#Liver disease diagnosis

[vaidyaslaboratory]

Liver Function Test: A Detailed Guide for Accurate Reports and Health Awareness

Unlock insights into liver health with our comprehensive guide on liver function tests. Learn about their importance, common tests, result interpretation, and debunked myths. Discover why Dr. Vaidya’s Laboratory in Borivali offers the best, hassle-free liver function tests with free home blood sample collection services. Prioritize your well-being today!

[orcelito]

Honestly sooooooo fucked up that I thought my overwhelming daily fatigue and debilitating body pain was a product of the awful working conditions I was under for years and years... and yet, despite being out of work for half a year now, I'm still so fatigued and in pain all the time??? Like come on man that's not fair

Oh well maybe I have liver disease and they'll treat it and then I am magically so much more energized like I was as a kid. We can only hope !!!!

[gastroenterologist]

Meta Description: Learn about the common signs, diagnosis methods, available treatments, and the impact of fatty liver disease on life expectancy in this comprehensive guide.

[harmeet-saggi]

Liver Disease: How To Identify Liver Problems?

Are you aware of the vital role your liver plays in keeping your body in harmony? What is liver disease, and how can you identify potential problems early on? In this comprehensive guide, we'll delve into the world of liver health, exploring the stages, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of liver disease. Discover proactive measures to prevent liver issues and learn when it's crucial to consult a doctor, all within the comfort of your online space.

[theghostfilesdifference]

When an anime girl is dying and the doctor just says “her body is failing”

[hopkinrx]

Fatty Liver Disease: Important Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment

Fatty Liver Disease: Important Causes, Symptoms, and TreatmentIntroductionWhat is Fatty Liver Disease?Causes of Fatty Liver Disease Poor Dietary Habits Sedentary Lifestyle Obesity Alcohol ConsumptionSymptoms of Fatty Liver Disease Fatigue Abdominal Discomfort Jaundice SwellingDiagnosing Fatty Liver Disease Blood Tests Imaging Studies Liver BiopsyTreatment and Management Lifestyle Changes Balanced…

[bullet-prooflove]

Months: Travis Wheatley x Reader

Tagging: @kmc1989 @trublu2u @yousigned-upforthis @queenslandlover-93 

Companion piece to:

The Circuit - You're the first person Travis tells about his condition.

Beachside - Travis's diagnosis gives him a fresh perspective.

Lifetime - You promise to spend a lifetime with Travis, no matter how short it may be.

It’s Sunday afternoon and Travis is asleep on the couch with his head resting on your lap, your fingers combing lightly through his hair. He’s been napping for a couple of hours now, his arms crossed over his chest as you listen to the even sounds of his breathing. It’s been happening a lot recently, ever since the doctor hold him he was in acute liver failure.

It’s not a matter of years anymore, he’d told the two of you. It’s months.

The car ride home had been quiet because Travis, he doesn’t want to face this just yet and you don’t blame him because the truth is, you’re not ready to face it either. You’re not ready to let him go.

“I want to have a part of you.” You say quietly as you’re making dinner that night. He’s cooking steaks on the stove while you chop peppers for the salad. “When you go, I want to keep a part of you with me.”

He turns the stove off then because the who of you talked about having kids once upon a time. The plan had always been after you were married, when the two of you settled down in your own little ranch in Montana.

“Honey…” He begins, his hands coming to rest upon your waist as you set the knife down. “I don’t think that’s a decision we should be making right now.”

“When should we be making it?” You snap as you turn to face him. “In a couple of months when you’re too sick to move, when you’re gone?”

The words hit him like a slap because you aren’t wrong, his time, it is running out and he understands why you would want a piece of his memory after he leaves this world but he also understands it’s an emotional response to the reality you’re facing.

If he does succeed in getting you pregnant and that’s a big if, considering your age and his circumstances, the likelihood is he won’t live to see his baby being born, he won’t get to hold them in his arms, to sing the lullabies is momma used to sing. The thought of that, it tears him up inside because there is nothing in this world he wants more than to marry you, to give you his baby but he knows all of that is a symptom of his condition.

“Gina honey.” He whispers. “I can’t give you that, not like this.”

You break then, he watches the pieces of you crumble as you push away from the counter, slipping away from him. You’re out the back door before he can stop you, slamming it shut so hard that the glass vibrates in the panel. Travis puts his hands on the counter, trying to catch his breath because this hurts, it hurts so fucking much to listen to you breaking down on the porch outside, sobbing your fucking heart out.

His eyes start to sting because this thing, this fucking disease it won’t happy until it’s destroyed every part of him.

Love Travis? Don’t miss any of his stories by joining the taglist here.

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[blueiscoool]

‘Curse’ Behind King Tutankhamun’s Tomb Mysterious Deaths Finally Solved

The unsettling curse of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in Egypt has bewildered archaeologists since it’s been feared to be linked to the mysterious deaths of multiple excavators who discovered it in 1922.

However, a scientist now claims to have solved the mysteries of the infamous “Pharaoh’s Curse” more than 100 years later.

Toxic levels of radiation emanating from uranium and poisonous waste are believed to have lingered inside the tomb since it was sealed over 3,000 years ago, Ross Fellowes wrote last month in the Journal of Scientific Exploration (JSE).

The burial chamber in the tomb of Tutankhamun, near Luxor, Egypt.

The radiation level inside Tutankhamun’s tomb is so high that anyone who comes in contact with it could very likely develop a fatal dose of radiation sickness and cancer.

“Both contemporary and ancient Egypt populations are characterized by unusually high incidences of hematopoietic cancers, of bone/blood/lymph, for which a primary known cause is radiation exposure,” Fellowes wrote in his study.

However, this radioactivity isn’t isolated to Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Fellowes revealed that “unusually high radiation levels have been documented in Old Kingdom tomb ruins” and spread throughout sites in Egypt.

“Radiation has been detected by the Geiger counter at two sites at Giza adjacent to the pyramids,” he wrote, adding that radon — a radioactive gas — has also been detected in “several underground tombs at Saqqara.”

The “Coffinette for the Viscera of Tutankhamun,” which contained the king’s mummified liver, depicts him as Osiris, holding a crook and flail.

Medical imagery of Tutankhamun is shown above a replica of King Tut’s skull on display during the “Tutankhamun And The Golden Age Of The Pharaohs” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in California.

These readings were all found to be “intensely radioactive.”

“Modern studies confirm very high levels of radiation in ancient Egyptian tombs, in the order of 10x accepted safety standards,” the study shared.

It’s also theorized that those who built the ancient tombs were aware of the toxins based on the eerie warnings carved on the walls.

“The nature of the curse was explicitly inscribed on some tombs, with one translated presciently as, ‘they that break this tomb shall meet death by a disease that no doctor can diagnose,’” Fellowes wrote.

Outside the tomb of Tutankhamun during the 1922 excavation in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.

Other ominous translations like “forbidden” because of “evil spirits” may have significantly fueled the fear that supernatural curses lingered in the ancient sites.

Those fears intensified with the mysterious deaths of Lord Carnarvon, who funded the excavation in 1922 and reportedly walked through the treasured filled rooms — and multiple others after they unsealed the tomb.

“Carnarvon was dead within a few weeks of the uncertain diagnosis of blood poisoning and pneumonia,” Fellowes wrote.

Egyptologist Howard Carter (R) walks with archaeologist Lord Carnarvon, the patron of his research, outside the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922.

Egyptologist Arthur Weigall allegedly told colleagues that Carnarvon would “be dead within six weeks” upon entering, the study claimed.

Howard Carter, the first person to walk inside Tutankhamun’s tomb with Carnarvon, died in 1939 after a long battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which was suspected to be caused by radiation poisoning.

British Egyptologist and independent excavator Arthur Weigall was present at the opening of Tut’s Tomb and is also credited with starting the ‘myth’ of the curse.

He died of cancer at 54 years old in 1934.

Workers remove a tray of chariot parts from the Tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings, Egypt, in 1922.

In total, six of the 26 people present when the tomb was opened died within a decade from asphyxia, stroke, diabetes, heart failure, pneumonia, poisoning, malaria and X-ray exposure.

While the deaths can be seen as odd, the curse theory was also likely fueled by the oddities that happened when it opened.

Carnarvon had reportedly suffered a mosquito bite that became severely infected.

Around the time excavators opened the tomb, Cairo reportedly suffered a bizarre power outage and a freak sandstorm, according to National Geographic.’

At one point during the excavation, Carnarvon’s favorite dog allegedly let out a chilling howl and suddenly dropped dead.

A photograph showing guards standing outside the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt in 1922.

A sacred cow being removed from Tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922.

From a historical perspective, the discovery of the tomb in the Valley of Kings is considered one of the most fascinating finds that gave modern society a glimpse into the Egyptian royalty voyage into the afterlife.

Five thousand items, including solid gold funeral shoes, statues, games, and strange animals, were discovered inside Tutankhamun’s tombs.

It would take the excavators ten years to clear the tomb of its treasure.

The golden funerary mask of Tutankhamun.

The unsealing and studying of the tomb is also credited with launching the modern era of Egyptology.

Tutankhamun took the throne as pharaoh around nine or ten years old and ruled between 1332 BC and 1323 BC.

However, he died by the time he turned 18.

There are no surviving records of Tutankhamun’s death and how the young pharaoh died remains a mystery.

However, Tutankhamun is suspected to have suffered from several health issues — likely linked to his father, Akhenaten, and his mother, Nefertiti, being brother and sister.

By Richard Pollina.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive (Check out all of our long covid resources!)

BY Rhys Richmond

Research reports and detailed case studies from doctors and other providers can tell us a lot about Long COVID. But to understand the full scope of the disease and its impact, we must also listen to the experiences of patients who are suffering.

Today’s post features a contribution from one of our readers, who details his experience with Long COVID and a preexisting illness—in his case, myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). As someone who suffers from both ME/CFS and Long COVID, Billy Hanlon—in his role as the director of advocacy and outreach at the Minnesota ME/CFS Alliance—also advocates for advancing research into these conditions.

While researchers and clinicians have noted parallels between ME/CFS and Long COVID, as well as among other post-acute infection syndromes, much more research is needed to fill the knowledge gaps. Some researchers hypothesize that multi-organ damage wreaked by COVID-19 might explain how people with preexisting disease in certain organs (such as the heart, lung, liver, and kidney) might be at higher risk of severe COVID-19 affecting those same organs. Furthermore, research has linked an increased risk of developing post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (Long COVID) to having a preexisting medical condition prior to SARS-CoV-2 infection

In a sense, we’re beginning to see that COVID-19 infections might take advantage of less-than-perfect health to cause persistent symptoms. While other viruses have exhibited similar opportunistic patterns—for example, influenza has been shown to cause more severe illness and hospitalizations in patients with obesity and heart disease—the long-lasting and poorly understood manifestations of Long COVID merit particular attention. In Hanlon’s account below of his own struggles with ME/CFS and Long COVID, he also details how you may be able to help advocate for more research into both of these conditions.

A patient’s chronicle of life with ME/CFS and Long COVID I’m a resident of Minneapolis, living with ME/CFS and Long COVID.

In 2017, at age 28, I suffered from an acute viral-like illness. Before long, I began experiencing severe neurological complications, such as difficulty with concentration and comprehension, as well as heart palpitations. The newfound, crushing exhaustion was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Physical or mental exertion seemed to exacerbate these complications, a phenomenon called post-exertional malaise (PEM), the cardinal symptom of ME/CFS and now Long COVID. In 2022, following a second COVID-19 infection, my symptoms worsened, leading to a Long COVID diagnosis.

As my personal experience can attest, ME/CFS and Long COVID are multi-systemic diseases involving pathologies of the brain, immune system, autonomic nervous system, and energy metabolism system. Many patients report that the onset of the illness (ME/CFS) is preceded by a viral infection, such as Epstein-Barr virus, H1N1 flu, or SARS-CoV-2.

Despite my best efforts, I have never recovered from ME/CFS and Long COVID. There’s no cure or FDA-approved treatment for these conditions, which affect people of every age and background. Very few American medical schools include ME/CFS and Long COVID care in their curricula, so only a handful of specialists in the country are trained to treat these diseases. As a result, many patients are disbelieved or discredited in medical settings, leaving essentially no system of care to lean on. I learned firsthand about the barriers and inequities faced by patients with ME/CFS and infection-associated chronic illnesses. Care for these conditions is vastly under-resourced, under-funded, under-studied, largely overlooked, and highly marginalized.

I anticipated these formative years of my adulthood to be marked by time spent with friends and family (my wife and nephews), new homes, job promotions, and vacations, but instead I find myself in a twilight world of this medical enigma. My life trajectory was headed one way, then viral illness has completely redirected it. I now spend the majority of my time horizontal, forging ahead as best as my body will permit, advocating with the will that still endures. ME/CFS and Long COVID rob futures and confine lives. Coming to terms with losing my career, my independence, and so many hopes and dreams has been as difficult as the chronic illness.

A lot more could be said about the profound loss I’ve felt professionally, physically, personally, and socially, but I instead want to focus on actionable items that anyone reading this can do to help support future care for this rapidly growing group of people affected by these illnesses.

First, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) recently announced a legislative proposal for The Long COVID Moonshot Act. This proposal is aptly titled as the advancements needed surely warrant a moonshot—the term used when Congress marshals resources across the federal government to expedite progress. These infection-associated chronic illnesses have historically been left at the end of the queue for research funding.

You can reach out to your elected official and ask for their support on this proposal, which will help accelerate and prioritize research, diagnostics, and treatments. This proposal would provide $1 billion in mandatory funding per year for 10 years so that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) can respond to this crisis with the sense of urgency that it demands. Recently, Reps. Ilhan Omar (MN-05) and Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) have also introduced a companion bill for the Long COVID Moonshot in the House of Representatives.

Second, an ME/CFS Research Roadmap Report was approved in May by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). This is a step in the right direction toward clinical trials, but now we need the NIH to robustly fund it. You can contact your elected officials and ask that the NIH help make this a reality. These are also efforts that could pay dividends toward an ME/CFS platform clinical trial. This was recently recommended by Senior Investigator and Clinical Director Dr. Avindra Nath following the completion of the NIH ME/CFS Intramural Study. A platform trial or advancements in the Research Roadmap Report could potentially yield a lot of intel for Long COVID treatments and help inform the RECOVER Initiative, a research program by the NIH that aims to understand, diagnose, prevent, and treat Long COVID..

Lastly, Long COVID and ME/CFS were highlighted in May at the Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee FY25 NIH Hearing. During the hearing, NIH Director Dr. Monica Bertagnolli stated, “… I want to say about Long COVID and ME/CFS—we are so grateful for our partnership with the people that are affected by this. They have taught us over the last two years what we needed to do. Now we just need to deliver for them.” Millions of people would agree. A crucial step would be to establish a dedicated Center at the NIH focused on Long COVID, ME/CFS, and infection-associated chronic conditions and illnesses.

Rhys Richmond is an MD candidate at Yale School of Medicine

[whencyclopedia]

Ancient Egyptian Medicine: Study & Practice

In Europe, in the 19th century CE, an interesting device began appearing in graveyards and cemeteries: the mortsafe. This was an iron cage erected over a grave to keep the body of the deceased safe from 'resurrectionists' - better known as body-snatchers. These men would dig up freshly interred corpses and deliver them, for cash, to doctors wishing to study anatomy. Dissection of a human being was illegal at the time, and until the Anatomy Act of 1832 CE, the only corpses a doctor could work with were those who had been executed for capital crimes.

These did not provide physicians with the number of corpses, nor the assortment of causes of death, they required to better understand anatomy, physiology, and pathology. Doctors recognized that the best way to treat a patient was to understand how the organs of the body worked together and what could affect them, but they were denied access. These physicians paid the resurrectionists large sums of money over the years for dead bodies and would most likely have been surprised or even amused to learn that, in ancient Egypt, the practice of dissection was routine but that no one in the medical field of the time thought to take advantage of it.

The ancient Egyptian embalmers did not discuss their work with the doctors of the time, and the doctors never seem to have given a thought to inquire of the embalmers. Physicians in Egypt healed their patients through spells, practical medical techniques, incantations, and the use of herbs and other naturally occurring substances. Their understanding of anatomy and physiology was weak because although Imhotep (c. 2667-2600 BCE) had argued that disease could be naturally occurring in his treatises, the prevailing understanding was that it was due to supernatural elements. A study of internal medicine, therefore, would have been considered a waste of time because sickness came to a person from external sources.

The Nature of Disease

Until the 19th century CE, the world had no understanding of germ theory. The work of Louis Pasteur, later confirmed by British surgeon Joseph Lister, proved that illness is caused by bacteria and steps can be taken to minimize one's risks. The ancient Egyptians, like every other civilization, had no such understanding. Disease was thought to be caused by the will of the gods (to punish sin or teach one a lesson), through the agency of an evil spirit or spirits, or brought on by the presence of a ghost.

Even in cases where a diagnosis suggested some definite physical cause for a problem, such as liver disease for example, this was still thought to have a supernatural origin. Egyptian medical texts recognize liver disease but not the function of the liver. In this same way, doctors understood the function of the uterus but not how it worked nor even its connection to the rest of a woman's body; they believed it was an organ with access to every other part of the body. The heart was considered the seat of intellect, emotion, and personality while the brain was believed to be useless, even though there are documented cases of brain surgery. It was understood that the heart was a pump and that veins and arteries moved blood through the body, and heart disease was diagnosed and treated by measures recognizable today (such as changing one's diet), but the root cause of the disease was still thought to come from supernatural agencies.

Continue reading...

[darkmaga-returns]

If it had not come from a government report I would have had difficulty believing this horrifying case history.

Aaron Kheriaty, MD

Nov 01, 2024

According to a recent report (see page 13) from the Chief Coroner’s office of Ontario, a patient with mental health conditions, including severe depression and PTSD, and a covid vaccine injury was euthanized in Canada, instead of receiving treatment for his physical and mental disorders. This case report shows how the Canadian healthcare system abandoned a suicidal patient in need of real medical and psychiatric care (in Canada, euthanasia is euphemistically termed Medical Assistance in Dying [MAiD]):

Mr. A was a male in his late 40s who experienced suffering and functional decline following three vaccinations for SARS-Cov-2. He received multiple expert consultations, with extensive clinical testing completed without determinate diagnostic results. Amongst his multiple specialists, no unifying diagnosis was confirmed. He had a significant mental health history, including depression and trauma experiences. While navigating his physical symptoms, Mr. A was admitted to hospital with intrusive thoughts of dying. Psychiatrists presented concerns of an adjustment disorder, depression with possible psychotic symptoms, and illness anxiety/somatic symptom disorder. During a second occurrence of suicidal ideation, Mr. A was involuntarily hospitalized. During this hospitalization, post-traumatic stress disorder was thought to be significantly contributing to his symptoms. He received inpatient psychiatric treatment and care through a specialist team. He was also diagnosed with cluster B and C personality traits. The MAiD assessors opined that the most reasonable diagnosis for Mr. A’s clinical presentation (severe functional decline) was a post-vaccine syndrome, in keeping with chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis. No pathological findings were found at the time of post-mortem examination. The cause of death following post-mortem examination was provided as post COVID-19 vaccination.

This case report was brought to my attention by my colleague Alexander Raikin at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who is carefully documenting the concerning developments of the euthanasia regime in Canada. As he explains, “In just six years, the number of deaths from euthanasia or MAiD increased thirteenfold, from 1,018 deaths in 2016 to over 13,200 deaths in 2022. More Canadians die by euthanasia than from liver disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, or pneumonia. In fact, MAiD is now effectively tied as the fifth leading cause of death in the country.” Nearly one in twenty deaths in Canada is now by Euthanasia. If you are interested in more on this topic I recommend this recent interview and this article by Raikin (or this longer report for those who want a deeper dive).

[tj-crochets]

Hey y'all, this is a huge longshot, but I cannot figure out the answer through my own research and I just found out the two different medical groups I see doctors in have one of my medical conditions listed very differently, but they both seem to be wrong? I'm hoping someone else out there has this issue and knows what it is actually called. Discussion of salt-wasting syndromes beneath the cut:

So, the problem: back in 2019, I was diagnosed with salt wasting syndrome. Salt wasting syndrome is not a diagnosis that exists, or rather, it is a general term that includes a few different things but I never got diagnosed with which one I have specifically. What I do know: - I do not have SIADH (upping my salt and water helps, so it can't be this) - I do not have any genetics-based diseases that would have started having symptoms when I was a baby, but - I did have salt issues before I got sick, they just weren't as severe. The first time a doctor told me to eat more salt I was 15, I didn't get sick until I was 18. My dad and his side of the family also tend to need more salt than most and get dehydrated easier than most, so I suspect there is a genetic component to it - I (almost definitely) do not have Addison's, or if I do it's with very very unlikely blood test results (they've tested for it a lot). I do have a family history of Addisons - I do not have a pheochromocytoma (they also tested for this one a lot despite me having opposite symptoms) - My kidneys, liver, and adrenals all test perfectly normal on all blood tests - I grew slowly as a child, but other than that did not have any unusual health issues at all growing up except for being clumsy - my symptoms most closely match Cerebral Salt Wasting syndrome, but Cerebral Salt Wasting syndrome is, from what I have found while researching, almost always a self-correcting problem that occurs after head trauma or brain surgery. Now, I have had some head traumas, some before the first time a doctor told me I should eat more salt even, but it's been 12 years since I got sick and 14 or 15 since the first time I was told to eat more salt, and for a self-limiting problem that usually resolves itself in days or weeks that seems unlikely I don't know what my actual issue is. It's definitely salt wasting! But there are a lot of different parts of your body that can mess up how you process salt, and I can't even figure out which kind of ologist I should be talking to about this, because nephrology referred me to endocrinology referred me to cardiology referred me to neurology referred me back to endocrinology I'm trying to figure it out because I am being treated for Addisons but my doctors all say I don't have Addisons, they are just giving me the treatment for it because it seems to help. I'm not looking to be diagnosed via tumblr post, I just don't know what to research next

[thatlavenderblue]

Things that happen in every episode of House md:

Bleeding from a hole that shouldn't be bleeding

Both kidney and liver failure

The patient convulsed

Heart stopped beating or is beating abnormally

The crew breaks into someone's house

The crew practices a lumbar punction for no reason

The patient is treated with corticosteroids

The corticosteroids aren't doing what they're supposed to do because it was the wrong diagnosis

The ducklings gives 30 different treatments to the patient in a 3 day span because they don't know what's going on and House refuses to take his job seriously

House makes at least one joke about Cuddy

The ducklings are doing group therapy while doing a patient's scanner

Wilson barges into Houses office to give him The Eyes™

House and Wilson being gay

Taub cheats on his wife

House opens the patient's skull because it is fun and mommy cuddy lets him do it because she's tired of managing him

House ends up finding the right diagnosis during a completely off-topic and meaningless conversation and gives us The Look™

Diagnosis ends up being either a really stupid thing that got bad for some reasons or a disease coming from another planet

[saltwaterandstars]

I mentioned in a little comments conversation with @bookhobbit that over the last year I've worked really hard on changing my relationship with my body (which had become totally medicalised after I developed long-term health problems). I said I'd write something about how I've gone about this, so here it is - a long post with brief medical details under the cut. This is not a post about what I think anyone else could or should do - I don't know what would be possible or helpful for anyone else. It's just a description of what I've been doing in response to a challenging aspect of my life.

Some background. I have several long-term health conditions, the most problematic being an autoimmune condition that causes muscle damage. If you can't get it into remission then it becomes a progressive disease, causing damage to the muscles that are needed to walk and lift things, and to control swallowing and breathing. So yeah, you want to get it into remission. I'm lucky in that I've responded to the immunosuppressants and the condition stays in remission or near enough as long as I take the meds, so my muscles are not getting massively damaged at the moment. But the meds have wrecked my stomach lining and intermittently do bad things to my liver, and the multiple muscle biopsies I needed to get a diagnosis have done other damage, and because of the meds, even in phases when the autoimmune condition is in remission, I still regularly have unpleasant symptoms. And when I take a break from the meds, the muscle damage starts again.

Relationship to my body. Since all this started a few years ago my life has felt like an endless stream of MRI scans, medications, biopsies, blood tests, injections, and rehab. And my body has come to feel like a collection of broken parts, just a heap of systems that don't work and feel bad and are frightening and exhausting. About a year ago I recognised that my relationship to my body had been completely changed by all this. I had come to see my body, to experience my body, as just a collection of medical problems and nothing more. And of course, that was being reinforced by the regular conversations I have to have with doctors about it all—dispassionate, diagnostic conversations about whatever bits of my body are currently failing to perform normally. I had come to experience my body as a bag of broken medical objects—and that is absolutely not the relationship I want to have with it. So, I decided to do what I could to change that relationship.

How I went about changing my relationship with my body. What I can’t change is the fact that I have long-term health conditions and that means symptoms and treatments to varying degrees for the rest of my life. I can’t change the fact that there are parts of my body, whole systems, that just don’t work well. But what I had to recognise is that my body is not merely that; I am not merely that. And knowing intellectually that I am more than a collection of symptoms was not enough. I needed to retrain my attentional habits to notice more than just medical stuff. And I needed to start treating my body as more than just medical stuff.

I’m lucky that I have some personal resources that I could lean on to do this:

I’m a (non-theist) pagan and I’m used to using ritual to turn towards painful experiences and explore them and set specific intentions about them

I have a decades-long history of mindfulness practice

I am a determined, obstinate creature!

This is what I did.

1. I made a ritual about the issue. I cast a circle and lined the circle with objects and pictures that represented my imaginary gang (Patti Smith, Kate Bush, Natasha Khan, Mary Oliver, and Hilary Mantel, in case you’re wondering!) I sat in the middle of the circle and told the ladies the story of what had happened—of how ill I was and how medicalised my body had become and how sad and lost and frightened I felt about it all. I stated my intention to the gang: to reclaim my physical, animal self—to relearn how to experience my physical self as more than a selection of medical problems; to treat my physical self as more than a medical problem. I listed some of the ways I could view and experience my body that were not about it being a broken medical object. I made a commitment to myself and to the gang to weave this practice into my daily life, and then to show that I was serious about the commitment, I acted on it in the ritual by putting on lots of temporary tattoos and jewellery—treating my body as something to be adorned and celebrated rather than just medicalised. I finished by having a little feast, thanking the gang, and closing the circle.

For me, a ritual like this acts as a clarifying lens and also as a crucible in which to form new behavioural habits. And I use the memory of the ritual as a support when I’m trying to act on my commitment day in, day out, and maybe struggling.

2. I put myself on an attention training programme. By that I mean that following the ritual, every time I noticed that I was focussed/fixated/ruminating on a symptom or some other aspect of my body-as-a-medical-object I would ask myself two questions:

Is there any reason why continuing to focus narrowly on this medical issue/body part right now is going to be helpful? (It was rarely helpful). I would then wish the body part well and would shift to the second question:

In addition to this medical issue/struggling body part, what else is my body right now? I’d make myself broaden out my attention to include the whole of my body (including but not limited to the body part or symptom I’d been fixating on), to be able to respond to this question based on direct, sensory experience: This is a body that’s wearing yellow socks with puffins on them. This is a body that’s feeling the breeze coming in through that open window and enjoying the sensation. This is a body that smells of pears from my favourite shower gel. This is a body that’s tired. This is a body that’s feeling hungry. This is a body that feels restless. This is a body that's listening to Chaka Khan and has an urge to dance.

Over the last year I have intentionally, thousands of times, acknowledged my body’s struggles and symptoms and then I've widened the field of my attention to notice what else my body is, what else it can experience, what else it means to me, what it is as a whole. I have trained myself, one tiny practice at a time, to reconnect with a wider, fatter, richer sense of what my body is, of who I am as an embodied creature. Of course, my attention is still pulled to pain and nausea and symptom-focussed worry etc. but I don’t get caught up in those things for as long as I used to, and I notice the non-medical stuff quicker and more frequently than I did.

3. As per the commitment I made in the ritual, I have begun (again) to treat my body as more than just a collection of medical problems that need treatment. Specifically, I have worked on changing my role/behaviour towards my body from that of merely nurse/physio. For me this has included (at different times) adorning it with temporary tattoos that make me smile, feeding it foods it really likes, wearing perfume, wearing clothes in colours I love, singing round the house, massaging my hands and feet, seeking more cuddles etc. from my husband, dancing when I feel able to, and really importantly to me, starting to have massages every six weeks or so that are utterly non-medical in nature. I still have to give myself injections and book blood tests and make myself have naps etc. but that’s not all I do in relation to my body now.

Given that my health conditions are going to be around for the rest of my life, I think these practices will also need to be around for the rest of my life, or at least for as long as I find them helpful.

This is already very long so I’m going to stop here, but I’m very happy to answer any questions about any of it - if anyone gets to the end and it's of interest :-)

[hopkinrx]

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