You may have noticed things have been a little quiet around here as of late. I’ve hinted around about me getting sick but not really explained in full detail. In February, just a few days after quitting my job, I woke up in severe pain and unable to get out of bed. It turns out I had a kidney stone. It wasn’t dreadful but was causing me problems about once a week. After four months, The thing was still rattling around inside of me and I went through a small surgical procedure to take care of the problem. That was late July. Unfortunately, the procedure didn’t work and the kidney stone just got pissed off. For much of August, I was experiencing between five and eight kidney stone attacks a day, which if you’ve never had a kidney stone, I can assure you is pretty miserable. So in summary, my productivity for the last month was all shot to hell.

I am all better now and kidney stone-free. This past week I canceled this site’s sponsorship knowing that I needed to dig out on the legal side. Now I’m back to filling my fitness rings on my Apple watch while I’m still behind on email (sorry!), things are getting manageable again and next week MacSparky will be back to its regular programming.

While they are quite uncomfortable, kidney stones are not the end of the world. Once you get rid of them, you’re done. It’s not like cancer or some other chronic illness. Nevertheless, the past several months gave me new appreciation for how difficult it is for people with chronic illnesses to get by. I think about guys like Federico Viticci, who built a flourishing website while at the same time fighting off cancer, and I have more respect than ever. Thank you everyone for the well wishes as I’ve been dealing with this.