My RA has been attacking my elbows. What’s horrible is there is evidence of inflammation in the way there was evidence of inflammation of my Achilles only through MRI but still no rise in CRP.

I have the same degree of pain in both elbows, I had both x-rayed, but MRI only of the right.

So. Here we go.

There is extensive full-thickness chondral (cartilage) loss from the radial head and capitellum (bottom of humerus)-

That’s a pretty confronting reality. I’ve only recently had my range of movement affected and honestly I probably wouldn’t have noticed that because it’s been the difficulty with blood tests that made me aware my elbow wasn’t extending enough. And honestly? They’re the only joints that didn’t contribute to my 7/9 Beighton score. I just always treat them as less mobile than every other joint.

But said blood tests also said I didn’t have inflammation, so yes. I kind of just thought… well it can’t be RA.

-with mild subchondral oedema (blood) in the central capitellum (inside the bone).

I mean. I’m a bit worried about that. RA is a cause of vit D loss- I think fairly obviously so seeing as you do wind up with bone remodelling. It’s pretty simple though- when joints erode your body tries to rebuild and you wind up taking that from elsewhere. I apparently broke a toe and you can see that to repair it bone was taken from the far end of it.

Small elbow joint effusion with moderate synovitis, and synovial proliferation, most pronounced posteriorly.

Synovitis is inflammation of the synovium. It’s the slick surface that allows joints to move smoothly. It’s also the specific tissue RA attacks. That now makes sense. I can point to the end of my radius for the pain.

There are multiple intra-articular bodies within the anterior and posterior elbow joint recess; four are seen anteriorly and at least one is present posteriorly. A further tiny 3 mm intra-articular body is suspected in the medial joint recess adjacent to the medial trochlea.

I. Yeah. I might need more intense vit D as this is now very much a problem. It doesn’t read like these are accessory bones- they are nice and smooth and I did have the full compliment in my hands.

Lateral elbow: The common extensor tendon origin is intact. No high-grade tear. The radial collateral ligament is intermediate in signal suggesting prior mild sprain.

I can’t really remember spraining my elbow. But honestly the erosion and change in shape of my wrists probably does mean there are different forces on the tendons and ligaments at the other end. I was just hoping it was muscular. Maybe even bursae.

But I’m still at a loss as to how I can have so much inflammation in my tendons, lower leg triggered by injury but also trigger finger in both hands, and now a large joint like my elbow and it not show up in the very tests I have to keep track of it.

It’s not like you can just have MRIs at any time either. But I also have had what feels like activity in joints that turned out fine- it’s also hard to keep asking for what is expensive imaging in case. And the fibro Dx can be a barrier there too.

So yes I had a quick look and it turns out I can indeed have this activity. These were only published in the last few years.

Also, CRP levels had a moderate correlation with disease activity. Overall, IL-6 is a better marker for disease activity when compared to CRP levels in patients with RA.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11265957/

Results: MRI detected synovitis in 82%, bone marrow edema in 66%, and erosions in 54% of patients… No significant correlation was found between CRP/ESR and erosion scores. MRI revealed active inflammation in several patients with normal CRP and ESR levels. Conclusion: CRP and ESR moderately correlate with MRI-detected synovitis and bone marrow edema but are insufficient as standalone indicators. MRI adds value in detecting subclinical inflammation, supporting a combined clinical, serological, and imaging approach for optimal RA management.
https://healthcare-bulletin.co.uk/article/association-between-inflammatory-markers-crp-esr-and-mri-findings-in-rheumatoid-arthritis-3881/

So. I’ve booked in to see my GP, and it looks like we do have to add in methotrexate again. I get so sick on it. Like full motion sickness sick.

My most recent SSD just disappeared. I’ve got it in an enclosure and I can see it again so it could be the SATA cable has gone bad but it supports my choice to not resubmit any papers this year- the stress alone. It’s one thing to lose a working drive but I lost my back ups including some files in the cloud and it took a month for a patch for… whatever happened. The problem is no one really publicly explained what really happened.

What it did bring home is that the back up software that came with my drives only work on the drive with the OS. Which. What? Of all the things to lose the OS and programs I installed are the least of my worries. So manual back ups it is.

But it might have been manual backing up that triggered it. There is an earlier report of drives being erased if you transfer a lot of data- it’s been blamed on beta firmware but it still explains what could be triggered under the right circumstances. That being a whopping 50G of data transfer.

But it also fits in with other errors I have had. Because apparently I am too fast for the built in file manager and have too many files. I’m apparently also too fast when I access archives/journals online and get rate limiting.

So. I guess I’m a bot now.

But it does show I couldn’t have accidentally wiped my drives because there are no quick keys to accidentally silently erase a drive. There is a warning even if you choose to permanently delete. Even then actions at shutdown cause a slow shutdown. 1 to 2T is a lot to write over so comprehensively.

There are a few more avenues. And I think I found it. Or at least a clue. My internal SSDs can be secure erased via the utilities it came with but my USB connected drive cannot as it requires a bootable USB as well as its utilities. So that explains the difference in outcome. And the utilities both left errors in my event log for the VSS failures that were well known.

The company that produced my HDD? Yep they identified an issue related to it the failures but couldn’t do anything so escalated it up the chain.

So it does look like it is an OS level. It’s something. But it means I can’t reinstall said utilities in case another update does the same.

Which leads me back to how to reorganise everything.

It’s a case use for agentic AI. Get it to find multiple copies of a file across 1T and move them to a different folder delete corrupted files- but it’s really not. The ethics of it all for the glaringly obvious, and also the risks of them taking a prompt to the extreme. The risk of breaking sandboxing. Oh and as they are in the cloud all that data could be exposed.

These aren’t minor risks either. And they can wipe databases extremely quickly.

So I’m obviously disappointed I can’t commit to a time and date but this could happen again. It could be worse.

I’m still trying to repair my archives. Made a bit of a hash of it. There are so many Calls for Papers right now that fit beautifully but. I am far too scared of taking a space and having something happen yet again. Yes my tendons are settled, yes I think my petechiae seem to be stable yes I think I worked out why I was so very sick this year. But something else could happen. I mean living next to a construction zone that’s had earth works for more than two months and barely having one day off from it a week is playing a very large part.

But I accidentally wound up being super excited about an armour project I’d put on hold. I had a closer look at some details and realised I was probably able to do them after all.

Today I also found both my rolls of masking tape so I can do something like I did for my Blood Dragon armour. And that I still had a layer of tape and paper on my mannequin for a different but related project. I just need to grab some permanent markers to plot the general outline so I can use them as anchors to build up the layers that float.

Maybe I’m just so exhausted from trying to repair my research that I need a project to make. I do think that losing my costumes to the environment has also affected me. It has felt like my life has retracted to the space between my chair and computer. Because it mostly has.

I do have some files missing after The Great Deletion Event (paleo nerds I know you get this reference.) I had collected research on both the TV and stage adaptations of The Mirror and the Light. I know people know I probably have Opinions on the depiction of Anna. I do also hope people know that includes my appreciation of the pull between narrative and reality. But yes, you cannot dedicate a good part of two decades of Anna and all the depictions of her to not spot influence. One line of research has been to track prints of her because for most of art/costume history she wasn’t visible.

The written word is how most people got introduced to her so I have also got a few strand of research going back that way as well.

FWIW I’m also working my way through costume history books I only ever used for images and… ouch. Oh no. Just. One example is carelessness in the print production- the portraits of Anna and Jane Seymour got the other’s caption.

But yes I can tell when my own research makes it to research/recreation and I just wish people would cite me. I share because when I started out everyone was discouraged from recreating the Holbein portrait. The argument was that there were not enough similar examples. Thus my timeline of portraits. Thus my collection of every catalogue possible.

I have finally emerged somewhat victorious from my other SSD and my folders of my costumes. To say it was with a mix of overwhelming emotions is to put it mildly. I have so much to be proud of. This was also in part so that I can get my patterning book organised.

What is extremely clear is that I sneak in every possible accurate patterning and construction element in my cosplay. Like. That makes it super difficult to draw the line between the too. Take my Lizzy gown. Obviously Lizzy but I used Kohler and so have an accurate back panel- the miniseries really stuck to modern princess curves.

My Blue Dress from Phantom. Not silk like the original but cotton and I used yes actual 1870s-80s patterning and construction.

I’m super tired though.

Not very well. What I had dismissed as a tummy bug on my birthday has actually not gone away. And has gotten so much worse. It’s caused me to be extremely tired and I can’t leave the house. The problem is I can’t tell what’s going on. To go with it I’ve developed trigger finger in both hand.

I had also dismissed that as my fault for throwing good health after bad in preserving my data. But. It’s exactly the same pattern in both hands which just screams RA. If it was over use then the knots around my tendons would map more to the mouse buttons. Instead the worst is middle finger on each side with knots I can feel easily, then ring fingers with smaller less intrusive ones, then the tendons in my index fingers feel more like they are barely passing through, and my little fingers feel more like they are drifting and it is just all in all extremely limiting.

So I’ve got a short taper of prednisone to calm down inflammation, as a break. At this point though there’ll be secondary problems which are a bit more difficult to resolve because it’s not just a case of taking probiotics but which ones. And that’s made even more complicated being on immunosuppressive therapy as they’re all live organism so could get out of control.

I’m hoping this does indeed “just” mean a change in diet daily probiotics, but I know my RA/immune side effects. I have a pattern of developing symptoms that bed in and hang around for more than 18 months. I even have a couple of nodules on a knuckle- mine tend to stay small but spread and they’ve moved apart fairly quickly. These are essentially the same process as what happens inside the joint.

On a nicer note, Missy has managed to wiggle her way to my bed and has slept on me two nights in a row. It’s a bit difficult because of course both Boo and Mr Carlo loved my room but especially when they weren’t well.

It is easing tensions between Missy and Fluffy, so I’m hoping Fluffy settles even more.

Our Very Good Papa blackbird is missed, but he taught his children well and while we won’t be sure which is which we do know he does live on that way. His wing injury just made it so easy to recognise him which is how we knew he had lived a good long life, but it’s also how we became attached by recognising him every day.

This whole issue was indeed the update- which means I really was risking all of my work and that I couldn’t use my laptop instead. I’m clearly a bit biased here in feeling a certain way about how all of this has played out so I might be reading a bit more into this but one of the vendors updated their article:

This update may introduce system-wide issues that affect VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) operations, leading to backup failures… In some cases, the affected machine may also lose connectivity with the cloud console and appear offline… After extensive troubleshooting and verification of all available mitigation steps, the issue has been escalated… As a resolution please install the [OS] update released on 12 May 2026.

So here we find it was system wide, included their cloud services, and they could do nothing. But what of the other vendors? Well. No one is really saying very much about the how and why, some are even using it to promote their product. Nothing like a little exploitation in the morning. But I did find one of my cloud services was affected. Oh no. Do I need to look at the other? Okay, let’s write that down on a long list of software to check.

Right now I seem to have lost the thread as to what backups I was originally working from. So that’s not fun. It’s a lot of work. Files are safe, I just am back to trying to find them. “just” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Well. So. Guess what? Yet another back up app failing and again by the manufacturer of the drive affected. Running in the background too. And with an associated driver that appeared as a stand alone device in device manager, and in storage devices.

My internal HDD seemed fine, but attaching my brand new external? It kept appearing and disappearing in disk and device management- flashing really. Read and write errors of a kind that suggested massive hardware fail. I tried different cords, different ports, but nothing. It was so bad that I thought it was bricked.

But no. I ran chkdsk on it and oh what was that? “A snapshot error occurred while scanning this drive. You can try again, but if this problem persists, run an offline scan and fix.” So I uninstalled the software and lo. My drive is perfectly fine.

It would be a miracle if my Ironwolf is okay. What happened there was probably hardware- power management issue which is possibly related. But based on how the external flashed on and off, and the kinds of errors thrown- it is possible. I’ll have to try with the enclosure.

Okay. So. Do I test my Ironwolf. Okay. No. Definitely hardware failure. A pity. It’s not spinning up in the enclosure- probably not enough power- when attached by sata the clicks and interesting new beep suggests the only chance of recovery is gong to be complex. And no. I’m not sending it off for recovery given all the sensitive information on it.

Now the question remains- when will it be safe to actually *do* anything?

I’m in so much pain. I am the bendiest of bendy banana shapes over my keyboard.

And yes, so much noise still.

It’s emerging that the April update does in fact interfere with backups. Technically I shouldn’t be affected- at all. I don’t have the driver. But other back up software that also do not use this driver are also affected affected- VSS errors. The named software has a secure, but paid for update, another says they can’t do anything as they are simply using OS functions, and the third which is bundled with a brand of drives is looking into it. So no this has no easy resolution. None named so far were on my system during The Great Deletion. But I did have one- not so coincidentally I feel- for the drive actually wiped. There is no such software for the two drives where everything wound up in the bin and so was recoverable. So I still think that’s a clue.

And this is why this update is so nasty. After the August update that caused SSDs to be erased- again there was a single vendor recognised but more people seemed affected- everyone recommended the data management software at the very heart of this issue, for being so reliable.

For me? Removing the migration software has had the obvious effect of preventing these errors. Wow. Shadow copies abound today. Did the migration software get triggered in a way it caused the partition to be wiped? It does perform such a clean on the target- I mean.. yes obviously. But why did manually copying files trigger this.

I’m unwilling to lose data. Oh I should also add there seems to be.. something.. related to cloud services being affected. I’ve been getting errors for one- and it’s not supposed to happen because this is not an enterprise version and there should not be settings that are there. Either that or event viewer is inaccurate.

All of this while there is heavy, heavy, heavy, machinery clearing the section next door still. It’s just not conducive to doing anything. It’s just not possible to concentrate. So I’ve mostly just been looking in event viewer, reliability monitor, task scheduler- because yay for third party apps setting trigger events there that override my start up wishes. And trying to be prepared for patch Tuesday- which is a day later.

Oh. Somehow an image I edited on my laptop that disappeared- it alerted me to cloud syncing weirdness- has reappeared but only last night. The OOB update was only a few days later and so even with a slow rollout it doesn’t seem related.

I can barely stop from crying because this is such a waste of my life. And my RA anniversary is a big one, one that really strikes home how much of my life has been wasted in flares, how much I’ve had to give up. And my digital record at least preserves something. So please, no unhelpful advice- I have owned my own computer since 2003. Just the update catalogs themselves reveal how much goes wrong even when it’s not all users all the time. I have back ups of back ups of back ups- that’s not the problem. The problem is these were being erased by backing them up. I’m not risking anything when there still isn’t a clear solution.

The two weeks of digger hell is really affecting stress, but it also making me physically ill. The nausea is so bad.