Some of you who have been following my blog for a while know that I am a huge fan of Murderbot.
Like, I try to channel Murderbot whenever possible. Murderbot struggles with social situations. Murderbot is painfully aware that he is not like other constructs and absolutely knows that he is not a human. He pretty much is unique in most settings. (If he was a human, you might consider him a zebra). Murderbot is a total bad ass; often terrified, roiling with self-doubt and uncertainty, he takes action to protect what is important, and keeps moving forward. There might be some violence and murdering, but he gets the job done. He also watches media entertainment whenever possible. His favorite is a serial called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Do I have a Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon tee shirt? Umm… yeah.
That’s why when I finally recovered from my injuries (car wreck) enough to drive last January (2025), I put on a Murderbot audiobook, opened up the sunroof, and placed my emotional support chicken on the passenger seat next to me. I can do this, I told myself! I did it, channeling Murderbot every single time I stepped into the car again until I had moved past the trauma and was a confident driver again.
That was how the year 2025 started. I still listen to one of the audiobooks in The Murderbot Diaries series every single time I go out in the car. The last year was just epic in its awfulness. It was difficult on all fronts, and it felt like I just couldn’t catch a break all year long.
My scleroderma flared with new, significant complications that just kept coming. I had tendonitis for months. I developed bacterial overgrowth in my GI tract (SIBO) that stole my energy as I steadily lost weight for months. My cat almost died. My sister died. My son died. I had a serious fall and caught covid at the emergency room. In the aftermath of my covid infection, I developed dysautonomia and new cardiac symptoms that kept me close to home and on oxygen more days than I wanted to admit to. For a couple of weeks, I mostly stayed in bed and on oxygen as moving around just a little caused dizziness and chest discomfort. Did I read Murderbot while I was bed bound? Of course I did. Finally, as 2025 came to a close, I realized that most of those symptoms were much better and that my heart was settling down.
There is a media serial mentioned in one of the Murderbot books called Cruel Romance Personage: the title, an approximate translation from an ancient language, puts Murderbot off so much he has never watched it. One day I realized what a correct translation would be. Cruel Romance Personage would be more correctly called… Heartbreaker. That is the perfect description of 2025: Heartbreaker.
I finally got into the office to see my cardiologist last Monday. We talked about new treatment options. We talked about quality of life decisions within the context of a fatal health condition (PAH). We talked about resiliency. I asked if he thought that my heart had been damaged by my covid infection. Probably not, in his opinion, since I had recovered. The more likely scenario was that I had sustained heart damage from Broken Heart Syndrome, and I am now well on the way to recovery. I have follow-up testing in a couple of weeks.
Of course. How on point for 2025.
I’m supposed to avoid stress. (Ha. Are you listening, 2026?) What am I doing with my time? I’m knitting, reading, and weaving of course. I’m learning new things, I’m picking up new causes. I’m producing new things. I am moving forward.
Goodbye, 2025. You were a Heartbreaker.
And I am still here. Bring it, 2026! Let’s go!!
Yarn, Books & Roses 
Good grief! You wrote about all those different things but they were spread out through the year. Seeing them all together is pretty mind- blowing. And yet here you are. A study in perseverance for us all.
Yep. It was a year.
It really was pretty extreme, wasn’t it!
Sorry to hear you had such a crappy year!!! (I can definitely relate. 2025 was very much Not My Year.)
And thanks for the book recommendation! I love it when you find that book (or book series) that’s *yours* and you relate to so much and is a comfort during hard times. It sounds like Murderbot is that series for you. 🙂 I haven’t read it yet, but you’re making me want to! Admittedly, I don’t need yet another book on my to-read list, but I don’t care, I’m adding it! 😀
For me, *my* book is Jane Eyre. I used to read it once a year. Unfortunately, I stopped that when I was getting my accounting degree and taking the CPA exam, then there was Covid, and life just hasn’t been normal since. I need to do a Jane Eyre reread this year. Along with my favorite vampire series, Vampire Academy (and the spinoff series, Bloodlines). Maybe it’s silly, but those books were so helpful when I was going through a hard time about ten years ago, and I still love them to this day. 🙂
It is just stunning when a whole year goes wrong, isn’t it. My mother had a year like that… She fell and broke her pelvis roller skating (not her fault as some kids fell in front of her), was T-boned by a truck that ran a stop sigh, and (this is my favorite) was bit by a rattlesnake sleeping under her car when she walked up to it. She leapt to the hood of her car, beat it off with her cane (this was not long after the fall roller skating) and then walked back into work to get medical help. Luckily she was a nurse and worked at a hospital. 🙂 My mother has been, and always will be, the ultimate role model in resiliency.
I have two books that I used to read every single year too. They are both written by Cecelia Holland and I have several copies of them because I worry about a copy wearing out. The titles are Great Marie and Floating Worlds. I sure miss that author.
I have long since decided that your blog needs to be published. It’s not just a series of informative stories, it’s a record of your condition with explanations, study, testings, results (good and not so good) and future planning. It includes tales of your household and its residents, descriptions of your reading – never superficial – and in some ways my favourite bits, your crafting. It’s an amazing recitation of life, Marilyn – and that’s not even beginning to touch on the knowledgeable descriptions of your medical problems, which writing must be a very, very valuable record to the medical fraternity.
I am gobsmacked.
You aren’t the first person to talk to me about writing a book. I guess I need to think about that. You know that I am all over the place with my topics, and I always feel that there need to be threads that pull my writing together. I’m deliberate about some of those within a single post or a group, but if I go larger I need to really spend some time distilling out some essential truths and themes. Hmmm…
Thank you for such great encouragement!!
Dear MR, I’m trying to imagine a world in which you are gobsmacked. You are so direct and honest in your opinions and judgements. 🙂 Reading your comments often make my day!!
In fact what’s in my thinking is to have it published AS THE BLOG IT IS. It could easily be formatted to have each post followed by its comments and without any of the WordPress bits; it would be huge fun for you to work with an editor on the formatting …. But long before that, the editor would need to work with you to choose the best and most useful posts – because obviously your entire blog is far too enormous to put out in print. You would probably need to liaise for confirmation with one or other of your specialists on this – the matter of what is the most interesting and useful stuff for anyone in the medical field, world-wide.
The hard yakka would be finding a publisher – associated with medical publications in some way – who could see the benefits in such a project. Someone who realizes that so radically different a way of putting out such relevant knowledge and understanding of so under-explained a fairly (?) rare condition would be not only a research source for more medicos, but also a simple from-the-heart autobiography, appealing to many, many people.
Oh how I wish I were there !! I would drag in Colorado with her editing skills, too !!
Okay, now you have me thinking about how to lay this out and what the purpose would be. I contacted another patient to ask her to brainstorm with me the big issues that patients like us deal with, and then I can hunt for the blog posts that reflect that part of the journey.
Thank you for the awesome boost of confidence that you have sent me.
There is an editor/patient in my support group!! So far I haven’t contacted her because she has a pretty strong personality…
Pissed meself laughing, Marilyn – you could be talking about me, of course !! [grin]
If you need any further bits of ideas, drop a line, me old china plate, OK ?
XO
You personify resilience, Marilyn. I’m glad you’re recovering from some of last year’s devastating blows, though grief and loss become companions, the pain softens. I’m glad you could get behind the wheel again, and happy to hear you’re enjoying simple pleasures of book and craft. Mateo is a handsome boy. I’m sure he is a soothing companion as well.
That is such a true observation about recovery from grief and loss. It never does stop hurting, but as time goes on, I find that I focus on more of the happy things and I’m glad that I had them in my life even though it is hard to go on without them.
It is kind of a deliberate effort to keep moving forward with new projects and outings, but it really does help with the recovery, and I’m producing some really nice stuff. 🙂
You’re extraordinary.
Glad you made it through 2025; that was beyond rough for you. And broken heart syndrome is nothing to mess with. Wishing you a highly superior 2026!
It was just crazy with my cardiologist told me that was probably what was happening. I did contact his office a couple of times during the worst of it, and they did give me great strategies to manage symptoms, but I hadn’t shared all the trauma that had been going on linked to the whole dysautonomia picture. I had told two other doctors about my symptoms, and they were like… it is so hard to manage dysautonomia… try to rest… monitor your symptoms and let us know if things get worse… Pretty frustrating. Now that I am through it I feel like it was pretty fitting that it was probably broken heart syndrome and I’m so grateful that I didn’t get worse and end up in the hospital.
The fact that you are still standing after 2025 is quite the testimony to your strength and resilience. Wishing a much less stressful 2026.
I’ve made it through the first month!! Hopefully there will never be another year like the last one…