Professional Medical Mystery

Avery | They/Them | 28 | Queer | Chronically Ill and Disabled about it | Autistic | White icon description: a picture of Avery, a white nonbinary person with brown hair, making a shocked expression with an orange bottle of pills in their mouth. | header description: A black cripplepunk logo, a person in wheelchair giving the finger, over a bigender pride flag with 5 stripes, pink, yellow, white, purple, and blue.

[insidestory1]

Please don't hold yourself to healthy people standards of orderliness. Having a tidy house is for people who have the spoons to do that. Preparing proper food for every meal is for people who have the spoons to do that. Getting up every day is for people who have the spoons to do that.

[anxietyproblem]

[strawbkiwi]

btw if all you are doing as a physically disabled person is survive, you're worthy of being here as much as everyone else. even if you can't work, make art, or leave your home. even if you don't see anything beyond your bedroom and phone screen. even if you gain or lose weight, or your appearance otherwise changes because of your disability. even if you aren't awake or aware most of the time. you being here is enough to contribute to the world. i love you

[strwbrrypupx3]

The absolute gnawing guilt of being chronically ill even though you know there's nothing you can do about it

[mysticalspiders]

I feel like we don’t talk enough about how having chronic illness and/or chronic pain makes you irritable. It makes you grumpy. It can make you a not very fun person to be around. 

We don’t talk enough about the ugly sides of chronic illness/pain. The parts where you feel like a bad person not because of the pain in of itself but because everyone else thinks you are pushing them away. The times when you don’t bear it like a saint and the roughest edges of your personality come out. Where maybe you do hurt other people’s feelings. Its a complicated side of the experience thats resists an easy answer. 

[mysticalspiders]

Another more mundane but perhaps more insidious side to chronic illness, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and probably other is the way it can hurt your friendships not in such a direct way as I describe in the post above but because you simply can’t be there. All the times when you have to cancel plans because you don’t have the energy or the ability to be with people. All the times when you can’t make plans in the first place.

It makes me feel like such a terrible friend to say I can’t hang out with you. And it makes me feel like I can’t ever truly deepen my friendships because I’m not able to put the time in that other people can.

[washmysoul]

[fibromyalgicaf]

Hey if you have chronic pain, you gotta remember that the cognitive load of dealing with that is exhausting. Just that alone. Never mind what else you've got going on.

You're not lazy or being dramatic; you're overloaded.

[lupusbaby]

When you’re chronically ill or disabled, a short task also requires an allotted recovery time or flare time. I can vacuum my bedroom in 10 minutes with difficulty, but then I need 2 more hours to rest because I exerted myself. I might even need an entire day to recover from a more difficult task. So a 10-minute task now becomes 2+ hours, and an hour task becomes a day. So when I ask someone else to do a task I can technically physically handle, it’s because they can do it in minutes and I need hours.

[potsiepumpkin]

[bungoustrayfrogs]

“Hey can you come here for a sec?”

Yeah hold on lemme just *stands up*

*joints snap out and into place, blood rushes down my legs making my vision go black, a wave of dizziness and nausea overtakes me for a solid 30 seconds*

*blinks and shakes out my head like an etch-a-sketch* alrighty I’m coming sorry

[fibro-memes]

[my-brain-is-soup]

[dankmemeuniversity]

[anxietyproblem]

[potsiepumpkin]

When the chronic fatigue is chronic

[korokposting]

disabled person who isn't pushing themself to their absolute limits and feels guilty about it I love you

disabled person who cannot 'keep it together' I love you

disabled person who straightforwardly can't do certain things I love you

disabled person who thinks they should be doing more I love you

disabled person who 'gave up' I love you

[thewitchbladecoven]

Being disabled so I can't leave my bed means not making a lot of new memories and it hurts so much more than you can ever realise that your friends have forgotten the most precious memories you have with them because they get to keep making more memories with more impact, while you just get to lay there, see your life pass you by, and remember your most precious memories knowing nobody else even remembers.

Fuck, I'm so fucking lonely.