Chronically Mistreated

Side Blog

[chronicallymistreated]

Hi, my name is Cherry.

I am a Black autistic woman in my late twenties struggling with a range of physical disabilities and chronic illnesses. I am a part-time wheelchair user and use walking aids daily.

I am looking to make friends in the community, as I am often isolated and mostly homebound. This blog is my processing space where I speak about my lived experiences. I'm happy to receive comments and advice from others with lived experiences. I also appreciate hearing what has helped others with similar challenges.

However, I do not appreciate generalisations about my medical problems and needs, or being dismissed simply because you haven't heard of my conditions. My blog reflects the many different things I am suffering through and living with. If you don't understand something, it is perfectly okay to ask questions or respectfully scroll on.

I experience frequent medical mistreatment, and this blog is a testament to what I continually go through as a Black woman with chronic illnesses and physical disabilities in a predominantly white society.

More about me under the cut...

I'm currently diagnosed with:

Asthma

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome / Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME)

Chronic Gastritis

Chronic Hypotension

Chronic Migraines (With Aura)

Chronic Monocytopenia

Chronic Neutropenia

Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (Hypermobile)

Endometriosis (& Endometrioma)

Fibromyalgia

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)

Radiculopathy

Sciatica

I'm currently being assessed for:

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)

If you spread any kind of hate, you'll be blocked. I shouldn't have to spell this out either...

[romanceyourdemons]

guy currently hurtling toward a migraine at a rate that would impress most astrophysicists: i wonder wgat is happening in my beautiful telephone

[linolinoing]

guys pls don't die from the heat i love playing tumblr with you

[crippled-peeper]

if your disability came from something you did voluntarily, like driving a car, or having sex, or doing BMX stunts, then guess what???

you deserve respect. you deserve to have your needs met. you deserve to live

[mysharona1987]

[lynati]

If the trash pickup people stop doing their job for two weeks you'd be throwing a fucking tantrum. Same for the janitors who keep your office spaces and bathrooms clean. (And that's before the various illnesses start to spread all over your city from the build up of pathogens.)

The people responsible keeping our spaces clean (and thus, mostly disease-free) should both be paid more AND thanked more.

[hunter-rodrigez]

If some tech billionaire who makes a million an hour stopped doing his job for two weeks, nobody would notice... well, some might notice because things would suddenly improve across the board.

[remanence-of-love]

[fibro-memes]

[wizardarchetypes]

beautiful women named MyChart are texting me about my overdue pap smear exam

[kosmogrl]

[04k96]

[04k96]

[grace-is-tired]

I hate that being chronically ill means that I constantly feel like I’m just living life on the sidelines. I spend most of my time observing the outside world from bed. Hearing and seeing how everyone I know is out in the world experiencing new things and traveling and exploring while I just have to lay here is heartbreaking sometimes.

[fractally]

To Americans who might feel inclined to scoff at Europeans talking about the heat: I know you’ve heard this before but maybe you’ll listen to an American who spent many years of her life dealing with 115F / 46C summers out in the American west and now lives in France.

THIS IS WORSE. It’s so much worse.

When you hear “there’s no AC” you probably are thinking like…oh that’s rough, but still I’ve dealt with those temps. My old place didn’t have AC. It can’t be that bad.

NO. The lack of AC trickles down into every facet of dealing with the heat in a way that slowly and quite literally boils you alive. It’s not just “oh my apartment is hot this sucks”, it’s “there is nowhere you can go to cool down and if you overheat there is no help available”

For most there’s no AC anywhere. Anywhere. The coolest place available is maybe your local church, or a shopping center. Both will kick you out around 8pm, the hottest part of the day. In France and Spain in particular, the time zone is wrong (Hitler’s fault—we’re still aligned with Germany instead of the UK) and the sun doesn’t set until 10-11pm. Heat is still being actively pumped into your living spaces at 10pm.

And the temps do not meaningfully drop overnight. (Which you might expect if you’re from the American west. Southerners do understand this.) Many people live in stone walled buildings that just keep heating up. This is very literally the experience of being in a stone oven. And there’s no way to drop the temperature. You can’t escape it.

If your body temp climbs to unmanageable levels and you start experiencing heat exhaustion, you can call the hospital…most of which also do not have AC. I’m not sure how they’re treating people, I guess with ice packs? There’s already been a handful of deaths in my city, and that’s before any kind of post-wave reporting. These are real time reported deaths.

Anyway I want you to really, really internalize the sense of panic that starts to set in when you’re in these circumstances. The animal brain really starts to go wild when there’s no options and no escape. That’s why Europeans are posting about suffering.

(And no—leaving isn’t possible either. Many people don’t have cars, and the trains are down due to track over heating. And also don’t have AC. These conditions are frankly genuinely scary.)

[vixvigil]

it’s never a normal temperature anymore it’s always some fucking bullshit

[fishpondfish]

it is impossible to watch a movie. every night i think i want to watch a movie. no movie gets watched. because it's not possible

[mousidy]

and yet they keep making movies with the hopes that one day humanity will discover a way to watch them. it's so inspiring

[important-cat-pics]

[anistarrose]

if you are a parent, or may become one, or you are otherwise likely to arrive in the situation of caring for a child while they eat, promise me this: if a child doesn't like a certain food or food group, you will ask them WHY. and specifically, you will pay attention to either confirming or ruling out "it makes my mouth itch" or "it makes my stomach hurt," both of which are medically important info that children may not provide unprompted. which i know because this PSA has been brought to you by "i spent my entire childhood and much of my early teens eating peas and lentils while wondering why everyone else liked the Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation so much, like were they a bunch of legume masochists or something, before i finally realized that Violently Itchy Mouth Sensation was in fact a sinister demon appearing only to me, and her true demonic name was: Legume Allergy"