friendly reminder you dont need a diagnosis to be in disability spaces, as an example im in constant pain and fatigue, have migraines every week and my joints hurts to a point I can't write, but since familiar gaslighting/medical trauma and the fact that im an indigenous, brown skin fat man a diagnosis is fucking hard (but im in my way! :)) , but i still deserve a safe space to talk about my experiences and to feel valuable and supported.
never feel like youre interrupting someone's space or that you shouldn't be here cause you dont have a diagnosis, disabilities existed before diagnosis
join a community for all the girlies with gi issues.
warning: please be patient as i continue to work on it.
How are you feeling? You don’t know? Me neither! So I look at this chart several times a day (got reminders set on my phone) to check in on how I’m feeling throughout the day. I’ve been doing it for a few months, and it’s actually getting a lot easier to identify how I’m feeling.
Pro tip: some people have to rely more on how their body feels to tell them what they’re feeling emotionally. Work on trying to identify how certain emotions feel in your body. Work in broad strokes at first, before working on identifying more specific emotions. For example, try to notice how sad, happy, angry, and afraid feel. Where in your body do you feel them? What physical sensations go along with the emotions? It’s different for everyone!
The more often you practice, the better you’ll get at it. This is all straight from my therapist and it’s how I’m finally feeling my feelings after years of dissociation.
Having conditions affecting the digestive and excretory systems is just so isolating.
Because even in semi-disability-aware spaces, talking about symptoms relating to the GI and excretory systems is still treated as TMI, as gross.
Even friends and family members are grossed out just seeing us put laxative in our water, or run to the bathroom all the time, or sit weirdly because of an immensely painful gas bubble.
And we internalize this shame so much that when we actually have to describe our symptoms in a medical setting, we hold back, and use euphemisms, because we're so used to having to do so.
It's so so isolating.
It’s a fucking travesty that the leading cause of bankruptcy in these United States is medical bills. Not credit card bills nor risky investments. Not even student loans, but hospital bills. Invoices racked up through freak accidents and diseases the patient certainly didn’t ask for and would probably prefer to live without.
To our readers in other, more civilized countries, you’re dismissed. This week we’re going to be dissecting a uniquely American problem: exorbitant medical bills and how to pay them.
The CEO of GoFundMe, an online crowd-funding platform, never dreamed that his company would become synonymous with “I’m broke and need $300,000 to pay for my child’s cancer treatment.” What he envisioned as a way for entrepreneurs and artists to raise money for their passion projects has become the last desperate hope of sick and injured Americans on the verge of total financial ruin.
It blows, dear readers. It fucking blows.
Keep reading.
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