Losing my ability to speak

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Hey guys, Drifter here. For the first time in my entire life, I don't know if I'm going to be able to make content anymore or for much longer because I'm sure you can hear that my voice sounds funny. I'm losing my ability to speak for very stupid reasons. So, I the most of this video is going to be in this sort of low and mumbly voice cuz that's easier for me to manage. The short version is that my joints are failing and becoming weak at an accelerating rate. And that has spread to my face, which includes the muscles around my jaw and also weirdly around my eye for no particular reason, but we'll circle back on that. Just forgive me for being mumbly and soft-spoken and less animate than usual. The surgery that I got to relieve pain from my spine has been quite successful. It's doing its job very well and I've recovered from it very well. And I don't know if it was bad timing, an environmental problem, or if it was perhaps too much stress on my body, but my joints have begun to fail at an accelerating rate. Uh, I currently have sprained fingers, toes, the toarscils, the the flat part of my feet, the in between parts of my hand, wrist, both elbows, both knees, jaw has been a big one. I made the terrible mistake of I think it was laughing and my right side popped and it's been hurting and sore and tight ever since. And then the left side started to twitch and spasm.

[00:01:35]And then the right started to twitch and spasm. And then I'm getting spasms up here in my head, which is fine. I don't know what's going on with my joints.

[00:01:43]Nobody does. I don't have any anomalous laboratory results for joints. And if I get an MRI, X-ray, CT, they all look normal. But they all basically bear no weight and have no range of motion. like um just sitting here in this desk keeping my arms bent like putting them down on these side rests will sprain them in a short period of time. If I reach out and straighten my arm it will get a minor sprain. Lifting something heavy, twisting left, right a little too fast. Uh my most recent injuries have been straightening up my legs sprained them. Log rolling out of bed sprained them. pouring milk, sprained an left arm. Brushing my teeth, sprained my right elbow, laughing, sprained my jaw.

[00:02:31]Uh, so I really can't handle more than a pound or two of weight on almost anything and have no range of motion.

[00:02:40]I've been tested up and down for everything on the planet. And there doesn't seem to be anything obviously wrong. And no, I did get checked for Ellers's Danlos. I don't appear to have that either. They are evaluating me for an autoimmune condition because I have a couple of cytoines, inflammatory cytoines that are elevated. Um, but what's weird is that I don't have any inflammation with one exception. I have one finger that is very slightly swollen. Um, but for all of this joint pain, there is no inflammation at all. I also can't rotate my joints very well.

[00:03:15]Like look left, right. It's feels like everything is very tight and if I use it even a small amount it will sprain to a lesser or greater degree and it rarely heals properly. The problem I've I've dealt with that for a long time but now it's spread to my jaw and I can't type because my fingers are ruined and I've been doing a lot of text to speech and voice commands on the computer but now as you can tell I'm kind of losing my voice.

[00:03:42]So that's not good. Uh I'm not actively dying. Liver, kidney, heart, brain, uh all the sort of standard things you would test are either normal or healthier than normal. Don't seem to have diabetes or any inden problem, [sighs] but I am kind of actively decaying, which is why the hyperbolic uh death guys on the grim reaper is on the thumbnail. I am getting weaker every single day, and I can't seem to stop it.

[00:04:10]I eat extremely healthy, no junk food at all. I go to physical therapy three days a week. I go to the pool. I force myself to get 5 to 7,000 steps a day, no matter how tired I am. Try to do my stretches, though bearing weight on them is hard, and it doesn't make any difference. I'm just getting weaker in my joints, so it feels like I'm decaying. I lost 10 lbs.

[00:04:34]Also lost access to hot water in my house. uh hot water heater died and my particular condition. I can't regulate temperatures very well. So, a cold shower is not just unpleasant but uh medically problematic.

[00:04:49]I tried to use public showers. My public shower experience was really bad. When I went uh here in Plano, two out of three of them had poop in them. I used the third one. And in an entirely empty locker room with about 50 lockers, I had to change uh quite nakedly because I can't move normally. So, I have to sit and use the bench to like get my pants on and stuff. Old man just walks up and sits down right 2 in beside me and wants to make small talk and there's like 500 other open lockers. So, that's been fun.

[00:05:22]And working on the water problem, we have discovered a very massive mold problem. Uh, so that's supposedly been cleaned out, but that tore up most of my master bathroom. And there's now like a negative pressure zone and fans in there. And maybe mold exposure has been my problem the whole time. I don't know.

[00:05:40]That's a very like lime. That's a very weird community with its own vague and difficult to diagnose symptoms. So, it's not a rabbit hole that I really want to like dive down. And you may have noticed there's not a lot of content here because I'm not physically able to make the content. I can sit up longer than I used to be able to. Can't really use my arms for squat and my voice is uh this most of the time. I can speak up and be normal, but it's more taxing. Uh you guys are getting about a third to maybe half of all the talking I'm going to do today. Currently just uh coasting on my savings, living on savings, but I really just want to live in general. Even though I'm not dying, this doesn't feel like living to me. Got five weeks before I go see what I hope to be my final specialtist, a very high caliber immunology rheatologist that can help maybe figure out this autoimmune thing, if that's even the problem. because I have an extremely unusual presentation of even that to the point to where we need a specialist to confirm if that's real and they kind of want to put me on immunosuppressants which carry their own very significant risks and it's all very dumb here.

[00:07:00]Very very dumb.

[00:07:02]It's very scary that for most people's ability to test that there is very little wrong or the things that are wrong should not be at this scale or they should present very differently than they do and there's nothing for me to do about it for over a month at minimum if not you know looking at treatment might be two 3 months out and I'm just getting rapidly weaker and I'm afraid that if I push my jaw too much or I do too much with my hands or my knees or whatever stupid joint is bothering me today, which is I sprain a couple every day, but at the end of treatment, there won't be much left. So, I don't know what the future of content here is. I can promise you I will make as much as I can. Uh the second channels have been very busy with some stuff that I had pre-recorded. If you want to check them out, I link them down below. But, uh, if I can't talk and I can't sit for a long time and I can't use my hands to type and I even get to this, my eyes are starting to kind of go. Um, they're just constantly burning and itching like an allergy, but it's like all my problems, there's more to it there. It's a little weirder. Um, I'm afraid in the future I might not be able to use my hands or speak, and I don't know what's going to become of the eyes. So, I have a lot to worry about.

[00:08:23]And uh I know this is a very negative update, but uh I promised everybody that's been watching for years and years to be honest about what's going on here and keep you all in the loop. And well, that's how I'm doing. And [gasps] uh I just hope that hope this is all a nothing burger and in a couple of weeks I can bounce back and be more normal and talk normal. I'll even take fairly weak. I just want to be able to do some things and make some content here. So that's all for now. Drifter out.