Here I am again...

A lot has happened.
There is still a lot that I haven't processed.
I have lost a fair amount of weight, so that is promising.
Most of that comes from walking. I walk a lot. The past few weeks we have had weather consistently abobe 93 degrees F, so I haven't walked QUITE as much, but still as much as I can.
Feel still hurt like hell, but they function, for the most part, so that's good.
The doc who says I need surgery for my shattered sesamoid has not brought it up again, and at this point, I have dealt with the pain for so long that I wonder if it may be best to just "grin and bear it" for now.

My retinas are stable! Just had a check up about a week ago!

Kidneys are improving! Doc walked in a couple of weeks ago and said "What the heck have you been doing!? You're healing! This is great!" because my Creatinine went from 1.7 to 1.4 or something like that.

Diabetes is improving. Got the A1c to and stabled at 7.3, which is amazing.

Then my pump malfunctioned, and I wound up in diabetic keto acidosis (DKA), dehydrated, and with a creatinine level of 2.1  Luckily, I didn't lose consciousness at all, and I made it to the hospital as the doc told me to, and outside of a little issue with the IV, I was able to be treated and released in not TOO long of a timespan. The issue with the IV though- that was messy. I was laughing about it though. That poor nurse! It TOTALLY wasn't her fault!
I am a hard stick to begin with- that is putting it mildly. When severely dehydrated? Pretty dang close to impossible. This woman stuck me so many times, and she kept apologizing and I kept telling her not to worry about it, I am a hard stick, yadda yadda and just remaining as calm as possible. my thing is that I am basically fine- as long as I don't LOOK.
Well, all of a sudden, I feel a little drop, and the nurse says "Oh, you're a bleeder, huh?" and I said "Huh?" and turned around....OOPS! When I turned around, I saw this:

Yup. It is a lot more than it looks like. This was taken after I'd been cleaned up a bit, but you get the basic idea. The blood took up almost half of my shorts. It went through to my underwear and my skin, and around to the backside.  Apparently, they got a new type of tubing in the ED, and they had a tendency for the caps to pop off, which this one did, resulting in lots of blood. They went and got me some surgery scrubs so I didn't have to lie  there/leave covered in blood.
That poor woman was beside herself though. I told her over and over that it was okay and that "shit happens and clothing can be washed" so not to worry about it. I do hope that eventually, it sank in.

So I was without my pump for 4 days until the replacement arrived, and taking inhections never got back to "working" in that time frame, so my sugars were a bit high...but manageable, thankfully. I have been back on the pump for 2 weeks or so now and everything is basically back to normal.

Unless you count the debilitating ear, nose, and throat pain that I have been having, and is getting progressively worse over the past month or two. Right now, I am on a soft food/primarily liquid diet because I can not swallow very much/very well. It is very painful, and swollen.
The ENT doc thinks I may have Sjorgren's Syndrome, so I need to have some tests done.
The also said that acid reflux and TMJ are making my pain worse, and that I have Proliferative Verrocous Leukoplakia, so that sounds like fun.... more tests on the not-too-distant horizon, I am sure.
I had never even HEARD of any of these things til yesterday. I am overwhelmed and scared, but hoping for the best!