I guess I’ll just lay this out here.  I do not like talking about this kind of stuff and I am not extremely comfortable writing this but I’m also a genuinely honest person who is getting pretty worn out composing half-truths for people about what’s going on with me.  If you’ve been reading you know that I was on antibiotics this winter that wrecked my GI.  The long-term consequences of that have been awful.  I’ve been in pain almost every single day since mid-December.  It’s a re-aggravation of a condition I developed three years ago when I was put on antidepressants and sleep medications which basically constipated me beyond belief and ravaged my insides, which I’ve been living with ever since.  I saw a specialist about a week and a half ago, who put me on Nifedipine, which is supposed to address what’s going on.  Unfortunately, this shit sucks.  I take it twice a day, and it makes me feel hot, lethargic, and lowers my blood pressure, which is already on the low side of normal so some days I go around feeling like I’m halfway to passing out.  These are all expected side effects, and I’ve been trying to function, but some days I can barely stand it; the feeling of blood vessels pressing their way out of my head and knowing any chance of regular exercise is at least a month away since I have so little initiative feeling this way.  All of this is compounded by the fact that after years of uncertainty – maybe this maybe that – it seems likely that I have IBS.  So there you go.  I know I will get better if I can just ride again with any kind of regularity.  But I see little to no chance of doing that on this medication.  So I’m cutting the dose in half, only going to take it at night for now, and see if I can regain some kind of ability to be active during the day again.  I need the medication to some degree because it could work and it is my absolute last chance of avoiding surgery that has risks I am not sure I would ever be willing to take.  But I can’t take this anymore.  I’m so sick of sitting here, feeling like I want to do something but physically just can’t bring myself to do it.  I’ve had such a hard year this year already and I need an outlet for it in the worst way because things aren’t getting any easier.  I can’t just sit here and be depressed.  It’s been like this for months.  I feel like I am losing almost every nugget of fitness I ever had and it’s amazing how much harder it is even to do basic tasks when you’re missing all this strength that used to back you up.  I’m tired of this.  All of this.  I’m bigger than my body gives me credit for and I will climb out of this fucking hole one way or another, if I have to start entering races just to get trounced inside of fifteen minutes or half an hour again and again, all summer long if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes.