![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
they stab it with their steely knives but they just can't kill the beast
Saturday, May 7th, 2016 11:38 pmOngoing game: Insert Madonna lyrics into daily conversation. I've found they're familiar enough that most people will let the reference pass thinking "oh sure!"
Like a Prayer is a good place to start. "Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone." Think of how many times that's been applicable in your life! Every break-up, for me.
Chuck Tingle, noted omnisexual erotica author is masterfully trolling the Sad Puppies, a Gamergate remnant battling it out over the Hugos
This link makes me feel things. I don't know if I like all of the reactions I have about this author, but I definitely like a lot of them.
I found a story about Prince having chronic pain this morning that I'm reflecting on tonight.
I have chronic nerve pain from fibromyalgia. That's the pain I know. I *don't* know the pain of constant performance, of pushing your body to the max in a vain attempt to try to contain the soul within. I get the sense that's what Prince was about.
But the pain of fibromyalgia is bad enough.
After following all my doctor's holistic treatment recommendations including sleep apnea treatment, medications, physical therapy, and getting on a good circadian rhythm, my pain is 1/10th of what it was. But it's always with me.
( Today I feel like describing it for you. cn explicit description, body horror I guess? )
I'm *very* lucky in many ways, including that I had the luxury of time to work very hard on my health. For some people with fibromyalgia, the medications don't work and the pain keeps hemming them in. For lots of other people living with many other conditions, too numerous to name, there are no medications that will stop the pain. Again, daily life.
Before I was diagnosed, the pain inched in and I didn't notice gradually living a more and more sedentary lifestyle. Though not moving as much is a natural reaction to the stimulus of pain, for chronic pain, it makes the pain worse. Not moving in *all* the ways that we can for long periods of time makes muscles less able to do work, and therefore even more painful. See: deconditioning; the lymph system.
Pain is not only in the body, but we forget this when we are lucky enough to not deal with pain ourselves. I forget pain too-- the pain that has passed fades away, but chronic pain feels as though it eats away at the mind simply because I can never forget.
This melancholy elephant of bodily function means that when pain becomes a normal part of life, our brain reacts to the stressor differently. Impossible to ignore, and yet somehow completely ordinary, all at once.
It's not entirely the pain that causes the sickness. It's the dance of avoiding it: I detach all the labels from my clothes, wash everything in sensitive skin detergent, take all my meds on time, exercise enough but not too much.
When out with friends, I constantly make excuses. I say no to outings and dinners and parties. I leave when I'd really love to stay longer.
When I can't will off ignoring the pain any longer, I get cranky. I don't like treating people like that. Plus, experience has taught me that those people who have been lucky enough to be temporarily "able" their lives so far... do not understand how my body shuts down on me when in pain and tired. So I leave early. But I hate it.
My "naughtiest" treat is popcorn; I'm looking *forward* to maybe cutting gluten out of my diet to see if it helps. Yay, new self-experiments! Eat the Wahls diet, maybe. Paleo. Walking every day. Yoga. Meditation. Sleeping right. No night shifts. Low stress environment.
A key difference between being chronically ill vs "able" (aka being ignorant of the fact that that's where we all end up for many reasons including that Western medicine basically sees the aging process as an illness): I *want* new restrictions, new research, new self-experiments because my body says I'm worn out and I'm 30 years old.
Healthy people don't have to think about this stuff all the time, and they get to call me a hypochondriac. Reality disagrees: I'm sick and I have to manage it all the time. I know that someday, especially as I get older, I might overdose from the very same medications I now use to treat it. It's incredibly risky for people prescribed some of the same medications I take to forget meds.
My approach is based off harm reduction: I have a pill-minder set up to prevent mis-taking meds. I hate narcotics &won't take them if there's any other option. My pain has decreased enough that I don't take as many meds as I used to. It's still a risk.
Everyone in pain I've met has figured out that in general, society is not set up to care about anyone without money, or all the shit with anyone who's not the 'norm' in specific. (I'm so disheartened to live in the US rn y'all.) Then imagine all of that interacting with mental illness, like it did for Prince.
Like it does for me.
We only need the meds that make us feel better when we dance to forget.
Like a Prayer is a good place to start. "Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone." Think of how many times that's been applicable in your life! Every break-up, for me.
Chuck Tingle, noted omnisexual erotica author is masterfully trolling the Sad Puppies, a Gamergate remnant battling it out over the Hugos
This link makes me feel things. I don't know if I like all of the reactions I have about this author, but I definitely like a lot of them.
I found a story about Prince having chronic pain this morning that I'm reflecting on tonight.
I have chronic nerve pain from fibromyalgia. That's the pain I know. I *don't* know the pain of constant performance, of pushing your body to the max in a vain attempt to try to contain the soul within. I get the sense that's what Prince was about.
But the pain of fibromyalgia is bad enough.
After following all my doctor's holistic treatment recommendations including sleep apnea treatment, medications, physical therapy, and getting on a good circadian rhythm, my pain is 1/10th of what it was. But it's always with me.
( Today I feel like describing it for you. cn explicit description, body horror I guess? )
I'm *very* lucky in many ways, including that I had the luxury of time to work very hard on my health. For some people with fibromyalgia, the medications don't work and the pain keeps hemming them in. For lots of other people living with many other conditions, too numerous to name, there are no medications that will stop the pain. Again, daily life.
Before I was diagnosed, the pain inched in and I didn't notice gradually living a more and more sedentary lifestyle. Though not moving as much is a natural reaction to the stimulus of pain, for chronic pain, it makes the pain worse. Not moving in *all* the ways that we can for long periods of time makes muscles less able to do work, and therefore even more painful. See: deconditioning; the lymph system.
Pain is not only in the body, but we forget this when we are lucky enough to not deal with pain ourselves. I forget pain too-- the pain that has passed fades away, but chronic pain feels as though it eats away at the mind simply because I can never forget.
This melancholy elephant of bodily function means that when pain becomes a normal part of life, our brain reacts to the stressor differently. Impossible to ignore, and yet somehow completely ordinary, all at once.
It's not entirely the pain that causes the sickness. It's the dance of avoiding it: I detach all the labels from my clothes, wash everything in sensitive skin detergent, take all my meds on time, exercise enough but not too much.
When out with friends, I constantly make excuses. I say no to outings and dinners and parties. I leave when I'd really love to stay longer.
When I can't will off ignoring the pain any longer, I get cranky. I don't like treating people like that. Plus, experience has taught me that those people who have been lucky enough to be temporarily "able" their lives so far... do not understand how my body shuts down on me when in pain and tired. So I leave early. But I hate it.
My "naughtiest" treat is popcorn; I'm looking *forward* to maybe cutting gluten out of my diet to see if it helps. Yay, new self-experiments! Eat the Wahls diet, maybe. Paleo. Walking every day. Yoga. Meditation. Sleeping right. No night shifts. Low stress environment.
A key difference between being chronically ill vs "able" (aka being ignorant of the fact that that's where we all end up for many reasons including that Western medicine basically sees the aging process as an illness): I *want* new restrictions, new research, new self-experiments because my body says I'm worn out and I'm 30 years old.
Healthy people don't have to think about this stuff all the time, and they get to call me a hypochondriac. Reality disagrees: I'm sick and I have to manage it all the time. I know that someday, especially as I get older, I might overdose from the very same medications I now use to treat it. It's incredibly risky for people prescribed some of the same medications I take to forget meds.
My approach is based off harm reduction: I have a pill-minder set up to prevent mis-taking meds. I hate narcotics &won't take them if there's any other option. My pain has decreased enough that I don't take as many meds as I used to. It's still a risk.
Everyone in pain I've met has figured out that in general, society is not set up to care about anyone without money, or all the shit with anyone who's not the 'norm' in specific. (I'm so disheartened to live in the US rn y'all.) Then imagine all of that interacting with mental illness, like it did for Prince.
Like it does for me.
We only need the meds that make us feel better when we dance to forget.
