It’s the 20th Anniversary for Anita Blake and I’m not touring. I’d planned on it, but what I hadn’t planned on was getting sick for about three months. It started with my doctor thinking it would be a simple fix, and then that I needed a certain kind of medical specialist, but that wasn’t it. After two and a half months of crippling pain and other unpleasant symptoms that kept me pretty much either on the couch, or in bed, just trying to doze through it all, finally found the right medical specialist. One thing I learned from all this is that every doctor has their bias and are more likely to diagnose in certain areas, as opposed to other areas, and if its not in their area than you, as a patient, must be more proactive. It would take me far too long to finally say, enough, and help figure out what medical specialty I needed. But in a way it’s a crap shoot, they test scatter shot and hope they hit it, which is pretty frightening to realize, actually. The right doctor, at the right moment, with the right information, is a true life saver.
When we had to make plans to tour I was still very ill, and didn’t know what was wrong with me, so my publisher and I made the only decision we could. I’m better, and I thought well, maybe we can take a late event, or two, after the book comes out. Then I caught a cold virus, and had multiple migraines in a week, and realized I’d experienced this before, about a decade ago before I started allergy shots. I’ve missed three months of allergy shots. They won’t give them to you if you’re sick, because allergens are hard for your body to deal with, or you wouldn’t be allergic to them. The allergy doctors worry about making symptoms of any sickness worse, so I’m behind on my allergy meds. I’d forgotten how terrible my allergies were before the shots, but I’m remembering. A half hour outside in the woods equaled two hours of being sick once I got home, but with the shots I can go hiking again. The severity of my allergies is actually one of the factors that made me decide not to pursue my masters, and eventual goal of doctorate, in biology. Just think, if allergies hadn’t worsened exponentially in college I might not have been a writer, at all. I certainly wouldn’t have the career that I have, and we wouldn’t be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Anita Blake.