Melodious Maddy

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

For those of you that #bulletjournal should I wait for my #leuchtturm1917 to show up or start in this beautiful notebook? The former is the dot grid and this is lined. I'm so conflicted. Both seem awesome. Any thoughts are appreciated!

[uwmadarchives]

Summer Music Clinic, 1940s (Images #S17479, S17481, S17476)

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For more information about UW campus history, contact [email protected] or visit archives.library.wisc.edu. On, Wisconsin!

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

I HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED IN A MEDICAL WEBSITE BLOG! And I was compensated for my time so am I a professional yet?! I'm very excited to share my Endometriosis battle with you and maybe if you need help with a difficult diagnosis try #crowdmed They helped me a lot! http://blog.crowdmed.com/finally-heard-crowdmed-success-story/

[lattes-and-lingerie]

Here is a shot of my desk with all my stuff laid out on it. Welcome to my new Instagram and hope you all have a wonderful day. #studying #studyblr #study #desk #erincondrenlifeplanner #erincondren #eclp #planneraddict

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

My dream!

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

Finally Being Heard: The Upward Battle for a Diagnosis | CrowdMed Blog

Hello, my name is Madeleine (Maddy) Gerlach, and I used CrowdMed’s services back in March 2013. I have been diagnosed with ten diseases over the past eig

I HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED AND COMPENSATED FOR MY WRITING!!! A FIRST FOR ME! 

I’m so excited to share my #Endometriosis story! Please let me know if you have had similar experiences...? Or anything you want to know just ask! #Spoonie #CrowdMed

[just-spoonie-things]

This brave spoonie has been struggling with severe systemic gout for ten years, along with other serious medical conditions that have all left her suffering from extreme chronic pain. She is physically unable to work and yet she has been denied Social Security Disability Insurance many times and thus has no income. This young women wants to be independent, and your money would pay for food, gas to and from hospital visits, other daily needs, over the counter meds to help with side effects, and helping her mother pay rent. Please, donate to make this spoonies life just a little easier - I’m sure any help would be greatly appreciated.

- Bella

[herhmione]

“if trump loses will clinton really be any better?” YES. yes holy shit why is this even a question yes she will fucking be better!!!! have you read her policy!!!! have you paid attention to what she’s saying!! you may not like her but she wants women to have access to abortion, she wants gun control, she doesn’t want to overturn same-sex marriage. she doesn’t want to ban muslims from immigrating to the country. like the amount of hatred for hillary clinton is honestly insane when your other option is donald trump

[chronicreality]

I hate the term differently abled. Because I’m really not differently abled. I’m disabled because I am unable to do a lot of things. Differently abled would be like Spider-Man who can crawl up walls. Differently abled applies that I have different abilities than a normal person but I don’t. So please just call me disabled.

[pcosandendometriosis]

[pcosandendometriosis]

[amimusic]

Right about now my graduation ceremony is starting, and I’m here in bed. I find graduations to be long and boring but it still would have been nice to walk across the stage and get my masters degree in front of my friends and family.

[spooniestrong]

*love & spoons* 💙

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

I feel the same way.

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

I put a red lip on at 10:15 tonight in my pajamas to showcase my new hair style! @danielle_rose did a great job of sheering the weight of my heavy and thick hair. My neck doesn't hurt anymore! And I learned new techniques. It looks and feels better than my health. So if I can fake feeling good that's okay with me. It's the next best thing. Thanks @cintaaveda I will definitely return for more color and cuts! (at Agesong)

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

@cintaaveda @danielle_rose did such a great job on my wavy hair and taught me a lot about how to do it at home! Thanks!!! (at Cinta Aveda Institute)

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

This is for all the #lupuswarriors out there. It sucks and it's tough but I believe in you always. This is for @lg5iscoming I hope this is okay. You're amazing!!! I hope it works out. #spooniefriends

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

How I feel right now. #painsomnia #spoonielife

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

My #mambihappyplanner came from @michaelsstores in the post today! I know it doesn't start until July, but I'm a planner and we plan, damn it! I'm exceedingly excited. This is my first #thehappyplanner ! @meandmybigideas

[melodiousmaddy-blog]

Essay: Delving into Depths of Memories and Music

If you’re up for the challenge, dear reader, do some exploring of your own. It could be just what you need. I know that I’m chronically ill and need many medications, but music is my drug of choice. I am chronically musical, and always will be.

I have always had music built in my bones and flowing in my blood. At a very young age, I could clap in rhythm while my mum sang me songs. She’s a composer and pianist, and utterly brilliant if you ask me, and a few critics too. Her mom and dad played several instruments each. My Grandma plays piano, organ, flute, and some cello. My Grandpa played alto and tenor sax, and bassoon. All of their kids played music at least in school and could do most things by ear early on.

I’m currently living in an assisted living facility while I get my medications for various illnesses, both physical and mental, under control and also try to get the pain management going. I’ll be here for 3 months. My parents could say I’ve been passionate about classical music since I was just out of the womb. I have always, feverishly adored classical music and all of the sub genres like opera, concertos, sonatas, art songs, oratorio, solo piano, and on and on. I have a vast love of classical music history too. I’ve spent money on textbooks I didn’t need for a class, just because I wanted to do research. I must get it from my dad who used to read the dictionary as a child, and still does.   

When a person becomes as ill as I have been in the last 7 years, it can really put a gigantic damper on life plans and interests, hobbies, relationships, friendships, and everything else, come to think of it. Everything shifts. I became a “flake,” which was the exact opposite of me before the illnesses started appearing and making as ill as someone with cancer. Before all this, I was going to an arts high school, which required an audition to attend, and I was majoring in voice. My plans were to go to a conservatory after high school and eventually end up as an opera singer. Well fate laughed at me and threw me a life-threatening rare blood disease that wouldn’t allow me to clot out of nowhere. After one autoimmune disease is introduced, others started showing up later. I currently have more diseases and disorders, meds, and side effects than I can even remember (that’s also a side effect).

In high school I had one extraordinary friend who is remarkably, exceedingly, talented. He’s a brilliant pianist, and because I adored this pianist a little too much (let’s call him George), I wanted to seem like I knew what I was doing when it came to music. I began delving into Beethoven’s pieces that aren’t as well known, or aren’t usually known by singers, because Beethoven didn’t write for voice well (technique wise). I knew Mozart operas, but I wanted to know as much as I could shove into my brain about Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Ravel, Fauré, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Prokefiev, and all the main composers of a well rounded library of classical music. George really did gift me classical music. Even though I loved it since being a child, I didn’t know names of performers, conductors, and the whole classical music scene.

When I started spending most of my afternoons and nights laying in bed and simply listening to music, it became my best friend, and constant companion. I always joke that Beethoven’s the only man who has ever understood me, and he’s dead!

I spend many hours listening to music per day. I have 99 gigabytes of music, if that means anything to you. The longest piece I have is 25 minutes of a Tchaikovsky piano trio. Many works are much longer, but usually they split up the tracks on iTunes or CDs, so it’s not like 50 minutes in one track.

I hope one day I am able to be a music historian, and go around lecturing and writing books! That is my ultimate goal in life, besides being healthy, but the latter usually goes without saying.  

So what’s the point of these little stories? What point am I trying to make? Now that you, dear reader, have some background information, let’s talk about life.

As a kid I would bottle everything up until one day I would scream uncontrollably, sob, weep, and shut the f#ck down. I could no longer handle what was going on in my terrible childhood, and I cracked under the pressure. This became a pattern, and I have had to and am still learning how to not do that.

Once I got into therapy at 16 years old, we started thinking about my childhood and how I would push my feelings deeper and deeper down into the depths of hell, so no one could tell what I truly felt about the turmoil I was experiencing. Even I couldn’t feel the pain I was in. I was numb, and that’s only good for a select few situations. I needed to do more exploring. Exploration is a wonderful thing, and I believe it to be a key ingredient in find some sort of peace.

Once you break the ice, there is so much to be found. It’s actually quite exciting when 2+2=4; once you put together that this event mixed with that feeling equaled the reaction I had. I have logic on my side now. I didn’t as a child, which lead to many, many problems both at the time and even now.

Music has taught me so much, but a few things that I’ve realized are that everyone has their own interpretation and feelings about any given piece of music and to respect that; and to explore as much as humanly possible. Music exploration excites the my heart and brain more than anything else can. Music has saved me again and again,  and will continue to be exactly what I need in exactly the right moment. Music history is my favorite subject; music theory keeps my brain going, because it’s like math but so much better (in my humble opinion); and music as a whole is just the most amazing thing to me. Music has gone through a lot of exploration of its own. It’s taken many minds and people to come up to where we are with music currently. To be very cheesy, music is the most universal language, and to me the only language to living in your heart and brain.