pain and cats

chronic pain, tattoos, cats, pink things, and glitter

[painandcats]

Transcript for Vlog #9: Chronic Illness Tag (Part 1), therapy, Youtube recommendations + tattoo etiquette

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd11fcTLhdk

[music: Killercats - Kaibu] [intro: Pinhead: "I. AM. PAIN."] So I drive Randy's car for the most part, now, which is the gold Prius.  And I always forget to put this up cuz the other car has it on the license plate and this one you actually have to put up all the time and we usually put it down because he's tall and he can't see through it, but yeah, I definitely just went to the Starbucks without proper identification.  Luckily they know me but dang. Yeah, never underestimate having another wheelchair using therapist.  This is awesome.  This is working really well.  And  she recommended that I find this video by Zack Anner called Pimp My Wheelchair.  So if I find that I'll link it below. And I'm definitely going home and looking for that and hopefully we'll be able to watch it cuz that sounds hilarious. I feel like I look like trash, but oh well. I found it easier to just film in chunks and um go from there, so that's how I'm gonna do this, so… I am gonna do, right now, the first 3 questions of the chronic illness tag and I'll link all that information below.  I found it through Painful Hilarity.  I've been looking for shorter tags[cough]…shorter tags, but I think I can do this if I just like…film it throughout the day.  Anyway, so the first three questions?  I said?  I don't remember. Anyway, 1. What have you been diagnosed with? I…how should I do this… I've been diagnosed with Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. I've been diagnosed with fibromyalgia. I've been diagnosed with dysautonomia. Post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, which is either just a consequence of the situation I'm in or actually, like, diagnosable on its own.  We don't really know. Um…others…? #2: What will you tend to do at night if you can't sleep or when you can't sleep? This is really bad but lately I've stopped taking amitriptyline on a regular basis, like on a daily basis for controlling my depression.  And I explained why I did that on Twitter a little bit ago but basically I just don't like how it makes me feel compared to some other medications that I've found to work better but I don’t have access to anymore, so… I have all this amitriptyline left over, and if I don't take it on a regular basis it basically works as a sleep aid. So, if I can't fall asleep and I know I don't have to wake up really early for work the next morning I'll just take one of those.  And like, last night, no, yesterday I woke up at 10am which is really rare for me now.  So, it works! Or uh sometimes I'll, now that I have the heating blanket available now, now that we found it again, I'll use that or lying on the floor sometimes works as well. Or crying. #3: Worst experience/side effect of a medication? Has to go to a, oo… It said side-effect, not withdrawal symptom, so I'm gonna go with Tramadol as well as Vicodin because both of those spurred some very serious and awful gastrointestinal and excretory side-effects which I would prefer to never experience again, so, that one wins, for sure. And I'll come back to this tag a little bit later in the day, so see you then. What is this…? Why? Alright, I think I might have mail, but I'm gonna do three more questions of this chronic illness tag before I go down and check because that's gonna be a big whole ordeal, don't know how long it's gonna take to get up the stairs or whatever, so I'm gonna do this first. #4… How has your condition impacted your mental health? Check my twitter… But seriously like… Y'know, chronic illness puts you in a constant just…series of changes and new accommodations you have to make and some of them are..stuff ya didn'…stuff you just don't expect… So, I, it's a process…I'm not to the point where I can be cheerful and excited and "thankful" about the whole experience yet, but… Y'know getting the Ez Lite Cruiser I think is gonna help quite a bit cuz I'm gonna be able to like, get out, and get out more. Being on the first floor is gonna be another big deal, to fix things.  Maybe help me a be a little bit better about my situation…and um, once I'm working at least part-time somewhere where I'm seated I think things'll be a lot easier.  But, y'know, gotta take it one day at a time and I am never gonna claim to be the most, ha, positive or well-adjusted person about this quite yet, so, I dunno… Keep watching for the progression, I guess. 5. Describe your social life. Um, online I have a pretty flourishing social life.  On Twitter, on the messaging services I use to talk to people back in Cincinnati with, I talk to them every day.  I talk to people online every day.  I have a lot of friends I met on twitter, and some that I've met on tumblr who I still talk to because I don't use tumblr a lot, at all, other than the transcripts for these, now. In person?  It's a little more isolated, or I'm a little more isolated.  But that's why I like the job that I'm at right now, and that's why I'm not keen on the idea of jumping to another job even though it might be better for me health-wise…it's like, I'm JUST meeting people.   So, I dunno… A+ social life online and when it comes to people I consider my family, absolutely, but when it comes to um, support systems offline, Randy's fantastic but he's one person, so I should get to know more people locally, probably. 6. What is the hardest thing to do when you are flaring? And I don't really know how to take this, if this means like, emotionally-- what's the hardest thing to do?  Or physically-- cuz that really varies, physically, depending on what's going on. But um, just in general, I'm gonna say driving right now, because, with the amount of cognitive dysfunction I deal with if I have elevated pain levels for a certain amount of time, [cough] driving is becoming more and more difficult. And um, yeah, because of the level of inconvenience that's gonna cause me, I think this one wins for now.  Maybe I'll do this tag again in 6 months and I'll have a different answer, but for now, that's what I'll say. So, it turns out, Randy has the mail key, so I can't get what I was gonna check, not yet at least, so I cleaned up a little bit, and I wanna go get some either more tea or juice or something because lately I've been preferring to drink my calories.   But while I'm waiting, because it's like 5 o'clock, and I don't wanna go out when everybody else is out, so just to pass some time I'm gonna keep doing some of these questions. Alright… 7. Do you have any worries for the future? Nope!  Nope…not doing this…right now…nope. [in the distance] NOPE! I have makeup on.  I'm not answering that. 8. Favorite comfort food? These, Tazo green teas, which I hope to get very soon when I leave. 9. Tell us a valuable lesson you have learned through being sick. And, um, right now I'm not really in a good enough place to answer that in any capacity… Anything I'll give you is gonna be steeped in cynicism and so I'm…I'm gonna choose not to answer this one right now. 10. Name 3 things that you miss that were taken because of health limitations. I have makeup on. 1) Running, 2) eating whatever I want, 3) dreams of the career I had chosen. Alright, so I'm just gonna finish this up.  I'm gonna go out, and hopefully get more teas or something, and shoot some more things, work on another EDS video that probably won't go up today, but anyway… 11. Last one: How old were you when you started noticing symptoms? Alright, this is gonna be…complicated… So, like, if I look backwards I see EDS symptoms from birth on… Fibromyalgia symptoms started when I was in my mid-twenties like at the end of grad school, and that was when like, any chronic pain symptoms that I had had became so bad that it became concerning. I've had back pain, like my back pain started in middle school probably but never thought that it was anything abnormal.  I thought everybody dealt with it.  So, that's what I thought about a LOT of things EDS-wise until very recently, so… Yeah, so, it varies. I'm going out in like, no braces…hardly anything because y'know what? No. I just want to go there, get tea, and come home, and I'm NOT asking for that much so let's do it. So here's the barrier we have to create if we want to keep the door open because Lucy likes to run down the stairs.  It's just one of our tables with our closet door.  Ridiculous. [music: Itro & Kontinuum - Alive] And y'know what?  Here's some tattoo-related etiquette for you: if you see somebody and they have nice work and like, you want to say something just say something to 'em.  Don't, like… Don't point at us, don't talk about us right like, really?  If you wanna say something, and we're right next to you, just say it.  Just say that it's cool.   I just… Involve me in your conversation that is very clearly about me, right in front of me.  I promise I won't be offended.  Just saying. And to add onto that, I know I won't be offended because I've already heard the most awful stuff anybody could ever say to a heavily tattooed person, ever, so, y'know what?  It won' be new.  So just, bring it on.  Bring it on. It's for me.

[painandcats]

Transcript for Vlog #8:

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZKOi89T6xo

Randy: "You've GOT to be kidding me." "Minimalism at its finest." [music: Tobu - Candyland] [intro: Pinhead: "I. AM. PAIN."] My self-care is just slathering this all over my body, apparently. This little Bratticus Finch was getting allll up in the vlog earlier-- not the vlog-- the marijuana tag…could NOT leave me alone! What! Here's all the attention you require.  Hi baby! Oh now she comes out.  I know I'm not the only one… If you see me from the top up, I'm never wearing regular pants.  Always sweatpants. Whatcha doin'? Here's some annoying nonsense: when you put lotion on and then it shows up on your cane.  Oh we're not gonna focus?  Cool. I'm wearing my wheelchair mermaid Annie shirt! I did the first two questions of Day 2 of the #ThisIsMyEDS tag in vlog #...shhh…I don't remember…Those are in Vlog #3.  I've linked that below. 3. When did you first start experiencing symptoms? When did you acknowledge them as symptoms? Obviously I've been experi..exp…omg…experiencing symptoms my whole life but I started acknowledging them as symptoms sometime in my twenties: I recognized I had symptoms of some type of hypermobility in my early twenties and recognized them as EDS in my late twenties when they became malignantly symptomatic. You can tell if I'm especially dealing with symptoms if I'm OBVIOUSLY reading off a script. I used to run and weightlift…things like P90X and distance running.  I had to stop running during my last year of grad school due to an unknown pain in my knees. During my second year teaching symptoms that'd be identified as fibromyalgia started giving me issues.  We moved to Arizona to get away from the cold.  We'd heard people feel better in the dry heat.  I did for awhile and then the EDS symptoms became much more of an issue and much more obvious as the fibromyalgia symptoms weren't as strong and thus didn't mask the EDS as well. What?  You can't attack the other cats.  You're gonna get sprayed.  Go. Anything atypical about my body I didn't know was weird until extremely recently.  Even at work, I'm like…can you bend your fingers this way?  Can you do this?  So I'm still trying to figure it out, to be honest. 4. Was there a specific age where your health drastically changed? If so, when was that? I was in my mid-twenties when everything started.  Or anything that would have given me enough trouble to warrant going to a doctor or putting braces on or being scared about the pain, or whatever.  Last year my feet started to begin having symptoms and now I can barely use them.  Two hours standing is my limit before I need to sit down or start experiencing cognitive issues or dysfunction. 5. What medicines, treatments, and/or devices do you typically need? Do you have access to all your needs? Ie. body braces, Feeding Tube, Manual wheelchair, power chair, power scooter, walker, cane I use body braces, I have a manual wheelchair, I'm getting a power chair very soon, and I use my cat cane.   Once my Ez Lite Cruiser arrives I'll have access to all the mobility devices I feel I'll need.  So right now,  I'd say that I'm…I'm very blessed compared to what the situation could be. Y'know just…once I get the Ez Lite Cruiser you're gonna see a lot more in the vlogs! Y'know, I'm gonna be able to go out a lot more and be more independent. So I'm really excited about that. Oh come on… 6. How often do you go to the hospital? How comfortable are you in medical environments? What kind of resources and support do you use? (are doctors helpful, support groups, personal research, trial and error) I am not comfortable in medical environments because I feel like I'm never believed.   The last time I was admitted to a hospital was due to high pain which was causing me to become suicidal.  Because sustained pain levels can do that!  Sustained high level pain can do that.   This was prior to my EDS diagnosis, so all I had on my chart was fibromyalgia which really opens you up to so much medical abuse.  I can't even tell you. Essentially, they put me in a room, implied I was drug-seeking, and implied I just needed to be in a room until I "got over it" or "got tired of waiting to get drugs." I will never go to the ER again unless I absolutely have to.  Which, I mean obviously, no one WANTS to go to the ER, but…y'know… Unless I am bleeding out of my face, I do not want to go to the ER ever again because of that situation.  It was terrible. That proved to me that healthy, abled people and doctors would rather see us die than treat us compassionately. I had a rheumatologist before I lost my insurance but I wasn't getting much from her.  She was treating me for RA, which I don't have…I DO NOT have… But she was treating me for that because it's "easier to treat" than EDS. I had a pain management doctor who was great but worked within a really bad pain management clinic who among other things threatened to discontinue my care due to medical marijuana use.  Which that doctor had given me his blessing on, so… Then when they realized I had no more insurance they were VERY hostile to me so I haven't gone back. I talk to people online with similar conditions when it comes to support.  Randy is healthy but extremely supportive.   He's like…the best.  He's the most supportive person.   As well as like the friends I have online, and my ex and best friend Alex and her fiancee, like, they're super supportive as well, but y'know, they live in Cincinnati, so, um, I really miss them so much, like, seeing them in person. When it comes to people in person, I have no,  like other than Randy I don't really have a lot of people.  And that sucks. So that's the end of that tag.  Let's see what else… What more footage of the cats being ridiculous I can find, otherwise thanks for watching, and check out the little medical marijuana tag that I created. Check my other videos.  And I'll see you later!  Have a good night! Oh what, I'm done filming? Bra comes off immediately.

[painandcats]

Transcript for #littleMMJtag YT video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs5XK4rRBnE

[music: Tobu - Candyland] After Chronically Mo made her video about medical cannabis use, I followed up in one of my vlogs discussing how I've integrated cannabis into my pain management regimen. I've decided to make a small tag to help open up discussion about medical marijuana among patients.  I know a lot of people are hesitant to talk about it openly, so I hope this can work as a script or a jumping off point to talk about it. 1. What is a benefit of this medication? One benefit I've found is that it offers mild to moderate pain control or pain relief for my pain-related symptoms.  I've found it very or much more helpful for controlling trauma-based symptoms as well as many anxiety symptoms like OCD compulsions, sort of, and panic symptoms, as well. I've also found that it's a lot harder for me to really go into a flashback if I'm on or using medical marijuana.   And I've found that to be the case for a long time now. 2. What's a negative side-effect that you experience? Some strains give me a headache.  I've found that it's mostly indica strains that'll do this to me so I've kinda learned to avoid those or at least know that might be the case.  I've also found that I'm avoiding CBD strains because I don't find enough benefit for the cost that's almost always attached to that. There's also still a stigma around using medical cannabis in any capacity and that's definitely another negative. 3. What types of medical cannabis do you prefer? In Arizona we have access to flower, concentrates like shatter and budders, topicals, edibles… Anyway, we have edibles as well.  I don't like that.  I don't like them, at all.  I've even seen CBD-water and dog treats.  I prefer to stick to concentrates like shatter, though. And lastly, 4. How does #mmj fit in with your medical regimen? Currently as I’m waiting to get insured again medical marijuana and a muscle relaxer called um…cyclobenzaprine are the only two medications I have available that are worth using.  I have a stash of old tramadol that I'm afraid to use because of the extreme gastro side-effects I experienced while on it. Anyway, that's it!  That's it for the tag!  That's why it's called the LITTLE mmj tag.  I've added… She REALLY wants to be in this video, apparently.  That's why it's pain AND cats, right baby? You have lipstick on your nose. ANYWAY, I've added the questions in text form so feel free to do this tag on your channels! Thanks for watching!

[painandcats]

(I have Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome + related issues, mild scoliosis, and fibromyalgia.)

So in the last week I've started experiencing new, severe back pain in my thoracic spine.  If I move or breathe or cough I can feel the bones in my spine crunching around and shifting.  If I bend forward too much, it sends this electricky, sharp-but-dull jolt through my body.  If I roll forward as if I were rolling into a ball, it makes it feel a lot better.

I'm currently uninsured and very financially strapped.   My ER visits locally have just involved being labeled drug-seeking because of my chart.

I don't really know what to do because this has gotten a LOT worse in a very short amoun tof time

Any ideas? :( As to what it could be, or what to do?

[outsider-my-ass]

via [x]

[qjusttheletter]

[ID: a series of tweets from Laura (@painandcats_): 

if i see one more person sharing that “you know it’s bad when ppl in wheelchairs are protesting” meme i’m gonna lose my shit. 

1. us protesting is not some metric for how fucked up things are 

2. sorry that you haven’t noticed us literally every other time wtf 

3. the disabled ppl iknow are the most politically minded ppl i’ve ever met and if you don’t see that, that’s yr own fault 

4. we protest as much as we’re able so if you dont see disabled ppl in your events, it’s likely your fault tbh 

5. super adorbs that abled people will consider us for memes but not when our actual humanity is at stake

end description]

[painandcats]

Haha it’s me!  Obviously I’ve been on twitter a little more often than tumblr lately!  http://www.twitter.com/painandcats_

[painandcats]

follow me on twitter: painandcats_

[noddytheornithopod]

Bill Nye Saves the World from Disabled People

Image Description: Bill Nye a 61-year-old white man with grey hair stands atop the earth with his hands on his hips and lab coat billowing out behind him like a superhero’s cape in a promotio…

[disabilityhealth]

PSA for writers

A disabled character can have a happy ending without being cured.

[painandcats]

reblog if you think eating hot peppers a la that Speechless episode should be the new standard for people apologizing for their ableist bullshit

[painandcats]

Handmaid’s Tale – Episode 1

Trigger warnings: rape, ritualized rape, religious/cult abuse, religious extremeism, miscarriage, guns, execution, violence, talk of “rounding up” of LGBT people, violence towards women, eye removal (not shown).

Basic summary and more warnings below

DO NOT START WATCHING WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT YOU’RE GETTING INTO.

The first episode introduces the dystopic future: an extremist Christian government has taken over. Due to environmental disaster, many people are infertile.  Fertile women are rounded up and taken to the “Sarah and Leah Center” for indoctrination and training for their new jobs.  They’re called Handmaids, and their job is supposedly described in the Old Testament: they bear children for infertile couples high-up in this new government.

Offred, our protagonist, is a Handmaid.  She is assigned to a Commander Waterford, who is high up in this new government.  She is ritualistically raped about halfway through the episode: she is put on her back and raped by Commander Waterford while she lies between his wife’s legs as she looks on.

At the end, there’s a ritual where a man convicted of rape is executed.  He raped a Handmaid and the fetus she was carrying died.  He is thrown to the Handmaids, who beat him to death.

Inferred things: there was a war that caused a lot of environmental destruction, which also caused widespread infertility.  It seems to be in England or the former US (in the book it’s the US) but everyone has American accents.  Oranges are rare.  People are assigned romantic partners.  No one trusts anyone.  The Handmaids are under scrutiny.  It’s unclear what happened to trans people and the disabled.  Canada exists and was a place people attempted to flee to.

They speak of a place called “The Colonies” where people are sent to “clean up toxic waste” which causes their skin to “fall off in sheets” before you die.

[actuallyblind]

[Image: tweet by Titanium Cranium (@FelicityTC) including three screenshots of a Harry potter book in three different formats on Amazon. Text:

“Harry Potter on Amazon -

Print: $6.39 Audio: $44.99 Braille: $100.00

#CripTax”]

[kimboo-york]

So, let me explain this a bit.

The defenders of CripTax prices will say that those prices cover the cost of production. This is, without a doubt, true. I work at a university where we often have to take written materials and convert them into braille – it takes a LOT of people hours, special software, and a braille embosser.

But those defenders of higher prices are reversing the argument to justify fleecing disabled readers.

What do I mean by that?

Braille is not magic. It is done by taking plain text and feeding it through fairly affordable translation software, creating a document that can easily be printed in braille.

All that time and effort and special software? IS NOT FOR THE BRAILLE.

It is to take the document provided by the publisher (usually in PDF format, the same file they send to the printers) and turn it into plain, unadorned text, by hand. Text has to be “stripped” (OCR/text recognition); images have to be described; footnotes have to be embedded; special pullouts and other formatting shifted or removed. 

Printing in braille is cheap; reverse engineering a finished text to print it in braille IS NOT.

Same with those audio books. After a book is completed and, often, after it has already been published, the publisher arranges to have the book recorded by a professional voice actor/reader, which usually also involves a recording producer, if not a recording studio, which all stacks up to $$, no two ways about it.

However: that cost? IS RARELY FACTORED INTO THE BUDGET OF PRINTING A BOOK.

Oh, it might be, if the author is JK Rowling and it is well known that readers will want audio versions right away. But most of the time, nope, the audio book is produced only after the hard copy book has become a decent seller, and so it’s an extra cost which is claimed must be covered by making the audio version extra expensive to buy. (Even then it’s somewhat ridiculous, since honestly, creating an audio book is, in the end, cheaper than printing, factoring in the cost of paper.)

If publishers factored audio book production into the assumed costs of publishing a book, they would have very little reason to price it higher.

If publishers factored in creating a “plain text” file – including having editors/authors describe images – that could be used to print braille copies or to be used with refreshable braille readers (electronic pinboards, basically), then there would be zero reason to price those books higher.

tl;dr: Yes, it’s a #criptax, and the excuse that “those formats are more expensive to produce so they have to be priced higher” is only true if you completely throw out the premise that publishers have an obligation to account for disabled readers when they are actually budgeting for and publishing the book.

[actuallyblind]

I’m really glad you brought this up, because this is exactly the sort of argument thatpeople try to use to justify inaccessibility in all kinds of areas. When we tell a company that their website or appliance or piece of technology isn’t accessible, they frequently tell us that they are sorry to hear that but that the accessibility is too expensive and time-consuming to add in now. There is also a provision in the law that allows companies to not bother including accessibility in their products if the cost of building in the accessibility is more than 5% of the total cost to build the whole product in the US.

That seems reasonable on the surface, doesn’t it? Except here’s the thing—the accessibility should have been a part of the original plans to begin with and designed in from the very beginning and should have been considered a necessary element and just another ordinary part of the cost of producing the product, not some extra feature that can be opted out of if it’s too expensive. The problem is that these companies do not understand the fact that if you cannot afford to build the product with the accessibility included, then you cannot afford to build the product and that is that. It’s exactly the same as not being able to afford to make the product with all elements up to safety and health codes and standards. If you can’t afford to meet the legal standards, then you can’t afford to make the product, and it’s that simple. Accessibility is not an exception to this and it should not be considered as such. It should be just as much an ordinary required part of the design process as any other element, not an extra, shiny, fancy feature that you can just choose not to bother with if it costs a little bit of money.

Accessibility should be part of the standard design process just as much as safety codes and health standards and other legal regulations. The ADA has existed for 20 years so companies have had ample time to catch up and learn to plan for accessibility from the beginning as a part of the standard required design process. If you can’t afford to create the product fully up to code, standards, and accessibility laws, then you simply can’t afford to make the product. No excuses, no exceptions.

[andreashettle]

I have often said that, very often, the high cost of disability accessibility is not actually for the accessibility itself. The actual high cost is often due to the lack of foresight and planning for accessibility from the design stage onwards.

Let me explain what I mean with an example. Take accessibility in a building. Usually making a building accessible means you need things like braille signage, ramps to entrances, wide doorways that leave plenty of room for a wheelchair to pass through, and so forth. If you design a new building from scratch to incorporate all of these design elements from the beginning, literally before the building is a hole in the ground, then the total cost of integrating accessible features into the building is less than one percent of the total cost of constructing that building.

On the other hand, if you don’t bother to account for the need for disability access and just build the building first, and then go, “oops, we didn’t design for accessibility”, then you will need to literally tear down parts of the building and reconstruct it from scratch. If this is your primary approach to accessibility, then of course the cost of accessibility may seem expensive. But it’s not actually the ramp or the wide door ways that are expensive. What is expensive is all the extra cost and effort of completely undoing parts of what you had already created wrongly so that you can recreate it correctly. In other words, the actual expense is the lack of planning ahead for accessibility.

This is the first I learned how books could be more cheaply accessible if this was planned for ahead of time. But it’s the same principle at work. Unfortunately, most people don’t understand all this and blame disabled people for wanting accessibility instead of blaming designers, architects, inventors and book publishers, and so forth, as well as the people responsible for contracting them, for having failed to consider the needs of disabled people when there was still time to integrate accessibility during the design and initial construction phase, when it could have been done cheaply.

What we need is for more designers, architects, inventors, book publishers, policy makers, program managers, and so forth to learn about the principles of universal design.

[iaiamothrafhtagn]

Unfortunately, most people don’t understand all this and blame disabled people for wanting accessibility instead of blaming designers, architects, inventors and book publishers, and so forth, as well as the people responsible for contracting them, for having failed to consider the needs of disabled people when there was still time to integrate accessibility during the design and initial construction phase, when it could have been done cheaply.

reiterating for emphasis.

[lyjerria]

my kink is seeing women flourish after a break up

[likeavirgil]

On April 19th I made bread

Latin graffiti in Pompeii (CIL IV.8792)

life fast die young, Romans

(via likeavirgil)

#HAPPY ANNIVERSARY OF THE TIME THAT ROMAN GUY MADE BREAD

(via audible-smiles)

4/19 bake it

(via inquisitorpsyduck)

[quadriparesis-deactivated201908]

Good: disabled adults and teenagers running blogs or YouTube channels about their disabilities and how they do stuff (like transfers) and talking about their own medical issues and treatments in the way they want to, and sharing their own information about themselves how they want to.

Bad: parents of young disabled children running blogs or YouTube channels about their child’s disabilities and how they or their children do stuff, and talking about the child’s medical issues and treatments and sharing all of the details about them that the child may not want shared.

[painandcats]

PET PEEVE

seeing people on shows use canes incorrectly!! OMG YOU WILL HURT YOURSELF. STOP DOING THAT.

[finding-flight]

YES OMG STOP IT. This is one of my biggest pet peeves; people who know me irl probably have heard me rant about it. They make sure that the character walks funny to show that they’re really disabled or whatever, even though the WHOLE POINT OF CANES is to let you walk as normally as possible so you don’t screw up your body.

And this is actually legit damaging because no one tells you how to use a cane. Usually, you just get one, and then you use it the way you’ve seen other people use it, and if you only see people on TV with canes…you’re gonna use it wrong.

sorry to jump all over your post this just annoys me so much and your post came up first in the cripple punk tag so

[dimin-hall]

If possible could you detail correct cane usage somewhere for anyone who might need it? (I understand if it’s a visual sort of instruction)

[painandcats]

When I began using one, I looked on youtube for how-tos.  It’s definitely necessary because, yeah, if people go by what they see on tv, they will likely start using it wrong and it’s really difficult to undo learning it that way.

Basically all there is to remember is that you use your cane alongside the opposite leg– not like the cane is affixed to the leg it’s closest to.  If I’m holding my cane with my left arm, it’s following the right leg.

Anyone have an infographic?  I do not.

[cripplepink]

here’s one i found! it’s a little confusing bc it starts at the bottom and you read upwards.

here’s two for stairs:

[painandcats]

Here are a few!

Here is a very short video about using a cane.  It’s very specific.  I will say, though, that she mentions that “you’ll hear different people say different things” re: using a cane affixed to your “bad leg” but I gotta say, I’ve never heard a medical professional tell anyone to use a cane any other way than the way described in the video.

If you use a cane like Dr. House on House (for example), YOU WILL HURT YOURSELF.

[crypticcripple]

I use my cane for balance, but I still use it as if I had a bad leg like described above. Sometimes the “good” leg will be bad and I’ll have to figure out how walk with the cane in my left instead of right hand.

What I’m saying is that this is the correct use of a cane even if you use it for different reasons than included in this post.

[squidsqueen]

Making sure your cane is the correct height is also very important!  Dr. House’s cane is TOO SHORT.  He also uses it by holding the handle against his hip and pushing the tip out away from his body.  This causes you to have lean to the side with every step.  You will throw your back and/or hips out of alignment if you walk this way. Leaning to the side on your cane will also cause damage to your hand and arm joints.

Your cane should sit comfortably in your hand, should remain vertical when you’re standing still, and the height should allow your elbow to bend a little when you’re holding it standing up straight.  If your elbow is fully extended when holding your cane at your side, it is too short. 

[agayworthfightingfor]

^ all of this. i legit did research on how to walk w a cane before i got one. because otherwise… yeah. and i dont do it *perfectly* because sometimes it just doesn’t work with the ways my body allows me to move, but i never do that for more than a few minutes at a time. and yeah. when tv people use canes in ways that will fuck up their bodies. im pissed. because i did have to go off google to correctly walk with one

[cheeky-cripple]

everything has been big sweaters and almond milk cappuccinos lately 

[image description: two pictures of me, a disabled person, standing in a bathroom. in one, i am facing forward; in the other, i am turned to the side. i am wearing black leggings and a big burnt orange colored sweater. i have a forearm crutch. the third image shows my desk, including a cup of tea, a cappuccino, and miscellaneous study supplies]

[beeth0ven]

PSA

Listen… if you’re going to go to a public bathroom and you’re abled bodied… for the love of all that is holy don’t use the ONE accessible stall to text or do your makeup for 10mins when EVERY OTHER STALL IS OPEN. Like just… don’t be that guy ok? And don’t assume it’s okay because there aren’t any disabled people around. Don’t. Do. it.