I can’t believe how long its been since my last post. I apologize for my lack of updates to How to Blog and my being so behind in answering my emails - the reasons for which are two-fold.

Firstly, I’ve been in migraine hell again — its been really bad. I feel like a human guinea pig with all of the different medications that neurologist has given me and am extremely frustrated with how poorly they all work. There are two different kinds of medications that migraine sufferers take: a) a daily preventative medication and b) a medication to treat a migraine when you’re actually having it. The biggest zinger is that the preventative medications all have possible side effects of actually triggering more migraines (which has been my experience in 3 of the 4 preventative medications I’ve tried thus far, making things WORSE rather than better for the time being). To add insult to injury, the migraine medications that you take when you have a migraine are VERY expensive. $20-$25 a pill!!! And as if that weren’t frustrating enough, they don’t work. Every time I find something that works (Migranal, Axert, Maxalt, etc) it starts decreasing in its effectiveness so by the time I am on dose 5 or 6 it no longer works. I’m losing my mind a little bit here because when you have a migraine you can’t do anything - in addition to the pain you have sensitive to light, inability to concentrate or focus at all, you can’t even do anything to distract yourself from the pain like watch tv or read because that makes your head hurt worse - it is hell. And forget about trying to get any work done, never mind any blogging.

Which brings me to reason number two as to why I haven’t posted in forever: I’ve been busy on a contract job for the last two months, and every spare moment where I’ve been fortunate enough to not have a migraine and be able to think and use the computer I’ve had to devote to the contract job. While I’ll still have some contract work through June, it won’t be as much as over the past two months so I hope to have some more free time to devote to How to Blog. I have so many articles that I want to write and so much news that I want to report, but it is very time consuming and I need to earn a living so I can pay my mortgage, etc, so until blogging can help pay the bills it has to play second fiddle to my contract work (bummer).

On the plus side, I actually don’t have a headache today (which is VERY exciting!) and I have an appointment tomorrow to go to an acupuncturist to try an alternative method for preventing my migraines — I’ve had at least 4 different people suggest that I try acupuncture for my migraines b/c they know someone who was helped tremendously by it, and I found some studies on the internet that actually claim acupuncture is more effective than medication for preventing migraines, so keep your fingers crossed for me that this will finally be the thing that helps me with my migraines so I can get my life back again!!!! Wish me luck - I need it!!!!!

Sorry that it’s been ages since my last post, and I haven’t been as good as I’d like about responding to e-mails, but this past month has sucked royally as I’ve been getting migraines almost every other day (which I’m going to start a separate blog about when time permits…)

The good news is that I saw a neurologist at UCSF and I officially do not have a brain tumor (thank God!)

The bad news is that I do suffer from classic migraines, which have been increasing in frequency and severity lately (grrr) and while my doctor prescribed some preventative migraine medications to try, get this: possible side effects of the preventative migraine medications are… MIGRAINES (I have to laugh about it because otherwise I’ll just cry). Needless to say, the first preventative medicine that I tried (Norvasc) was clearly causing me to have more migraines, so I’m now trying preventative medicine number two (Verapamil), but you can only take a half dose for the first 10 days as your system gets used to it (during which time I got plenty of migraines– Joy), and then you can ramp up to the full effective dose. So far I’m on day 13, and am keeping my fingers crossed (it’s been two days without a migraine!!). wish me luck.

More to come later..

Just a note that my comprehensive list of free themes for WordPress 1.5 and up has been updated to add 13 new themes, and now consists of a whopping 369 themes! (update - make that 616 themes!)

As always, tremendous props to the many theme authors for all their hard work in creating these themes AND for their generousity in sharing them with the wordpress community. If you’re using someone’s theme, I’d bet they’d love to hear about it so shoot them an email and give them the thanks they deserve.

On a more frustrating note, I’ve discovered at least two people who have stolen my wordpress theme list and reprinted it on their websites without my permission, one of them even claiming it as his own work (with the audacity of reprinting word-for-word all of the accompanying verbiage that went with my post!) Fortunately, I’ve resolved the issue in both instances, but this prompted me to remind everyone that my blog posts (and yours!) are protected under copyright laws and may not be reprinted without permission.

Much thanks to Tony at tonystreet.com for notifying me about the guy who stole my post in it’s entirety and helping me to get him to remove it (and also for all the wonderful wordpress themes he has created and shared with us!)

To my loyal blog readers - if you come across a site which has stolen my theme list, please let me know by emailing me at howtoblog @ gmail.com (remove the spaces - protecting myself from spammers). I’ve spent well over 40 hours in the months since March 2005 on both creating and maintaining my comprehensive list of free wordpress themes.

Also, thanks to everyone for the kind words (and patience) while I’ve been ill. Migraines are a real nightmare to deal with, and prevented me from being online for quite some time. But I’ve been feeling better lately, and while I’ll need to attend to some work in order to be able to pay my mortgage, I look forward to getting back to work on How to Blog!! I’ve missed you guys!

Update: the theme list now contains 615+ themes and will soon have even more — a huge update is on the way!

I’m sorry that it’s been quite some time since I’ve posted to “How to Blog”, but it’s not because I haven’t wanted to. Rather, I’ve been having a really difficult couple of weeks filled with more frequent and intense migraines than I’ve ever had before, which may or may not be related to my RSI (repetetive strain injury from computer overuse - lovely).

To say that things have sucked would be putting it mildly. My eyes have been so sensitive to light that I’ve speant much of the time laying down in dark rooms and have resorted to wearing sunglasses inside. I’m on a waiting list to see a neurologist at UCSF who specializes in migraines since the prescribed Fioricet that I take doesn’t seem to work much for me anymore…wish me luck.

In the meantime, the severity of my headaches has been getting better over the past couple of days, with periods of feeling completely fine, even (thank god!) so hopefully I’ll be able to be back blogging (and working) on a more regular basis soon!