im sick yo

my tumblr for venting and seeking community for my ever-lengthening list of illnesses. see pinned post.

[chronicallymentallyill]

Current list of illnesses/disorders/syndromes:

Major Depressive Disorder

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Borderline Personality Disorder (formal diagnosis confirmed 03/30/22, unsure of accuracy)

ADHD* (suspected, not seeking evaluation at this time due to desire to transition)

Autism* (suspected, not seeking evaluation at this time due to desire to transition)

Pseudotumor cerebri/idiopathic intracranial hypertension

Migraines

IBS (primarily D but regularly mixed)

Hidradenitis suppurativa/acne inversa

Severe year-round and seasonal allergies (as in allergic conjunctivitis, allergic bronchitis, allergic sinus infection, etc.)

PCOS

Hypothyroidism

Anemia* (in remission, on maintenance meds)

Eczema

Osteoarthritis

Spondyloarthritis* (currently settled on ankylosing spondylitis)

Deviated septum (s-shaped with permanently inflamed turbinates, cannot breathe well out of one nostril and struggle to breath nasally overall)

[systlin]

U ever wanna just take your own brain out and soak it in a nice ibuprofen solution for a little bit

[chronicallymentallyill]

I'm so fucking bitter rn. I worked all day, including some on my current contract assignment, and was rly looking forward to Minecraft.

Ha. Nope. The gods of arthritis couldn't allow that.

So now I'm laid up in bed waiting for the medicine to finish kicking in so I can sleep, glaring at my computer. It's not fucking fair.

[mamoru]

if you ever get a doctor that says you cannot possibly have POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) because your blood pressure is not low enough or does not drop low enough when standing, whether or not a tilt table is involved: that doctor does not know enough about POTS.

by the current and most common diagnostic criteria, POTS patients must not have their blood pressure significantly drop when upright/standing in order for it to be considered POTS. a POTS diagnosis is only supposed to be made in the absence of orthostatic hypotension. very long story short: if your blood pressure drops a bunch when you stand up or are upright, you can not have POTS. doctors who say there must be low blood pressure or a significant decrease in upright blood pressure for someone to have POTS are wrong by the very definition of POTS.

but POTS patients can have low blood pressure in general, can have high blood pressure, and can have their blood pressure increase when standing.

POTS is not: low blood pressure, or a blood pressure drop when standing.

POTS is: significant heart rate increase (tachycardia) from being upright, with symptoms, within 10 minutes of being upright on a tilt table, without having orthostatic hypotension, after ruling out certain other causes and circumstances.

[ayamccabre]

Except you can absolutely have both. My test involved continuous monitoring for both heart rate and blood pressure. My blood pressure dropped sharply but then rose and stabilised within a minute or so. My heart rate graph was a totally different shape and was still rising when the test was over. Your heart rate can't be explained by your blood pressure, but if the two graphs look totally different you can absolutely be diagnosed with both. It's just not something you can do without specialist equipment.

[mamoru]

"The current diagnostic criteria for POTS is a heart rate increase of 30 beats per minute (bpm) or more, or over 120 bpm, within the first 10 minutes of standing, in the absence of orthostatic hypotension." from dysautonomia international who handles autonomic research, advocacy, awareness, and hosts the world's largest autonomic medical conferences.

at the conferences they discuss how yes you can have every symptom of POTS except also have a blood pressure drop, and then it stops being POTS by the current definition. instead it becomes another form of autonomic orthostatic intolerance.

[ayamccabre]

I'm sure doctors are happy to treat an unnamed orthostatic intolerance. They for sure don't treat orthostatic hypotension. I'm gunna stick with my hospital diagnosis that gets me meds. And that's kind of the entire issue. They fuck with diagnostic criteria, people get their diagnosis revoked without ever seeing a doctor about it (it happened. To me. Different condition.) and suddenly there's no treatment. There's no insurance, if you need insurance. There's no longer the warning on your hospital file. Worst case, you lose your meds AND you have to repay costs for treatment you got. Cost of living payments can be revoked and demands made for repayment. This shit kills. So yeah I don't fuck with changes in diagnostic criteria when they exclude people who have the symptoms and don't have a viable alternative. The same organisation that published that is the one not providing another label. Again, this kills.

[mamoru]

dysautonomia international absolutely does address types of dysautonomia other than POTS. that is why they are called dysautonomia international and not POTS international. dysautonomia international has not changed the diagnostic criteria for POTS recently, and they do provide resources and education for many different types of dysautonomia including orthostatic hypotension. dysautonomia patients absolutely can receive care for non-POTS autonomic orthostatic intolerance, and I am one of those patients.

DI's research has been life saving.

the diagnostic criteria for POTS has been this for many years. I genuinely do not understand what you are talking about, can you show me what you mean by saying DI recently changed the criteria?

[thebibliosphere]

Weirdly, I had a doctor claim that DI had changed their criteria and that’s what they were following, but as someone who has been following DI for years, they literally haven’t.

I’m actually wondering if some hospitals have changed their policies in response to long Covid and the staggering number of people now searching for a POTS diagnosis, and I wonder if the exclusion is coming from there because they are being pressured not to diagnose people with POTS/dysautonomia because they didn’t have the education and resources before and they sure as shit don’t now.

[thebibliosphere]

Via Dysautonomia International on Twitter (click the above link) Swedish researchers just published the first #POTS symptom score, based on the 12 most common symptoms reported by 1000s of patients in the Big POTS Study, a collaboration between Dysautonomia International, Vanderbilt & Univ of Calgary.

I don’t have the spoons rn to image ID, but using that self-reported scoring system, I score 9/10 on a daily basis. Meanwhile, I’ve been downplaying my POTS symptoms because I keep telling myself I’m sooo much better than I was in 2019, which really only serves to highlight how ill I was in 2019.

I need to be kinder to myself and stop wondering why I don’t have the energy to do shit 🙃

[crippleprophet]

Wait holy shit

AS describes exactly the pain I have

oh boy okay as i’ve mentioned i’ve got an extensive document on AS symptoms & mythbusting coming soon but i’ve been wanting to do a quick summary of “wtf is that?” for a while and this is the perfect opportunity! most stats in this post from this 2022 summary article (link) but note that their gender stats are questionable as recent studies show equal prevalence regardless of ‘sex’. so!

wtf is AS?

ankylosing spondylitis is a systemic autoimmune disorder characterized by inflammatory back pain. it’s estimated to be 1.5 times as common as rheumatoid arthritis and over 6 times as common as lupus (SLE) but is incredibly underdiagnosed, which is why i’m super loud about it!

key symptoms of inflammatory back pain:

most frequent onset in early 20s but can be juvenile or later. articles say onset is prior to age 40 but seeing as i’m deeply skeptical of all things medical establishment i wouldn’t rule later onset out

either no history of mechanical trauma or unrelated (for example, i have a herniated disk but had AS symptoms for years before then)

pain gets worse with rest and better with movement - most sources say “exercise” but in the experience of me and other folks with AS i’ve talked to that’s debatable at best. my pain gets worse after remaining in the same position and better with rotating, stretching, etc; sitting upright is most painful for me, but on typical days i need to alternate laying down and standing / walking briefly

morning stiffness and back pain that wakes you up at night

alternating buttock (butt) pain

articles say inflammatory back pain improves with NSAIDs but i’ve never met any chronically ill person whose pain has been made manageable with NSAIDs

AS can also include (usually asymmetrical) joint pain in other locations (especially large joints like the hips, shoulders, neck, and knees - juvenile AS commonly starts with pain in one or both knees prior to spine involvement), fatigue, peripheral neuropathy, and enthesitis (inflammation of tendon insertion points, especially plantar fasciitis).

testing and diagnosis:

CRP and ESR for inflammation. 40-50% of people with AS do not have elevated inflammatory blood markers.

HLA-B27 gene marker. less common in people with non-radiographic AS (doesn’t show up on an x-ray) and more common in white people. only 6-10% of people who are HLA-B27 positive develop AS and plenty (10-30%) of people with AS are negative for HLA-B27 - myself included!

x-ray and MRI for spine inflammation. both of mine were negative; the absence of clinically visible inflammation does not rule out AS. there is a growing body of literature and education about non-radiographic AS; my rheumatologist put me on 20mg prednisone for a week while waiting on my bloodwork and scan results and when that helped my back pain immensely, said “yep it’s definitely inflammatory then” and that this is the standard of diagnosis/care rheumatological associations are advocating for

i wish you the absolute best of luck in finding an explanation and treatment for your pain 💕 if you (or anyone reading this who suspects they have AS!) have any questions feel free to reply, send me an ask, or dm me!

[lizzie-gains]

So I have a favourite virtual yoga studio, Alchemystic Studio. They specifically are Indian teachers and teach a decolonised practice. I love every session I get the pleasure of attending, however I don't get to attend as many as I'd maybe like, because they're on the other side of the world and the time zones make it hard. Yoga is definitely the kind of movement I can, and want to, incorporate into my regular movement practice - especially to help with the pain and mobility. I do use videos and recordings to guide my practice, but sometimes a live class (even if it's virtual) can be really good, and once I've booked a class I have the motivation to attend it.

The past two days, I've gotten up for a 4am yoga class and honestly I think it was worth the interrupted sleep, I feel amazing now.

But also I'm definitely going back to bed 😴

[walkingouttahere]

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Tweet from Kat (@/ chronicParent30) on 7/16/20 reading: Chronic illness is weird in that if a healthy person got ill for a week with the symptoms I deal with every single day, they’d likely rest and do the bare minimum for that week. But because my symptoms are forever I’m meant to live life as normal no matter how dreadful I feel. /End ID]

[roberteospeedwagon]

this is your regular psa that neurodivergencies that result in struggling to start and finish tasks results in things that aren’t always “acceptable”.

when people hear about people with depression struggling to motivate themselves, or people with adhd having executive dysfunction, they think of not cleaning their room, or not doing work. these are all parts, but you know what else can and often does happen?

not brushing their teeth

not showering for days, weeks, or even MONTHS at a time (when i was younger, i would literally only shower maybe once every month or so.)

not cleaning their room… to the point where old food is still there and is rotting. i try to eat downstairs these days bc i know if i bring food up into my room it’ll stay there and rot.

not washing clothes

not changing clothes

etc.

and i feel like everyone ignores those traits because they aren’t hygenic. when people imagine a dirty room due to executive dysfunction and/or depression, they imagine a room with stuff scattered all over the place — never a room with things rotting. never a room that is so dirty you can barely see the floor.

oftentimes, neurotypical “allies” support us until we’re gross. until we haven’t showered in so long we’re horrifically greasy. until our teeth are noticeably yellow — or we even lose them (that also overlaps with classism!). until our rooms go from “messy” to “nearly impossible to navigate through”. until our symptoms are ugly.

signed, a depressed autistic person with adhd who can barely fucking function.

[batmanego]

my pain scale invention. it goes from 0-16. you fill it out like this:

i made this because i find pain to be a multifaceted thing that influences me in different ways. i can accomplish lots of small tasks while in pain but that doesnt mean i can move around or even think clearly. its name is the goldstein expanded pain index or gepi. you can use it if you want. or not.

[palominocorn]

[Image description 1: four circles, inside one another, split by two lines to make four sets of four slices each. Each quarter of the circles is labeled: one is "intensity of pain", one is "difficulty thinking/communicating", one is "difficulty accomplishing tasks", and the last is "difficulty moving around".

Image description 2: the same as above, but some of the sections have been colored in. Intensity of pain and difficulty accomplishing tasks each have one section colored red, difficulty thinking/communicating has two, and difficulty moving around has three. End ID.]

[scribefindegil]

Tips for baking with brain fog

Brain fog in the kitchen can mean anything from forgetting an ingredient to accidentally skipping a recipe step, plus much more. Here's how to bake successfully, even when you're feeling foggy.

A useful article from King Arthur Flour (my beloved) on baking while disabled.

[capt-coffeebitch]

This genuinely might make me cry. I already deeply appreciate King Arthur for making the best GF 1 for 1 flour. And having good recipes. But an article posted by them from someone with disabilities about how to do the thing even with disabilities? That’s just genuinely lovely. I know that my bad there is low, but it’s low for a reason and hopefully stuff like this can continue to raise that bar for disabled people like me.

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

This is so useful! And in case people don’t know, King Arthur Flour is 100% employee-owned!

[sadhoc]

Deleted the reblog for other reasons but. Jowling kowling rowling’s new book where the villain has ME, POTS, fibromyalgia, and Allodynia is going to be the first time a lot of able bodied people hear about these conditions. And it’s also going to be the first time that a lot of people who have these conditions see them in print. The harm that will do is immeasurable

[cistematicchaos]

Especially since JKR is known for successful campaigns against marginalized groups, including disabled people. She uses disability as a tragedy. She uses disability to discredit people, to villanize people and able-bodied people soak that shit up like a sponge. I can imagine way too well how horribly this shit is going to go down and I’m already exhausted.  

[sadhoc]

this is fine to reblog btw. and also with able bodied people it's like. they resent the idea that some people are sick all the time. they have a sort of constant low level anger towards us for not being able to meet their standards of productivity and physical perfection as proxy for moral purity. what stories that have disabled villains can do is take that resentment and stoke it into outright hatred and violence

[hamenthotep]

She picked those conditions specifically because they're hard to diagnose and are often considered 'fake' illnesses.

There's no real way to measure how much pain someone is in. Or how fatigued they are. It's about discrediting the villain. Not only are they woke, but they're a benefits cheat! Faking illness because they're too lazy to work.

But when the hero is a JK Rowling self insert, there's no room for reality to make an appearance

[kipplekipple]

Oh sorry, yes this is better wording.

[princeofchronicpain]

In the transgender community, there is a term for acting in a way that reflects that you do not want people to know you're transgender: going/being "stealth".

Many disabled people go stealth as well.

Whenever I apply for a job, and I have to fill out the forms that ask if you have a disability, I have to lie and say no. If I don't, they'll find a reason to not hire me. Or they'll find a reason to fire me. I also don't ask for accommodations because I know that's just asking to be fired. I can't show how tired I am or else I might be fired. I live in terror and exhaustion because of this.

Ableds say, "They can't do that! It's illegal!" Yeah, if you know that, don't you think I know that?? But what am I supposed to do? If they don't wanna hire me, they just won't. If they fire me, they'll just write down any old reason they want. I'm not gonna sue them: I don't have the money or time. I'm sick and tired of people doing the disabled version of mansplaining. Ablesplaining.

[state-of-franklin]

Anyone with HS (hidradenitis suppurativa):

What’s, depending on your comfort with the topic, the lowest having the disease ever brought you, and also, what is the best treatment or solution that has helped your life immensely since your diagnosis?

My worst was when my mom yelled at me when I was younger when “the rash” came back, and that I was limping and couldn’t walk properly in public while on vacation.

My best was getting diagnosed and finally, after 6 long years of not knowing what was wrong with me, that I wasn’t alone and there was help and medicine out there that can negate it’s negative effects.

[chronicallymentallyill]

The worst was when I was hospitalized with horrible cysts of "unknown origin" that nearly went septic, as well as being subjected to uncomfortable questions (being asked at 14, in front of my mother, whether I was sexually active and, of so, what kind of acts I'd done was my own level of hell regardless of the fact that I wasn't).

(The second worst was when I was nearly approved for a clinical trial for HS treatment, only to be declined at the last second due to my mental health issues. 🙃)

The best was actually talking to a dermatologist and getting treatment for something that every other doctor had shrugged their shoulders at for decades.

[chronicallymentallyill]

Really love how, even with medication and therapy and meditation and constant introspection and trying to always check in with people, my mental illnesses can still take me from perfectly fine to sobbing and trying to delete my phone in like 5 minutes.

And by "love" I mean I want to punch something.

[chronicallymentallyill]

Fat Acceptance Movement: Don't hate your body! Love it for all it does for you! Love it for allowing you to live a full and happy life!

My disabled ass: ...bitch...

[hopelesscalico-deactivated20230]

i am so fucking sick of people trying to act like it’s ableist to acknowledge that disabled people Are Disabled. this whole movement has started around people saying “disabled people are just as capable as abled people” when the conversation that SHOULD be being had is “there is nothing wrong with needing accommodations that abled people don’t”

[notaverynicelady]

Disability is not intrinsic, it is based on context. People are not just disabled, they are disabled because the (human-made) environment does not cater to their particular ways of being.

I am disabled working in an open space full of chatter and bright lights. I am fine working from home in an environment I control and set up according to my needs.

Also, one does not need to be officially labeled as disabled to operate better in conditions that vary from the norm. We need to recognize that because we will all be better for it. There is no one-size-fits-all.

[chronicallymentallyill]

Okay, that's true for some types and severities of disabilities. But there is no level of accommodation that will make my chronic pain go away. There is no level of accommodation that will erase the mental and physical effects of too much fluid on my brain.

Accommodating my vision problems? No problem! Tinted glasses with the right prescription and a blue light filter. Similar for my hearing loss, though hearing aids are utter shite and way too expensive (but people can speak up, type their questions, etc.). But there is no way to just erase my pain. I'm about to kill my kidneys and liver with OTC meds and the pain is getting worse so they're not touching it; anything stronger will make other things worse, like my memory, ability to drive, etc. There's no way to just erase the brain damage from the excess CSF, nor to ease it without multiple, dangerous surgeries that are nearly guaranteed to fail over and over.

All disabilities are not created equal. The social disability model is not a one-to-one thing for every single disability. Storm vs. Rogue, etc. etc.