Hey guys, I'm really sorry for the no contact for a while, I shared a post on the members discord channel about 2 weeks ago about my wife's health, We only had a little information then, and we've learned a lot more in the last couple weeks that has turned our lives upside down.
 
 Anyone who's been a fan of AFV and following it's progression for a while know that my wife has been having major issues with her health and mental health and we've been desperately searching for a diagnosis. Major delays in the game's development and progression have been in large part due to this challenge that we've been facing for over 5 years now. We finally, after years of searching and traveling, found a clinic with a team of specialists that were able to help us find some answers, one answer being pretty devastating.

 What we've found so far:
I'm just sharing the diagnosis for anyone who might be interested, or who might be dealing with similar frustrations themselves, I know it's a lot of details that you don't need, so feel free to skip this paragraph. - I'm going to try and explain this as best as I can the way I understand it, During the COVID pandemic, my wife had a really negative response to either a COVID infection, or possibly the vaccine itself, becoming one of the patients with long COVID symptoms. It is thought that this infection triggered multiple autoimmune comorbidities in my wife's body. The ones we've identified as being the most likely are systemic lupus, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and the one that seems to be affecting her the most is Sjogren's disease. This wasn't a huge surprise to us, since we've long suspected an autoimmune disorder to be the cause of most of her symptoms and deterioration of her spine, but then we found out that lesions had been identified on her most recent MRI, which have now led to a multiple sclerosis diagnosis, most likely the primary progressive variety due to her age and location of the lesions.

What’s going on now:
Treating multiple autoimmune disorders can be challenging, a lot of times treating one will make the other one worse, so that’s frustrating, but the MS diagnosis is what’s really been devastating. My dad was diagnosed with primary progressive MS as well only a few years ago and we’ve watched him go from a marathon runner to completely confined to a wheelchair in a matter of two years. That prospect has absolutely terrified my wife and sent her into the worst depression spiral I’ve ever seen. Getting her out of bed and to her appointments, injections, therapy, etc. has been a monumental task for me. Just trying to keep her alive and fighting and trying to convince her to go on has been kicking my ass and draining all happiness out of me. Trying to shield my kids from seeing the worse of all this, trying to wear a mask and pretend that everything’s okay, shielding them from their mother’s depression and rage is fucking exhausting and soul sucking. In between travelling to appointments and taking care of the wife and kids, I’ve been trying for weeks to post something to let you all know what’s going on, as supporters of my game’s you don’t deserve to be left in the dark, but every time I’ve tried, it’s just felt too overwhelming, and this weird mental block I can’t explain keeps shutting me down. I’m sorry for that. I have been able to do some limited work on both games though.

Going Forward:
Things have started to stabilize a little bit, and we’ve been given some reasons for hope. Enough hope that my wife’s mood is more stable and I’ve been able to pull myself up today to overcome my mental barrier and post this POL. First off, we caught the MS in a relatively early stage and my wife has youth on her side, with standard treatment her MS progression is not likely to be as bad as my dad’s, but even beyond that, our doctor was able to pull some strings with a friend of his and last week she got to do a telephone interview with a woman recruiting for a few MS clinical trials. The interview went well and my wife is likely a candidate to participate in one of their trials pending a more complete diagnosis of whether her MS is regressive or primary progressive. Crazy thing is, to participate we’ll have to end up moving to the location of the trial. I’ve already been looking for housing and taking steps to Airbnb our house while we’re away. 

As far as game development goes, I mean, sure this has been kicking my ass, but I quit my job to do this full-time, and I’m sorry for the delays and lack of communication, but we’re getting through this, and I’m just going to put my head down and power through, I’ll likely be back into full production before the end of this week. I still need to take my wife to appointments and stuff, but those appointments are becoming much less frequent, and with the hope we’ve been given, along with the Immunosuppressant drugs, my wife’s mood and physical symptoms are improving. A diagnosis, even a bad one, is better than being in the dark with no fucking clue what’s going on like we have for over five years. I’ll be back on the discord server regularly again and answering my SS messages likely starting tomorrow or Saturday. Thank you guys for supporting me and our games through all of this. I try not to take for granted what a positive community of gamers have supported AFV, AB, and myself as a developer. Thank you guys a ton!