Hello friends,
Many of you probably already saw my note on Five Hearts, but for those who didn't, I've been struggling the past several months with a condition called De Quervain's tenosynovitis, which is thumb tendonitis with inflammation of the tendon sheath lining. Unfortunately, this has affected both of my hands and has made it increasingly difficult and painful to write, play games, drive, and even hold my baby niece. I've tried ice/heat, bracing, physical therapy, and cortisone injections to help with the pain. The cortisone did absolutely nothing (aside from making the pain 100 times worse for a couple days) and while the other three have helped a lot, I seem to have reached a point where I'm no longer seeing any benefit. Thankfully, the pain is not excruciating, but it's painful, distracting, and frustrating enough that I've decided to give up writing and video games for the next few months with the hope that that will help. If not, then my next option is probably surgery.
Unlike with Five Hearts, though, since I only planned for two or three more chapters for this story (at least before the timeskip), my plan is to go on hiatus until I know whether or not things will get back to some semblance of normal. I'll give it a year, and if I'm still unable to finish the story at that point, then I'll post the notes I had for rest of the story. Regardless of what option I go for, once I either finish the story or post my notes for the rest of the story, I'll also post notes for what would have happened after the timeskip, along with the notes I had for a side/spin-off story where Zack and recently promoted 2nd Class SOLDIER Cloud get hit by a monster attack, get turned into children with only the memories of when they were that age, and then cause chaos for everybody by disappearing because they don't remember being SOLDIERs.
Thank you so much, everybody, for sharing this story with me for so long, and hopefully I'll have better news soon.
Stay safe,
Squirrel