Chronically Ill Blitz
I've never thought about Blitz as chronically ill, more mentally ill, but this idea came from the lovely @thecartoonchronicles one of my chronically ill hazbin posts and chronically ill Blitz just kinda hit me. I hope you all enjoy!
Everyone knows that Blitz is covered in scars,it’s not something that he particularly hides, especially when one of his most prominent scars takes up roughly half his face, but some he has kept a bit quiet is the fact that his scars from the fire came with neuropathy.
Now, Blitz didn’t have much family support after the fire that caused the nerve damage, so he never got the proper medical care he needed, relying on what little first aid he remembered from his mother teaching him and Barbie at a young age. Luckily, he healed alright, but when the tingling, numbness, and burning sensations came, he kinda just assumed that’s what scars were supposed to feel like and spent the better part of his life from that moment on ignoring it.
He spent years dealing with numbness and tingling across different scars, while others felt no sensation at all and others felt like they were on fire almost all the time.
Despite one of the worst looking scars being across his face and neck, since he had a very small amount of sensation there, it doesn’t tend to bother him much, though he does avoid people touching his face most of the time since it does often cause a burning sensation across the scarred portion of his face and neck and sometimes, he can't feel hot or cold on that side of his face, which isn't really an issue, but annoys Blitz to no end.
Blitz, the self-sabotaging bastard he is, actually freaked out and ditched Verosika when he realized that he trusted her enough to let her touch the scars regardless of the way it felt since he trusted her to not intentionally make any pain he had worse…. It freaked him out so much that he… Well, ya know….
Stolas is one of the few exceptions to the not letting people touch his face thing since he's realized that in his eyes, the owl is worth burning for.
The pain in his hands tended to be the worst. His fingertips had full sensation, but his palms alternate from pins and needles to straight up stabbing pains, to numbness that makes him question whether his hands are even still there.
Dropping things was pretty common since the nerve damage in his hands meant that numbness, muscle weakness, or even sudden spikes of pain made it harder for him to hold onto things some days.
Tremors. He doesn’t usually notice them unless he’s holding something or writing.
A frustrated Blitz when he can't always feel his gun in his hand.
Moxxie was the first person to find out about the nerve damage…. Mostly because he noticed the way Blitz would often flinch when certain areas of his body were touched or brushed against, like even a light accidental touch pained him, or he’d notice the way Blitz seemed to not notice when he’d been touched somewhere or the weakness in his hands that occasionally caused him to drop things. And of course, being Moxxie, he took detailed notes on everything he noticed and eventually convinced him to see a doctor.
Medications to help after the doctor’s visit and diagnosis.
Moxxie going over the correct ways to pronounce his diagnosis and names of his medications.
Millie would be the one to set alarms and reminders on his phone for his meds after the first few times he forgot to take them.
While Moxxie was the first to realize something was wrong, Loona would be the first to start implementing changes when she learned about her adoptive father’s neuropathy. One of those things included replacing most of the cups in the office and at home with plastic replicas. Blitz pretends he never noticed, but he actually found it really sweet when he noticed.
The team would have to have a little intervention to convince Blitz to even consider physical therapy…. Or really any type of therapy at the doctor’s recommendation for managing the symptoms of his nerve damage.
Loona would also go with Blitz to every doctor’s appointment, insisting in the beginning that it was because she didn’t trust him to mention side effects from his meds or that she didn’t trust him to actually listen when a doctor spoke and that she was only concerned about his health because she lived with him and he signed her paychecks…. But she knows Blitz’s medical history better than he does and keeps a list of his medications and their side effects and interactions with things, and his therapies in her phone’s notes that she always insists he brings up at appointments. For a long time, this was the only solid proof he had that his daughter cared about him.
Emotionally support horse plushies for when he's particularly frustrated with the sensations (or lack of) around his scars. Over the years he's collected one from everyone he cares about and he rotates them out so none of them feel neglected and he always has one near by.
Although he never outright told Stolas about the neuropathy, much like Moxxie, Stolas did notice things over his time with Blitz. He’d ask Loona and Moxxie and Millie and would try his best to accommodate the imp he came to love in his own subtle ways without outright telling him that he knew until Blitz himself was ready to open up about it.
Stolas would do his own research about neuropathy and implement some of his own small ways to help too, the one that seems to help the most being textured squeeze balls that help with the imp’s function and the fine motor skills in his hands.
Blitz actually does do research on his own condition… mostly after reconnecting with Fizz, who also suffers from neuropathy after the fire. He did the research more to accommodate his friend (since it’s pretty common knowledge that he cares far more about his friends and family than he does about himself), but some of the things he learned actually helped him to better cope with his own issues too.
Soft clothes. So many soft and comfy clothes, all specifically to try to alleviate his discomfort around his scars.