Bienvenue à Spoonie-Ville

Le blog consacré à la vie de malade chronique www.spoonie-ville.com

[bogsheep]

if someone close to you is disabled, you have to take that into account when you go places with them. you have to think about accessibility, fatigue, pain, flare ups, etc because its exhausting and hurtful when people who say they love you dont bother putting the effort in to make sure you ACTUALLY have a good time.

🔪abled people are required to reblog this🔪

[positivity-in-pain]

not gonna lie. kinda really want one of these. 😂

[spoonie-ville]

Mais c’est ça qu’il me faut !

[positivity-in-pain]

same

[positivity-in-pain]

[thelatestkate]

Spring will come.  °˖✧*•  Shop, Patreon, Books, Mailing List *•. ✧˖°`

[thelatestkate]

°˖✧*•  Shop, Patreon, Book, Mailing List *•. ✧˖°`

[thelatestkate]

August 2019 Illustrations  ヽ(• ‿•)ノ

[owlet]

reminder: disabled people are still disabled even when they’re not actively suffering.

[Image ID: The first panel depicts an annoyed-looking brunette woman, wearing a pink tank top and gray leggings, who is sitting in a silver and red wheelchair.  Unseen speakers say “She is obviously not disabled enough to be using a wheelchair!” and “Clearly just faking for attention.”

The second panel shows the same woman, now propping herself up against a counter, visibly disoriented and exhausted, with sound effects showing that she’s out of breath. An unseen speaker says “There! Now she’s disabled enough.” The woman pants “wh- wait… what?” End ID]

[slowlymadeart]

[Image Description 1: Comic, digital art cartoon style. To the left is a blue character and to the right is a red character. “People are sick!” Blue yells with a concerned expression and a sweat drop forming. “People are hypochondriacs!” Red yells back while rolling their eyes with an annoyed vein next to their eye. Below a tiny purple arrow points to two dots.] [Image Description 2: “PEOPLE! ARE! SICK!!!” Blue yells, their brow furrowed. “PEOPLE! ARE! HYPOCHONDRIACS!!!!!” Red yells back in their face. The purple arrow pointing to to dots is slightly larger, unnoticed by Blue and Red.]

[Image Description 3: The words “PEOPLE ARE SICK)(HYPOCHONDRIACS” are extremely large, in a motion blur as they swirl around the yelling heads of Blue and Red. Their heads against each other like a yin-yang symbol, eyes budging, saliva dripping. Below the purple arrow is bigger and we can see the dots are silhouettes.]

[Image Description 4: Below the purple arrow are two characters. On the left, a short character, tan skin, wearing blue pants, an oversized sweat-shirt with a heart mirrored by an upside down heart. Their head is half shaved and half short, curly, pale indigo color. They look shocked and annoyed, bags under their eyes.“Has a degenerative condition that took 5 years to get diagnosed” is written above their head. 

To the right, a girl nervous hold her hands in front of her chest, tears in her eyes, sad and frightened expression. She has on light green pains and a dark green tang-top dress shirt that ends above her navel. She has deep purple hair, long that fans out behind her head, and micro-bangs. Above her head “Has hypochondria, now called Somatic Symptom Disorder or Illness Anxiety Disorder.]

[Image Description 5: "Hey-” The short character says to the girl, their face still looking annoyed. “Yes?” Our hypochondriac responds startled, pupils tiny, forehead blue, and sweat forming on her arms. Afraid she’s about to be ridiculed for her anxiety disorder.]

[Image Description 6: The short character holds out a hand towards our hypochondriac, looking more relaxed. “Ya wanna get away from this noise and learn how to support each other in healthy ways?” They say. Turns out they have resting annoyed face, making them difficult to read. Hypo is more relaxed, but still has her hands to her chest nervously, her body closed off, more sweat, tears still in her eyes, looking at the short person.]

[Image Description 7: A close up of our hypochondriac. Covered in sweat, her pupils shrinking again as she processes what the short character proposed. She did not expect a person with a physical illness to see her as someone who wasn’t an enemy- to see her as more than just a person who made it more difficult for those with rare disorders to receive diagnosis or be taken seriously, or to be treated with respect and even love. She’s not smiling, but she is blushing as a sense of trust takes hold.]

[Image Description 8: *sniff* “I would love that.” Our hypochondriac says, now smiling and taking the hand of the also blushing short character.]

[Image Description 9: They fly into the sky holding hands, a rainbow trailing behind them. *Ghibli type music starts to play* *laughter of relief* They are pretty far away from us now.  “I think I’m getting altitude sickness” our hypochondriac says, the short person responding “That might actually be happening, we’ll go lower.”]

[Image Description 10: Downward at the bottom of the rainbow in script font are the words “Have fun with your word wars, ya Butts!”. Blue and Red have their backs to us as their looking at it. “What do you think those people were talking about?” says Blue, to which Red says “No idea. Wasn’t listening.”]

[softanddisabled]

I know a lot of people have this idea that they should be pushing themselves past their limits to achieve something. My illnesses and disability have taught me that pushing myself past my limits can only harm me. Yet, everyone expects me to do so. Here is your reminder that you do not have to push yourself past your limits. Those limits are there for a reason. Just take your time and do things at your own pace.

[theunitofcaring]

I don't get seasonal depression, I just get slightly sleepier and more irritable and mopey when I don’t get any sunlight, but when I said this to my doctor she was like “you should still get a lightbox” and I did and now I have way more energy.  The moral of the story is, if you spend time thinking to yourself “well I don’t actually have [diagnosable problem], I have [milder version that I can just ignore]”, you could instead of just ignoring it get the accommodation for the problem and see if it improves your life. I do not expect to remember this next time I “don’t actually have the real problem”, but maybe eventually I will learn.

[glorious-spoon]

We treat accommodations like something that you can only have if you’re really really desperately suffering and cannot function at all without them, but that’s… really really not the case. Or at least it shouldn’t be.

[comp-lady]

Not to uuuhhh highjack this post, but I have some experience with this. Not only does it corroborate the above but I have found that even you don’t have any need for whatever accommodation that also shouldn’t bar you from getting one if you just…

want it

see years ago my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, and as happens with progressing cancer her mobility was drastically reduced. To help combat this and allow her to retain independence at home Papa (my grandfather) got a shower chair. This is about as self-descriptive as it can get, it is a chair made of metal and plastic that sits in your shower or bathtub. I’m sure those with physical disabilities are already quite familiar with them, for those of you that aren’t just google it.

Eventually my grandmother passed. A couple years after my dad had to stay at Papa’s house for a couple weeks, for his own medical reasons. While there he discovered that Papa had kept the chair. And while Papa was old he was hardly infirm, he didn’t use a cane or have any severe mobility issues. Certainly none that would have affected his ability to stand in the shower. The conversation went more or less as such:

Dad: Why they hell did you keep the shower chair, dad? You don’t need it

Papa: Kevin, you wait until you use it. Then you’ll know why I kept it.

My dad was disbelieving tbh, to him chairs in showers when you don’t need them was a thing that like. Lazy rich people had. wtf could be so great about being able to sit in the shower? Why would an able-bodied person even need to? it’s a fucking shower? wash urself and then get out. Then he used the chair, and according to him it was like he’d had a proper religious revelation. Shortly after his return home (tbh the amount of time it took for him to take a shower sans chair) my dad went out and bought a shower chair.

The ensuing conversation with my mother went as such:

Mom: Kevin why did you buy that? We don’t need it!

Dad: Just use it once, this will change your life.

And it did. After using the chair for the first time my mom straight up wanted to know why they had never thought to get a chair for the shower before. Ever since we have had a chair in the shower.

It has proven itself invaluable.

Exhausted but covered in grime from yardwork so you HAVE to wash before doing anything else? shower chair

Don’t have the spoons to stand in the shower? shower chair

Leg/hip/back injury slowly getting worse over time making standing for long periods a difficult matter? shower chair

Home from work and just want to shower but your feet are killing you? shower chair

can’t keep your balance when masturbating in the shower? shower chair

want to write fic in ur head without your feet starting to hurt because you maybe spent a little too long standing there in spray? shower chair

disassociating? shower chair

gotta shave your legs? shower chair

crying because you’ve now realized how much easier being able to sit down and prop up a leg makes shaving while in the shower? shower chair

I have no current mobility issues, and yet if I had to move house tomorrow a shower chair of my own would be one of the first things I purchase for my own home.

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of “this could make my life easier but do I really need it?” And y’know what maybe you don’t need it. Maybe you don’t need that accommodation, but maybe it would make your life easier anyway. When it comes to things that you keep in your home for personal use does it really matter? Besides there is always the very real chance that buying it now, when you don't’ need it but can afford it, will save your ass down the line when you suddenly do desperately need it.

[spoonie-living]

Important and true advice—both the general stuff and the waxing rhapsodic on shower chairs.

We see folks going, “well the doctor didn’t prescribe a cane…” buddy, you don’t need a license to buy ‘em, just head over to your pharmacy!* If you think something’s gonna help you, even a little, freakin’ go for it!

And if you think we aren’t looking right at you (yes, you) and talking about that thing you kiiinda want but don’t feel like you neeeeeeed… well, you’d be wrong.

* Okay, it’s not a bad idea to ask whether your doctor thinks the cane would be contraindicated by another condition of yours, if that’s a possibility. But for most people that ain’t a thing. Just look up safe/healthy cane use advice. The point is, you get to decide if you want one.

[berniesrevolution]

Doctors told her there was nothing wrong. But she knew her body.

(Continue Reading)

TheNib.com

@thenib

[mithliya]

some nice bits that were on the link! medicine has a massive misogynistic bias it needs to address.

[molepaws]

my family has a history of hypothyroidism, but my mom wasnt diagnosed for decades. she was misdiagnosed and only symptoms were addressed without searching for the actual reason. even now, because how how long she went untreated, her bodys systems are extremely taxed, causing other issues. her body is permanently off the deep end to some degree because doctors refused to investigate to a proper degree.

if you have consistent symptoms, keep pushing. the doctor is not always right. keep pushing.

[slowlymadeart]

Hey everyone!!!

Any thoughts on this particular comic before I go through with finishing it?

I know the visuals are a bit difficult to follow in places, and, at least before, I was wording things in potentially problematic ways. (Which is 100% the last thing I want to do).

I know this comic brings up a bunch of tangents that can be followed, but those are for other comics….(despite me being topic saturated)

It was originally written for a chronic illness experience, but then I realized this tied into other similar experiences.

But seriously. Just some small notes would help!!!

[slowlymadeart]

Now on to part threeeeeee!!!!!

[endangeredbodiesnyc]

Disabled people’s lives are not tragedies. Parents and carers are not “heroes” for loving disabled people. Disabled people’s private moments should not be shared without consent on your “warrior mom” blog. Disabled people are not your pity hires, dates, or friends. Disabled people do not exist to be saved or spoken for by non-disabled people.

Treat disabled people with respect and dignity. Treat disabled people like people.

[spooniestrong]

Wishing all of you a Happy Halloween! 🎃

*love & spoons* 💙

[mylifeleftbehind]

“probably shouldn’t have walked that much huh”

— famous disabled proverb (via disabledlgbt)