rest is resistance

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

Getting diagnosed feels like walking into a confessional you didn’t realize you were already inside.

like your body finally saying:

okay. i can’t hold this anymore. here’s everything.

and suddenly it all spills out

the pain you normalized

the symptoms you ignored

the things you thought were just “how you are” but were actually your body adapting to something no one named for you.

And you realize

you weren’t fine.

You were just very, very good at surviving quietly.

And that realization doesn’t feel like relief at first,

it feels like grief rearranging your entire life without asking permission.

Because now you know what was happening,

and you can’t unknow it.

And somehow, horribly, beautifully,

you will still survive it.

You have before.

You will again.

Check out my most recent blog post:

Nobody truly talks about the butt fuck that finally getting that diagnosis really is. The one that suddenly makes everything make more sense

Thankyou for being patient with me. I've been going through some more health issues recently and had to take some time to focus on them. But, Im back and doing better. I hope you enjoy.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

When things go awry, and they will when you’re living with chronic illness, stressing about it doesn’t make it better. If anything, it makes it worse. This is the 5-4-3-2-1 method. I use it during pain flares, in waiting rooms, and while sitting there waiting to be called back for procedures.

It’s simple, but it helps pull me back into my body when everything feels too loud.

I hope it helps you the way it’s helped me.

If you want more of this kind of thing, give my blog a look: Dr Shits n Giggles— the blog for the mundane and medically insane. My newest post— The Body That Was Measured Instead of Understood includes a journal entry on my most recent procedure and what I learned, as well as what helped— including this graphic.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

Writing is how I process—

because my brain doesn’t do it clean.

There are blocks. Gaps. Doors that don’t open when they’re supposed to.

So to get around them. I write.

I recently got some not-so-great information about my neuro issues after brain surgery.

This peice is a product of that.

____________________________________

I used to explore the world

boots in dirt, lungs full of sky,

a body that said yes before I even asked.

Now my body is the wilderness.

Unmapped. Hostile.

Full of things that hunt me from the inside.

The lost hiker and the storm.

I was the doer.

The fixer.

The one called at 2 a.m. When the world cracked open,

crawling on hands and knees, through the rubble.

Listener. Lover.

Human safety net.

Someone forgot to say.

Where the hell do the safety nets go

when the one holding them starts to fall?

I watched myself die in slow motion.

Piece by piece.

Function by function.

Future by future.

And

the ones I held,

the ones I carried,

the ones I bled for

vanished.

Or they stayed

and sharpened their teeth on what was left of me.

Some absences are quiet.

Some are violent.

I learned the difference

while learning how to survive both.

Now my life is measured in scans.

In “just to be safe.”

In rooms where silence means waiting

and waiting means what if this is it.

I wake up

death already sitting at the edge of my bed,

like we’re in some long-term relationship

I never consented to.

Not a phase.

Not a chapter.

This is the rest of my life.

Tell me

how is it fair

to reach for love

with hands that shake like this?

How do you say,

“Come here,

build something with me,

just know it might collapse without warning.”

How do you ask someone

to fall in love with a body

that is always one step away from betrayal?

Every high comes with a receipt.

Every good thing

followed by the quiet click

of something going wrong.

Joy has an echo now.

And it sounds suspiciously like loss.

Here's the part no one wants to say out loud...

If you don’t live your life,

you don’t have a life to lose.

No high

so no fall.

No love

so no grief.

Just a body moving through time

like a hollow vessel,

soul already packed up and gone.

Safe.

Empty.

Untouchable.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

New Podcast Episode:

Beef Jerky, Birkenstocks, and the ER

Survival isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t come with instructions. It comes with snacks, shoes that barely fit, and a body that has other plans. Every step is negotiation. Every breath is strategic. Your bag is heavy. Your phone is light. You improvise. You adjust. You plan your next move. Notice what you can control. Notice what you can’t. Take your space. Protect your energy. Write a note. Drink a sip. Shift in your chair. Laugh at the chaos. Smile at the small victories. Endurance isn’t quiet. It isn’t simple. It is deliberate. It is showing up, again and again, in whatever way you can.

Listen to the second episode of Dr. Shits & Giggles for survival strategies, absurdist guidance, and a little humor from the trenches of living in an uncooperative body.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

First Episode Re-recorded:

How to Survive the Waiting Room

Waiting rooms don’t just hold people.

They hold time.

They stretch it, warp it, pinch it until your body forgets what normal feels like.

Chairs are cruel.

Lights are interrogation.

Clocks move sideways.

Your phone dies just to remind you how small you are in this universe of waiting.

But here’s the secret: you’re not powerless.

You can see. You can hear. You can feel.

Even when the system is designed to make you forget your own presence, your own needs.

Even when cortisol spikes like it’s giving a performance.

Ground. Name five things you see, hear, feel.

Then four.

Then three.

Two. One.

Take your space. Bring your essentials.

Charge your phone.

Write down what matters.

Ask the questions. Take the notes.

The waiting room might feel like a Roman Empire built to crush you.

But surviving it—intentionally, mindfully—is an act of quiet rebellion.

You will leave.

Maybe with answers. Maybe with more questions.

Maybe just with the knowledge that you survived the impossible hours, and you did not disappear.

This is your power.

Your patience.

Your small empire of self.

Listen to the first episode of Dr. Schitts & Giggles for practical survival tips and grounding exercises straight from the trenches of waiting rooms

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

Not my usual post but wanted to share this—

I recently was accused of using AI for my writing because of my use of dashes. I appreciate feedback and constructive criticism but the assumption that writing is AI simply because of a dash is hurtful to writers especially those in technical writing.

‐-----‐---------------------------------------------------------------

While there is a rise in AI being used in writing, it is incorrect to assume that the presence of a dash automatically means something was AI-generated. While questions about authorship are understandable in this day and age, it is important to recognize the legitimate uses of the em dash in writing. The dash has been used far longer than AI has existed and remains a standard punctuation tool for improving clarity, emphasis, and sentence flow.

An em dash (—) is commonly used to indicate a strong break in thought, introduce additional information, replace commas or parentheses, or emphasize a key point. It can improve readability by helping writers manage complex ideas without creating overly long or confusing sentences. Many academic, journalistic, and technical style guides support its use when applied intentionally and sparingly.

Example:

Clear communication is essential in technical writing—especially when complex ideas must be conveyed efficiently.

Punctuation alone is not a reliable indicator of whether text was written by a human or generated by AI. Writers have long used dashes as part of their natural voice and structure. Assuming that a single punctuation mark signals AI authorship can overlook both the history of written language and the wide range of legitimate stylistic choices available to human writers.

I will continue to use em dashes In my writing, as its what I have been taught in technical writing.

Thank you, hope everyone has a great day.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

After enough appointments, scans, specialists, and the classic “so… tell me your entire medical history again” moment, I realized something: The healthcare system expects patients to be walking databases. We’re supposed to remember diagnoses, medication doses, surgeries, allergies, weird reactions, rare conditions, and the name of the neurologist we saw one time in 2019 while sitting under fluorescent lights in a paper gown. And if you’re dealing with chronic illness, neurological issues, or complex conditions? Half the time your brain is the least reliable storage device in the room. So I built something I wish someone had handed me years ago. I created a technical guide on organizing your medical records into a structured document — basically a medical resume. Think of it like the quick-reference version of your body’s instruction manual. A good medical resume answers the questions providers always need but rarely have time to dig for: • who you are medically • diagnoses • medications and dosages • allergies and reactions • surgeries and procedures • emergency considerations • major imaging findings • specialists involved in your care Instead of spending half an appointment trying to reconstruct your life story from memory, you can hand someone a document that basically says: “Here’s the situation. Here’s the context. Here’s what matters.” It’s useful for a lot of situations people don’t think about until they happen: • ER visits • seeing a new specialist • travel • medical emergencies when you can’t advocate for yourself • complex or rare conditions • long diagnostic histories • care coordination between providers It also helps you see your own medical history clearly. When everything is scattered across patient portals, discharge papers, and half-remembered conversations, it’s hard to see the big picture. Putting it into one organized document changes that. And honestly? Doctors are human. Nurses are human. The healthcare system is chaotic. When you hand someone a clear, structured summary, you make their job easier — which often means you get better care. So I wrote a step-by-step guide on how to build one. This guide is just one resource among many that I share on my blog, Dr Schitts N Giggles: Do Not Chart, where I write about navigating the medical system, chronic illness survival, patient advocacy, and occasionally screaming into the void with humor because sometimes that’s the only sane response. If you have chronic illness, a complicated medical history, or you just want to be prepared, I highly recommend making a medical resume. Future you — possibly the version of you in a hospital bed trying to remember medication dosages while someone is taking your blood pressure — will be very glad you did. Click here to download the guide Organize your body’s paperwork. It shouldn’t matter as much as it does, but in the current system? It absolutely does.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

New page alert:

I added a new page to the blog: Improvised Medicine.

It’s basically the documentation of what happens when your body is a disaster, the healthcare system is slow as hell, and you’re forced to become your own emergency preparedness kit.

This is where I keep the real survival gear.

The electrolytes.

The soft, salty snacks.

The symptom-spiral interrupters.

The “oh shit something is happening and I need to fix it right now” tools.

There’s also a DIY electrolyte recipe I use, plus a document explaining how to build a medical resume—a simple, organized sheet with your diagnoses, medications, allergies, and important information all in one place.

It’s perfect for emergencies, travel, or new medical appointments when you need your information fast and don’t want to rely on memory or a stack of paperwork.

It’s the stuff you start carrying when you realize symptoms don’t wait for appointments, insurance approvals, or doctors to call you back.

None of this is glamorous.

None of this is a cure.

It’s improvisation—the patient-built infrastructure of staying upright in a body that occasionally chooses violence.

If you’ve ever had to pack a bag like you’re preparing for a medical apocalypse just to leave the house, you’ll get it.

Go read it.

Steal the ideas.

Survive the chaos.

Check it out here: https://drshitsngiggles.wordpress.com/improvised-medicine/

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

March 8, 2026

Written after a recent Fibro flare:

Fog and Flesh—

a weight you can’t see,

a fog you can’t shake,

a body that refuses the world’s pace.

For so long I refused the name.

Not the pain,

not the exhaustion,

but the weight of it in the eyes of others.

A condition invisible,

yet shaping every step, every breath, every thought.

The flare came again.

I woke as if my body had been dipped in lead.

Muscles thrumming before I moved,

limbs sinking into water that doesn’t move back.

Every sound, every touch, every flicker of light

was louder, sharper,

a storm in the nervous system.

And the fog.

Oh, the fog—

thick as wet cement in my skull.

Thoughts vanish.

Words disappear mid-sentence.

Decisions feel like mountains.

Even my own body feels foreign,

a suit familiar yet uncooperative.

Mom saw me then.

Shocked. Worried.

But with eyes that could read the tension,

the imbalance,

the muscles folding under themselves.

Pain made visible.

Fibromyalgia is not “just sore muscles.”

It is a body that feels everything too loudly, too intensely.

A mind that moves through molasses,

a nervous system set to storm.

Slowing down reveals something else.

Energy is precious.

Small actions demand negotiation.

The body stops being a machine,

becomes an ecosystem—

rhythms, limits, signals,

all demanding attention.

Illusions of control slip away.

The body is not something I command—

it is something I inhabit.

Resilience becomes strange and quiet,

a patient, humble work.

Even historically, this is not new.

Frida Kahlo—her spine fractured, her body broken,

her pain unspoken because there was no name for it yet—

painted it anyway.

The Broken Column

her spine, neck, right leg,

all mapped across canvas in agonizing detail.

She felt it. We feel it.

Treatment has changed little.

Pacing. Symptom management. Learning to live

in a body that refuses to cooperate.

To my fellow travelers—

I see you.

I see the heaviness, the fog, the negotiations.

Some of the hardest journeys we walk

are the ones entirely inside our own skin.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

A lot of us chronically ill folks end up needing electrolytes constantly, and the packets get expensive fast when you’re going through them every day.

So instead of hemorrhaging money on boxes of electrolyte mixes, I started experimenting and made my own bulk version.

Cost me under $30 to make more than 200 servings, and honestly the taste is way milder than most electrolyte drinks. It’s also sugar-free, which my body appreciates.

Each serving gives roughly:

• 1,000 mg sodium

• 200 mg potassium

• 60 mg magnesium

• 270 mg vitamin C

Here’s the 30-serving recipe in case anyone else wants a cheaper option.

Ingredients

• 15 teaspoons table salt (5 tablespoons)

• 2 teaspoons potassium chloride

• 3 teaspoons di-magnesium malate (1 tablespoon)

Optional

• 2 teaspoons vitamin C powder

• ½ teaspoon stevia

Mix it well and keep it in a dry container.

Chronic illness already costs enough money and energy. If this helps someone stay hydrated without burning through electrolyte packets, then I’m happy to share it.

Stay salty, friends.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

New Post Alert:

a year ago

pieces of me started dying

not all at once

not quietly

some left like ghosts

with no warning

some stayed

broken

limping

haunting

anniversaries like this

aren’t marked by cake or balloons

they live in cold grey rooms

in phone calls that hand you answers

you begged for

and secretly feared

they live in the body

remembering

what the mind tries to forget

the deaths of the bodies we once knew —

the bittersweetness of their anniversaries

is up on the blog

it’s raw

messy

sometimes horrifying

sometimes darkly hilarious

always true

if you’ve survived yourself

if you’ve gotten an answer

that shattered you

and healed you

at the same time

if you like words

that don’t pretend survival is neat

this is for you,

read it here:

https://drshitsngiggles.wordpress.com/2026/03/04/the-deaths-of-the-bodies-we-once-knew-the-bittersweetness-of-their-anniversaries/

no fluff

no apologies

just the messy

beautifully fucked-up truth

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

My face has been betraying me for days.

Not in a dramatic way. Not in a way anyone would notice across a room.

But in the quiet, intimate violence of nerves misfiring.

My jaw forgets how to open.

Forgets how to be soft.

Forgets how to be mine.

There’s a live wire running from my chin to my temple,

stitched under my skin,

and every movement threatens to pull it tighter.

The right side of my face flickers between fire and nothing.

Pain and Absence.

Signal and silence.

I am starving,

and afraid of food.

I want warmth.

Flavor.

Comfort.

Instead, I negotiate with liquids like a wounded animal,

careful not to provoke the trap.

I ate a sandwich today.

I forgot, for a moment, the rules of this body.

I am still paying for it.

My cheek burns like it’s being held to a flame no one else can see.

And as if one rebellion wasn’t enough,

fibromyalgia has returned like weather.

My limbs are heavy with invisible wet concrete.

My joints rusted.

My muscles flicker between cramp and combustion.

My brain moves slow,

thick,

distant.

Language feels like it lives across a river.

I am here,

but I am not fully reachable.

This is the part people don’t understand.

Yesterday is irrelevant.

Yesterday’s body is gone.

Chronic illness is not a straight line.

It is tide.

It is animal.

It is a sky that cannot promise its color.

I do not know who I will wake up as tomorrow.

All I know

is that I will wake up

and meet her there.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

The Why Files-

Medicine didn’t get “better.”

It got bought.

The AMA didn’t start as medicine —

it started as a union.

They shut down schools,

invited Carnegie money,

let petroleum crawl into the exam room,

and suddenly healing needed a prescription pad.

Natural medicine wasn’t fake.

It was inconvenient.

Bad for business.

The allopathic vs natural divide wasn’t organic —

it was engineered.

Call it progress if you want.

Turns out the real placebo

was capitalism in a lab coat.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

A specialist can be minutes away and still completely inaccessible.

Complex care isn’t rare. Access is.

Proximity doesn’t mean care. Availability doesn’t mean equity. And for complex patients, “almost” is the system working exactly as designed.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

Patients aren’t failing. The system is.

It failed before. The (Capitol) Cripple Crawl was a warning. Hallways with flickering lights. Forms that vanish. Appointments that stretch into months. Voices saying you’re fine while your body screams in ways no one can hear.

It failed me. A tangled knot growing slowly, ignored. Pain dismissed. Time stolen. Strength taken. Hope scraped thin. And I barely recognize myself.

This isn’t weakness. Survival looks like bruises, carpet burn, crawling anyway. Through doors that won’t open. Referrals that go nowhere. Bureaucracy and apathy that pile on while hands never reach to catch you.

The cripple crawl isn’t shame. It’s defiance. Rage pressed into motion. Survival written in bone and sinew. The system calls us failures. It will fail you too.

So crawl anyway. Crawl tired. Crawl furious. Crawl laughing at everything that tried to erase you. Inch by inch, shaking, screaming. Here I am. I am not disappearing. I will not be silent.

[nothingspecialjustasoul]

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

Pretending I'm healed is exhausting.

Exhausting like a hospital corridor at 3 a.m.

Exhausting like explaining your body exists on its own rules.

I’m done pretending. I’m done quiet. I’m here, broken and still breathing.

[thewaitingroomraisedme]

Tomorrow, he's a liar-

How can I

trust

when my body learned betrayal

first.

He swears tomorrow

with a straight face,

then disappears mid sentence.

Pain

signs contracts

my mind

never

agreed

to.

Breath files false

reports

Hope

pleads

guilty

before the trial even starts.

How do I promise

anything

when tomorrow won’t keep his word?

How do I love with an expiration date

that laughs

in

my

face?

My body

isn’t a home

it’s a crime scene

that keeps

reopening

itself.

If I’m still here,

it isn’t faith,

it’s resistance

with teeth.