I've blogged about it before, but things aren't getting any better.

I can't think of a time, going as far back as my mind allows, when I didn't have some sort of a symptom related to this. When I was young, my parents and I assumed it was a pinched nerve in my arm or something. As I've gotten older, I've noticed the patterns, though. It's all getting way more frequent, and far more painful or otherwise disruptive.

The most recent symptoms are just repeats of things I've had before:

• Tactile Allodynia - Pain sensation to a light touch, even triggerable by air movement
• Twitching - Looks like a tremor, but is very localized to a hand/finger or a foot/toe, lasting several minutes if not days, and has always been on my left side
• Muscle cramping/spasming - I can't find a clear medical distinction between the two, so I've lumped them together. It comes and goes, though, and is almost always in my left arm, left hand, left leg, or left foot.
• Aphasia - I lose the ability to process things like words, sounds, or other things. It's not that I can't hear, or that I don't know how to read or write (this blog alone should tell you that), but rather my brain loses the ability to make sense of things. Music will sound just like noises, speech will sound similar, but turning it into useful, comprehensible things just completely shuts down.
• Middle Ear Myoclonus - I've had a hearing test and I have excellent hearing, but I get this thing in my right ear where it sounds and feels like someone is physically tapping my eardrum. The neurologic audiologist I saw said it's completely benign and my hearing system is otherwise perfect.

Today, It's a cramping/spasming thing, but in the weirdest way. It feels like I slammed 3 of the fingers on my left hand in a door. It's the proximal phalanx, not in any of the joints. As I'm typing this, I'm feeling it elsewhere, like in the same relative bone in my thumb. It's excruciating, and I'm just waiting for the meds (Gabapentin, Cyclobenzaprine) to do their thing.

I just want a doctor to pay attention to all of these things and understand how disruptive they are to my life and help me to identify what it actually is and how to treat/manage/cure it beyond what I've been doing.

August 1, 2008, I set foot in my first living space in the Houston area. On the west side of the city, right along Interstate 10, it was my biggest and one of the most important chapter changes in my life. Having lived in a small city in Indiana before, and a rural area prior to that, also in Indiana, I was overwhelmed by the grandeur of this new metropolitan area.

August 4th, I made my way to the downtown Houston office for the first time, nervous about working in a more corporate environment after working for small companies and startups prior. It was wild, parking in the downtown lot, taking the elevator to the second floor, and setting my stuff up in a cubicle on a side of the building that was still being set up. I recalled stepping outside the office and staring in amazement at the skyline that was close enough to touch. I even took a picture, sharing with my family and friends back home in Indiana, and feeling nervous about the future ahead.

Here I am, 16 years and a couple months later, staring at my final day in that office, surviving 2 major acquisitions/mergers, arriving at IBM after it was all said and done. Our leadership decided though that we were not going to occupy that building any longer, and that we had to be out before the end of October this year. Fortunately, though, they had organized other office spaces for us to occupy, relative to our roles within the company. Mine, and that for most of the people adjacent to me in the organization, is actually closer to where I live now, on the 5th floor of a high-rise on Houston's west side in the Westchase District.

It's bittersweet for me. I have a lot of memories, some silly, some amazing, and some frustrating at the downtown office. I got used to the area, and took great advantage of all that was nearby, including the downtown tunnel system. But on the west side, it's not as familiar to me, and we don't have the convenience of a tunnel system, of which to navigate the surrounding area subterranially. But I know it's going to be a great experience, may actually be a quicker commute, and will expose me to new people, new benefits, and there will be new memories to form there.

I'll have to find my picture I took of the downtown skyline from the downtown office, and try to replicate it tomorrow before I leave for the last time.