficult for my body to process. My heart rate increases anywhere from 30 to 50 bpm just because I stand up. My blood pools in my legs and causes them to turn purplish because my veins don't constrict right. I assume that blood pooling is at least partially the cause of my chronic nausea; it's possible that not enough blood gets to my digestive organs when I consume something, causing them to throw a tantrum anytime I eat.

Good news is I got a new medication added to the list and I'm hoping it'll help me feel better. I'm also supposed to make changes to my diet and exercise and even wardrobe --compression socks anyone?-- that should alleviate symptoms. POTS isn't an illness that can be easily treated and done away with. Each patient is treated differently; there is no unified method and a lot of it is guess and check. But at least now I know --at least partially-- what I'm up against.

Health Rant :

I spent four years chasing a GI diagnosis because my primary symptom was nausea when I should have been seeing a neurologist or cardiologist like I am now. I've seen... er, four? At least four separate GI specialists (gastroenterologists) on multiple occasions, plus a rheumatologist thrown in for good measure. I choked down radioactive scrambled eggs for a gastric emptying study that was bust. I drank more than a bottle (16+ ounces) of this nasty cough-medicine-tasting stuff (a sort of contrast dye) to have a CAT scan done that showed nothing. I'd just like to interject here that it's hard enough for me to eat --or drink-- anything. Most of the time the tests I do make me even sicker. Heck, I had my gallbladder removed for no good reason, which, I might add, later caused bile to back up into my stomach. If you didn't know, bile is a lovely, basic, green liquid produced by the liver that is usually stored in the gallbladder-- now I take daily meds to keep the bile from building up.

Tests are expensive. Tests that keep coming back negative seem even more expensive because they seem like a waste. Especially when you begin to think that it's all in your head and you're not sick at all because the doctors can never find anything. I had a doctor tell me 'some people just have nausea' and I spent the rest of that appointment trying to hold back tears while he kept talking and talking. I had another doctor who was convinced I was anorexic because I couldn't eat. He thought I wouldn't eat because I'm female, slim, and young and that was enough, despite my not having significant weight loss. It's likely that due to his suspicions --which he wrote into my medical file-- I wasn't accepted into the Mayo Clinic when we appealed to them twice for help. I've read stories about people with POTS who went to Mayo and were diagnosed within four hours.

It only took me four years. Sometimes people ask me what I'm doing these days and I always smile and say 'nothing'. They're surprised I'm still sick.

I went to a pediatric cardiologist twice when I was in high school because they suspected I had an unrelated heart condition called Marfan's. I could have been diagnosed there, but my heart rate was only taken when I was sitting, not standing, so we never noticed any peculiarities.

I missed half of my junior year of high school because I was sick and I didn't know why. I got better, and then I got worse and I had to drop out of college. I can't work. I can't go to school. I've already taken all the classes I can from home; anything higher than the level I'm at with mathematics and physics can't be taken online as they require labs and in-class lectures by actual professors. I don't leave the house except to go to doctor's appointments. I haven't seen my friends in more than a year because they went away to school while I stayed home sick in bed. I use a wheelchair when I go to my appointments because if I don't I might get dizzy and fall on my head or throw up on someone's shoes.

Sometimes I go on facebook and wonder how anyone can complain of having a bad day because they spilled their coffee or because their phone isn't working. I know it's insensitive. Sometimes I feel stupid because I didn't realize how fundamental good health is until I became like this.

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[Isolde Seibold]

So it seems like I'm going to have to do the loser-ly (loser-ish?) thing and take a step back from Miz, perhaps indefinitely. There's a lot of stuff going on in my life right now and not a lot of it is good. It's sad but my health has actually gotten worse since I posted that nonsense up above. All the medications my doctor gave me came with some pretty unpleasant side effects and I've been having to weigh the pros and cons of taking them. If I want my heart rate lowered into an acceptable range I've got to give up being able to stand without feeling like I'm going to fall on my head, that sort of thing. Choices choices!

((OOCly --or whatever, I don't even know what to call it-- I'm sorry for how bitter I probably sound. I know it's happening but I can't make it stop.))

Anyways really sorry to my threading partners for both Kyo and Isolde. I think I'll have to drop Isolde completely. Not certain about Kyo. My computer also just gave up and died so there's that too, and unfortunately that bad luck (or bad consumerism?) affects more than just me.

Thank you to everyone who has RP'd and those who have been very understanding while I continue to suck. If you want to PM and ask about finishing threads or at least coming up with some reason why my characters disappeared we can give it a go, but like I said I don't really have a computer now anymore, and I don't know how long it'll take for me to get a new one. Probably a while, at least.

Thanks again.

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