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katyawriteswhump · 1 month

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(i'm still) watching you—harringrove microfic

my first attempt at harringrove and probably totally weird like my usual shit, so… yeah, nervous. but I love prompts/challenges too much to resist… Pls be kind 🙂

WC: 914. For @harringrovemicrofic prompt, green (I also got a passing mention of Jason Carver in for the additional prompt.)

CW: None. Tags: angst, pining, chronic illness (Fibro/Chronic fatigue), enemies to lovers, h/c, no Upside Down AU, slightly soft Billy? Rating: M.

…

Steve hated sitting in the stands watching the Tigers win without him.

Hargrove rained all over the hoop, right until the full-time whistle ripped through Steve’s skull. Simultaneously, Billy ripped his vest off—shouting, thudding his chest, scanning the crowd.

His crazily soft-blue eyes rested on Steve. That smug grin faltered, and Steve’s heart gave a crazy little squeeze.

Billy’s attention snapped away. His teammates carried him on a lap of victory, and Steve shaded his eyes. Too fucking much. Since he’d got sick, the doctors had droned on about Steve having to pace himself. Today, that’d been a bust—all for the torture of watching Hargrove play.

Even though Steve hated him.

And he’d chew on that image of shirtless Billy for goddamn weeks.

“Stop bawling, Harrington.” Steve startled, squinted into the suddenly too-bright light. Tommy H waggled a stuffed tiger in front of his nose: “You can be team mascot. This one’s got even less backbone than you.”

“Jesus, I’m gonna punch your stupid face in!”

Steve pushed himself up. Despite his dumb threat, it took all his strength to stumble away. Halfway to the exit, he collapsed onto a seat, slumping forward with his head in his hands. The crowd stomped by, sending shockwaves through his aching bones. Nobody offered to help. Probably figured he’d bite their heads off…

A hand landed on his shoulder. “You okay?” asked Billy.

WTF? Steve flinched away. Up close, he couldn’t handle those stupidly long lashes and gorgeous eyes. “M’fine.”

“Want a ride?”

“You leaving already?” Steve gawked at Billy’s pecs. “Guess there’s only so much showboating even your fat ego can take.”

Billy arched his brow. “I’m sick of this shit. Your ex-teammates are fucking losers, you know that?”

Uh… Yeah?

“Whatever, dude. I’m leaving with Nance.” Steve had just spotted her with freshman golden-boy, Jason Carver, scribbling madly in her notebook.

“She’s writing an essay on that asshole. Couldn’t bag me. Seriously, I need space. Figured you might too.”

Space with me? “Jesus, you still never stop talking! You hate me. What’s your game?”

Billy shrugged. “I don’t hate you, man. It genuinely sucks you had to be benched. Don’t have to believe me, but I actually miss you.”

Miss humiliating me? Miss me rubbing my ass against you while you shoved me around!?! Guess I enjoyed touching you as much as I hated you. I mean, uh, I STILL hate you…

“I don’t need your fucking sympathy, Hargrove.”

“Not offering fucking sympathy.”

Steve’s heart repeated that crazy squeeze. He’d grabbed the hem of Billy’s green shorts before he knew it.

Don’t leave. I honestly can’t get up without help right now. Won’t ask for help, either.

Billy harrumphed vaguely, casually offered a hand. Steve clasped it—since when did he dig slippery palms?—let Billy draw him up and sling an arm around him. Even with Billy’s help, the effort of walking consumed Steve completely till he sank into the Camaro.

Billy winked at him from the driver’s seat. “Don’t worry, I’ll go gentle.”

“Jesus, I’m not gonna break.”

“You wanna go home?”

Yeah, I totally should. “No fucking way. Anywhere but this dump.”

With minimal wheelspin, Billy tore from the school grounds. He didn’t play loud music. They didn’t talk much either. Seemed Billy did occasionally shut up. Only Steve fizzing nerves—WTF AM I DOING?—kept him awake until Billy slammed to a halt.

Steve blinked. “Where are we?”

“One of the few places in this shithole that’s not a shithole.” Billy hurried around and helped Steve from the car.

“I’m not a fucking princess,” Steve bitched.

“Whatever you say, pretty boy.”

“Screw you.” Steve’s glare melted into a laugh that he almost felt.

They’d arrived somewhere in the hills, which smelled of spring grasses. Steve slipped from Billy’s warm grasp—not without a dumbass pang—lay flat on the soft turf. Beyond the trickle of a stream, it was so quiet, he dozed almost instantly.

Then, through the blur of his lashes, he spotted Billy stripping his shorts. Christ, that ass!

Billy headed for the stream. His smirk was as mind-blowing as his body. “I skipped showers.”

“Fucking show-boater.” Steve snickered.

He watched Billy wade thigh deep, splash sparkling droplets over that lick-able, lithely muscled torso. He wished he could watch this a billion times over, ached to join Billy, then his eyelids grew too heavy, his fatigue winning, and… Shit!

Deep inside, something snapped. He slung an arm across his face and cried, drifted, then cried again, shamelessly sniffling. A brush against his arm stirred him. Billy lay stretched beside him, towel around his waist, chin rested on a fist.

“Tears are cathartic, huh?”

Steve rolled to full-on sneer at Billy. Ended up fixed on Billy’s lush mouth, fretting his own lower lip. “Quit mocking me.”

“I’m not. Tears help. Apart from when they’re too damn painful. You don’t have to say which those are.”

Billy reached out, as if to push hair from Steve’s damp eyes, then hesitated. Steve grabbed Billy’s fingers, like he’d grabbed for his shorts. He barely breathed. He clasped Billy’s stream-chilled knuckles to his own burning face, like his life depended on it.

“Meant what I said about missing you,” murmured Billy, as Steve drowned in those adoring eyes. “None of those dicks are half-decent rivals. It sucks we never got a chance to work through that tension and…"

This is a dream, right?

Billy’s fingers slid up through Steve’s hair, gently drawing him closer, and they tumbled into a kiss.

#harringrovemicrofic3 #harringrove microfic #harringrovemicrofic #harringrove #harringrove ficlet #steve harrington hurt/comfort #steve harrington whump #steve harrington hc #steve harrington #billy hargrove #billy x steve #steve harrington fanfic #steve harrington fic #i can't believe there's not a tag for bitchy steve harrington #no upside down au

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so-called-failed-academic · 10 months

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I am only diagnosed with fibro.

But I see those with fibro on the internet doing so much more than me.

I am so so fatigued.

I’m starting to wonder if it’s cfs too.

I just can’t function anymore. I used to have so much energy but now it’s constant naps and everything making me so fuzzy and tired. Basic tasks are a full on chore.

All my levels are perfectly fine but I’m still so so drained

I just want to understand what to do and tips to help I guess idk

#actually disabled #disabled #disabled community #ambulatory wheelchair user #chronic fatigue #chronic illness #chronic pain #chronically ill #crip punk #cripple punk #cfs (chronic fatigue syndrome)#cfs/me #fibropain #fibromyalgia

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glittertomb · 7 months

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Very personal but important question(s?) regarding chronic health issues and disability

So I’ve had fibromyalgia and Gastroparesis for about a decade now, and I try my best to self-manage these issues (in addition to the expensive meds they give me that don’t really provide relief), but it becomes severely difficult for me to work a full schedule, particularly when my job drains me physically, mentally, and emotionally. I spend my days off in complete recovery mode, absolutely bed-ridden, afraid to do anything social or physical, because I risk going into a total Fibro meltdown. Which is a nightmare, but I’ll spare you the details.

I’ve been considering applying for partial disability because I think working 3 or 4 days instead of 5 or 6 would be much better for most humans, honestly, but particular for someone like me who deals with chronic nausea, discomfort, and pain on the daily. I’ve been putting it off for ages though because I know that disability can be very difficult to get and a horrible process and I can’t work myself up to it or afford a disability lawyer to help me. I tried being a little more aggressive this past summer and collected “documentation” on my fibromyalgia in the hope of preparing to submit it, and literally all of my documentation says “fibromyalgia?” because apparently none of my doctors believe me after years of testing and thousands of dollars of office visits trying to get this diagnosis. To be honest, using fibromyalgia as my reasoning for disability needs was a dead end anyway because lots of doctors still don’t believe it exists, so I doubt the government would find that a good reason either. And I really doubt they would take the Gastroparesis seriously either, even though both of these conditions are dehabilitating at times.

So one of my friends recommended I go through the avenue of my mental health issues. At different points of my life I’ve been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, bipolar, ocd, adhd, etc, and who knows what the real answer is, but she’s a mess. I’ve been realizing over the past couple years that I’m very likely autistic, and that would actually explain a lot of these things, but the past 6 months have been crazy, and even though I’ve been working a bunch, I’m poorer than ever because of the rising cost of everything, so I cannot afford to get a formal diagnosis yet. But I know that I told my most recent psychiatrist all these horror stories about my anxiety, so I decided to get done documentation for her too, and guess what? Generalized depression and mild anxiety. Girl, huh? (Tw: blood and dermatillomania coming up) I showed her evidence of scars on my hands from picking my hands every night til I bleed everywhere, I described how I get overwhelmed and cry at work several times a week and often fight back panic attacks at work and in my private life, I told her than I struggled to fall asleep and stay asleep and only got collectively about a few hours every night, I told her that I literally could not socialize without using alcohol as a crutch but I can no longer do that because of my digestive issues so I self-isolate, I told her that I struggle to maintain eye contact and panic when people give me eye contact… so many stories like these. Mild anxiety smdh

So that comes to my first question cause I guess I decided while writing this that I have a couple:

1) How do you, as a female-presenting person, get a diagnosis for severe anxiety? How wild do my stories have to be without accidentally committing myself?! I have an ex, amab, who basically pulled a john Mulaney and was like, “I get nervous on planes sometimes” and he legit got a prescription for Xanax or one of those other big ones, and another who is on a dose of gabapentin 5x the strength of mine because he gets social anxiety sometimes, so this is especially frustrating that I can’t even get a dang proper diagnosis on anything after ten+ years of therapy, doctors, tests, everything.

2) What is the process like for getting an autism diagnosis and are there cheaper routes you can go that would still be credible? I’ve exhausted my expenses from years of jobs not paying my worth combined with money poured down the drain trying to get any sort of help with my kaleidoscope of issues, and at this point I’m too broke and demotivated and burnt out to figure out a way forward.

3. Has anyone been able to get partial or full disability who would be willing to hold my hand through the steps and keep me motivated? I know it’s a huge ask but I honestly get so anxious even thinking about the process that I completely shut down. At the very least, maybe you could explain what worked for you or how you would approach it better next time? I just moved far away from my support group so I’m feeling alone and even a word of caution or encouragement would help.

I know I’m not really as connected to this community as I used to be, but I’m hoping someone will get to the end of this and even a kind word or a smidge of sympathy/empathy would be nice. And please do reach out if you have fibro because I don’t meet many and it would be nice to have friends who can relate. Thank you for listening! 💜💜💜

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demifiendcruithne · 4 months

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HAI sorry i am. SO FORGETFUL but i finally got a diagnosis for my ouchies!!! its AMPS (amplified musculoskeltal pain syndrome) and its apparently the precursor to fibromyalgia!!!

i blame my mom tbh (i love her but that woman gave me so many ailments)

i have never heard of that, i guess because i got the fibro diagnosis as an adult good to know about, and hopefully it means that you can get some stuff mitigated before it goes full fibro? (i'm wording badly today but)

i'm guessing it's genetic as well then? i know my sibling and i both have fibro but then i have no idea which parent we got it from or if it skipped a generation or two or just randomly spawned somehow like i'm certain i got the autism from my dad but other than that everything just Showed Up

anyway getting a diagnosis good now you can throw it at people who don't take you seriously and it means you know what to look for resource-wise. i hope you can get it as under control as possible (though if you can get like. disabled person benefits like my bus pass. even if you have it under control you still have the condition which (for my fibro at least) can flare up without warning so i'd recommend looking into what help you can get regardless)

#and also the government is a heck get at least a bit of what we all deserve from them #wording might not make sense brain is in the pear wiggler

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flameo-hotman · 1 year

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Figured I would pop on real quick and just let yahl know I am still alive and my primary care doctor is finally doing her job, so some of my health issues are having improvements. I also learned that guess what, my body was about to stop making new blood! So now my doctor actually listens to me when I say something is wrong with me.

So now I’m on meds for that.

As for the fibro... Finally diagnosed. Officially.

I suppose it is nice that my doctor finally took my pain seriously, but I wish the answer had been different. Something that wasn’t going to be with me for the rest of my life. But there is no sense in thinking of a world where I didn’t have fibro because that world isn’t the one that I actually live in. I exist in a world where I have to grieve my former health and make peace with what was and what is. And I have to learn to accept what will be and learn to cope with it.

But my current therapist also has chronic illnesses, so she gets it. So it’s not like it is going to be a bad and bleak future. It is just a future I will have to learn to navigate.

Maybe once my health is better... Well, better enough, then I might be able to finish up my fics and even come back to Tumblr. But for now I am continuing to rest and try to build my strength back up.

I have a life (mostly online) and I want to finally live it.

But until then, I am going to keep taking my meds, go to therapy, and hopefully get into physical therapy.

I’m ready to live.

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mir-zaynen-do · 1 month

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our labs came back normal as far as i can tell for autoimmune stuff, so… i guess thats good because ok phew i probably dont have an autoimmune disease 🪬 dont get me wrong im glad for that. but then wtf was that horrifying effusion all about??? still frustrated that we couldnt get in earliee because then we might know for sure. and it also just seems like ill be diagnosed with fibro which is like. “hurts and feels bad disorder” ok yes i KNOW i hurt and feel bad so its gonna be frustrating if my diagnosis doesnt have a known root cause or concrete treatment etc. but to me it seems like were getting closer to that basic bitch hEDS/POTS/long covid/fibro combo. yay.

anyway. the dr did seem competent and invested in us and brought up EDS of her own accord (seemed wary of pursuing it but at least shes aware) and soon we should be able to pick up a stronger anti-inflammatory med that she prescribed. so thats good 🧿 hopefully it makes each day more bearable because right now surviving each day is a major struggle and honestly i commend my host for sticking through so much of it. i havent even been fronting for a lot of this cause i dont cope with being bedbound so well but i randomly woke up today

#personal #i know this is a very rambly post. just ranting about health stuff #the other thing i really hope we can get prescribed is some custom orthotics #cause our feet are fucked #lol it was hilarious we mentioned we used to be a competitive dancer #and the doctor visibly WINCED and was like ‘oh that probably made it so much worse’ LOL #anyway G-d will sustain us and is protecting us through this and i know we will come out of it stronger and more capable

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thessalian · 1 month

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Thess vs the Sons of Prometheus

Had to leave off last night because the migraine was too bad to start in on the hyperfocus. Feeling somewhat better today, so I figured to just get a few side quests going.

Right. Runda's Rollerback salvage. And then maybe I'll go do Handa's stuff because it feels unfair. Granted, Runda really needed help whereas Handa's just ... erm ... Handa, but y'know. Fairness in all things? I guess?

Oh. Except if I'm really being fair, I should probably check on that rebel camp the delvers have been on about.

This is ... actually useful. Show myself juuuuuuuuuust enough to lead people out of camp, and then shoot them when they're out in the open. I am such an ambush predator.

Only problem is knowing exactly how much or how little is "showing myself juuuuuuuuuuuuuust enough" because now I'm in melee. Oh, fuck you, rebel shithead.

...I ... do not know how I did that thing where I rammed Aloy's knee into her attacker's face but I doubt I will be able to repeat it. No matter how much I want to. This is part of why fighting games will never be my thing. Well, that and the fibro.

And we're in the camp and ... where is everybody else? Oh. Right. I lured them all outside and killed them.

...Oooooooh, so this is how they're overriding machines. I mean, respect to them for figuring out that whole deal of pulling remote override cores out of Corrupters and then trapping machines with the intent of performing surgery on them, but still, yeesh. Also they can't be doing very well at this if there are this many machine corpses lying around.

Welp. No more of you. Stabby-stabby.

Okay. So. Where is everybody else?

Ah. There's like three of them behind this wall. How do I get in?

Oh. Okay. Gate.

And you ... and you ... aaaaaaaand you. Sorry, Son of Prometheus sniper; I am a waaaaaay better sniper than you. Now. Let's have a look.

Focus that I need to deal with back at base. Right. Okay. I had to go back there for a couple of bits and pieces of quest anyway. I guess this is important enough to drag me back there fairly soon.

Also ... can I just pretend in my head that the Oseram going along with this were just caught by the possibilities of the tech, and aren't blatantly evil? I usually like the Oseram.

...Well, there was Ulvund. Like I said; usually.

.........Maybe if I tell Erend about this, he can crack some Oseram heads and tell them to stop being shitheads. That'd be nice.

Anyway. Rollerback salvage. If I actually have to kill a Rollerback for this, I'm going to be pissed.

Oh. Okay. So it's just picking salvage out of a field and--

OFUCKSHELLSNAPPER DODGEROLLDODGEROLLDODGEROLL!

Right. So much for you, you subterranean pain in my ass. Now. ROLLERBACK. SALVAGE. Plus some extra Shellsnapper bits.

Oooh. Shiny close-range bow. This will be useful when I've upgraded it a little more. I should put together a shopping list.

(Honestly I'm really glad that whatever arbitrary time limit I've been given to get main quest shit done isn't really worth beans. I'd hate to think I doomed the world because I was trying to help an Oseram lady win an armour contest and upgrade my gear Because Reasons.)

Okay. I should head in a Handa-ward direction, but again I'm going for campfires and ... oh. Ruins. I should check those.

If there's a metal flower in there I am going to scream and punch things.

Nope. Just Firegleam. Now ... how am I doing this?

Huh. We're playing with water physics today, are we? Okay. A-swimming we will go.

Y'know, I didn't even look at what symbols this stupid holo-whatever was giving off. I have ceased to care. I am soggy and I would like out of the water hole, please.

(Why can't we go tell Drakka that, hey, if they want to go south a ways, there's a whole flooded ruin that might be a source of potable water while they wait for the Wound to fill up again? This feels like a waste.)

Right. More campfires and ... okay, that Thunderjaw looks upset. Oh, look, Oseram are baiting it again. Lemme see what I can do about this.

STOP. MOVING. NO. STOP. YOU ARE GETTING IN THE WAY OF MY SHOT-- uhoh.

SO glad I'm getting better at dodge-rolling. Smoke-bomb, dodge-roll, INTO the bush I go.

Okay. There. That's dealt with. Oseram, STOP BAITING THE THUNDERJAWS. YOU ARE OUT OF YOUR DEPTH.

What's all this now? Oh. Rebels. It's dark, I'm stealthy, and you're all doomed. Bye, rebels!

Ooh. Spikesnout. I can always use bits from them.

Okay. Just going to collect this shelter, because shelters are awesome and it's the best place to pause for the day. Though I should consider going back to Base later to drop shit off, and also to a settlement to dump some vendor trash.

Also I need to see if I can upgrade anything-- Huh. One upgrade on the shiny purple short-range bow. What do I need for upgrade 2? Ah. Greenshine cluster. I have fragments and slivers a-plenty, but no clusters. Lemme check my map.

Okay, new order of proceedings. Stop game, have food, see how much time I have before D&D, and then possibly go hunt up that greenshine cluster up in the mountains to the east.

I have more to-do lists for my video games than I do for my Being A Motherfucking Adult sometimes and it's weird. Ah well. At least it's more fun. And takes up fewer spoons.

On that note, food.

#Thess plays video games #Thess liveblogs Horizon Forbidden West

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fleetsparrow · 6 months

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So, after seeing a post that mentioned how doctors will literally let patients die rather than treat them for other health problems while fat, I remembered I wanted to talk about this.

I have been trying to get top surgery for the past... 5 years? At least? In my area, there's only one doctor who does all the top surgeries for my insurance. For this entire time, I have been told that I must lose weight before I can get this done.

~~Backstory time~~

In late 2016, my bipolar developed psychotic symptoms (auditory hallucinations being the strongest). I was put on aripiprazole and stayed on it until about August of this year.

During the last part of 2016 through 2017, I went from about 135 pounds to 220 within months. Not a single doctor connected it to my new medication. Every one of them said it was my "eating habits" (I have struggled with disordered eating for years, even before this, but especially after) or my lack of activity. During this time, my fibro pain increased tremendously, though we finally did get it controlled. I could not walk without a cane for years. When we went to comic conventions, I had to use travel chairs or wheelchairs because walking for that long would cause severe pain. I couldn't walk from my bedroom down the hall to the living room without my hips seizing up.

But I was fat. So, you know, this was all my fault. 😑

(Note: I'm 5'1". I've always been on the small side of fat, and I recognize this. These are just my personal experiences.)

With a medication, I got most of my fibro pain under control. Between 2021 through now, I ended up at a very physically active job. My weight has been stable for years, but still "too high."

~~End backstory~~

In August, I changed anti-psychotics. Within two weeks, I lost about 4 pounds. This past Wednesday, I went for a weigh-in for my surgery, and I'm down to 198. The nurse congratulated me for this and said she'll let the doctor know so we can set the surgery date. My mom congratulated me for losing weight. My dad even is happy about this (I say "even" because we don't really talk if I can help it.)

The thing is, I have done nothing to lose weight. The only thing that changed is a medication.

I am livid. I am seething.

My mom is angry because not a single doctor listened to me when I said that I was gaining weight too quickly without anything changing. I guess I'm a bit miffed about that, but I'm used to not being listened to by doctors.

What I'm most upset about is the way people, including doctors, have treated me because I'm fat.

I have done so much self work on unlearning anti-fatness. I have advocated for myself, I have tried educating people, I have done my best to be as good to myself as I can, because I know nobody else will.

I am currently the fattest person in my office, and have been for years now. I'm also the only one who doesn't allow diet talk around me. I am exhausted.

I also still struggle with disordered eating all the time. I love food. I think food is a true joy and should be a joy for everyone. Yet, I still feel "guilty" for eating at all. I constantly deny myself food that I need to eat because I haven't "earned" it.

But every doctor thinks I overeat. Every nutritionist tells me to eat half of what little I already eat. Every single person explicitly or implicitly tells me I'm doing something wrong because I'm fat.

I am furious. I am tired of diminishing. I do not want to lose weight, yet I now am.

But everyone else? They're so proud of me.

I'm under 200 pounds, a weight I haven't seen in nearly 10 years.

I'm so tired.

I'm so stressed.

But most of all, I'm angry.

#tw weight loss #cw weight loss #personal #weight talk #weight loss #weight

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transboysokka · 3 months

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Chronic pain/fibro updates and thoughts from the past couple days I guess since I treat this site like my goddamn diary

First of all let’s talk plans for solutions. My big huge obstacle right now is my daily commute. Obviously when my lease is up in September I’m gonna fork out more cash to live closer to work, preferably (but unlikely) in a building with an elevator.

Until then something needs to change to manage the pain. Here are those options:

Buy another motorcycle/scooter. Driving to work would fix everything tbh but I honestly think it’s such a hassle to have and park a scooter in Taipei

Switch to crutches for the commute instead of a cane. The cane is helpful to my knees but I have a fucked up shoulder too so it’s not a sustainable solution. I’m embarrassed enough using the cane (something I know I gotta work through) so I don’t think I’d even be ready for crutches on that level

Try to bike more to/from work. Here’s the option I’m going to explore! It’s about 5km each way which is super easy for me. I’m not thrilled about the kind of dangerous trafficy route but I’ll try it…

ok now some good news from today!

I’ve been so depressed these last few months just in survival mode from pain but also stuck inside my windowless apartment on weekends dealing with pain when I just want to be active

My holiday to the US was restful and healing in the ways I needed it to be so I’m in a way able to start fresh now being back here

I’ve always mostly enjoyed running or hiking and I’m starting to finally be able to accept that those days are behind me. Even walking for exercise frankly. So it occurred to me to return to cycling, which I used to do a lot and has always been easy to me. Since I can’t ski in Taiwan, as much as I love it.

I don’t have my expensive fancy bike anymore (no place to store it rip) but I rented one of those cheap ass city bikes and rode around about 25km today. It was so. Good. And freeing. And healing. To be able to Get Out again and go fast and feel active. I didn’t go as far as I could have, and I wasn’t in any pain while I was doing it. I’m SO glad I found something I can still do and I want to go on more weekend rides and I think it is going to be so good for me…

Maybe I can even teach my dog to walk next to me on the bike because his twice-daily walks are getting too hard for me too….

#tian talks

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lightandwinged · 2 years

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It’s been a hot minute since I said anything about my life on here bc people just... haven’t been around? I guess? Or maybe I haven’t felt the need to, I don’t know. BUT there are important updates, and I can break them down into three categories:

1. I’m sterile, but this time, it’s on purpose.

2. I have an official diagnosis of fibromyalgia.

3. I’m going to fight God in a Wendy’s parking lot.

Sterility-wise: after Roe got undone in June, I decided that even though the odds of me getting accidentally pregnant are very small, I wanted to make those odds zero. My health is Very Not Good (more on that in a minute), and while emotionally, I’d love to have a fourth kid, it’s just not practical right now. And I didn’t want anyone to control whether or not that happens but me.

So I called my OB-GYN, the one who took care of me through both of my pregnancies, and on October 3, I officially had a bilateral salpingectomy, meaning that my fallopian tubes no longer exist. Ideally, I would’ve kept them in a jar of ether or something for Maximum Creepiness, but that’s also not practical with three kids (two of whom are four-year-old twins), so instead, they were shipped off to pathology and then discarded as medical waste. Before, I couldn’t get pregnant because my body was just a dick. It was still a possibility, but a remote one. Now, though, this one thing is completely in my hands. If I really do want to be pregnant, if Kyle and I decide at some point that we want one or two or six more kids, we’ve got six embryos in storage.

But for now: my body is mine and mine alone. Nobody gets to decide who lives here but me. And that feels really fucking good.

Fibro-wise: about two years ago, I dealt with a major spine injury. Nothing paralyzing, nothing severe, but it left me with permanent nerve damage in my left leg and sent me to the ER in excruciating pain on Thanksgiving Day (definitely my worst Thanksgiving, 0/10, I want a refund). Calling it traumatic is severely understating the matter; any time I feel the slightest twinge in my back or left side nowadays, I have to talk myself down from panicking that it’s starting all over again.

Worse, I couldn’t get any of it treated because of insurance bullshit. Kyle’s company laid him off around the beginning of the pandemic, and then his new job laid him off exactly a week before I was due to have the surgery that would have solved my issue entirely. I lost my insurance, and the hospital didn’t want to accidentally have me foot the bill for it, so the surgery got put off and put off and canceled. By the time Kyle found his current (and very excellent) job and got on their insurance, the spine issue had technically resolved itself, but not before leaving me with zero feeling in a lot of areas of my left leg and with a foot that likes to cramp up randomly because it’s a little slow to get the nerve signals that it’s time to move a certain way. It’s awesome.

Shortly after the injury itself, I found myself getting really tired, really easily. I was also in a lot more pain than usual, and all the doctors I saw had different thoughts about what was causing it. I saw a sleep therapist and got on a CPAP, but her diagnosis was ultimately “bad at sleep schedule.” I talked to my primary, but her diagnosis was something along the lines of “fat also drinks soda.” BUT to my primary’s credit, she did get me a referral to a rheumatologist (even though she said, “it’s probably your diet. Have you considered cutting out carbs?”).

The rheumatologist did easily one of the more painful examinations of my life. She poked and prodded and pushed and pressed, and when it was all said and done, I’d apparently demonstrated pain in all of the areas necessary for a fibromyalgia diagnosis.

Fibromyalgia, essentially, is a disorder of the nerves. It typically happens after a physical or mental trauma, and it results in the brain misinterpreting every signal sent to it by every nerve as pain.There are a whole bunch of therapies available--some with more evidence behind them than others, some more accessible than others--but there’s no cure. It’s essentially a diagnosis of “you can do things to make things a little easier on yourself, but as of now, you’re going to be in pain the rest of your life.”

Which is neat.

So I’ve been processing that. On practical levels, I feel somewhat like I’ve been given permission to give myself a small break. No, I can’t do the things that I used to do, but I also didn’t used to have this condition that makes my everything hurt all the time and, gloriously, makes it so that NSAIDs and other pain relievers are more sugar pills than anything else. I don’t beat myself up as badly anymore when I look around at my messy house because I’m like... okay, it’s not just having twins and depression and no time. It’s having twins and depression and no time AND EVERYTHING FUCKING HURTS. And in that vein, too, I don’t feel terribly bad about renting a wheelchair for our Disney trip later this year OR about ordering a handicap placard from the state.

There’s also some vindication in that fibromyalgia isn’t caused or worsened by a lot of things that you, personally, can do. It can get easier to bear with exercise (essentially, you’re pointing out to your brain that pain is not the correct sensation here, so we can still walk and function), but it affects people of all walks of life in roughly the same way. It’s annoying as fuck, but I feel vindicated that no, this is not my fault.

BUT the biggest emotion is just... grief, I guess. Something is fucked up about my body, and it’s not a fixable thing at this point in time. I can do a lot by myself, but there’s also a lot I can’t do by myself, and that leaves me more than a little dependent on my family and friends for everything, and I do not like that. I was hoping that when the doctor checked me out, she’d say that I had RA or OA or something that’s inflammatory because at least then, I could look into anti-inflammatory treatments, but no. This is a pain disorder where anything inflammatory-related is completely irrelevant.

And I’m mourning because I hoped that it was something that I could easily reduce the pain about. There are nights I can’t sleep because I’m so uncomfortable and there are days when I can’t write or use my computer because my fingers hurt so much. And I’m moving into a treatment plan (after we get back from Disney because I literally do not have time for anything right now), but it’s still like. Ugh. UGH.

I feel unworthy of anyone. I’ve been flirting a lot more lately, and I’ve been pursuing some things casually, but I also feel like there’s never a real chance for anyone who doesn’t already love me to love me because I’m pretty damaged goods. And YES I know this is not intellectually honest of me and that I wouldn’t even dream of saying those things to someone else I know dealing with this, but it’s not always easy to turn off that spiral when it starts.

Which leads me to...

Fighting God: Ages and ages ago, I wrote a big long treatise here about my religious history, but the tl;dr is that I’m nonreligious/vaguely witchy. I’m a pastor’s kid, grew up all gung-ho about the whole thing, but gradually, it all slipped away. I was content with that, and up until recently, I wasn’t really mad about anything with the church because, hey, not my thing but whatever. At worst, following 2016, I was kind of :| at all the people in my life who weren’t considering how their actions affect others, but I was willing to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Not anymore.

In late August, I lost someone to cancer. He was someone who meant a lot to me for most of my life, and we met through church theater things. In a way, he was a sort of last tie back to that life--I built an imaginary life around him when I was a teenager, loved him like crazy. They say that you truly become an adult when you realize who “Landslide” is about for you, and for me, it was about him.

Anyway, he died of cancer, which is awful in and of itself. The church that we’d both been part of had this big fucking spectacle planned around his death and were thanking God for his death in the “at least he’s not in pain anymore” sense, which I found kind of sick. Like God put the goddamn tumor there, why would you thank God for literally any of the situation?

But THEN I found out that he had refused conventional treatment in favor of alternative bullshit, like he wanted some sort of miraculous “and then I had my scan and the cancer was just GONE and the doctors couldn’t explain it!” cure or he was anti-science or whatever the fuck. He refused conventional treatment until this past summer, and then he had surgery and it became apparent that, no, God had not chosen to do things bombastically, but by that point, it was too late. He died of a cancer that could have been easily fixed, had it not been for his faith, and that disgusts me.

Add my fibro diagnosis to that--because it’s treatable but not fixable--and I am very put out with God in general. And yes, we can obviously go into volumes of bullshit the church does anyway that I’ve always hated, and I’ve never been happy about any of it, but now I’m fucking pissed. Anti-Christian, anti-god, anti-whatever. And maybe that’s 3edgy5me, but anger is part of the grieving process, and I’m enjoying it far more than I enjoy when the anger fades for a minute and I can’t do anything but sit there and cry.

(yes, I am seeing my therapist about this, and we’re working through it, slowly but surely)

So there we go. My update. I’ll post pictures of the kids later.

#abby’s physical health #or lack thereof #abby's mental health #infertility #family planning #bilateral salpingectomy #abby and religion #and a partridge in a pear tree

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thewritingsofevbrowne · 6 months

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Day 27 of NaNoWriMo

It's currently 1:30am, just popped in to tell everyone I am still alive even though I have lost my sanity.

My overall word count is 44,020

I'm writing chapter fifteen. I have an outline and everything... Ended up writing like three thousand words. 3073 words in fact. Which is amazing but I'm also terribly worried that I'm not going to make it to 50k. Which I'm sure is totally possible. Hold on a minute let me do the quick math on this... I need 5980 words to complete my goal. Which is really only like 6k. Okay, I could write that in two days but that's on a good day. Though I have written 3k for the past two days. I've really been focusing which is hard for someone who gets distracted by every little thing.

I think probably the funniest part is that I'm probably going to continue writing it because I'm not even halfway through the story yet. Well... Guess I'm writing a long one this time lol

I can't wait for this craziness to be over lol

How am I doing? Well currently going through a fibro relapse, stressed about the holidays and other shit. Staying positive but also slowly losing sanity.

Looking forward to December, can't wait for it to snow. I've also got so many books on my tbr list it's insane. Want to start reading more.

My cat is dreaming and snoring. Want to keep writing but I'm so tired. It's currently 2am. I'm going to try and get some sleep even though I have to wake up early tomorrow. Now off to dream about coffee in the morning lol

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cherry-pop-elf · 8 months

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((Life update! Sorry for like. No real posts or being hectic. I was in the ER Monday because I had a severely bad reaction to my Fibro medication. So I’ve been bed bound since then. So that’s uh. Not fun.

💊

There was also a incident where a guy at college made fun of me while I was having my medical emergency. Saying “Is the bitch dead?” And then laughed at me when my legs spasmed. Not even a hour later fire trucks and ambulances came to the school and took me to the hospital. People were mocking me, while I was kinda dying. That’s traumatic.

☢️☢️☢️

I’m better, kinda. Idk when I’ll properly post again. My health is getting worse, and it’s kinda scary. So that’s what’s up right now.

🧪🧪🧪

Cherry Cherry Wood will be back soon! I just don’t know when.

🍒

Just gonna cling to George for comfort, as he would be the person that understands me the most. One day normal, and the next disabled. Still surving, and trying to make others happy. How people FORGET he’s disabled, and the struggle on how to learn to live life through a new lenes. How one day you are normal, and now you can’t. How people view you as a freak. Not wanting to talk to you or help you. Because you are different. He would know. He would comfort me. He would make Cherry feel loved and cared for. Help him with his Walker. Give him piggy back rides with out a second thought.

🎇🎇🎇

Trapped in a Walker and wheel chair I am. All because I was born different. Mocked and made fun of because I can’t control my muscle spasms. So yeah. Idk when I’ll properly post again. It’s just really hard when your health keeps getting worse. I’m getting worse, and i don’t know what to do. It took so long for the medical system to even diagnose me. I was nearly black listed, because doctors refused to believe me. Believe my pain. Thinking I was drug seeking. If they accepted me sooner. Maybe i would be ok. I don’t know what to do.

⚰️⚰️⚰️

So….Yeah! Life updated! If you guys send asks, I’ll try and answer! Since that doesn’t take much effort. Not like I have anything else to do, being bed bound lmao. So uh. Yeah! I’ll be back online again soon! Maybe? Idk. The most I’ll do right now is I guess answer asks, and Reblog stuff. Expect lots of George Weasley from me lol!

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clanoffelidae · 11 months

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SPEAKING OF FURSONAS-

Hey Lorwolf players! Are you in Goldsea? Do you like riddles? If yes, come check out Riddle Me This!; an in-pack event I’ve been working on for about a month or so for the members of Goldsea! The first season is up and running now and currently we’re on Round 2! This one seems to be a bit harder than I intended it to be, ha, but take that as an opportunity to test your Lorwolf knowledge and see if you can figure it out! Header artwork provided by the incredible HaloCat on-site. :)

(Fursona rambling under cut lol)

I haven’t had a proper sona-sona in years, I just use pictures of lynxes (especially eurasian lynxes) because I love them, so I’d still call that my sona just not quite in the same way as most people it seems. But thankfully most people are pretty willing to work with that! I literally just hand them pictures of lynxes and say ‘like this’ lol, there’s no set design. Mentioning fursonas made me think of this and reminded me I needed to advertise the event on Tumblr because I went ‘hey, I have gotten some art of me done recently!’

I guess another difference between me and most sonas is that like, it’s not a character? It’s not ‘oh there’s me the person and then my sona is a re-imagining of me with a different backstory’, it’s just. Me. We might make jokes that ‘oh I’m actually an ancient eldritch entity’ but it’s not like, a separate character? It’s just, me. I work in a veterinary diagnostic lab. I would like to get art of a lynx in a lab coat and gloves at some point and maybe the safety glasses I never wear that live in my chest pocket asdfghjkl because hey! That’s me! There is no ‘Lynx’ as a sona that’s just. My username. That’s me, the person. That’s just what I go by. There’s no character here it’s just me.

Idk, I feel like I always have a bit of trouble explaining that lol. Like any artwork of me with friends isn’t ‘my sona with the friends in her backstory’ it’s just, me with my friends avatars. The ‘characters’ in there aren’t character-characters they’re just. Real people. Like that header art isn’t ‘Lynx and a vespen’ it’s me and one of my many vespens, idk idk lol

For the curious the other pieces of art I have are my avatar lol (for the record I don’t smoke, I’ve never even touched alcohol and am only considering possibly seeking a form medical marijuana as an oil for pain purposes some day, or seeing if I can get my paws on some non-medical oil/edibles from somewhere for my mom who has fibro; I’m actually quite against smoking bc you’re also potentially harming people around you, but if you do it somewhere as private as possible or if everyone’s already involved I’ll frown at you disapprovingly for fucking up your lungs but leave you to it lol. I just don’t like mind-altering substances idk like my own brain messes with me too much sometimes I don’t want to add something else to that man), and then this a friend drew 😭 we were messing around with a little music generator and I said mine sounded like a shop theme so one of my friends drew me this

It made me so stupidly happy you have no idea 😭

I was putting my different screen names from different discord servers into it and this one gave me a straight up shop theme asdfghjkl (this isn’t the music generator this is my music app lol)

#lorwolf #goldsea #petsim #furry #fursona #GOLDGANG GOLDGANG

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brightgnosis · 7 months

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Instagram Repost: June 3, 2022

Happy (2 day early) Birthday To Me! 🍰🥂🎉 Ok well technically my birthday isn't actually until Sunday, but my Husband took today off work so we could grill out and have my Birthday Dinner early because the weather's supposed to turn this weekend, cancelling our Kayaking plans and everything.

Tonight's menu is grilled Pork Chops from a local Market, seasoned with a rub made just across the county line; Red Potatoes seasoned with tones of fresh Herbs from my own garden; Coleslaw from a regional Dairy chain; and this beautiful 'Southern Living' Hummingbird Cake my Husband insisted on making for me (and which I put together and decorated with cut Banana and Crushed Pineapple, as well as a little bit of Thyme from the garden, just for some color)- to be served with Amaretto Peach Charlotte Ice Cream from the same chain we got the Coleslaw from.

I tend to like "weird" cakes that practically no one knows exists anymore- like the Lady Baltimore, and the Hummingbird Cake, and so on; Walmart Bakery cakes are just too "boring" for my Antique + Vintage cookbook collecting butt, I guess, ha! And so I started a tradition decades ago, while I was still in High School, of making my own cakes for myself on my Birthdays (with the rare exception of my Mother's Mango Cheesecakes). Since then there's only been a handful of years when I haven't carried through with that tradition- much to the annoyance of many of the people around me for some reason.

It was truly sweet of my Husband to step in this year and insist on helping me with that now that Fibro has basically taken over my life; remembering how to be Human and re-learning the limitations of your body is difficult. Especially when you can no longer truly participate in things you've enjoyed doing for decades. I'm learning that it's ok to have help with that.

#Instagram Reposts #2022 #Vintage Recipes #Ye True Olden Days #Food Is The Ultimate Love Language #Calendar Nonsense #Oklahoma #Personal #My Experiments In Food

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bougiebutchbitch · 2 years

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Thank you so much for raising awareness about hypermobility. I've known I had it since a young age, but the (professional pediatric rheumatologist) doctor just told me "just don't do yoga i guess" and I assumed that was all I needed to know.

Now I'm an adult and it turns out my joint hypermobility is probably a full blown syndrome by now and has likely caused the migraines, vertigo, and chronic fatigue that has kept me mysteriously bed ridden for the past six years or so. Also the anxiety that isn't fixable by medicine or therapy (due to JHS causing adrenaline fuckiness) It pisses me off immensely that I already had the diagnosis and nobody told me about the symptoms other than fucking "bendy sometime?" literally around twenty years of constant pain might have been made a little more bearable if a single fucking doctor had known or told me. I learned about this because of the kindness of a complete stranger.

(mind you I was diagnosed back in like, 2000 - I couldn't just look it up on the internet back then)

I'm immensely pissed (not at you obviously), but also really fucking grateful. If you hadn't posted so much information about hypermobility and the associated disorders (and the poppin asshole) I would never have known where to start looking. Now I can talk to my doctor and maybe get the ball rolling on treatments.

(as always feel free to ignore this if I'm being a weirdo. Feeling emotionally charged right now.)

I'M GIVIN U A BIG CUDDLE WITH MY FREAKY SUPER-LONG DISLOCATING GIBBON ARMS <3

Doctors are finally starting to recognise Symptomatic Joint Hypermobility and the range of associated disorders, but the scars left by their refusal to listen to people (not to assume, but especially afab people) and their delight in slapping on a 'chronic fatigue & fibro diagnosis, it's all in your head, go out for a walk and take some antidepressants and you'll be fine :)' diagnosis will remain for a long time. Especially since a lot of them have yet to recognise the REAMS of scientific research into this and do their fucking jobs properly.

(This is not to say that chronic fatigue & fibro aren't real; they're what causes me the most day-to-day suffering along with the vertigo and syncope and dysphagia and popping asshole and IBS hell. But SO many doctors still think that because something is untreatable with a pill and affects primarly afab people, that means you're a) exaggerating, b) not their problem and c) should just suck it up, sweetie x)

Anyway, I am very, very, very grateful to my GP & Rheumatologist for being both informed and empathetic. I hit the lucky jackpot in that my rheumatologist has JHS, has studied a lot about hEDS as a result, and could accurately diagnose me and get me some help. But unless you're put in the care of someone who is either knowledgeable about this range of disorders or is willing to put in the work to both listen to you and learn, it's hell on earth.

I'm so sorry about your shitty experiences with the medical profession, and I can only say that, if it helps, you're definitely not alone - a huge number of people with this spectrum of disorders have suffered years of medical neglect and their symptoms being shrugged at and dismissed. I really hope things get better for you. <3

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