#I’d get anxiety medication but I a) have a lot of issues with doctors and b) cannot afford to see a doctor or pay for more medicines

[stardust-falling]

I’m so, so beyond grateful and stunned for the support I’ve received so far. I was able to get my medication and pay the utility bills and a good portion of the medical and credit card bills for this month.

Unfortunately this need is recurring, and right now I’m still at a point where even thinking about going in for a job is causing near-breakdown levels of anxiety, plus my partner’s paycheck has run out so we’re having a difficult time affording things like gas and groceries, some of which are unavoidable necessities.

Again, thank you for support and for sharing this post. I hate having to do this, especially in times like the present, but I really don’t have much other options and have genuinely tried all I can to “make a living” otherwise.

Unfortunately, I am once again asking for assistance.

Due to several factors I don't really want to talk about, I've suffered a series of mental health episodes over the past few weeks that have left me, quite frankly, in the worst state since... basically before I started working on trauma recovery. I've come pretty close to being hospitalized a few times, but aside from the additional trauma that might incur, I also just simply couldn't afford it.

My ability to work an outside job was already limited by my C/PTSD among other things, but for right now, I can't even think about picking up a shift without having a panic attack. I can still force myself to do things if necessary, but... honestly I really need to be able to not do that, at least for a little while until I can get back on track.

Unfortunately, I can't afford to take a break with no income. A few surprise expenses came up recently which very nearly brought everything crashing down. It's only thanks to the support of my followers and fans that we were able to scrape by, but right now there's no buffer whatsoever. My partner's already working as much as he can, and almost his entire paycheck is going to rent payments and other bills. I can't ask him to work even more to cover my expenses as well.

Last month, I had to skip getting a prescription filled. I can't do that again. My cats are more than six months past due for their shots just because we can't afford it, and I'm stressed every day that I might lose them because of this. They are my literal lifeline.

To cover my own expenses, I need a bare minimum of $600 USD a month, broken down as follows:

Medication: $100

Medical Debt Bills: $300 (total $6000)

Credit Card Bills: $100 (total $3500)

Utility Bills: $100

This is just literally what I can't afford to stop paying no matter what, it doesn't cover groceries or gas, and I also need an additional one-time $500 to take my cats to the vet.

Any percentage of this that I can make through ko-fi tips, donations, requests, and patreon pledges is more time I don't have to spend forcing myself through panic attacks and hallucinations to work an outside job.

I'm hoping to get to a more stable place both mentally and financially eventually, but for now... I'm stuck. I'm stuck and it scares me. I want to heal, but right now it's like all the work I've already done and the progress I've made is evaporating. I'm struggling to keep up with even the most basic daily tasks, let alone my creativity and emotional well-being.

If you can help support me, I'm really, really grateful. The best way to do so would be through joining my Patreon, but really anything helps. I have some requests open on my ko-fi if you'd like to get something out of it, and here is a link to donate directly to my Paypal if you'd prefer that. I'm not really in a stable-enough place to make a full commitment right now, but if you leave a note with your donation that includes your url and a character name (or just a character on ko-fi), then I'll do a little doodle for you as thanks once I... am not struggling so much with the urge to delete myself from existing.

Thank you.

[obsessedwithtoomanythings]

The Terrifying Ordeal of Falling in Love with Leon Kennedy

CHAPTER 2

Pairing: Leon Kennedy x Reader (female reader)

Series Warnings: Minor injuries, Leon teases reader a lot, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Mutual Pining, Drinking, Drinking followed by driving, DO NOT DO THAT THIS IS FICTION, Anxiety, Leon S. Kennedy has PTSD, Leon has an anxiety attack, Anxiety Attacks, Swearing, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Nightmares, Leon S. Kennedy has Nightmares, Cuddling & Snuggling, Probably incorrect medical talk, Strangulation in one tiny little scene, Reader's brother was a cop who was KIA, Slow Burn, Slow Build, Grief/Mourning, Christmas Fluff, Mistletoe, Fluff and Smut, Eventual Smut, Arguing, Love Confessions, Looking for Alaska is mentioned, Inconvenient Love Confessions, Penis In Vagina Sex, Dirty Talk, Dirty Thoughts, Oral Sex, Cunnilingus, Leon loves eating Pussy change my mind, Shower Makeout, romantic smut, Desperate Leon S. Kennedy, They are both desperate for each other tbh, They say I love you as they come, Scar Kissing, Enthusiastic Consent, Always pee after sex, UTI PREVENTION, POV First Person, No use of Y/N

Words: 1.4K

Masterlist

March 2004

We’re only getting older, baby

And I’ve been thinking about you lately

Does it ever drive you crazy?

Just how fast the night changes

-Night Changes, One Direction

The door opening pulls me out of the piles and piles of reports I have yet to file away, and I greet the distraction with a thankful sigh. Dr. Dalton stands in the doorway, his usual smile adorned on his features. In this lighting, it’s easy to make out the light dusting of freckles that dot across his face.

“Wanna take this one?” He asks, eyeing the stacks of paper littering my desk. I stand immediately, almost too fast, the hem of my purple scrubs catching and tugging me back closer to the desk with an unexpected huff. The doctor chuckles at my accidental antics, grabbing half the reports of my desk with a smile.

“Thanks, Dr. Dalton.”

“No problem, and hey, it’s Jasper,” he corrects, still smiling. “Oh! Before I forget, Lilian asked if you were interested in coming to dinner sometime?” Lilian is Jasper’s wife, and while I have yet to meet her, the way he talks about her? It serves as a gentle reminder of what love is supposed to look like.

“That would be fun! I’d love to meet her.” He lights up.

“Perfect, I’ll let her know. Now I wouldn’t keep him waiting, he seemed a bit irritable.” Oh. An irritated injured agent. Now I understand why Jasper offered it to me.

Striding out into the room, I adjust the diffuser silently as I breeze past, hopefully increasing the lavender scent before I look up and see him. Again. Standing in the middle of the infirmary.

“Agent Kennedy. Was hoping I wouldn’t see you back in here,” I say, disappointment etched on my features. It’s not as if I didn’t want to see him again, quite the opposite, actually. However, that desire also included that meeting not taking place in the infirmary when he’s injured.

“Was I really that bad of a patient, Nurse Nosy?” He asks, that signature smirk plastered on his lips as his arms fold across his chest, and I frown at the nickname.

“Nurse Nosy?”

“Yeah, seemed fitting after our last meeting.” His tone is infuriating.

“What do you need, Agent?” I cross my arms across my chest as well, a futile attempt at shielding myself.

“I’m having some lower back issues, so I figured I’d stop in and have someone take a look.” Agent Kennedy’s excuse seems kosher, and I gesture to the exam table with a wave of my hand, grabbing the gloves from the box.

“Remove your shirt and lay down on your stomach, Agent.” The words are devoid of any of my previous niceties, figuring he’d rather be in and out than make small talk.

“That tone’s a bit rude,” he mutters, but still doing as I asked. I turn back toward him and release a gasp. His entire back is covered in bruises in different states of healing, and I notice that the gash on his shoulder has become scar tissue already. I reach for the ice, but he notices this and quickly speaks. “They’re fine. I’ve been icing them.”

“Jesus, what the hell do they have you doing?” I ask as I move to press my hands against his lower back, right in the curve of his spine. Before I make contact, I notify him of where my hands are about to touch. He silently huffs, and I remove my hands like his back is a hot stove. “Sorry, I didn’t realize it was that tender.”

“It’s not. Your hands are cold.” The words are mumbled into the space between his arms, his forehead now pressed against the folded limbs to keep his nose off the exam table. I exhale a breath I didn’t even realize I was holding.

“Oh, okay. I’m gonna run my hands down your spine, tell me if I land on the area that’s bothering you.” Even through the gloves, I can feel the heat that practically radiates from him and I find myself wondering if he has a fever.

“There,” he mumbles as I graze over one of the bumps of his spine.

“Does it hurt when you move or all the time?”

“Mostly when I move or stretch.” I remove the gloves and toss them into the garbage with a chuckle.

“Well, I figured out your problem, Agent.” Agent Kennedy sits up, turning to look at me with pained movements as I move away toward the cabinet.

“And that is?”

“You have a pretty nasty bruise right over that vertebrae. It pulls tight when you move, hence the pain.” The explanation is simple, and I reach over and drop two little pills into his hand, along with a water bottle.

“What is this?” If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was anxiety in his voice. But I do know better.

“It’s pretty intense. You need to be real careful with it.” I fain seriousness, almost losing it with a giggle that bubbles up in my throat. “It’s regular-grade tylenol,” I whisper, leaning in close as a smile spreads across my lips before I reach for a blank form on the counter. The blonde rolls his eyes at the theatrics, looking at them hesitantly before popping them in his mouth, followed by a small swig of water. As the bottle lowers, I rest my fingers on the edge, not raising it, but preventing it from dropping any lower. “Drink. You need more water in your system if you want those bruises to heal faster.” His mouth opens in protest, but with a single glare, he seems to think better of it, drinking a few more large gulps.

“Why are you here?” He questions. The pen in my hand stills as I look at him. Still shirtless.

“Because I work here?” As if that wasn’t obvious.

“No, why here? Why not somewhere else?” He wants to know more about me? Or maybe he’s just being nice? Do I even answer? A sigh falls from my lips as I rotate, resting my back against the countertop as my hands find my pockets.

“I used to work in pediatrics. You know, taking temperatures and handing out suckers after a shot, the whole spiel.” His eyes widen. Guess he didn’t read my file then.

“That’s one hell of a change. I bet you see a lot more injuries this way,” he mutters, almost chuckling.

“I’m used to it. My brother was a cop. I used to be the one to bandage him up whenever he came home beaten to shit.” The agent doesn’t hesitate, latching onto the subtle wording.

“Was?” Damn it.

“Yeah. Was. He was killed in a hit and run 4 years ago.” I don’t need to share this with him. Something about the blue eyes he’s sporting just draws me in, and I find myself struggling to look away, knowing I should. “You can put your shirt back on, by the way,” I inform, turning away from him and those whirlpools he calls eyes. I hear a slight rustle of fabric behind me.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” The words are sincere, and the tears spring into my own eyes without permission. Reigning them in before turning back to him, his muscular chest and abs now concealed under a loose black shirt.

“Thank you.”

“Used to be a cop myself, it’s not an easy gig. Your brother was brave.”

“Really? You? A cop?” The revelation takes me by surprise, although it probably shouldn’t have. My eyebrows rise in shock.

“Yeah, believe it or not. Ended up here through sheer dumb luck.” The way he says ‘dumb luck’, it sounds like there’s more he wishes he could say but can’t.

“Well, then it sounds like you’re pretty brave yourself, Agent Kennedy.” The clipboard handed to him. Him signing it with a scratching across the paper. His hands, bruised knuckles and all, returning it to me.

“I would be inclined to disagree with you, but I’m worried you’ll scold me again,” he admits with a teasing smile, stepping off the table again and heading toward the door. “And hey.” My eyes find his, actually facing me this time. “Call me Leon.” Then he’s gone. Again. Stepping back into the office, I hand him the report, dropping down into my chair with an exhausted sigh.

“So how did it go?” Jasper asks with a mischievous grin. I roll my eyes.

“It went fine. Thanks for making me do that, by the way,” I tease, crumpling an old post it and tossing it at him. It misses, landing in front of him on the desk, his own laugh resounding.

“Oh, I didn’t hon.”

“What?” But he said-

“Guy asked for you. By name.”

He what?

Leon: @house-of-kolchek @bonnibuckets @athanasia-day @muffimtv Everything: @chaosandbubbles @kassiekolchek22 @akiramoon8088

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

For Taskmaster s18e03, I said I’m not liveblogging that one, because I was exhausted after a long and shitty week that involved a significant spike in anxiety, and once I’d finally reached the weekend and could have some blessed relief from trying to go to work through this, I just wanted to curl up under my weighted blanket and passively consume my comfort show. The week of Taskmaster s18e04, there was no liveblogging because I didn’t watch the episode that week, because I was busy dealing with a significant escalation in the sudden spike in anxiety issues, having panic attacks at work, terrified of losing my job, getting called into a meeting with my boss to discuss my “performance issues” such as [list of anxiety symptoms that included “hand wringing” and “rapid breathing” and other things that I normally try incredibly hard to cover up at work but it turns out that two weeks of being too burned out and anxious to mask is enough to ruin everything], became unable to function for a bit.

Anyway, today there will be liveblogging, because I saw a doctor, got a prescription for new anxiety meds and a note for six weeks of medical leave from work, so suddenly, I have a ridiculous amount of time on my hands, enough time to easily make watching Taskmaster take 2 hours instead of 1 (which is what happens when I stop to liveblog, for some reason, even though it doesn’t seem like it should take that long). My life is an absolute mess, but bright side, there’s time for Taskmaster!

I’ve started and abandoned several different posts in which I explain what’s happened lately, because venting on Tumblr is a go-to resource when I'm having a bad time and want to express that, but while I was in the middle of it I didn’t have the energy to write anything – hence the lack of any posts for a little while – and this one sort of feels too real-world big to share on Tumblr (…I reserve the right to go back on that if I feel differently later this week and want to write a post about how hard it is to be a therapist for autistic and often anxious kids, while trying to appear to be a person who does not have any of these problems of my own). So instead, I’m going to return to Tumblr posting with:

Thoughts on Taskmaster s18e04, written as I watch it (five days late):

- I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the insulting intros where Greg Davies implies Alex Horne is right-wing in a really specific way are the funniest ones.

- My immediate thought after hearing the prize task category: Cobra Kai DVDs. I know a lot of people who say “badass” unironically (I may… occasionally, in the right environment, which is not Tumblr, be one of those people myself), and they all talk exactly like Johnny Lawerence. Karate Kid movies would work as something that actually are badass, but no one uses the word there (the good guys would never use such a word because they’re too busy using the force, which is magical in an only slightly racist way, while the bad guys are too purely evil to say fun stuff like “badass”), Cobra Kai drops some excellent uses of the word in an accurate context.

…I wrote that whole paragraph before remembering that Cobra Kai was released way too recently to be out on DVD. Burn them yourself, then, that’s even better. Piracy is badass.

- Emma Sidi’s prize has big “owned this anyway, wanted to bring it in, found the prize category where she could most easily shoehorn it” energy. But fair enough. If I owned a statue of a baby angel with sunglasses on, and I got called up to Taskmaster, I would do the same.

-

[Sam Campbell voice] I've got nothing but love for the boys from above...

- I get Babatunde's slang ("ends") that confused Greg, because I have seen Ahir Shah's latest stand-up show. I am still unimpressed by sneakers, but I'm pleased that I apparently know more British slang terms than Greg Davies. I feel very cultured.

- Rosie Jones' prize initially had me thinking "I'm sorry, but Josh Widdicombe ruined tattoo-based task fulfillment for everyone else, way back in season one. This would be fine out of context, but in context, no temporary tattoo will ever look any good next to his permanent sacrifice for Taskmaster." But by the end of her explanation, she had me more on board. Threatening to kill someone for a couple of prize task points is pretty good.

-

This has always been true. I'm just sorry it took the TV industry until you were almost 50 years old to realize it, Zaltor the Merciless (by the way, let's bring back that nickname).

- Bad art of a bad ass. I knew you wouldn't let me down, Zaltor. Four episodes in, and his prizes are a sea of lies, puns, and one that's just an historical reference.

- Not fair scoring. Emma and Babatunde's prizes were both better than Jack's.

- Ed mentioned on the podcast that there was a continuous argument with Andy Zaltzman about how far to take the costume, when he wanted it into the realms of the impractical. It appears he won on this day, as he enters the task with not just the helmet on but the face mask down, gloves on, bat in hand. Good day to be Zaltor.

- Oh, I like this. Nice simple task with lots of different ways to interpret it, a bit more time than usual (half an hour is a lot for the UK version, this days). This has the "vibe" of one of the NZ tasks, in a good way.

-

...Jack, are you under the impression that the stuff you've already said about how "identity politics" and "cancel culture" and "mental health problems becoming too fashionable these days" (I might be particularly annoyed about that last one at the moment) are ruining society isn't enough in that direction to make people dislike you? You probably don't need to push the envelope a lot further than that, we get the idea.

-

- I've recently re-watched the TV show Starstruck, and I'm pleased to see that Emma Sidi in real life is the same person as her character on that show.

- ...Zaltor, I would like to apologize for not having assumed that your full costume was complete with the jock strap. Obviously that was there too.

- I like Emma's literal interpretation, but this seems like a case where you maybe do want to steal from previous seasons, perhaps Rob Beckett with the pea. Just put the envelope in a wheelbarrow and push it around the garden for the whole time. Or, if you want to argue that "farthest" means it ends up far away and not just that it moves a lot, leave the grounds and push it down the sidewalk for 30 minutes.

- Now that I know Emma's outfit is meant to be Cluzo, I can see it so clearly. Like I said before, it's a perfect character to invoke. Hey, I've just remembered I have a ridiculous amount of time on my hands for a while, I should actually re-watch those movies.

...Oh God, they're going to be racist, aren't they? I remember that when I was a kid, because I loved the Pink Panther movies so much, my dad showed me another Peter Sellers movie The Party, and I know I definitely should not go back to that one, the racism in that one was overt enough to be quite clear even in my memory ~25 years later. Pink Panther can't be as bad as that, can it? I might have to find out. I'm sure Jack Dee would say that even asking this question is ruining society.

- Oh look! Rosie Jones is making chocolate milk (apparently, according to those barbarians in Britain).

- Oh, no, according to Greg in the studio, it's actually a smoothie. I was joking about it being chocolate milk because it's not actually that, but it's definitely not a smoothie either. British people need to sort out their drinks labels.

- This is a bit weird, but for some reason, this shot of the house before Jack Dee comes outside is the first time since I've started watching this season that I've had a moment of: "Oh my God! I know that place! I saw it! I saw that house!"

Taken when I was in London on July 30, 2024:

I saw it! The little TM on the door! I walked beside those hedges! That's so cool!

- ...I'm not a fan of Jack Dee, and therefore, I'm not a fan of having to admit that he is doing exactly what I saw a few minutes ago I thought would be the correct way to do this task. Down to using the wheelbarrow. Fine, he gets credit for that.

I am, however, a big fan of getting to say: I saw this! I saw that road he's walking down! I walked all along there! If you follow that along the river for about 25 minutes, you get to the bandstands where they did location tasks in the earlier seasons!

Jack Dee:

Taken by me on July 30, 2024:

Annoyingly I don't have a picture of the exact spot where Jack is walking in that picture, slightly further along. But it's pretty close.

- Jack Dee:

My picture:

I mean, that's fucking cool. It's a lovely walk.

- ...Yeah, Jack Dee's attempt was fun. The editors get some credit here too though, nice choice with the music and shooting it like a reflective movie scene.

- This could be a Bugle monologue. The stuff Andy Zaltzman is shouting at that inanimate object, I could absolutely see a character in his Bugle lies shouting that at something. It turns out that Zaltor the Merciless has been pushing the envelope for years!

- Interesting choice for Babatunde to put milk in the envelope and then reveal that he can't drink milk.

- I can't get over how much fun Andy Zaltzman is having on this show.

Closest we'll see Andy come to breaking apart a cow, given that he wasn't there on that one night in 2003.

- That should have been one point for Baba and two for Emma. Emma did push it, just not very far. Baba hardly did anything. A bowl isn't even that different from an envelope, he didn't push it literally and he barely pushed it metaphorically.

- I'd have gone five points to Andy and four to Jack because Andy pushed it in two different ways ("pushed the envelope" into telling him the information, the way a cop might "push" any suspect into a confession; and "pushed the envelope" by using extreme rule-breaking methods to get that confession) while Jack only used one. But they were both good, to be fair, I don't have a big problem with doing it the way Greg did.

- Going with the hot dog costume on a location task, that's an interesting choice. I'd speculate about the logic behind that choice if I thought there was any rhyme or reason to Baba's decisions on this show.

- How appropriate. A creepy Halloween-type task for the creepy abandoned theme park location (since the first episode, I have learned that it is Thorpe Park, which is definitely not abandoned, but they've still done a very good job so far of making it look like a creepy abandoned theme park in the location tasks - a place that seems like enormous fun to run around doing tasks, probably less fun to attend as an actual theme park).

- Laugh all the time and don't walk too fast - I need to take back what I said about them not adapting the tasks for Rosie Jones. This one was clearly created to just be what she does anyway. Good stuff.

- Where are they? Does Thorpe Park have an actual maze, or house of mirrors or something, where they're doing this? Or did they build a whole creepy maze just for this task?

- I love Emma having no time for Alex's bullshit. Nope, not playing your creepy maze game. Let's get out of the horror movie.

- A few attempts in, and I'm getting the impression that this task isn't great for opportunities for the cast to be funny or show creativity, but is mainly made for a lot of opportunities for creepy shots of various people walking around a maze like an horror movie. Which is also fun. Sometimes the editors have to have fun too.

- Wait, they're letting Babatunde get away with that? I watched to the end of the task before writing this, since I assumed they'd penalize him. That was definitely running in the maze, he broke that rule hard. Andy sped up for maybe two seconds right at the end, Baba sped up for ages. They could all have done it in thirty seconds if they'd been allowed to run like that (...except possibly Rosie). Absolute bullshit, especially as it's getting doubled.

- I like "It's a wind-up" turning into a catchphrase for Emma Sidi. Good Taskmaster catchphrase.

- I also enjoy the running theme of Emma Sidi being incredibly supportive of Rosie Jones, all the time, no matter what Rosie is yelling about. I noticed it several times over the first few episodes.

- This is one of those tasks where the criteria is about number of errors rather than "fastest wins", so I'd take ages trying to guess the pattern before starting, and probably run into the fifteen-minute time limit. I'd probably also run around the house looking for clues before picking anything.

- I see Baba and Jack are also borrowing from early seasons, going for the Frank Skinner with the pie approach. Just try to magically sense what's in there with no strategy whatsoever.

- Ohhh, I see. Don't trust sound people and make-up artists becuase they're sneaking a locket into your pocket. To be fair to Baba and Jack I don't know if I'd have gotten that any faster; I was thinking there would be some alphabetical pattern.

- Rosie Jones straight-up robbing the crew. That's why they booked her.

- Oh, that's rough for Rosie, getting penalized for picking five pockets of her own, even after working out that it was on her, before finding the locket. Basically losing out because she happened to choose an outfit that's full of pockets.

- Well I'm pleased that this time it was Andy, not Jack, who had the same instinct as I did. Run around outside the lab, looking for clues, before picking any pockets at all. Unfortunately, it appeared to yield nothing. Good try by bringing in a bit of wood and seeing if he can claim it's a locket, though. I like Alex sounding slightly annoyed when replying "It's not a locket and it wasn't in a pocket." Like he's had enough of Andy's bullshit throughout these tasks.

- Oh, they brought back the Richard Red Herring from season 13! That's fun.

- Alex rolling his eyes after Andy announces "I'll use [my remaining 4.5 minutes] wisely" is pretty funny too. Come on, Zaltor, you can do it! You're so close, by saying you know it needs to be "an alternative pocket".

- This image should be the Taskmaster promo poster:

- Andy's slow journey from being sure he can find useful clues, to trying to come up with lateral locket definitions, to saying he never liked lockets and giving up, is even more of a "tragic old man reflective movie scene" than Jack's walk along the river.

- Emma! Yes, you go, Emma! That's actually quite an Inspector Cluzo move, to not do anything but just accidentally fall into getting the correct answer. I was thinking that during the earlier attempts, too - there must have been time between the crew sneaking it into their pockets, and when they started filming this task. Did these people just never put a hand in their pocket in the intervening time? I'm constantly reaching in my pockets to make sure all my stuff is where it should be. Fucking right, Emma.

- I was thinking this was quite a classic Andy Zaltzman approach, trying to come up with a new definition for "locket", but I had no idea how Zaltzman he'd gone until he revealed in the studio that he considered checking in a snooker club.

This was what I wanted when the season 18 names were first announced - to get the joy of seeing people who don't already know Andy Zaltzman, react to Andy Zaltzman. But I was thinking about seeing that on Tumblr, and maybe occasionally having a peek at the subreddit. It hadn't thought about how much fun it would be just to look at the contestants' faces, such as these ones when Andy explains that he thought the answer might be snooker:

I've been hugely enjoying Emma in the studio throughout this season. Her defences of her own prizes and task attempts are always fun, very eager and earnest and insistent. I also like how quick she is to jump in and defend Rosie Jones all the time. And it's fun how she seems to frequently be the opposite of Andy, just shocked that he could ever think any of this is a good idea. (A view that she confirmed on last week's podcast, saying she called Andy a prick in the studio even though she basically agreed with him, but "He was annoying me.")

- Even more references to older seasons in the live task, with Patatas the cat being back once again. I briefly wondered if that monster is the one from the season 10 live task, but I've checked that task description and it's not the same.

- ...Have now finished watching the live task, still don't really understand what was meant to happen. I guess they were supposed to take longer than that to get to 22. I also guess that live tasks are the only ones they can't drop from the edit if they turn out not to work. All right. These things happen.

- Well that was a good time. Can't wait to hear Andy on the podcast explain why he never puts his hands in his pockets. And the nice thing about having a breakdown that delays my Taskmaster watching by five days is I only have to wait two for the next one! That's good.

[sadittariuus]

So I’m feeling really sad tonight. I have a doctors appointment tomorrow and I’ve been anxious, but really I’m just ashamed of being fat. I’ve always been fat, it’s not going to surprise my doctors, I’m the same weight I was last time.

My whole life I’ve had all this shame and guilt in me, it’s always been there. And I feel it about a lot of different things, I’ve been trying to figure out why they’re such natural state for me. There’s a mix of reasons for sure, but recently I realized that I think it comes from the original shame and guilt of being a fat kid. Of being mocked, and othered, and having my body commented on by relatives and my parents and peers. I was a kid and I was made to feel bad and inherently wrong about the way my body was. No one asked why I overate or why I was so anxious I would throw up. No one saw that, they just saw that I was fat.

When I was a preteen and even a teenager I remember laying in bed and thinking that I would take whatever amount of pain or suffering if I could just be skinny. I’d fantasize about cutting off my extra fat and feeling all of it and if the skin were just normal and smooth thereafter all the self-inflicted pain would be worth it. I used to say “by 16 I’ll be skinny, by 18 I’ll be skinny, by 25 I’ll be skinny and so on and so on. I’d walk into a room and immediately be aware of my body size and how it compared to every other person in there.

How could I not expect this to follow me? My mom was never directly mean about my weight, unless she was drunk and feeling particularly bitter. She did however help me to develop some of these negative associations around my body and food. I think I was maybe 11 the first time she told me about the “mirror diet” where you eat all your food naked in front of a mirror to basically shame yourself out of eating. I remember her hating herself and calling herself a fat cow. There was a time when she stayed in bed for 3 days straight and I swear she lost 20 pounds in a week or so; after that she kept a picture of herself in her closet so she’d “always remember what a cow she was and never go back.” She kept the weight off until she died of liver failure from years of alcoholism. Probably contributed to by the fact that she didn’t eat. She’d tell me she didn’t think she deserved food.

How could it have taken me so long to see that the guilt and shame I feel so constantly are tied to the guilt and shame that was drilled into me as a child? By my family, my peers, even my friends? I’ve said for years now that I’m okay with being fat, but isn’t all my medical anxiety really rooted in the fact that I feel like any health issues I could have would be due to my weight and is therefore my fault? How fucked up is that? I avoided the doctor for years because I was scared of being told I’m dying and that it’s my own fault for being fat and not being a better person. I’m sick of it.

I know this isn’t a very productive post, but I’ve been staring at anti-diet stuff and wondering why I feel such an ache at being told I deserve to eat and enjoy things without guilt. I do eat and enjoy things but there’s always guilt. It’s not right. I do not need to earn food, being thin does not make me a better person worthy of anymore than I have now. I’m fat, I’ve always been fat, and I will probably always be fat. That’s okay and I can live a happy and healthy life and be fat at the same time. I’m still working some of this stuff out; I just needed to get it out of my head.

[lovemesomesurveys]

1. What is something in your life that you feel hopeful about right now? Well, I finally tried edibles to see if it helps my anxiety at all, as well as my insomnia, appetite, and pain. I’ve had horrible anxiety, more so than ever, this past year and the medications my doctor would allow weren’t working. I was feeling really hopeless and scared. The only thing that did seem to help was my pain med, which of course isn’t its intended purpose but I was taking it for that as well, which wasn’t good. I finally decided to give edibles a try with the hope of course of it actually helping me and to also take less pills. 

2. What was the last thing you worried about that turned out better than expected? Well, I’ve been trying this new regimen for the past week now and figuring out the right dosages and how many a day and  so far it is working. I have definitely cut back on the pills, which is really good. 

3. Name somewhere you are planning on visiting in the near future? I sadly have no travel plans. I’m hoping perhaps my new “medication” will help me feel motivated and have the desire to want to get up out of bed more and perhaps at least take a drive to the beach and park as close as we can so I can enjoy it from the car. I’d take that over nothing right now. I really miss the beach. :( Like I said, though, I’m still playing around with the correct amount and what type I take for what. I need a mood lifter kind. While it has helped some of my issues, it also makes me really tired and have zero energy which is not helpful if I want to go somewhere.

4. How often do you go grocery shopping and how much food do you usually get in one go? My mom goes twice a month for our big grocery trips. We get a lot of stuff.

5. What is a meal you eat extremely often? Or do your meals & food choices vary a lot? I have cream of wheat for breakfast, Taco Bell at least 4-5 times a week, and I have a sandwich for lunch just about everyday. I have pizza fairly often, too. It’s so wild how my appetite has changed since being home from the hospital because prior to I ate a lot of chicken, particularly chicken wings. I had that all the time before and now it’s rare for me to get chicken wings or chicken strips. I don’t know why.

6. When was the last time you felt unable or unwilling to speak your mind to someone? That’s kinda just how I am for the most part. I’d like to speak up to a couple people, but I just want to cause any drama or hurt anyone’s feelings. I just imagine the conversation going completely wrong and everything getting twisted. I won’t be able to say what I want to say in the right way. I’m getting hurt, too, but it’s best I just don’t say anything.

7. What was the last thing you changed your mind about? I don’t recall.

8. Who was the last friend you saw, and what did you do together? I don’t have any friends.

9. Who tends to show up in your dreams? Do you ever wonder if you appear in anyone else's dreams? I always have random people pop up in my dreams for some reason. Like people I know, but I’m talking like for example this kid I went to elementary and middle school with. We weren’t friends, but acquaintances. I didn’t have a crush on him or anything either. Sooo, I really have no idea why he’s the one to pop up on my dreams randomly. 

10. What is something you wish you could say to someone who is no longer in your life, or something you wish they could know? I sometimes wish I could talk to Ty again and tell him some things, but I guess at this point it really doesn’t matter.

11. Instead of flat earth, what do you think of the simulated earth theory, that we're basically all just a giant computer program or virtual reality? Nah.

12. What worries you most about your future? I’m truly afraid of getting worse or never getting much better. I’m afraid of living a life mainly stuck in bed or at home. I’m afraid I won’t be able to travel again or go places. My future terrifies me.

13. What is something you do to feel better when you're scared? I have to just try to distract myself somehow. 14. Who do you feel you can count on the most in life? Is there anyone you wish you could count on more? My mom, 100%. I know I always can.

15. What makes you trust someone? When was the last time someone broke your trust? It’s usually just unless I have a reason or feeling that I shouldn’t. You just kind of vibe with someone and gauge how comfortable you feel and how much you want to share. 

16. When was the last time you shared a secret with someone, and how did they react? I don’t recall. 

17. Are you more likely to give advice or to ask for it? I used to be the one friends came to for advice all the time, but I’m certainly in no place to be giving advice to anyone right now. I also don’t ask for it generally. Very rarely. I keep a lot of shit to myself. 

18. When was the last time you felt totally lost, figuratively speaking? How about literally? >> I constantly feel lost, figuratively speaking. I almost never feel lost, literally speaking. <<<

19. In what ways are you emotionally strong? In what ways are you emotionally weak? I feel extremely weak emotionally. And physically.

20. What is the strangest book you have ever read? How did you find out about it? One of them that randomly came to mind is “The Giver.”

21. Do you prefer to watch movies or tv alone or with other people? Is there anything you refuse to watch alone? I much prefer watching with others. My mom, brother, and I have several shows we watch together. I find it fun to have someone to react and obsess with. 

22. What was the last thing you broke? How about fixed? I don’t recall.

23. Is there a sign or symbol that means a lot to you for whatever reason (eg. seeing certain animals or birds, 11:11 or other repeating numbers, syncs, butterflies, hearts in nature, etc)? My favorite number since I was a kid has been 8. That number comes up a lot in my life, too. The number 9 does as well. I don’t know what it means, if anything, but it’s interesting. 

24. Do you have any personal ghost stories or paranormal experiences? No.

25. What do you get complimented on the most? Ha, nothing anymore. I’m a mess. 

26. What is something unusual that you find attractive? I find hands attractive, but I think that’s not so unusual or uncommon. I can’t think of anything that would be “unusual.”

27. What time do you tend to eat your first meal of the day? And your last? I tend to eat around 11 or 12PM and my last meal around 8. 

28. What was the subject of the last video you watched? I’m watching a YouTuber that does a lot of videos on abandoned places and companies that went bankrupt and/or closed down. The one I’m watching now is about Bed, Bath, & Beyond. 

29. When was the last time you traveled out of town, and where to? Over a year ago to the beach. 

30. How would you describe your overall aesthetic? I don’t know, man.

[still-quite-messy]

I do this about my burn-out and my depression a lot, actually! Because I already have like 3 masks on at all time while at work (the “social” mask + the “professional” mask + the “don’t stab my boss” mask) so I can’t add “hide the neurodivergence” on top.

So when people go “you look tired you need to sleep at night” and they’re surprised when I say “yet here I am sleeping 11 hours a night” I go into detail.

I tell them how the meds make me drowsy. I tell them about the 1h of staring at my ceiling in the morning. I tell them how there were more than two voices at once in a video call and I feel like crying.

I know I don’t HAVE to. One because I don’t need to justify myself or my mental health, and two because my god-given right as a gay to be ✨dramatic✨. If I want to raise a trembling hand to my forehead and swoon, I should be allowed to.

The real reason I do it is that when I first had signs of depression (which in my case is chronic and probably a good chunk genetic, so likely to stay around to some degree), I had to fight tooth and nail with my (big international supposedly-very-social) company to get accommodation.

I had to go see I don’t remember how many doctors to get a bit of leeway. I had to fight HR of all thing (be thou for the fucking people) to get them to accept that I needed to withdraw. I got guilt-tripped by my boss and the same HR into not staying away too long (“you have to be back by septembre!!!”). I got gaslit by my boss about staying away too long (the same boss who didn’t even stand or stop talking while I was having a panic attack so bad I was literally choking on my own throat).

When I came back to on-site work (I did get a bit of medical leave and then part-time home-office… after the whole Covid thing so it’s not like they didn’t have the systems in place), I had ppl look at me like I was made of glass. Like I was dangerous or contagious or mean. A couple of people told me to my face that I was a lazy bitch. A lot more like I’d been on holiday and it was my fault if things were late. I’d been back a month and I was already back to square one.

I’m not the first in this company, or even just my site, to have these issues. The mental health, I mean. (The general bitchy-colleagues-ness is, I fear, a bit universal.) But the person before me had been in even less of a secure spot than I was, and could not put her neck out.

So I ramble about my mental health. I tell them what feels better and what feels worse. I tell them when I’m out of meds and get snappy. I tell them when I have a stronger dose and struggle to be attentive. I tell them when they send something too vague - Hellen, sorry to disturb you but I don’t know what you mean by this request can you specify? - that I can’t process.

I tell them what dépression feels like, and what anxiety feels like, and how I trick my own brain constantly to be able to function. I even tell the safer ones about the masks I wear during the day. I tell them so that maybe, next time someone feels like that too, they won’t just get “oh stop it we’re all a little sad / tired sometimes” as an answer. And if they do anyway, I hope someone will point them towards me so I can help, because being alone with that shit is probably worse than the mental health issue itself.

Being overstimulated is such a weird thing to explain to people. Like "hey sorry, I'm not mad at you and this is nobody's fault and I'm not blaming anyone for it happening, I am aware this is a part of regular everyday life but I am mentally crumbling because There Have Been Things Happening nonstop for 5 hours straight back to back with no breaks, and I really need to sit down in complete silence for like 15-25 minutes, after which I will be completely fine and can proceed as normal. But if I'm not allowed to have that, I will resort to violence."

[blahandwhatever]

Medical News Today

Long-Term Care

My prime preoccupation for the past month or so has been my health and, specifically, once again, my supplements and chemical balance. Once again, I got some of the weird feelings and symptoms I had for a while earlier this year, before experimenting with my calcium, magnesium, and iron and concluding I should keep taking all of them; once again, these were my prime suspects. But this time, I was extra-heavy on numbness and tingling and coordination issues. And I scoured the internet anew, overwhelmed by possibilities and underwhelmed by the extremely limited, incomplete information on every website, thinking I should someday make a big spreadsheet of all the possible symptoms of every possible nutrient deficiency or excess. Of course, there’s also always the possibility that I actually have A Disease, but I have to get the more likely basics covered before I consider that.

And I experimented, and I felt various types of bad, and I felt various types of better. This time, some of my worst-feeling days were the ones when I took magnesium - generally a safe supplement, and one I don’t take huge doses of, but it is probably the thing I’ve been supplementing the longest (since the Age of Anxiety) and also something I probably get enough of from my diet; it’s possible that, no longer living in anxious times, I no longer need the extra dose (there was, however, one time it helped when I got agitated. maybe its use should be as-needed). Some of my best-feeling days were ones when I took none of the three suspects - but then, there were random ones that differed. Another suspect I considered was my zinc and copper supplement, and zinc in particular, as I also took separate zinc gummies sometimes. The results on that one were pretty inconclusive, but I erred on the side of caution, reduced its frequency, and skipped the gummies altogether. I also upped my B12, as I’d somewhat neglected that one lately, and considered the additional possibility of too much vitamin D but thus far have done no experimenting on it (bit inconvenient, as it’s part of my fish oil supplement, and also I think the main negative effects of excess vitamin D are due to resulting excess calcium absorption, so a) might as well focus on testing calcium directly and b) I’m honestly skeptical I’d have too much calcium even with the supplements because, given what I tend to get from my diet, it just doesn’t add up. ALSO I’ve paid close attention to how I’ve felt before and after taking different supplements each day and never felt a difference after the fish oil/vitamin D supplement).

Overall, I’ve come to feel and look and function better over time, for the most part, with a lot of ups and downs and no firm conclusions yet. It’s always a good idea to be cautious and conservative with supplementation. However, I still feel I benefit from some of my supplements, and some, I’m trying to figure out whether I should eliminate completely or just reduce. Currently, I’m feeling the most negative about the iron. I’ve mostly been skipping it and felt markedly worse the last couple of times I took it. The last time I took it, I had cold hands and orthostatic hypotension. It helped with those but made me feel worse overall. Questions continue to arise.

Urgent Care

A few days ago, I scratched myself by the neck with a long, jagged nail. Just barely - I thought nothing of it. Sometimes I’ll scratch myself when my nails get too long. Things got a little red, but I figured it’d go away soon.

The next day, the redness spread wider. Weird. A little concerning. But I trusted my body to do its thing. Took my zinc & copper supplement and felt better after a somewhat lethargic day.

By today, there were long streaks up my neck and down my chest. Bad. Very bad. The internet urged me to see a doctor ASAP.

And so I spent half this day trying to figure out, and go about, the best way to get treated. I searched around for high-rated urgent care clinics, explored their services and prices. I drove up to one in Northbrook, but it was about to close, and I didn’t go. Found the next best thing, open later, in Mount Prospect. Made an appointment, came back home, charged my dying phone, squeezed in a few quick tasks, and drove to the clinic.

I was a bit nervous - it had been almost a decade since I had seen a doctor. Wondered if they’d find me a mess just like the dentist did.

But it went pretty quickly and painlessly. My blood pressure was high, but they didn’t comment on it - maybe it was normal under the circumstances. No concerns about my lungs or heart. I got prescribed an antibiotic and told to use Neosporin.

By this point, it was 8 PM, and all the nearby pharmacies were closed. I found an open one in Palatine - at the Walgreens with the same address as my local one, where once upon a time GPS had brought me by mistake. So I drove way up there from Mount Prospect, and I dropped off my prescription, and it wouldn’t be ready for an hour and a half, so there wasn’t much to do but go home and come back.

And finally, by 10 PM, I had it all wrapped up, and I took my scary bright-red antibiotic, cringing at the thought of wiping out my microbiome, but oh well - it happens to the best of us.

Honestly kinda disappointed in my immune system for not having handled this better. I’ve had so many worse scratches and sores over the years that didn’t develop any issues. This was really such an odd one. Did I have some particularly bad bacteria on my hands, or was I particularly weak. Did reducing my zinc and vitamin C (which I only really take together with iron) supplements weaken my immunity? Today I took a zinc gummy and felt better after that one too. I’m thinking that isn’t something I need to limit supplementing.

But I also didn’t do anything about the scratch to begin with - again, because it seemed negligible. So, lesson learned there - I probably should have been alarmed by the redness much sooner. I bet some prompt disinfection could have stopped this in its tracks. Kinda mad I don’t get to see the alternate universe where one of my trusty gentle natural solutions - manuka honey, tamanu oil, coconut oil - prevents this whole thing. I’ve literally not had to use anything else to prevent skin infections in like 7+ years. I mean, I do keep rubbing alcohol, and sometimes antibiotic ointment, in stock in case any of those ever fail to work, but that has never happened.

Thankfully, this urgent healthcare need didn’t devastate my poor, uninsured ass (I sure wish I’d known the massive difference between ERs and urgent care clinics when I was younger). And the antibiotic somehow only cost me… $5? Rare win for the US healthcare system.

[itsnotresilience]

Is this forever or just for now?

I’m changing up my longtime blog that I haven’t touched in awhile. I had a lot to say but no time to say it. Now I have time and reason. My body has been a mystery to almost every doctor that has encountered it and at the same time labeled essentially surviving so not important enough to expend time on.

Todays blog though will be about extreme body changes brought on by medication. I have a friend, who, poor soul, has bravely agreed to be my voice of reason while I have no chemical clarity in my brain. Before you say co-dependency, this was actually suggested by my trauma counselor. The point is that I’m the type of person that crowdsources advice and perspectives before I make decisions sometimes to make sure I am considering all sides of a situation but there are many many things that I trust my gut instinct on and I’m known to be an incredibly decisive person.

All of that seems to be gone right now.

1) instead of the intellectual, quick, imaginative and productive pathways I take pride in, the chemicals steer me into the easier well rehearsed anxiety and trauma response zones almost immediately. Example. My boss engaged me in a brainstorming exercise on a work problem yesterday. I instantly felt like me again, thinking through a process and the issues I understood, the implications, ideas we could think about. Minutes later I wondered if he did it to placate me because he knows I’ve been feeling useless work wise

2) I am not in a space to even get a read on the event I’m asking about, let alone process the advice I’m getting and whether it makes sense for the event - which may not have been the event I perceived it to be because prednisone rage or sadness has tapped into what I thought to be a long dead trauma response. Example: I get an email suggesting I pause my run coaching so I don’t pay for something I’m not doing but the wording sends me into a complete tailspin of “everyone is abandoning me” and “my whole life is falling apart”.

3)I get overwhelmed by the advice I used to be able to parse through and kinda see what blend of perspectives made sense. I’m also needing it too much and burning out my amazing friends who have their own shit to manage.

So this was the idea from my trauma therapist- that for the meantime I’d have this one person to help filter things through because of the brain changes, plus- also increasing talk therapy of course.

Back to extreme body changes. The following is an excerpt of an exchange with my voice of reason through text. This has been edited for public consumption. Note that I am not body shaming anyone. This is about me, not anyone else. I’m not censoring thoughts based on what people think I might be saying or whatever else. We can have conversations in some other posts about body positivity and body dysmorphia. This is not that post.

“I was taking a bath and I thought I saw Ursula from the Little Mermaid in the mirror except she was white and had sticky stuff on her skin from EKG bruises from the 6 day IV and blood draw battle.

I was literally looking at Meghan pre-2019. The one I worked so hard to get rid of, except this one has an even more deformed shape in my minds eye- Prednisone face (one side is literally different than the other) and there seems no hope of losing it again.

I was crying, telling my husband I fucking hate everything right now and he really did try to console me. Except, he said, our 20 year old bodies are gone babe gotta let it go.

Something about his statement made me viscerally angry. I’m not pining for my 20 year old body. I’m pining for a body I literally was able to have 3 fucking months ago. I cannot wear my normal clothes and I probably have to go buy a bigger size. I’m not dreaming of my ultimate weight loss goal. I’m dreaming of ��last week I was 163 pounds and feeling like I could feasibly get back on track” and I know from my last scale check I had gained 10 pounds in a week. You can tell yourself these are all steroid pounds but it doesn’t make a difference.

All I see is that horrid body I hated and worked so fucking hard to get back into shape. Back to this shape. I’m defeated and I had to tell Eric three times to let me be sad about it. It will be even harder to lose it again as I was already struggling in peri-menopause to find the right diet combination to deal with the hormone fluctuations.

I had a nutritionist appointment scheduled Monday, which I cancelled because I there is no sense in focusing on this when I can’t even breathe all the time. “

Anyone reading this is probably wondering why the fuck I am caring about this when my oxygen levels aren’t normal and I’m on bed rest and could have to go back to the hospital at any time.

I don’t know that I can explain that well enough for all of you to not judge at all. I am a perfectionist. I take care of myself. I want to describe I’m an avid runner but cannot even run or exercise right now. I’m having major memories and trauma from my last experience with this and it’s ok that you don’t understand. It’s not your body.

It’s a lot of change and loss to process at once and sometimes I just break and sound like a child who says, “it’s not fair”.

And yeah, our super favorite toxic response is, “life isn’t fair”. How exactly is that helpful? That obvious statement that everyone knows? It seems to be used just to put upset people in their upset place which is far away from spaces we have to listen to them and they could ruin our “positivity”.

I’ll say it this way, some times there are people that get lots of shit at once and others get less. There are entire swaths of people who I believe live with a lot less shit because their basic needs ++++++++++ are met. Then there are those that every day is a struggle so that “isn’t fair”compared to those who maybe their Tesla couldn’t find a charge station. That kind of comment then becomes demeaning and we should maybe think of something else to say like, “life can suck”.

Anyway, so life can suck and you just have to be sometimes.

Be kind to each other

[amysubmits]

This is such a great comic expressing how it can be for some with ADHD. I hope I don’t detract from it too much by adding my experience.

I was also a quiet little girl so I was labeled as irresponsible, careless, not living up to potential, spacey, etc. Nobody ever suggested I may have ADHD when I was little. When I was just shy of 14, I saw a psychiatrist for mental health issues and was diagnosed as ADHD inattentive type. Totally unexpected. They never really said anything to me about that diagnosis, but I was given adderall. Nobody ever explained to me or my parents why I was diagnosed, and what ADHD looked like for me. We always wondered if the diagnosis was even correct because I wasn’t hyper, loud, disruptive. My mom often pointed out that I could sit through family dinners just fine, and when I was younger I’d spend long periods of time playing with the same toys. I didn’t seem to have a lack of focus in that sense.  

In our senior year of high school, one of my close friends got an ADHD diagnosis and started meds - and she had an experience just like this comic. She really grieved for her younger self. She wondered how different her life could have been if she had the help of medication before. She talked to me about how she had no idea she had been living life on hard mode until she had the meds. She said she felt ‘more like herself’ than she ever had. At the time, I thought this meant I likely had been misdiagnosed, because that wasn’t my experience with ADHD meds. 

I had heart palpitations and felt anxious while on the meds. Some of my other diagnosis’ included anxiety and PTSD as it was, but the adderal seemed to exacerbate my anxiety and I didn’t really get why they thought I should be on ADHD meds anyway. I wasn’t disruptive, and my grades were okay. I didn’t see how adderal was helping me, but I did see how it was harming me. So, I quit taking it. 

About a year ago I was struggling to get work done. I knew it was likely me being in a fog of grief (my dad died), but I was worried about my performance at work. I’m not usually one to struggle with being productive at work. So I went to my doctor to see about ADHD meds for the first time in about 15 years. She gave me adderal but said it may work better for me now as brain chemistry changes a lot between being a teen an adult. I tried it, and it hasn’t caused me anxiety, but after a few months I wasn’t all-consumed by grief anymore so my regular focus returned and I didn’t feel like I needed it to help me with work. So I didn’t see any point in continuing it, and had mostly stopped using it for the last several months. 

This summer I started therapy. I didn’t really expect ADHD to be a big topic of discussion, but the last couple of months it’s been a big focus for me because I’m just now - some 15+ years after my original diagnosis, finally gaining an understanding of what ADHD actually looks like for me. 

I’ve talked to my therapist about how I’m self employed, set my own deadlines, and keep myself accountable without trouble. I see lots of content on tiktok and other places that discuss ADHD where they talk about how difficult (nearly impossible) it is for people with ADHD to start a new project, or begin a household chore. Things like “I know I need to do laundry today, and I’ve been thinking about it and feeling guilty about it all day, but I cannot make myself get up and start the load.” Online this is usually what I hear people refer to when they say “executive dysfunction” so I thought I didn’t have executive dysfunction. 

So again - I thought maybe I was just misdiagnosed? But my therapist has explained to me that ADHD is really a spectrum. It’s not a spectrum with just a few types, either - it’s not hyperactive adhd, inattentive adhd, and mixed type. It’s a much more complex spectrum. 

She’s talked to me about how diagnostic criteria for ADHD was largely based on boys and how ADHD often looks different in girls, women or AFAB people. I had come across some of that info online, so that wasn’t news to me. But it was news to me that the “I desperately want to do X, but my brain won’t let me” is more commonly seen in boys/men/AMAB people. So me not having that despite having an ADHD diagnosis isn’t weird. 

She said the diagnosis is also largely based on people observing others with ADHD. So while it’s called attention defecit hyperactivity disorder, it’s common (or at least not uncommon) for people with ADHD to not feel like they lack focus. She said it’s now being understood that it’s more about being able to regulate your attention. She said she feels a better name would be attention regulating disorder! She said some with ADHD frequently experience hyperfocus, and this can make it hard for them to switch from focusing on one thing, to focusing on something new. To those observing us, this can look like we’re “spacing out” but in reality we’re hyperfocused on something, so we struggle to switch our focus to something new. 

My main point is, I’ve realized in the last couple of months that I 100%, without a doubt have ADHD. I just experience it differently than some others, but that’s normal because ADHD is a spectrum. I’ve also learned that ‘executive dysfunction’ is a ton of things, it’s not just being unable to make yourself do the laundry or something like that. 

My ADHD symptoms look like this:

I struggle to regulate my focus, because I hyperfocus on things that are “weird” to hyperfocus on. It’s common to hyperfocus on things like an exciting scene in a movie, or a video game. We’ve all experienced saying “hey” or “dinners ready” to a kid playing a video game and had them reply “huh?” even though you spoke clearly and at a reasonable volume. They just didn’t comprehend what you said because they were hyperfocused on their game. I do that if I’m just...doing the dishes and thinking about work. I’ll be so deeply invested in my thoughts that I can’t hear you unless you give me a minute to shift my focus. This also overlaps with audio processing trouble, and sensory processing is part of ADHD, too. 

Another way that I struggle to regulate my focus is bouncing between tasks. People without ADHD can cook something that needs stirred every 2-3 minutes, and text their friend between stirring and will effectively regulate their focus between those two tasks to keep stirring at 2-3 minute intervals. I can’t just jump back and forth between focusing on one or the other with ease, so i’m likely to either get too focused on cooking, or too focused on texting, and I’ll end up not stirring frequently enough, or I’ll be too focused on cooking and stir too often. This also can overlap with “time blindness”. You might think you’re stirring the pot every 2-3 minutes, but maybe it’s been 5+ minutes because you got too focused on your text message so 5 minutes felt like 2 minutes. So you may think you did a decent job of stirring at the right intervals, but you’re confused why it’s now sticking and burning, you don’t even realize you lose track of time, necessarily. It’s a type of executive dysfunction. 

I’m not a linear thinker, and I can’t edit my thoughts very well while speaking. Maybe I’ll be trying to explain to someone how I’ve been struggling with migraines, and I’ll go to tell them about one particular migraine I had, and then my brain remembers something else that happened on the day that I had the migraine, and now I catch myself telling this person about what else happened on the day that I had a migraine, even though it’s totally irrelevant to my point. I didn’t really even want to share this excess detail with them...it’s just that it popped into my head, and took over my focus, so I had to follow it along, and now I have to say “Oh, sorry, anyway - “ and then jump back to what I actually wanted to talk about. My therapist has used the analogy that neurotypical people, when talking, are sort of driving a car. They can control the speed, and control where to turn. They can consciously decide what details to share and what not to share. Where for many with ADHD, they’re more like a train on a track. If their brains focus shifts to something, they can’t really choose to just change topics. This is why I get “side tracked” and add irrelevant information when talking. And writing, to some extent - though I do try to “trim the fat” some when writing. This is a form of executive dysfunction. 

Rejection sensitive dysphoria. I had heard about this on TikTok and elsewhere too, but thought it was basically when someone immediately jumps to feeling rejected anytime someone disagrees with them, or similar. It can be that, but it can be a lot more subtle. It can basically look like social anxiety, and worrying that people will judge you - not necessarily that you think they’ll hate you or shun you. My therapist explained that how I sometimes have really strong reactions to worrying about being judged is also related to emotional regulation trouble. I knew emotional regulation difficulties were a symptom of ADHD, but I thought that meant people who get frustrated or angry easily and can’t calm themselves down. Yet again, it CAN be that, but it also can be having “big feelings” other than anger that aren’t proportionate to the situation. So if I screw up something I was cooking and sort of momentarily fall apart because I’m so upset about it? That’s an emotion regulation issue, and this is part of executive dysfunction, too.  

Hyperactivity. I thought this was the hyper kid who can’t sit still in school, church, or even at dinner. It can be...but my therapist said boys are more likely to have hyperactivity that disrupts others. AFAB people tend to have “internal” hyperactivity. They twist their hair, change positions in their seat, fidget with their jewelry, chew their nails, bite the insides of their cheeks, etc. That’s me! 

So, now I’m re-trying ADHD meds although I don’t feel that I really struggle with a lack of focus overall...I think I’m more prone to hyper-focus, but they can help with executive dysfunction, too - and many of these things I experience are forms of executive dysfunction. I never paid attention in the past to whether I was better able to switch between tasks or ‘cut the fat’ when talking, when medicated. I thought they were just supposed to give me more focus, so that’s all I was checking for when trying to figure out if they were working.��

I figure out I had ADHD last year, but I didn’t seek an official diagnosis and medication until this year. I’m 30 years old, my school days are long behind me. I slipped through the cracks because I have predominately inattentive type and I was a quiet little girl. Having ADHD does not mean you have to be hyperactive and loud, it means you have a processing problem in your brain that doesn’t allow you to regulate your focus or emotions. 

Mental health even now is still taboo to talk about. People are more open now than ever about it however and that gives me hope. 

This is a profoundly personal comic and it only reflects my own experience with ADHD. It is on a spectrum with a wide range of personalities. But if my story connects with someone else and helps them, that would mean the world to me.

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Long story about some shit that’s so personal I’m a little nervous about posting it, and I don’t know how long I’ll leave it up, and I don’t know if there’s any reason to put it here. But it helped just to write it all down, and putting things on here tends to help me.

So, I’m going back on anti-depressants because Ahir Shah told me to. I watched his special Dots recently, and in it, he said he’d made the mistake of going off those a while ago. The act of stopping his anti-depressants, he said, surprisingly turned out to be a pro-depressant. He got worse, he got hopeless about everything, so he went back on them. Assuming he wrote that quite bleak show after going back on meds, they didn’t exactly restore all his hope. But they don’t normally restore all hope. No one ever promised that they would.

I have a degree in psychology, I know how these things usually work. It’s a common phenomenon for any mental or physical condition that people will go on medication, feel better as a result of the medication, decide they’re better now so they don’t need it anymore, go off the medication, and then feel worse.

For me, it was the opposite. I went off anti-depressants about a year ago, after having been on them for quite a while. That was by far the longest I’d ever stuck with a medication, though I’ve been prescribed them many times throughout my life. I’ve often been prescribed them and just never filled the prescription. Sometimes I’d filled the prescription and tried them for a month, hated the side effects, and gone off them (by which I mean tapered off under doctor’s supervision – I might be lax with letting my mental health go untreated, but I’m not irresponsible enough to take risks with sudden stops to medication). But a few years ago, I got to such a low point that I was willing to go on meds and actually stay on them. I stayed on that anti-depressant for about 2.5 years.

I went off them early last year because I thought they weren’t helping. I still got sad all the time, often for no reason or as a disproportionate reaction. I still got overwhelmed too easily from what should have been normal amounts of human contact. The pandemic had exacerbated that a lot. My anxiety levels were so high. If I was like that despite being on medication, what the hell was the point of the medication? I told the clinic that it wasn’t helping and I wanted to go off it.

The doctor recommended that I stay on it – he actually made me sign something acknowledging that he’d given me this advice, presumably to absolve himself of liability if anything bad happened as a result. And then he prescribed me the appropriate number of pills in lower doses so I could taper off safely, because seriously, even if I make other questionable decisions, no one should ever mess around with stopping medication cold turkey.

I didn’t fall apart the moment I stopped medication. Actually I sort of did, because I had a few weeks of withdrawal (which can happen to mild or moderate degrees even if you do go off it the proper way, the severe withdrawal that occurs if you go off it wrong is scary), but once I got past that, for a while, I barely noticed the change. It’s only now that I look back that I can see a pattern. And the pattern doesn’t correlate perfectly with my medication history, because there are so many other factors at play. My life was fairly okay for most of last spring, so for a while, I felt all right even once I was off medication.

But I did, eventually, have a breakdown. I didn’t see it at the time; at the time it felt like a normal downswing in the normal ups and downs of life. But I can look at it now and remember that I didn’t get downswings that low when I was on medication. I definitely didn’t get downswings as low I am right now, where I’ve been for the last few weeks.

I remember a conversation I had, about six months after I started medication, with a girl I’d coached for several years. She had some serious anxiety issues, which she talked to me about frequently. I always gave her the best advice I could, which involved advising her to consult a doctor. She was reluctant to do so, which I understood, as I spent most of my teen years with my parents taking me to doctors who might fix my severe anxiety, but I never wanted anything to do with it. Now, I advise teenagers to be more open to accepting help than I was at their age.

I’d been open with this girl, when it came up and was relevant, with the fact that I had experience with this too. She asked me, that day, whether taking medication had helped me. She was nineteen by then. If she’d been younger I would have sugar coated it more, but I thought an honest answer might help her and she was old enough to hear it, so I told her the truth. I told her I still felt sad and scared at disproportionate rates, I still struggled with stress and human interaction more than most people, but since I’d gone on medication, I could function again. I could accomplish things, even if they were difficult. And I hadn’t once felt the desire to kill myself – in fact, I could barely remember how it felt to ever want that. I could barely remember how it felt to be close to wanting that. Since the medication had taken effect, my days of wanting to do that felt like a dream or a distant memory. Medication didn’t solve everything, but it took that away, and that mattered.

That’s what I told a girl I coached, several years ago. But as I sit here now and write this, I can very easily identify how it feels to be in that very bad place that I’d once reduced to feeling like a dream. What I have trouble remembering is how I felt on that day when I told a nineteen-year-old how confident I was in the resurgence of my mental health. I’ve described that memory in the form of a conversation because that’s how I remember it now – I remember saying it. I know that a few years ago, I felt like a functional person who was a million miles away from the darkest parts of depression. But I only know that because I remember telling someone I felt that way. I can now barely remember how it actually felt.

It was a few things at once at the end of 2022. Objectively bad things did happen, things that would cause most people to be upset. So when I reacted in the moment, it felt like it made sense. I’m only now realizing I’m pretty sure the version of me on medication would not have had quite the reaction that I did.

In those last few months, I stopped eating, stopped sleeping, stopped exercising, ignored my friends. Every step, at the time, felt like a normal level of having a bad day. I was still obsessively going through comedy and posting on here about it. More than ever, in fact. But I’d stopped feeling joy or hope in anything related to real life. I couldn’t be around people. When I did manage to go to my sport’s practices, the thing I love most in the world and only recently started getting back after COVID (God, I hate the phrase “after COVID” when we were very much still in COVID, but I’ve started going back anyway), I felt cold and disconnected. I didn’t like anyone there. I didn’t like anyone at all.

There were occasional exceptions, times when something would happen that would make me feel alive. But those were tiny flashes among weeks and months of not wanting anything to do with anyone, and the fact that they were exceptions highlights how bad things got.

I was already feeling that way when in October, a guy I used to know and like committed suicide. At first I felt nothing, which scared me because I thought the pandemic had completely turned off my capacity to care about things. But then I felt quite sad, and realized it was just a delayed reaction. So that was fine. Until a few weeks later when I learned that he did it to avoid charges for sexual assault of a teenage girl I knew, and I knew him around her; for years before the pandemic I worked with them both and saw them together and had no idea. And for all those years I was fighting for the people who oversee our sport to do something about all those predatory coaches in other regions, and had no idea that a friendly acquaintance of mine from another team in my own fucking city was one of the worst.

I spiraled pretty hard from there. A bad reaction would be normal, but I know my reaction was abnormal, because my friends got upset for a bit and then moved on. I couldn’t. It solidified my growing view that no one can be trusted and everyone in the world is a terrible person and no one is worth caring about, and therefore, nothing is worth doing or investing in. That everything that’s ever felt fulfilling to me is poison. And that’s when the actual wanting to die set in.

For the record, I do think there’s something to the depressive realism theory, espoused by annoying people who think being cynical makes them better than everyone else. As much as I hate those annoying arrogant people, I don’t know if it is right to say my reaction was disproportionate just because my friends got over it faster than I did. It’s fucking horrifying, and so are most things in the world. I think it’s rational to be really really upset that everything is so fucked up. I think I might be objectively more rational than my friends are about this. Also, the world’s ending. The world’s ending and everyone is just getting on with life, making plans for the future, as though the world isn’t ending!

But if exercise or diet or willpower or medication can give me whatever ability everyone else has to irrationally feel hope despite how fucking horrifying everything is, then I want to do that. Cynicism doesn’t make me better than anyone else, and I’d rather be happy than objectively rational.

Anyway, in the process of this spiraling, I shut down and didn’t see my girlfriend for several weeks, and when she asked me how we could move forward, I broke up with her. Because in that moment she felt to me like the only truly good person I knew, and I felt terribly guilty about hurting the only good person by asking her to deal with this version of me. The least I could do was be miserable and self-destructive without hurting an innocent person more than I had to, which was quite a lot, because we had a good relationship for fourteen months and of course I hurt her terribly by breaking it off. And then I felt incredibly guilty about that, and I still do, but I also still think I’d have hurt her more in the long run if I’d stayed with her and asked her to deal with this, so this was the path that caused the least harm, which is all I ever want to do. Though the actual path that would have caused the least harm would have been not getting into a relationship when I can’t count on remaining a functional enough person to maintain one. Which is what I did for ten years, until 2021, when I was on medication and though I was finally okay enough to try.

After that I shut down even more. I ignored calls from my parents who were worried about me, I couldn’t get out of bed. I did the bare minimum of work that I had to, but I’m lucky I have a quite flexible freelance job that can withstand this. One day my dad turned up at my door because I’d ignored my phone and he was afraid I’d hurt myself. I told him I was all right and let him take me for a drive, and he dropped off some groceries for me and I am incredibly grateful to have people who care about me so much.

A couple of weeks ago my parents got me to come to their place for Christmas, and now it’s a bit into January and things have got a little better. I’ve socialized a bit and eaten more and feel slightly more like a real person again, just enough to realize just how bad things had gotten in the last few weeks of 2022.

Through all this, I was still following all the comedy. When I stopped liking everything else in the world, the comedy is the only thing that never went away. There were times when I had trouble laughing at it, when certain types of comedy made me feel sick, but it could still pretty consistently make me feel something. I’ve been watching and listening to comedy and posting about it on here, and I don’t even know anymore if that’s escapism from the real world or if it’s my only connection to the real world that never got severed.

I recently watched Ahir Shah’s show Dots. And I now want to emphasize that I’m not going back on anti-depressants just because Ahir Shah told me to. I’ve known for a while that I needed to do that. I’ve known since I broke up with my girlfriend, and she told me she hopes I can work on my mental health and get the help I need, and I wasn’t doing well enough to take steps toward it at the time but I knew she was right. Over Christmas, when I’ve come back up just a bit, I’ve realized I need to actually start doing that. Because aside from anything else, I’m supposed to be looking for better jobs right now so I can be financially stable, and I can’t imagine that succeeding unless something helps my mental health get better. And I really want that to work, because I want to find a good enough job so I can relax about my financial situation and start planning some way to see the UK.

I already knew all that, but I still knew it sort of theoretically, as something I should get on at some point. And then Ahir Shah told me that the act of stopping anti-depressants is in fact a pro-depressant, and I realized he was right, going off it was a mistake. That was what I needed to hear. I needed to hear that the practical step of going back on medication – the step that seemed so big and complicated – could be done and has been known to work.

But seriously, I was going to do it anyway. I am not going back on medication literally just because Ahir Shah told me to, because no one should be taking medical advice from comedians. Please do not take medical advice from comedians. Listen to the advice of doctors, I say hypocritically, less than a year after signing a paper that let me ignore their advice. Do not make medical decisions based on comedy specials.

On the subject of comedy specials, I keep relating to the bad guys in people’s stories. I keep watching stand-up shows about relationships that didn’t work out, and relating to the person who isn’t telling the story. The partner who could not accept or properly return their love, and eventually, the protagonist realized that this terrible person was terrible for them. Even as I wrote in this post about how I broke up with my girlfriend, I thought, I know how this sounds. “I’m just too broken to be a good partner for you, sorry, nothing I can do about that.” It sounds like the bullshit that the villain in a sitcom or a stand-up special makes up to justify their shitty behaviour.

Before I got with my recent ex-girlfriend, I spent years not getting into relationships because I was scared of being that person, the one who hurts someone by letting them tie their happiness to my emotional availability, and then lets them down. When I first got with my recent ex-girlfriend, I tried to tell her that. I can demonstrate almost exactly what I tried to tell her, because this is a rare case in which I relate to the protagonist of a dating-based stand-up story; the first time I’d ever heard anyone else describe what I do was when I listened to this bit of Daniel Kitson’s After the Beginning, Before the End. But that’s not a clip in which we’re supposed to relate to him, even though he’s the one telling the story. That’s him telling a story about how he’s a bit of a dick sometimes. Taking the sort of liability waivers that they make you sign in a doctor’s office, and thinking they work in human relationships.

It’s not just how it ended. Even when our relationship was good, I never really let my guard down with my girlfriend, because I knew I wasn’t mentally functional enough to do well in a fully committed relationship. She wanted to travel together, meet my family, have me come over during the week sometimes, and I didn’t trust myself to handle any of that without freaking out, so I never did it. Now I listen to stand-up comedy stories, mostly by straight women about shitty boyfriends, where they realized they were too good for someone who kept them at arm’s length, and they were right.

About a month ago, my girlfriend came over to drop off the Christmas gift she’d already bought for me by the time I broke up with her; she wouldn’t take no for an answer about me accepting it. I glanced at it quickly, just enough to see that it was a really thoughtful and kind and considerate gift. Then I hid it in my closet so I wouldn’t have to look at it or think about what I’d done. And then I lay on my bed, and to try to block that out, I put on the radio show I’d been listening to. The first thing I heard was the comedian doing the radio show tell a story about her shitty ex-boyfriend for whom she’d made a beautiful and thoughtful Christmas gift, and he uncomfortably barely managed to accept it, and then she realized she deserved better than that and broke up with him.

Earlier, she’d told us how this guy said he’d be happy to live next to her someday but not with her, and the audience groaned in sympathy for her putting up with this guy, and my reaction was to think living in a home next to someone I love would be ideal. Not living with them. I loved my ex-girlfriend more than I’ve ever loved anyone I’ve been with before, and I was barely able to keep up a relationship of spending a night at her place once every weekend or two for fourteen months. If you live with someone, not just a roommate who isn’t allowed into your bedroom but with all spaces shared, where do you go when you’re having a mental health crisis and can’t handle seeing anyone? Oh right, most people are able to be vulnerable with their partners or whatever, during moments like that. Fine.

The ex-boyfriend from that radio story is one of my favourite comedians, and I frequently relate to him when he’s doing comedy in which he describes his worldview, but fucking hell, I don’t want to relate to him when he’s the bad guy in someone else’s story about her terrible ex, and the audience is audibly sorry she ever had to subject herself to that. I would really like to be better than that someday.

Anyway, I’m going back on medication, and not just because Ahir Shah told me to, I knew I had to do that anyway. But to be honest, there is a pretty direct connection between me hearing him say it and me making the actual phone call to my doctor’s office. It made that insurmountable-seeming process feel more possible. Don’t take medical advice from comedians, everyone, but maybe if you realize you’re the bad guy in all of their stories, consider trying to change something.

...I’ll be honest: I wrote this post last week, all of it up to this point, and saved it in my drafts because it seemed like too much to actually post. Just writing it out did help, so I already got that out of it, and there isn’t really a good reason to post it now. But I think I’m going to anyway, at least for a little while. I don’t need this to stay up for long.

I do have a bit of update, even since last week. I’ve made myself start doing workouts every day again, keeping in mind what I learned when I first became an athlete at the age of twelve: if you get out of the habit, no matter how out of shape you get, when you get back into it, it doesn’t matter if you can’t do everything you could do before. It only matters that you can do more than you did yesterday - if you keep to that every time, you’ll end up back in shape. I fucking hate sports clichés, I’ve spent years hearing people cite them unironically and they’re the absolute worst, but that one’s pretty true. I’ve previously used that one as motivation to go from being in a rut to being back in the top athletic shape I needed to be to compete at the varsity university national championships. Now, I’m using it to go from doing nothing for months to going back to being able to get through what used to be the daily workout that I did to keep my mental health slightly regulated. And shockingly, after just a few days of it, I have been reminded: oh yeah, there was a reason I did this. People who tell you that physical exercise can cure mental health problems are full of shit, but it does actually fucking help.

I still have my appointment to talk to my doctor about going back on meds, though. Because actual health care is important. Physical exercise and obsession with comedy recordings can both be helpful, but not good replacements for actual medicine. Sort your life out based on recommendations from certified professionals, not from Ahir Shah. But again, a few words from Ahir Shah can fucking help.

I spent an hour on the phone today with my friend who coaches a team five hours away from me. We’ve been close for years; pre-pandemic we had a long-distance friendship, but it didn’t feel that way because I saw him nearly every weekend at tournaments. He was one of the things I missed most during COVID, as I couldn’t see him at all without traveling. I saw him once right before Christmas in 2022, at one of the two tournaments I managed to attend, and it’s almost silly how much that helped my mental state, at least for a few hours. I was at that tournament, seething with frustration about knowing I was surrounded by terrible people who were once my community (including the brother of that guy who committed suicide to avoid accountability for grooming a vulnerable teenage girl, and that brother definitely knew and said nothing and tacitly supported it and he’s still running that team with more underage athletes and apparently that’s fucking fine) and I didn’t know how I’d ever feel at home anywhere again, and then my friend came out of nowhere and threw his arms around me after 2.5 years and I thought, “Oh right, this. This was what mattered.”

Anyway, I spent an hour on the phone with him today talking about how that guy who died deserved to die, and he agreed with me, and after months of hearing “Well, it’s complicated, I mean we have to be respectful”, God I didn’t even realize how much I needed to hear someone say, “I’m also glad he’s fucking dead.” There’s an old Andy Zaltzman/John Oliver bit (I think it originated in The Department from 2005-ish, so that old) that makes fun of people who fantasize about the extreme violence they’d like to commit against pedophiles, and I see their point. I see why it’s not helpful when society is trying to have an intelligent debate about criminal justice, and some people walk around giving unprompted rants about “Let me tell you what I’d do if I were alone in a room with one of those kiddie fuckers for five minutes.” But having said that, he’s already gone, so this isn’t about criminal justice. And this isn’t unprompted. And somehow to restore my faith in humanity I really needed to hear a friend tell me I’m not the only person who feels this much anger about it.

My friend also told me today that he refuses to die until he gets rid of all the predators in our sport, and I said yeah, okay, I’ll get on board with that. We might have to concoct a way to live forever if that’s going to happen, and if we do get rid of all the predators and all the apologists and people who’ve protected them, our entire sport might just be him and me and like ten other people hanging out in a gym somewhere. But fine.

God, Rhod Gilbert reminds me so much of him. This friend of mine has a case of ADHD that can be seen from space; he and I used to make a good team in fighting political battles together because I could be organized and keep track of what was happening in a way he can’t, and he could stand up and say things with social confidence and connections I don’t have. I’d edit the emails, he’d send them. He’d stand up in board meetings and yell at people, I’d text him under the table to make sure he didn’t forget all the facts that I had both memorized and at hand in a spreadsheet. Part of why I got so into Rhod Gilbert during COVID is I watched him on Taskmaster and in his stand-up DVDs, and it was the closest I could get to hanging out with my friend again. I realize not everyone with ADHD is the same, but these two guys were in many ways. Fuck cancer and nothing is allowed to take Rhod Gilbert out of this world.

One more comedy connection for me:

Okay there’s one other comedy show bit that’s been helping me a little:

Yeah, exactly. Thanks, Tim. Everyone needs to find a reason to want to stay around, even if it’s just to make sure the world keeps containing some people who are willing to hate bad things instead of being all fucking “Well let’s try to be centristly fair to the guys who groom vulnerable underage people” about it. Hopefully that’ll tide me over until I can get to the doctor’s appointment that I made because Ahir Shah told me to.

[phawareglobal]

Kaitlyn Salonga - phaware® interview 424

Canadian pulmonary hypertension patient, Kaitlyn Salonga discusses the impact PH has had on her job, her relationship and her mental wellbeing. 

My name is Kaitlyn Solanga. I'm from Vancouver, BC. I have been a patient of idiopathic PH since December, 2018. For about six months before I was in the hospital, I was having a hard time sleeping through the night. I'd wake up gasping for air. I wasn't sure what was wrong. I thought it was anxiety. At work I started to notice that I couldn't walk as far as I used to be able to without having to catch my breath. It got to the point where I couldn't walk across the street without having to pause. I went to get a puffer refilled once by a tele-doctor. They said, "You don't have asthma. Why are you getting a puffer refilled? You need to go get a chest x-ray." The next day I went to go get a chest x-ray, and I was admitted to the hospital for a month right before Christmas. That was how I spent my holiday season of 2018. It took about seven days for anybody to even say the words pulmonary hypertension. I was bounced around from hospital to hospital, because not every hospital, as I learned, has the same resources for tests and stuff. It just so happened that Vancouver is the lung center. At the time I was in a different city, so I had to get transferred over there and learn a whole new medical system and meet whole new doctors that said, "Okay, all of these other tests came back negative. Turns out you have pulmonary hypertension." For me, I was so far along that just going on oral meds wasn't really an option. It was straight to one of the IV pumps. Our nurse at the time described that to me. The first thing I remember asking is, "Oh, so I don't get to go swimming anymore?" I've tried a couple of things. I have tried like a water skiing jacket. I initially tested that out to see if it could help me wash my hair because that's one of the huge pain points of being on a pump is taking showers, doing the full hair wash because it's no longer hop in the bathroom, a five minute process. It is now, put the dressing on, put the gauze between, tape everything up. If you're really, really careful, you do the Glad Press'n Seal routine over the line and everything like that. I've tried a couple things. None of them have been fully swim-proof, but I'm hopeful. Unfortunately, the pump process was a two-parter for me, because it took them a while to get somebody who can actually do the Hickman line insertion. For the first week or so, I was on a PICC line, which means there is an IV in my arm instead of going straight through my chest. That was pain that I didn't need to experience. Then of course, I remember the worst parts of the procedure where they put my Hickman line in, unfortunately, but that led to actually being able to get on the medicine. Titrating was not fun. It was a lot of headaches and fatigue, but eventually you get a sweet spot where the medicine works for you and you can kind of walk again. You can walk across the street, you can walk to the grocery store, you can lift your groceries. That was a really, really nice point to get to, but it was a lot of work to get there. Originally when I was diagnosed, I was in a very high demand leadership role on a finance team, which was not ready to accommodate any sort of accessibility or time off needs. Once my short-term disability was up with that company, I actually had to leave it because their long-term disability options weren't going to work for me. Then I took a couple years off to just relearn how to become mobile, have time to titrate up more for my meds and stuff like that. Eventually I got to a point where I could work 30 hours a week, so not full-time, but enough to bring in a little bit of income, do it independently, and still be able to balance all of my medical issues at the same time. I was essentially in quarantine about a year longer than everybody else. Because I was diagnosed at the end of 2018, I kind of spent a little bit of time feeling kind of awful because of all the titrating. Then COVID happened. It was extra scary as somebody who was extra vulnerable. I was really careful to stay inside, kind of minimized my interactions with people who were in my life who had traveled or anything like that. It was really isolating and lonely for a while. I had a very good support system of virtual supports that I could reach out to. Because I was diagnosed in December, 2018, I just missed the last PHA Canada conference that was held in Vancouver, my hometown, by about three months. Every single time somebody tells me, "Oh, we had the last conference in Vancouver," I'm like, "I just missed it," so that's too bad but I was not without very good resources and supports. My nurses were very communicative. Everybody says they've got the best team, and I'm like, "No, I've got the best team." They were very quick to give me resources to PHA Canada and set me up with a counselor to kind of just work through all of this offline. It's very interesting being here solo. I recently left my partner of 11 years because they decided that they did not want to financially support a sick person anymore, which is something very harsh to hear. It really opened my eyes to a better version of life that I could be living maybe without somebody who felt that way about me. I am here and I am looking at these people with their husbands and their children and their mothers and their siblings that are all here to support them, and I'm very aware that I am doing a lot on my own. I unfortunately am estranged from some of my family and a lot of my friends are located a little bit further away from me than it is really accessible. I live alone in a studio apartment, but I'm trying to make it work. A lot of the space is dedicated to boxes of syringes and cassettes and everything like that, but it's a space that's mine and it's a new beginning. It's hard. It's definitely not easy. I do feel alone a lot of the time, but I know that I am not without people who I can reach out to if it gets to be at that point. Unfortunately, life doesn't stop for PH. It keeps on going, and it's unfortunately not the worst thing that I'm dealing with or that I have ever dealt with in my life. My body really just goes into fight or flight mode. I know I have to get this done to get through the day. So yeah, I'll mix even if the rest of my life is falling apart and even if I just had to pick up all of my stuff from my ex's house, but there's still tomorrow. Everybody's different. It's no use comparing your experience to someone else's to see at three months they were doing this much and maybe at three months you are still titrating up and still getting rid of these side effects and still going through all of that. There's no use saying, "Oh, my six minute walk test wasn't as good as theirs." Everybody's got their own experience and their own bodies, and eventually you'll find something that works for you that will be your saving grace. A lot of what I struggled with in the beginning was just learning how to get dressed in the morning with a pump and this tubing and where do I insert it? Does it go through the sleeve? Does it go through the collar of the shirt? Of course, it's different for men and women. We have to work with a bra or something like that. Where are you going to wear this giant game boy sized thing? How I perceived myself in the mirror was a very large hurdle that I had to come over, but I was very fortunate recently to work with another differently abled artist, and we actually did a boudoir photo shoot of me and my pump, where I was the feature and not my pump. I even wore my CPAP for it. It was the most really liberating and celebratory experience that I could not be more proud of those photos. My name's Kaitlyn Solanga, and I'm aware that I'm rare.

Learn more about pulmonary hypertension trials at www.phaware.global/clinicaltrials. Follow us on social @phaware Engage for a cure: www.phaware.global/donate #phaware Share your story: info@phaware.com @phacanada 

Listen and View more on the official phaware™ podcast site

[xxflyingwiththestarsxx]

Uhh; medical-ish rant under the cut, anxiety stuff, y’a know the drill

Having medical anxiety and a lot of issues that need to be looked at by a doctor is.. not good. And I avoid 😙✌🏻 like a mf.. except you really shouldn’t.. ignore medical issues 😃

And like, to be fair, I’ve gone in a couple times, but I just - it never ends, because then there’s blood tests and other tests because I have medical (and just general. anxiety) so I don’t do regular checkups, even though I know I should;

Which is another problem - because the more I know I should do something, or that I ‘have’ to do something, the more I do NOT. want to do it. It’s healthy for me? No, fuck you, fuck that, your ‘reasons’ aren’t good enough for me. And the more I try to convince myself that it’s for me, to feel better, to maybe not be in pain, the more I fight myself because ‘No. Fuck you. What do you know,’

Like, I’m finding myself a threat to my autonomy.

Anyway, there’s a couple issues that I need looked at; I still haven’t gotten an X-ray for my knees; y’a know the one that I fell on in December, and then 3 more times on STAIRS no less, in March. Because every time I start to think about it, I start to panic, and if I calm myself down, as soon as I go ‘okay, let’s try this again’ I’m panicking.

I’m pretty sure I have something wrong w my ears of sinuses, and I’m still having stomach/back pain problems. Though, i’m gunna be told that’s diet related again - and I’m not gunna get into that rant.

It’s almost like I need to be literally dragged to an appointment, or clinic, but I’m not asking anybody, because everyone’s working or tired, or doesn’t commute well. And it’s not like they wouldn’t - I’d get shit if they ever found out probably; but I can’t make that call, I can’t send that text.

[chronic-invisibility]

Tw for talking about sa

I spent so much time denying that it happened and then started thinking maybe it really did happen and it wasnt just that fucked up dream and i spent so much time in the hospital going “i wish i’d just know if it was real or not” but now that i know it was real and it did happen i wish i didnt remember at all. And i still feel like maybe i made it all up or it wasnt real or it wasnt really that bad, everybody i’ve ever heard talk about this kind of thing talks about flashbacks and body memories and stuff like that even if they don’t remember the actual event itself and i don’t have any of that except for that one dream but that was a few months after it happened and nothing since then. It feels weirdly invalidating that i’m not more distressed by this other than the stressing out i’m doing mentally but like shouldn’t i be having flashbacks or something? Not that i want to feel like it’s happening again or anything but for all the anxiety i have about this thing, shouldn’t i be more actively distressed by it? Maybe it’s because i dont remember most of it bc i was extremely intoxicated and was either asleep or blacked out or passed out for most of it, i just woke up and went “woah hey no i dont like this” and got the fuck out of there but i have no idea what happened while i was unconscious. No idea how long, or if anyone else was involved, or what he did, or even the exact date. And the gaps in my memories from that night scare me, like really really really scare me. Was it just bc i was fucked up? Did my brain just block it out and it’ll come back some day? Was that an indicator of some kind of extremely serious mental health issue? Was he right, did i say i wanted him to keep going? Bc i dont remember that and if i did then is it my fault, or was it not my fault bc i was fucked up? Was it my fault Because i was fucked up and i knew things were getting sketchy and i should have been more careful? Was it even assault if i told him to keep going, even if i dont remember that? Was he lying? Was that what he meant by karma when he sent that horrible message to me? Or did that message happen after this? I have no idea. It’s been over 3 years, should i get tested for sti’s just in case? Would that even matter after this long? Do i have to tell doctors about this when they ask if i’m sexually active? I don’t even know what happened, how do i tell a medical professional this thing happened but i have basically no details about it, they probably wouldn’t believe me. And i lost contact with the only person i’d trust to tell me the truth about that night. I’m so scared that i’m never going to really know what happened, i’m scared that if i do remember what happened i won’t be able to handle it, i’m scared about the blackout or whatever it was, and i’m scared and upset that i kept fooling around with him after that, bc i didnt remember what he did. I started trying to write down what i do remember and a lot of stuff has come back about that night but there’s still a lot of gaps and that really really scares me. I know our brains can block out traumatic events to protect us, i’m hoping that’s all that is and it’s not an indicator of something really seriously wrong. I know i need to deal with this in therapy eventually bc i can’t just keep pushing it down and not dealing with it, but i’m not sure i could even say any of this out loud, much less process it, and it would probably be hard to actually do much processing or healing when i barely remember anything of what happened to me. I just don’t know how to deal with any of this and i hate that this happened and i hate that i remembered it and i fucking hate him for doing this to me and fucking up my life, and i hate myself for putting myself in that situation and letting him fuck things up and i hate that i’m so powerless right now in all of this. Some day hopefully i’ll be able to process all this and learn how to live with this awful thing that happened, but right now i’m just not ready, which isn’t helping me feel better. Fuck.

[snoopysvalentine]

TW for mentions of losing/gaining weight and other shit that may not be fun if you have eating/body image issues below

I’ve been so frustrated about how bad my health is recently i literally cried in the car yesterday cause I was so upset about how long I’ve been chronically tired and having cold symptoms. I went to the doctor and he basically just threw spaghetti at the wall, they’re testing my thyroid and I’m experimenting with eliminating food groups to rule out an allergy starting with gluten. The thing is I’m pretty sure a lot of it is because I’m not getting enough to eat. I tried counting my calories and I get like less than half of what I’m supposed to be getting and I’m just like in a state of low level starvation it fucking sucks. And I feel like I can’t talk to anyone about it without sounding insensitive cause my roommates are both on a weight loss journey and my mom has struggled with weight her whole life. I just don’t have the appetite to eat as much as I need and part of that is cause I’m on a stimulant for ADHD but I kind of need that medication to function so I gotta talk to my psych about a non stimulant. I hate testing new meds and if my thyroid is fucked that would be the easiest fix but it would mean getting on ANOTHER medication and I’m already on 3 I just want to feel healthy for the first time in my life I’d like to not be plagued by nausea and headaches and anxiety and having a cold and being in starvation mode that would be so fun for me

[user13131313-13]

3

It’s still the same day as my previous entry I’ve got a lot on my mind.

I’m frustrated. None of my 4 parents bothered to tell me I was diagnosed with autism as a child and just turned a blind eye and pretended I was neurotypical??

I could’ve spent twenty years learning coping skills and shit but instead whether it was out of fear of alienation by my peers if I knew or had access to resources all this time, instead of skimming my childhood medical records for fun one day after getting them for continued care. And low and behold. My legal name right next to a diagnosis of autism in my assessment notes from a doctor visit I don’t even remember attending honestly.

I wish I weren’t so naive. Like, I’ve struggled to make and maintain friendships and relationships my whole life. And when I realize I’ve been betrayed, I’m quick to burn that bridge. I have four estranged siblings I haven’t spoken to in over ten years each for their own reasons I won’t get into. It makes me sad the people I grew up being closest to are and have been strangers for so long now. It’s weird. I’ve allowed too many friendships to wear me down, hold me back, or kept me around for whatever use they had for me and then I’d be disposed again. Same with relationships.

The only exes I’m on good terms with, were teenage relationships that ended because one had realized she was a woman and wasn’t attracted to me and was so apologetic and sweet when she broke up with me, we’re still good friends. It’s because it was never some big toxic dumpster fire like most of the relationship or friendship endings I’ve had. I’ve fallen into toxic friendships, relationships, unhealthy codependency’s with people who can’t even show up for themselves.

I used to be such a ride or die for my friends but I realized not one of the ones I cut off recently ever initiated anything first. Never texted first, unless it was to vent and then go back to ignoring me. Never made plans, or followed through, or flaked if they agreed to the plans.

I understand it’s hard to be social, it’s hard for me to leave my house. I get that.

But. I feel like I’m not irrational for being upset that the same people who stress me out with their problems, and constantly and continuously avoid me at all costs for over a year each of them. They never checked on me either. I stopped texting first 4ish months ago and guess who I haven’t heard from?

They don’t even know I’d been hospitalized a few times they ignore when I explain I’m struggling with leaving my house and asking them to visit me. I’ve offered gas money when that was a issue, shot down. I eventually even offered to come over to either of their houses despite my absolute dread-level anxiety I feel the moment I leave my front door- I wanted to see them and they would never. Yet they constantly post themselves partying and hanging out together and with other mutual friends and such

So when the excuse they’ve been avoiding me for a year is ‘mental illness’ it’s hard to believe when they’re consistently clubbing every weekend, hanging out with other friends as well as mutuals and even people who LIVE CLOSE AS HELL TO ME. I’m upset I didn’t see it sooner I’m upset I let these people who honestly probably never cared about my well-being stress me out so much for so long.

Since I cut them off, the only thing that’s changed is I have 2 less contacts on my phone and socials. Nothing else has changed really.

I’d rather die alone in a lush field than be surrounded by fake plants.

(I always thought fake plants were tacky. The texture is nice sometimes, but I just don’t get it really. Why get a hunk of plastic that resembles something else that costs about the same? There’s so many beautiful low-effort plants for forgetful plant parents… I don’t know)