My Face Is Having Uncontrollable Spasms. Great. It Hurts Really, Really, Really Bad.

Do people know about Vocational Rehab? If you're USAmerican they have this in every state.

It's a program that helps disabled folks access education, training, and employment. For FREE.

You only have to be disabled to qualify (autism, ADHD, mental illness, physical illness, etc) and they cover very broad categories of disability. You do NOT have to be officially diagnosed yet when you walk in - they will even help pay for your diagnosis if you are struggling w disability.

I applied with my suspected autism and fibromyalgia, and they paid for 100% of my formal autism assessment.

Once your disability is established they will give you career counseling to learn about your interests and skills, and depending on the plan you create with your caseworker they will then help with school or finding employment. They paid for 100% of my college tuition and books, and even provided a laptop for me to use.

You do not have to pay anything for this program. If you make above a certain income, you will have to contribute to educational costs but will still receive assistance.

They will also help with the cost of things like mental health counseling while you work towards your goals, clothing for interviews, etc.

They cannot discriminate based on your race, gender, or sexual orientation.

They won't make you do excessive meetings.

They will allow you to do meetings with your caseworker remotely.

They will not drug test you.

They want you to succeed.

I'm sure that individual experiences vary but my caseworker was exceptionally easy to work with and very kind.

Vocational Rehab is a phenomenal resource every disabled person should be aware of. Here is the list of offices in every state:

This site comes recommended by a friend of the blog, and oh boy does it look useful! Since it’s meant for use by doctors as well, the information it will give you doesn’t go through the kinds of “for the patient” filters you’d see on sites like WebMD.

The interface is clean and simple, and once you’ve gotten a list of conditions and selected one to investigate, it opens an on-the-page window for you with the Merck Manual’s entry. There’s in-depth data, a quick-view of the highlights of the condition, and there are even links out to other providers like Mayo Clinic, Medline, WebMD, Google, and more.

What’s particularly nice is that when you’re done looking at one condition, you can click “back to results” to get straight back to the list.

This one seems to do a good job of pulling up the common but quote-unquote rare diseases in the list, which certainly makes it feel a little more trustworthy.

Nonbinary folks, do note that it requires you to enter a binary gender.

April is IBS Awareness Month. If you have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), you are not alone – IBS is common with prevalence estimated at 10% to 15%. Yet many people remain undiagnosed and unaware that their symptoms indicate a medically recognized disorder.

i know hearing people on this website love to pass around those posts with links to free sign language lessons but you know you need to actually put effort into learning about Deaf culture, too, right?

It’s IBS Awareness Month, and honestly, I want to talk about the most annoying and frustrating part of IBS. I lose about an hour each day to it. That’s right. An hour. Half an hour in the morning, and half an hour in the evening. Yep, I start and end my day on the toilet, and while I’m nervous sharing this, I want people to think about that. Imagine being sick for an hour each day, every day, and there’s nothing you can do about it, and you lose that time. You have to wake up earlier than average people to get ready for the day, you can’t start your day until you’ve been sick for half an hour, and you can’t end your day until you’ve been sick for half an hour.

I have other symptoms as well, and I know everyone's IBS is a bit different, but wow, it is such a time waster for me.

Ah yes, my favorite chronic illness game: is this normal, is this new, or am I dying?

Time to order your free Covid tests:

http://covidtests.gov

Paging Dr. House: A Medical Mysteries Reading List - Longreads

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a doctor. Never mind my terrible grades in all things science. Never mind that I decided this in my second year of college, after deciding that the music school that I’d wanted for years wasn’t for me. It was 2006. It was the age of Dr. Gregory […]

I love a good medical drama. My mother, a nurse, raised me on ER and General Hospital, always pointing out all the plot lines that “would never happen in real life” but were really cool to watch on TV. My mother credits ER with pushing her toward her decades-long career in the operating room. So when I, a poor lost college sophomore who had gone to school to play French horn (French horn!) and found it wasn’t what I thought it would be, I did what I knew best to do and turned to TV. And on TV, I found House.

House had it all: a painkiller-addicted doctor with a smart mouth and a slap-worthy face, medical mysteries solved via CSI-style case-of-the-week format, and a beleaguered crew of sidekick physicians whose instincts were never quite as good as House’s. I would spend each episode studying the setup and trying to unravel what the medical culprit could be before the ultimate reveal. Instead of realizing that what I might want to be was a writer with a good plot, I missed the mark and decided I wanted to be a doctor.

Want to feel like you’re watching House, M.D. this Tuesday morning? Dig into Lisa Bubert’s new reading list on medical mysteries!

It's too hot to exist. 🥵

Stay safe, SpoonieStrong fam. 💙🥄