09/01/2025
There's been a lot going on last several months so I wanted to make sure I've got updates added here so everyone is aware of issues impacting processing and shipping times.
As you may have seen in recent weeks the current administration is trying to eliminate mail in voting, which will negatively affect some of our most vulnerable populations. However there's another aspect to this that's not being talked about much-the sabotage of USPS. This is something that the Republican party has been working towards since 2006 when new regulations were put in place requiring USPS to set aside full retirement for every employee when they're hired, including temp and seasonal workers. Since then they've reported huge financial "losses" every year, while they blame it on declining mail due to emails and such the reality is that the federal government is taking the money made and holding it hostage. No other government (or private) service has requirements like this. During his term Biden passed the Postal Fairness Act which reversed those regulations, allowing USPS to keep the profits brought in which significantly reduced the "deficit", however upon his return to office Trump immediately revoked it and they are back to having to forfeit profits to be held in escrow accounts. In addition during his first time Trump put DeJoy in charge as the postmaster general, who holds significant stock in UPS. At the time he took over the position he canceled ALL overtime for postal employees, they are no longer able to get paid for work past 40 hours a week, and froze all hiring even for seasonal work, which has caused significant issues as the USPS workforce was already struggling to keep up with the workload. This started the decline in reliability of shipping services.
At the beginning of this term DeJoy retired and a new postmaster general was brought in, this time a head officer of FedEx, and we're starting to see the repercussions. In the last several months they've cut 10,000 employees from the USPS workforce through early retirement buyouts and are planning to cut thousands more jobs. The result of this is that there aren't nearly enough postal workers to handle the mail. Smaller rural areas like where I am are no longer getting mail daily and more and more rural routes are being cut. Postal workers are facing reprimand for not being able to complete routes or meet quotas while at the same time having their hours cut, it's an impossible situation.
Since the beginning of the year they've been auditing USPS processing hubs and finding tens of thousands of packages sitting around because there isn't time to process them all to keep them moving, and there's been a few where that number of "lost" packages is topping 100k. It's becoming more and more common in the larger centers for shipments routed through to sit for weeks on end before moving on, and scanning and tracking has become unreliable. To further compound issues many post offices are now refusing acceptance scans for shipments and USPS has quietly started recycling tracking numbers at 2-4 weeks instead of the 4 months it's supposed to be, meaning that if a package is routed into a center where it sits for weeks often by the time it gets moving the tracking number has been updated with new shipping information and they're getting delivered to the wrong address. This has created a nightmare situation and I'm dealing with more missing and delayed packages than ever before, even during Covid.
It's become fairly common for shipments to take a couple weeks and for tracking to not update. Most of them eventually arrive, but it's also resulted in needing to remake and reship a lot more orders than usual. Between the remakes and the time spent filing and following up with claims it's added a lot to my already overflowing plate and resulted in processing delays. There unfortunately isn't much I can do about it, I'm doing my best to keep up on everything but for the time being please allow extra time for your package to arrive. I'm unable to file search requests or claims until 2 weeks has passed, so all we can really do for now is be patient.
What we're seeing happen now has been the goal since 2006-sabotaging USPS so it can be sold off and privatized to "save" it. It's likely that private companies like UPS and FedEx will be handed the package part of the delivery while the remnants are separated to handle mail pieces only. What does this have to do with the current attack on mail in voting? Because if the service handling those mail in ballots is private it can be controlled, and all those ballots will inexplicably be "lost". We already saw this during the 2024 election-shipping and tracking started becoming unreliable in late September/early October. During election season many folks never received their ballots and post election thousands and thousands of ballots were found stashed in the back rooms of processing centers, just like they're finding all these missing shipments during audits now because there simply isn't enough time for postal employees to process the amount of mail moving through these centers. Logically, given recent statements by the administration and the current degradation of services I'd expect things will continue to decline so that by midterms mail in voting won't be possible. Constitutionally Trump can't eliminate mail in voting, despite yesterdays executive order stating such, but he can ensure that those ballots never make it where they're supposed to go and therefore not be counted in time. This is scary times we're witnessing right now.
Another facet impacting business operations is the tariffs. While I buy the majority of my materials domestically ultimately the ore has to be imported because we don't mine adequate amounts of steel or titanium domestically. The first wave of tariffs caused significant delays with titanium wire as the mills had to scramble to find ways to get the necessary raw materials. Recently a 50% tariff was placed on all steel imports and while I'm not sure how this will impact the supply chain yet it's reasonable to assume that it's going to result in some delays. This is adding to a long list of factors affecting inflation and prices have been surging. Silver hit it's all time high this year and is now more than double what it was during Covid. Other supplies like packaging and tools have also jumped up about 30% and it's putting a lot of strain on small businesses. I'm actively seeking other suppliers to help mitigate these costs as I've already had to raise prices several times in recent years to account for these increased costs and the ever growing overhead costs and I'm trying to avoid raising prices any further. My main goal has always been to provide affordable options for everyone and I already have my prices well above where I wanted them to be.
And lastly I wanted to provide some updates on my health situation. as I'm currently dealing with medication issues that are impacting my ability to work efficiently.
It turns out that despite my particular thyroid issue being quite common-which is that my body can't convert T4 into the free T3 my cells need-finding a doctor who's familiar with and treats the issue makes finding an EDS knowledgeable doctor look like a walk in the park. Since the disease had been brushed off by my doctors every time I tried to get help over the last decade despite my labs clearly showing the problem a lot of damage had been done. I've struggled with heart problems for many years, which was blamed on the EDS but turned out to be the result of hypothyroidism. When I was hospitalized back in January with what I now know was myxedema and encephalopathy the EKG revealed left ventricular hypertrophy, T wave inversions, and long QT while the echo showed pericardial effusion. It had gotten so bad that the palpitations were waking me up during the night because my heart would go nuts just from rolling over in bed. If I'm being honest it hadn't been safe for me to live alone for some time. Beyond being so ill that I couldn't eat or care for myself anymore I knew there was high risk of another episode of heart failure, and the last time in early 2020 had very nearly killed me.
I started NDT on January 8th and over the next 5 weeks everything that's ever been wrong with me vanished. While there's no doubt I have EDS the vast majority of pain and disabling symptoms were all from being hypo for so long. Ultimately NDT didn't work for me, I crashed at the 5 week mark-how long it takes for T4 to convert and stabilize in the body. I then switched to T3 monotherapy, which has been a miracle. It's the first time in 8 years I haven't needed heart meds, the first time in longer than I can remember I haven't had arrhythmia, tachycardia, and BP issues. My heart is steady and calm, no more shaking my entire body when I lay still in bed. Not only am I eating again but I'm craving healthy food, I dropped 30lbs in just a couple months (most of the weight in hypothyroidism is just fluid retention, so it melts off fast). When adequately medicated I even fall asleep and stay asleep naturally, which I didn't think was possible. I've needed sleep meds since my teens.
Unfortunately it turns out that liothyronine is one of the meds with shortages. Right now is the 2nd time I've had to go without waiting for it to come back in stock and I'm really really struggling. T3 has a very short half life, so while the standard T4 treatment takes a couple weeks to affect you when you go without, T3 takes days. I'm at 2 weeks, and I've got another 2 to go. This time around I'm getting a 3 month supply instead of the 1 month, and I'm buying some out of pocket so I have backup because I just can't keep doing this. Last month I had to get a generic that feels like I'm taking less than half my dose, and it's been awful. I can't leave the house again, can't eat, can't sleep, gained back 20lbs. The color in my face and lips is gone and my hair is shedding again, the depression and emotional lability are back. I imagine I'm more sensitive to the changes now because I know what being euthyroid is like, when you live with it every day you adjust and become desensitized to it, but this is being free of all symptoms for a while then suddenly they all hit you at once. I'm doing everything I can to ensure I never have to go through this again, it's a nightmare.
This also means that my ability to both make the orders and get them to the actual post office is unreliable for the coming weeks. I went through a spat of burnout bad enough I had skill regression and spent a couple weeks unable to figure out how to make the splints I've been making every day for the last 10 years, that's thankfully lifted and I was thrilled to have been able to bang out hundreds of splints last week, but this week the weather changed and it's hitting me hard. The temp dropped 20-30 degrees overnight and my thyroid is really struggling to keep up with the cold on top of being undermedicated. I'm too far out for home mail service which has kept me from being able to get orders dropped off as I'm in no condition to drive, with my thyroid like this I sometimes have "microsleeps" like you get with narcolepsy. Nodding off for a couple seconds at home is one thing, but I can't risk it happening while driving. I've got a friend helping out picking them up from me, but she's only able to come out on her day off so for the next few weeks I'll probably only be able to get orders dropped off once or twice a week. I'll be ok within days of getting the right meds back in, so I've just gotta tough it out the next couple of weeks and with any luck this'll be the last time I have to go through this.
With the current issues both with my health and what's happening in our country I've decided to relocate, right now I'm looking at Costa Rica for the long term but I have to get out of here before winter hits so I'll be moving back down to PR in a couple months when hurricane season is over. It's not somewhere I can stay due to the lack of FEMA, but it'll give me the time I need in a climate I can heal in before making the big move. I'm now 2 1/2 years in with every second of my life being spent working or too sick to work, and it's not sustainable. I don't leave the house, I don't interact with people, I don't even have the time for crafts or hobbies. I feel like I'm letting people down if I spend any time doing anything other than working when I'm functional, and I'm never going to get better in this climate. I've been working by myself for the last 6 months because my health is too unreliable to hire anyone, there's too many days I wake up in rough shape and can't even get out of bed until late afternoon. I know it's making things worse.
The last 4 years of my life have been a nightmare fighting against my declining health. I have so many plans for things I want to do and expanding business options to benefit more people, and I've come to realize that it's never going to happen if I don't make some big changes. I won't survive what's about to happen in our country, and I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't harming my mental health watching this happen. I'm afraid for my friends around the country, I'm afraid for my hispanic family down in FL, I'm afraid for our community and what's going to happen in a few months when disability and medicaid are cut. I'm avoiding the internet as much as possible to minimize the impact, but it's there nonetheless.
Everyone stay safe out there, and take care of each other ❤