June 2023 can be summed up by two words: too hot. Thankfully more stuff happened than just the weather otherwise this would be a very short monthly update!

At the start of the month I finally made that appointment to talk to my GP about my costochondritis and a few other things. The one that has been delayed due to multiple reasons and that I’ve sort of been avoiding for reasons I don’t want to share. I was told way back in October by a doctor at the hospital that the costochondritis would go away on its own. It’s been over six months, and it’s still here. It’s pain in my chest constantly every day and the flare-ups are sudden and agonising.

When I told my GP that the pain was constant, she checked me out and found out just how tender everything was. I was expecting her to just tell me that I was on pain meds and anti-inflammatories already, and I would just have to, basically, suck it up. I did not expect to be given new medication! She has changed my anti-inflammatories, which I had previously been told was not an option due to my asthma. I was told that being on the ones I was ok since my asthma wasn’t too bad, but it was always suggested that nothing else was available. So you can imagine my surprise when I was told that there was a higher anti-inflammatory I could use.

Considering I’ve been in pain for years, I was quite angry. I didn’t share this anger with my GP for several reasons. First, she’s only started being the GP I see this year, so it’s not her fault that I’ve not been medicated properly and the reason I stopped seeing the previous GP is that we felt she was treating our health seriously enough. Then there’s the fact that getting medication, any medication for chronic pain is amazing in itself and if she was going to give me new meds I wasn’t going to rant at her about how it’s taken me getting an EIGHT condition for someone to realise that. Instead, I had a full talk with my therapist about it all, and damn, was that needed.

But yes, that’s me on eight health conditions now. The GP was like “well, it could go away…”. Hmm, where have we heard that before? Oh right yes, last October. I think a health condition is considered long term if it goes past the six-month mark, so yep, I’m at number eight now.

The new medication actually comes with a second one to handle the side effects because on its own this anti-inflammatory will wreck my stomach. It has made a noticeable improvement to the costochondritis pain. I am noticing it a lot less i.e. when the anti-inflammatory is in effect, however, wasn’t sure if it was doing much for the rest of my pain – then I ran out of them by accident. I didn’t realise that the GP had only given me a month’s supply of one of that one while she gave me a two-month supply of the second one. Thankfully I still had some of my old meds and there is no weaning off period needed, so I could just switch back for a few days. But I felt the difference badly.

It’s also been a nasty time for my health due to the heatwave we’ve been having here in the UK. It came out of nowhere at the start of June 2023 and even up here in Scotland it was ridiculously high. Usually in May it starts to warm up gently, June it gets sunnier and then July and August are the real scorchers for us. I went out on a Monday for my therapy appointment when it first started and thought I’d got away with it. Nope! I was only out for an hour and got hit with heat exhaustion hard the next day. Since then, it’s been migraines almost constantly. Thankfully most of them have gone off after a few hours after I’ve taken my meds, but having them all the time means I’m fatigued, and my brain is frazzled a lot.

Diablo IV came out at the start of the month, and I’ve mostly been playing that with Chris in June 2023. I was hesitant about playing it at first because it’s a Blizzard Entertainment MMORPG. What convinced me to play it in the end was that there is no general chat. It is so odd not having anyway to communicate with people, but it adds to the isolation of the game so well.

I surprised myself by choosing a melee class straight away. There was something about the rogue game play video that caught my attention. Many games have shadows involved in rogue builds, however, I’ve never actually seen one where shadows are utilised as a live part of the build. In Diablo IV rogues can use shadows to do things and that looked and sounded super cool to me. I was very lucky in that the first build I tried, Twisting Blades, was very intuitive for me and worked well with my play style. I got even luckier when the best in slot weapon dropped for the first tier and that made playing it so much fun.

We finished the main game quite quickly, and overall I enjoyed it, but I thought the storyline for Diablo III and its expansion Reaper of Souls was much better. This time the plot felt too obvious, and because it’s an MMORPG rather than a full game they’ve obviously only given us one part of a much bigger story. It’s a very different MMORPG than I’m used to, and I was again surprised by how much I’ve been enjoying the content. I’m not usually one who likes to do different difficulties and when Chris first mentioned it to me, I have to admit I grimaced at the thought of it. But the events and the things to do are working for me so far.

I would definitely not be enjoying it as much if I didn’t have Chris to help me work out the gear and skills. This is an extremely technical game with so many moving parts. I’m sure some hardcore gamers will roll their eyes and make unflattering comments about female gamers, but the issue here is my disabilities not my gender. Trying to focus on that many technical details just isn’t possible for me any more. I’m extremely appreciative of Chris helping me with it so that a game I enjoy is accessible for me. 

As I was mostly playing Diablo IV in June I didn’t spend much time in Final Fantasy XIV at all. To be honest, Diablo IV came along at the right time; I’ve become burnt out with FFXIV, but I didn’t know what else I wanted to play.

That means no new character level updates for this monthly update. I have been popping back in to do my Island Sanctuary updates, and I’m now level 14. I opened up a whole new cavern area and have captured some more rare animals.

I also had something amazing happen. It’s the ten-year anniversary of A Realm Reborn, the original game, and as part of their festivities Square Enix have been running competitions on Twitter for mounts. I entered and won! I didn’t realise that the mount was a rare one that had only been available once before for another celebration!

Behold my original white fat chocobo!

June 2023 was a month of TV shows and seasons ending. Two seasons I watched came to an end:

• The Flash – It was strange saying goodbye to this one as it was one of my favourite shows for a long time, and then the last season was such a disappointment. The final season was better, but it didn’t get back to the level it was at before. The finale was good, although they borrowed from an old comic storyline and changed it to work for the show again. Again they didn’t do a great job. What I did love was that they linked the end of the show up to The Flash family from the comics.
• NCIS: Los Angeles – In comparison, NCIS: LA was brilliant right to the end. The final episode was great and while I’ll miss seeing those characters regularly I felt that it was time to say goodbye to them. I was disappointed that a certain character didn’t appear in the final episode, but the actor hasn’t been well in recent years so that was to be expected.

I finished the following seasons in June 2023: 

• Ms. Marvel – Season 1 – Yep, we finally got back to it and finished it. I have mixed feelings about it as I enjoyed some parts of it, and other parts I have to admit I didn’t. I couldn’t stand Bruno, for one thing. We also stopped watching the first time right before Kamala went to Pakistan which is where the story picked up a lot, so this time it was much more enjoyable to watch.
• CSI: Vegas – Season 2 – It was great to have Catherine Willows back this season and another old team member later on. Unlike the first season, the focus on season 2 is the new team and the storyline was interesting. I did not see the ending coming though, that was a big shock.
• NCIS – Season 20 – The first season without Gibbs and I like the new guy, Parker. I also love having Katrina Law as a regular cast member, especially as her character is awesome.
• NCIS: Hawai’i – Season 2 – This is fast becoming my favourite NCIS show, and it just keeps getting better.
• Will Trent – Season 1 – This show just got better and better as it went on. That finale was amazing, seriously check this show out.
• Equalizer – Season 3 – I enjoyed the season, but there wasn’t anything particularly remarkable about this season.
• S.W.A.T. – Season 6 – S.W.A.T. was a mixed bag this season with some great episodes, some mediocre ones and as always some filled with Deacon’s Christian bollocks. I remember there being a particularly awful one where his son was being bullied, and he made him feel guilty about hitting the kid back. He made the kid go apologise to his bully. There was no mention of the bully getting in trouble. This was the first season without Chris, the first female officer in S.W.A.T., and there are two new female officers who are both very different from each other. I have to admit I like one more than the other, but we got to see more character development from the other towards the end of the season which opened her up a bit. My only complaint about the show is that it’s becoming one of those where the danger element is gone; no one ever gets seriously injured or dies. It’s beginning to feel like the team are immortal and that kind of makes their missions a little laughable when you watch them run into danger knowing that they’re going to win no matter the odds.
• The Rookie – Season 5 – Another excellent season, and I loved that Lisseth Chavez from DC’s Legends of Tomorrow joined as a new Rookie. Her character is very unconventional which so many people have complained about, but I think she’s great and Lisseth’s acting skills shine as she plays her. It was also wonderful to have Bridget Regan on the show. I’ve been a fan of her since I watched Legend of the Seeker and every time I’ve seen her in a role since she’s been a delight to watch.
• The Rookie: Feds – Season 1 – It was uncertain whether The Rookie spin-off was going to be renewed for a second season, and I’m so glad it has been. There have been so many bigoted comments about the main character who is a bisexual black woman who is not afraid to be loud, proud and do things her way – everything bigots hate. She is a breath of fresh air and I love it. The entire cast is great, and I really didn’t want to see this show get cancelled because of Hollywood politics. I mean, this is a show that has an ex-actor as an FBI agent and actually went as far as to film scenes from his Vampire Cop TV show for one episode. Stuff like that is TV gold.

The good thing is that as some seasons and shows ended, some new shows came back:

• Law & Order: Special Victims Unit – Season 24
• Law & Order: Organised Crime – Season 3
• Magnum P.I.  – Season 5
• Van Der Valk – Season 3
• Titans – Season 4

I got back to watching movies again this month, sparked by Chris and I catching up with the Marvel Cinematic Universe again. After we finished Ms Marvel we went on to Thor: Love and Thunder which I have been wanting to watch for so long. I really enjoyed it. I’d managed to avoid spoilers and got to enjoy all the surprises such as the cameos and the soundtrack.  I appreciated the way that comedy was balanced against the more serious topic of Jane’s cancer. The after credit scenes left things at a very interesting point!

The next day I watched a Natalie Portman movie that’s been on my watchlist for a while. Annihilation is based on the novel of the same name by Jeff VanderMeer. While it had great designs and effects, the plot and acting was very weak, and it didn’t hold up to what was shown in the trailer.

The third movie I watched in June was The Pale Blue Eye, and was a random choice from my watchlist, although incidentally it also starred another actor from Thor: Love and Thunder, Christian Bale. It’s a historical murder mystery movie that involves Edgar Allan Poe when he was a cadet. I didn’t realise that it was another book adaptation (by Louis Bayard) until I was writing this post. The link to Poe is what caught my attention. It wasn’t a bad movie, but it also wasn’t great either. It has a horrible ableist sub-plot and the big twist is very obvious because there are twenty-seven minutes left of the movie when the mystery has apparently been solved. So it’s very obvious that all is not as it seems.

Here is what I read in June 2023:

• Outlaw’s Vengeance (Assassins of Landria #5) by Gail Z. Martin
• Sailing in the Sky (Wave Sweeper, #1) by Starr Green
• The Law (The Dresden Files #17.4) by Jim Butcher
• Love Will Tear Us Apart (Stranger Times #3) by C.K. McDonnell
• Where Shadows Lie (The Last Gift, #1) by Allegra Pescatore

The books I reviewed in June 2023 were:

[rcno-book-listing ids=”31136, 31321, 31412, 31385, 31449, 31473, 31355, 28938″ wc=250 readmore=”Read my review”]

June was mostly about prepping for GeekDis my annual event about disability representation. I was contacting people about interviews and guest posts, and then one of my Twitter posts went viral! It was chaotic for a while there but worth it as I have such great content lived up for everyone 🙂

GeekDis is taking place right now (for the whole of July!) and is for the disabled and neurodivergent community to discuss the importance of accurate representation. You can find more about it at the GeekDis Information Hub and by following the #GeekDis hashtag on social media.

Thanks for joining me for my monthly update for June 2023.

How was your June?

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