#Thess has chronic migraine

[thessalian]

Thess vs Sacrifices

Quick thing before I collapse, because today was hard. Like, really hard. It wasn’t a great pain day to begin with but my bus got diverted and why? Because despite having spent months tearing up the road and replacing all the pipes and fucking up my commute for the best part of a year, apparently something went monumentally wrong and my bus home got diverted for emergency water works and I had to walk up a massive hill after an already difficult day. I hate Thames Water with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

Anyway, I survived another dinner at the parentals’ house on Sunday. Honestly it wasn’t too bad. The dog has decided he adores me because I have the best petting hands, and conversation didn’t go to anyplace too tense beyond a moment when my strongly Conservative-supporting mother actually defended Boris Johnson with, “He’s just an unfortunate public speaker”. ...I mean, that too, but ... look, my mother thinks that Margaret Thatcher saved this country (the way Ronald Reagan saved the US, in her eyes - I AM NOT SAYING I AGREE WITH THIS, BY THE WAY) and thus she is very pro-Tory and has serious issues with the fact that the current leader of the Conservative party is a lying, cheating, slovenly, heedless berk. She has chosen denial. I may not agree with it, but as long as it means no shouting matches at the dinner table, I’ll just leave that alone.

But seriously, if one ever needs proof that I love my mother, we now have it. See, Mum’s a big fan of science fiction, fantasy, horror, all the stuff I picked up from her by osmosis. Well, mostly. Frank Herbert’s never been hugely my jam. Mum, however, loved all the Dune books. And of course, the new movie just came out. Thing is, while she loves all that stuff, it’s not something she shares with my stepdad. He finds it all absolutely ridiculous and doesn’t really engage with it - he’ll be more or less okay with it if it’s on the TV where he can read the paper or something, but he’s not going to go out of his way to go to the cinema, even to make Mum happy.

Thing is ... I’m not a huge Dune fan. And I have some significant issues with the cinema - migraines, mostly. I don’t think a movie like Dune is going to go easy on me in that regard, so it generally wouldn’t be on my radar. I mean, I don’t want to be sitting in a cinema with people who may or may not mask up anyway, and sitting in one of those little cinema seats for two and a half hours is probably going to be painful in the extreme. Add all that to migraine and you get a whole lot of “I’m not going to see a movie at the cinema if it isn’t something I really want to see”. And I don’t really, desperately want to see Dune.

...But my mother does. And my stepdad won’t go with her. And she hates going to the cinema alone. So I offered, when she mentioned the movie, to go with her. I’d been thinking about doing that anyway but thought I’d spare myself a little bit and wait until she expressed an interest to make the offer. Since she did ... well, I know I’m going to damn well suffer but at least I know it’ll make her happy. I also set some rules - we’re doing it when I’m on my week off next week (I have so much annual leave, seriously; I shouldn’t feel bad for taking what I’m owed but I kinda do - which is not to say that I won’t take it...), we’ll have lunch beforehand, we’ll go straight home afterwards and she will not expect a conversation out of me when we leave the cinema. I explained to her point-blank that I would be in no condition to string a sentence together, more than likely. She understood and accepted that. This is probably a good solid step in the right direction.

So I’m going to go see Dune and I will pay for it with agony but it’ll make Mum happy, so whatever. I’ll just have to make sure I’m appropriately stocked on mallet meds for afterwards. And set up a meal that takes no actual prep for dinner.

Someone please remind me of this the next time I worry about not being a good person?

[thessalian]

Thess vs Dune Part 1

So I saw Dune. I would say I watched Dune but honestly? I’m still living with the migraine from that one. Part of it was the visual effects - so much fucking blur, which I’m sure looked cool but more or less killed me straight off, not to mention the “Having A Vision” cinematic tricks and the contrast between dark interiors and Unforgiving Sun On Sand Dunes Sparkling With Spice. Most of it, though, was the bass. Cinemas in general tend to crank the bass on their speakers, and they always turn it up loud. Since most of the effects from explosions to weapons-hitting-shields to Bene Gesserit Voice to the music as a whole were bass-heavy, it was loud enough in the tiny cinema I was in to shake the floor and the seats, to the point where it caused a fibro flare on top of the migraine. So I missed a lot of dialogue because of both the bass garble and the struggle to focus through the various types of pain.

(Despite seeing the shape I was in afterwards, Mum still wants me to go to Part 2 with her. I’m telling her that if she really wants me to do that, she’s buying my mallet meds at minimum.)

Anyway, what of it I did manage to grasp was ... eh. I saw a post about Ursula Vernon commenting on Twitter about it being a particularly humourless movie, and people getting on her case about how “Well, obviously - it was a humourless book!” and “Marvel Syndrome! Imagine thinking things need witty one-liners every five minutes!” and I’m going, “...Do you guys know anything about pacing and tension and the release thereof?” My issues with this movie as far as I could actually focus on it were ... not so much that there were no jokes, but ... okay, two things: the fact that the pacing was far too unforgiving in terms of narrative tension, and the fact that they clearly tried to relieve the tension in places but the effort was flat, unconvincing and kind of wasted because it didn’t happen in the right places to relieve the narrative tension and let people breathe before the next Portentous Thing. I saw a few things that were trying to be tension-breakers, but just came across as More Portentous Statements, and it broke immersion without breaking the tension for me.

The movie was, to me, the narrative equivalent of Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill, and the “To Be Continued In Part 2″ was it rolling back down to the bottom of the hill, a statement of, “I’m going to have to do this emotional effort with nothing to relieve the building pressure all over again”. Maybe that’s the narrative mood the book itself wanted to convey; I seem to remember trying to read it when I was very young and kind of giving up really early. I’m starting to see why, now. I don’t think ‘lugubrious’ is too strong a word. The victories were entirely Pyrrhic. The “War Is Eternal” vibe of the Empire and the Harkonnen and even the Atreides, plus the lack of any true element of light-heartedness anywhere, made the whole thing feel like Warhammer 40K with colonialism on the side. Even the mentions of eventual Paradise were more focused on the blood the Outlander Chosen One would have to wade through to get there than the hope he represents. And it honestly would have been more powerful had we been shown ... not even humour, but happiness to any degree before it all went to shit.

So yeah, I have no interest in suffering through Part 2 from a purely health standpoint, though I might watch it to see Paul-as-Muad’Dib do his “Become As The Natives To Meet Destiny” shtick. And I might even watch Part 1 again to catch the dialogue I missed to migraine and bass garble. But ... I can’t with the cinema. The acting was good, the sets and costumes were amazing, but the story leaves me cold and the pacing needed work.

Also ... ScreenRant has an article about “Every Hint Paul Will Become A Villain” like he’s Anakin fucking Skywalker. Except that we all knew from the start that Anakin was going to become Darth Vader and ScreenRant doesn’t seem to understand that the fucking books exist. Clickbait bullshit.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Migraine Management

Yeah, home with the migraine I knew was coming. Woke up this morning, went, “Okay, how am I feeling?” Literally just stood up and went, “...okay, NOPE OW” and went back to bed after setting an alarm to text Scruffman to let him know. He asked me to ring him at the office after 10am (he’s on half-days this week because he has annual leave to burn and we’re not busy) and I set an alarm for that too but still ended up having to wait until 11-ish because sweet merciful gods I am in pain.

There’s a reason I text Scruffman rather than call him. He is one of those people who exists without an inside voice. So I called and he answered in his usual energetic way and I actually had to ask him to please try to not be so loud. To his credit, he was apologetic, “I forgot who I was talking to and the context; I’ll try to take it down a few octaves”. ...I was a music student at one point in my life so me being me, I did mention that octave was tone and he probably wanted decibels. He said, cheerfully enough, “Well, you sound awful but you’re still just a little bit of a smart-arse, so that’s good; means you’re not dying”.

I think he’s getting the hang of me.

He’s also okay with me texting him rather than calling if this lasts longer than one day. It might. This one’s bad, with auditory disturbances and the added fun of a sinus headache on top. But at least I don’t have to deal with calling Scruffman on the phone for calling in sick again. Not only will I not have to deal with the sheer volume of that man, but I will also weirdly be more likely to get a reply; the last time I was ill I tried ringing his mobile and I never actually got him to pick the damn thing up and he never rang or even texted in reply to my voicemail message, so all I could do was remind myself that if he hadn’t checked his phone, he surely would do when he realised I was not in on time (I am always anywhere from 5-15 minutes early) and went to look up my number to call to find out where I was. Text, he’ll generally reply to.

I am out of bed because I am hoping coffee and maybe some food will help. Also, while I don’t generally like taking the mallet meds early in the day, I really don’t have a lot of choice. Maybe if those kick in, I can have some Zen house-building to distract from the rest of the pain and other symptoms.

Did I mention I hate migraines? And my sinuses? And basically most of my body? I don’t mind how it looks but it functions like crap; I would like a new one, please.

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Power of Positive Thinking

Ah, the medical profession. There’s always something.

I don’t feel like I should complain overly much, just because nobody in charge of diagnosing my fibromyalgia, my GP included, even came close to blaming it on my weight. In fact, they’ve kind of backed off the weight thing as a direct consequence of having been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, because it’s obviously difficult to do any form of exercise when your body is screaming at you all the time. So that part’s okay, and a lot better than a lot of people get when suffering from ... well, any health problem when overweight.

No ... it’s the other thing.

See, when it comes to something like fibromyalgia, which is chronic neuropathic pain because your entire nervous system has just decided to crank its sensitivity up to eleven for no apparent reason, there aren’t a lot of ways to adequately deal with it. It’s chronic, there’s no cure, it’s not going away. All one can do is try to manage the pain as best one can, and at least try to cope with the fact that pain and limitations are now one’s entire fucking life.

Unfortunately, in a medical community that really wants to avoid prescribing painkillers whenever possible “because addiction”, that’s the sole fucking focus of a lot of GPs - including mine. They advocate talking therapy, pain management strategies, keeping as active as you can, stress management, etc etc etc. Every time, it’s the same thing: self-management and coping on a mental and emotional level.

At that point, it takes everything I have not to yell, “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK I’VE BEEN DOING ALL YEAR?!?”

I hold down a job. Fine, not full-time, but I do it. It hurts, but I do it - partly because I need the money and disability assistance in this country is for shit, but mostly because I do actually like my job a lot of the time and I’d go crazy without something to do.

Physical health? I’m doing the best I can. My eating habits get better all the time, particularly as I have oodles of fun with my dehydrator and get really into dried fruit snacks of the kind you can’t buy at the average supermarket. I’m not exactly into sports but honestly, watering as many plants as I have is pretty significant as that goes, and I walk as much as I’m able. I try to get enough sleep, and the fact that it doesn’t work as well as I’d like is not exactly my fault.

As for mental and emotional health ... first of all, I’ve done the talking therapy and had coping mechanisms for stress and pain in place long before this, because anxiety and migraines, respectively. I took the pain management class, and follow its guidelines as best I can.

Unfortunately, none of this helps, or at the very least it doesn’t go as far as it needs to in the current climate. Nearly literally - not only is the weather itself with its record high temperatures and its humidity causing me physical pain, but there’s the stress involved in why it’s so hot right now. Yes, climate change is going to stress me out, especially when the government with which I am currently stuck seems to be moving in the general direction of ditching its net zero pledges in favour of “the economy”. Which is focused on the welfare of rich gobshites instead of the people who are struggling to survive on criminally low wages (which everyone says not to raise “because inflation”, which is BULLSHIT but never mind).

I worry about my friends in the US with the fuckwittery the Supreme Court is getting up to. I worry about my friends in the UK - and about me - with the fuckwittery the government has been getting up to, continues to be getting up to, and will continue to be getting up to for the next two fucking years. Hell, I worry about my friend in Canada, because said friend is in Alberta and Alberta is like Texas squared in that regard. I have empathy for the people around me, and worry for myself, and that causes stress, and no amount of talking therapy is going to solve that completely. I can do what I can for myself and others, I can be grateful for the help and support of friends and family, but that does not make the problems go away. Thus, stress is going to happen. The power of positive thinking is not going to get me out of stress-induced flares. Maybe if it was just occasional work bullshit, but not “the world is falling apart because of a few greedy, corrupt and overall selfish assholes and I and mine are the ones who suffer for their fuckwittery”.

I also resent the implication that I don’t do anything to remain active. Excuse the fuck out of me, but my problem is exactly the opposite. I cannot sit still and not do anything. It drives me crazy when idleness is enforced on me. Okay, fine, maybe it’s not doing a lot by most people’s standards - maybe it’s spending a few hours slicing fruit or inspecting my plants or playing a video game or doing a jigsaw puzzle or Lego or something. But it’s doing a lot more than my body thinks I should be doing, far too much of the time. I overdo it sometimes (more than occasionally, certainly) because I like doing things. It feels like a rarity here sometimes, I know. No one I know in the workspace seems to understand why I do things like gardening or crafting or what have you because “it just sounds like so much effort, you know?” so maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise when my GP doesn’t get it either. It is, though. I tell her this every time we have a consult.

At least I don’t have to do that again for the next six months. We’re still trying to avoid things like pregabalin and gabapentin, mostly because “possible addiction”. I mean, I get it? But what I really want to know is why it matters if I actually need it anyway. It’s like the walking stick - a couple of people went, “Ooh, you shouldn’t do that; you’ll get dependent on it”. But if I am struggling to function without it ... aren’t I dependent on it anyway? I can hyperfocus past pain for awhile, but I can’t just make it go away with a smile and a show tune, and I don’t know how to explain to a medical professional that the normal amount of pain is zero and while I could feasibly survive living on 3-4 on the pain scale, I’m more or less pretending to live at 5 when I’m probably closer to a very stubborn 7-8 and I should not have to do that. Why is the current sensibility towards not giving painkillers “because addiction” more important than my comfort and, more to the point, my being able to function halfway normally?

[thessalian]

Thess vs Aftermaths

So I survived the worst of the heat wave. Unfortunately, the aftermath is absolute hell. I had more or less anticipated something considering I’d been dealing with two days of oppressive heat, minimal sleep, and overall discomfort. Thing is, because I had the sense to not do much over the two days, the days themselves weren’t as bad as I’d been worried about, so I guess I thought I’d be okay.

Nope. Oh gods NOPE. Today has been a day of being by and large in bed, mostly paying off sleep debt and hoping that would help the unbelievable pain that has currently set up shop in basically everywhere. I guess I could partly blame having to go out to the big supermarket yesterday evening, but there wasn’t an option - I needed painkillers of the mallet-meds variety, and I had to wait until the heat broke at least a bit (32 I managed, though with the odd dizzy spell; 40 would have been murder and I’d have probably fainted or something), and the pharmacy in the big supermarket was the only place open that late. But anyway, yeah - at least I was sensible and called in sick.

Scruffman was understanding. Actually, he said to me that he’d also had some struggle over the course of the last few days - “like having had a workout and overdone it”, is what he said. Which weirdly made it make sense to me as I explained that his body had been literally fighting to keep its core temperature at an even keel and that takes more energy than you’d think. So I have a feeling that when he felt dragged out and achy after these two days, he more or less expected that I’d feel one hell of a lot worse. Thus, understanding, and he wasn’t pushing for me to go back before I was ready - I said I hoped I’d be okay to come in tomorrow (which I do; I’m not good at idle) but that I’d keep him informed, and he just went, “That’s all I can ask. I hope you feel better soon” in tones that were way more sympathetic than the impatience I used to get from people at some of my other jobs, temp and permanent both.

I’m still getting used to the whole “people actually understand the situation I’m in” thing, honestly. I mean, it’s been a year since the fibromyalgia diagnosis but even with HR and Occupational Health and everybody being well aware and understanding of the fact that I’m disabled, I still get anxiety whenever I have to call in sick. Then again, maybe that’s not such a surprise - I’m pretty sure chronic migraine counts as a disability but that one tends to get less understanding because no one ... well, understands about migraines. Way too many people see them as ‘just a headache’. I always feel guilty about the brief moments I have of wishing that the people who say shit like that could experience what a migraine really feels like for just one day - sure, them knowing first-hand would probably be the only way they’d understand, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. Wouldn’t wish a bad pain flare on anyone else either.

I probably should be lying down some more, but I am so. Unutterably. BORED. This is why I prefer going in to work, even when I’m not exactly comfortable. (Well, that and the anxiety, but I don’t exactly have what you’d call a high boredom threshold, which I can more or less blame on the undiagnosed ADHD, but never mind.) But honestly, today I could barely walk, and watering the plants was murder. But they needed it because they’re also having an aftermathy time of it and I am watering them little but often because I do not want them to wither and die. Especially not when so many of them are flowering.

Now I just need something to hyperfocus on while the painkillers kick in, so I can fight both boredom and pain in one fell swoop. At least it’s moderately cool - or, y’know, comparatively cool. Anything’s comparatively cool after yesterday.

[thessalian]

Thess vs More Changes of Plans

Stepfather came by this afternoon to check on my cleaning work and have a Word with me about “having let it get into that state in the first place”. Like I knew he was gonna. And apparently a “well done for what you’ve managed to get done” is too much to ask for. He said this to my face. (He also thinks that “she gets herself into trouble” is going to stand up in court as an excuse for opening my mail. He actually thinks this. It’s bad that I’m tempted to actually take him to court for opening my mail since he’s apparently banking on my refusal to admit previous financial issues to let him get away with admitting to opening my  mail. But then again, I live rent-free here on my parentals’ sufferance and my mother would never forgive me so there we are.)

So my moving situation has changed again. Apparently I am moving, but temporarily, because apparently the other flat will be easier to rent out. Except this flat, the one in which I live, is falling apart and they have to gut the bathroom and probably the kitchen so I have to move temporarily so it can all be fixed. Hopefully in a halfway timely manner (but I doubt it because they’re talking about transferring the council tax which means months). Of course, my stepfather wanted it to be next weekend, not having thought about things like, “Is the phone connected? Do I get time to transfer that?” so I shut that down, so it looks like I’m temporarily moving in three weeks, and then I have to move back, and apparently this will be easy because “I don’t have that much furniture”. I have: bed, desk, chest of drawers, multiple bookcases, end tables, coffee table, computer, dining table, dining chairs, various appliances, and he wants to move the fucking oven. Fucking. Hell.

At least he’s going to sort out the fact that my kitchen sink doesn’t drain, even if temporarily. Years I’ve been waiting with substandard plumbing and a place that’s generally falling apart while my parentals decided what they wanted to do about fixing the place and now I don’t even get the good flat. Plus I have to speed-pack for a move now. No wonder my stepfather was so gung-ho about things being tidied. I’m going to have to consider using some of my annual leave specifically so that I have time to unpack things.

No, I haven’t told him about the endless screaming pain I’ve been in. Honestly, neurodivergence and chronic migraine are apparently no excuse for not using my weekends for nothing but cleaning; I don’t think “it might be fibro” would get anything but “work past the pain”.

Oh, yeah, and apparently I’m “a little self-involved”, “don’t look outside myself”, “too idealistic” and “expect a bit too much”.

I am incredibly narked off right now.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Consequences

I wonder if I’ll ever get used to having a workplace that understands my chronic health conditions. Apparently the entire office was prepared to have me out with migraine for at least another day; hell, a couple of them didn’t even expect me to be in, because, as one put it, “I heard you have chronic migraine; I used to get those”. No ‘I got the worst headaches and they’d last for hours’ or any of that bullshit; literal, “Oh, shit, I know what those are like; you okay to be here?”

You should have seen the looks on some faces when I had to explain that I haven’t been below a 3-4 on the commonly accepted pain scale in a very, very long time and that I only called in if I was a) having issues with balance, vision, and motor control, b) contagious, c) literally in too much pain to move, or d) some combination of the above. So they did what I always hope and pray they’ll do when I’m not at my best; left me to my work and didn’t talk to me unless they really had to or I initiated.

And then the general relief of all that got blown right out a window when half the people on both my fucking buses this afternoon were not wearing masks. The Mayor’s classified the situation as a major incident, the hospitals are being overrun--

Side note: I don’t know if this is happening in any other hospitals, but everyone on our hospital’s email network, even those of us who don’t draw a paycheque from the NHS (don’t ask - it’s a data security thing) got no fewer than six emails from our urgent care department today saying, “Thank you for the volunteers earlier this week! We over doubled our bed capacity! Still, that’s going from not quite forty to not quite ninety, and we’re still getting rammed, so if anyone can volunteer, don’t worry, you don’t need ICU training; we just need every set of hands right now!” This is what our situation is right now. We are at the point where they will pull in anyone who happens to work on the hospital premises and thus passed all the necessary background checks because they need the staff that fucking badly. The next person who tells me that our hospitals are fine is literally getting punched in the face; I don’t fucking care.

Also I probably shouldn’t be saying that because apparently NHS staff isn’t supposed to talk about what’s going on for fear of disciplinary action, or at least those were the rumblings on the news earlier. Fuck it. NHS can’t sack me; they’re not the ones paying me. I just work on their premises.

Anyway, point is that literally half the people on both buses home, and one really chatty guy at the corner shop I always go to? No masks. Two guys on the Tube on the way to work this morning? No masks. They’re telling us to “act like you have COVID” at the moment, and it distresses me to know that this is exactly how people would behave if they did have COVID. This is going to get way worse before it gets even a tiny bit better.

Oh, yeah, Brexit rears its ugly head too. I did a little further digging and the lack of fresh vegetables at my usual grocery store? (Frozen too, come to think.) That’s the standard now. And it’s because of Brexit; this has been confirmed. I just kind of want to start swearing and not stop for about a month. Thank you, Tory Party, ERG scumbuckets, and xenophobic assholes, for further reducing my already woefully meagre dietary options. There are no words for my hate right now.

These are the consequences of the actions that other people have taken that I never agreed with, never wanted to be part of, and have actively tried to prevent every way I could. Now all I have is expletives.

I would very much like to be cheered up, please.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Personal Issues

So I know this whole Brexit mess is going to be shitty for everyone - especially since it’s pretty clear we’re going No Deal at this point.

Let’s have a quick look at how much fucking worse it’s going to be for the chronically ill. Because yes, I am generally pretty unselfish, but right now, just for this post, I’m gonna make it all about me.

“Oh, we have dairy! We’re fine!” Bitch I am lactose intolerant. How many soy beans, coconuts, and whatever other nuts one can make milk out of do you think they fucking grow here?!?

"We’ve got at least some wheat! We’ll be okay!” BITCH I HAVE COELIAC! Do we grow rice here? Do we fuck!

“I mean, potatoes--” A huge percentage of which are from the EU, mostly frozen. Also, can I please remind you of the Irish Famine? The way the 21st century has been going, I would not be surprised by a potato blight right now. Also, as re: the Irish Famine ... where do you think most of our potatoes come from? The Republic of Ireland is in the EU; WE ARE NOT.

“Well, okay, so your diet’s going to be pretty limited, but you’ll cope!” Not with a huge increase in the price of painkillers, if we can get any at all. The price of ibuprofen has already been skyrocketing, we don’t produce much in the way of the usual OTC meds, and I have chronic migraines and sinusitis.

So what some of these jackasses who support Brexit despite the fact that they won’t be raking in the profits of disaster capitalism are telling me is that they are perfectly happy for me to suffer and starve - not just from a lack of food in general but from a lack of food that I can actually eat without further suffering - for blue passports, more fish than we can eat, and some vague idea of ‘sovereignty’ which seems to translate to ‘never compromising with anyone in the entire world ever’. Which is not how global trade works.

Right. I’m going to get into D&D mode now and try to enjoy the two weeks in which I won’t be panicking about how long it’ll be before grocery store stockpiles run out.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Restrictions

This week off I’m having, I really do plan to try some of the games I’ve been gifted over the years (and it has been years, to my shame). But I started with the smaller, sillier games I’ve received at least in part because I am still fucking exhausted. This week will be healing ... I hope.

Anyway:

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension - this game is fun. It’s basically made of meta-humour, and it’s incredibly clever in its design. I’m just not 100% sure I’m going to be able to finish it. Unfortunately, right at the start it threw some garish bright flashing strobe lighting and fast-moving images at me, and in several points throughout the game, there’s a fair bit of screen-shaking and this purple swirly vortex effect. Since those things are serious migraine triggers for me individually, throw them all together into one game and it’s kind of a recipe for disaster. I love the game, don’t get me wrong; Messing With The Set Dressing to that level, and the entire point of the game being poking just everything on the screen, is great. Just ... the first act at least should have an epilepsy warning thrown in and everything else should be approached carefully if one has migraine issues.

PC Building Simulator - this one may or may not be your cup of tea depending on what you find fun. I find this one good for when I just want some Zen. I like building PCs anyway, and this lets me do it without the expense or the irrational worry that something’s going to spark and die on me. Sometimes the orders from virtual customers are a little oblique, and that can be frustrating, but I can see myself really enjoying the Free Build mode, once I get more used to the game as a whole.

Untitled Goose Game - this is basically another Messing With The Set Dressing game, but one thing I hadn’t quite anticipated was the stealth element. I’m not so great with stealth element games. Also I kind of struggled with some of the controls at first - it’s like playing a Frictional Games game in terms of the physics, and is a little highly saturated colour- and lighting-wise for me to be fully comfortable with it. Not as bad as the Borderlands series in that regard, at least.

Now I have a whole lot more to choose from. There’s Raji: An Ancient Epic, which I’ve had my eye on since the demo. I also bought the Quebec Indies Bundle off Humble Bundle, so there’s a lot to unpack there. Or there’s all the hidden object games I treated myself to awhile back. And Steam is yelling at me, in its own low-key way, to try picking up The Witcher 3, which I’ve been meaning to look at anyway. I’d honestly like to try Dishonored again, but seeing if my new glasses help with first-person perspective games is probably best done when I’m not already on the fast train to Migraine Junction. This might be a good time to go back to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, though honestly the camera positioning might be difficult for me there, too, at least when I’m already headachy; while not as bad as first-person, the camera perspective is just too tight.

I am really very tired of having to be so fucking careful about everything, you know. There’s so much I can’t eat, so many things I can’t watch or play or wear or do... Honestly, the only good thing about having so much in the way of health-related restrictions is that it made the COVID restrictions seem like less of a big deal to me. I’m already so used to having to be so careful about the things I do that being asked to wear a mask and stay away from people was just one more spit in the ocean. Then again, I even have issues with the COVID restrictions in terms of my health issues - the prevalence of alcohol-based hand sanitiser is a serious problem for me, because anything alcohol-based will aggravate my chronic sinus issues and usually kick off another migraine.

I think before anything else, there should be food. That might help with the head. And then I can either try something in my Unplayed Games Pile or just decide I can’t handle another new narrative or new set of controls right now and go back to Inquisition or something.

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Optician

Ugh. Day 3 of migraine from hell. At least this one was triggered in a good cause. Basically, I went to the optician on Monday. Apparently, yes, I need new glasses so very, very badly. My longsightedness has got worse, as has my astigmatism. Yay varifocals. Those should be ready in a couple of weeks. Hopefully the migraine triggered by all the bright lights shone directly into my eyes will be gone by then.

This is partially bad because ... okay, good news was I got a new job interview. Bad news was that I didn’t get a say in when it would be scheduled for, and it got scheduled for late yesterday morning. I don’t think it went very well, since I could not see straight at the time and still can’t. Blegh.

I did manage to have a halfway sane conversation with my mother about the new COVID-related restrictions. She does actually agree with me that people need to focus less on the death rate and more on the long-term issues that COVID can cause. She also agrees with me that if people just actually shut up and followed the restrictions (masks in particular), this would be over sooner. But she’s still sulking about the fact that this is all going to probably still be going on over Christmas. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a Christmas on my own. It’s way easier to deal with my dietary restrictions when I don’t feel like I’m inconveniencing others with them. Especially when one of the traditional parts of the meal is gravy, which is traditionally thickened with flour. Yeah, corn flour is a possibility, but my stepfather forgot last year.

Ugh. Head still hurts. I really, really hate chronic migraines. I did explain these to the optician (new guy; I hadn’t seen him before) and when I explained both the symptoms and the triggers, he winced and said, “Ah, no wonder you’ve left it so long between eye checks”. He did also say that the new prescription would help the constant low-grade pain I’ve been having. So I’ll live with the ow ow ow ow ow for now, I guess. Not like I have much choice.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Recovery

I guess it’s no surprise to anybody that after the last few weeks, and particularly the last couple of days, that I ended up flat on my back with a truly awful migraine today. Generally speaking, all this does is increases my stress levels because of the sheer number of times that people have terminated my contract on nearly no notice just because I had the temerity to get sick. This is always bad, obviously - but doubly so when the job is the reason I was unfit for work. However, today’s migraine was bad enough that I fought the guilt off pretty damn well, all things considered - or rather, just didn’t register it. This was in part due to being without painkillers of any kind, to be fair. I just called in, rolled over, and slept for several hours; even managed to sleep through the return call I got from my line manager.

Her voicemail message surprised the hell out of me. Basically, “Thank you for calling, don’t worry about it, get yourself better; I’ve got your phone and I’ll handle letting patients know about next week’s surgical list” (which I don’t get until Wednesdays, to the chagrin of most patients). This is ... unusual; not entirely unheard of, but unusual. Still, I’m generally up-front about the chronic migraine thing, and the fact that I cleaned up two major complications in the workplace just recently probably earned me a lot of leeway. My last two ‘Day Job’ posts outlined most of that, and it all got resolved - even when this one here got more complicated. Basically it was a consent issue, and trying to get a foster carer, the birth parents, the social worker, the clinical nurse specialist and the surgeon in the same room at the same time was a little like trying to herd cats. Especially when the surgeon forgot to reflect a time change for a meeting in his diary (was suddenly scheduled for exactly when I had arranged the original consent meeting, and I was told about this literally as I was on my way out the door at 5pm on the day before the meeting) and then had his morning surgical procedure run over time when I’d finally arranged that all parties come in a half-hour earlier. But I got thanks from the surgeon and all involved for getting it sorted, and consent was achieved, so all is well.

Anyway, head still hurts but there’s only so long I can spend in bed. I don’t imagine sleeping for most of the day does anything good for my sleep patterns, but not much I can do about that now. I do have to go out for painkillers at some stage, but that can wait a little longer, I think. If I go now I’ll be stuck with kids coming home from school and that’s the last thing I can take right now. Thank the gods for the big grocery store just a quick bus ride away with the pharmacy counter open until 10pm.

Here’s to a less headachy tomorrow, hmm? I can’t miss Thursdays, especially this one, as tomorrow is probably where I find out whether regular secretary will be doing a phased return, and thus whether I’ll be there part-time. Line manager says it’s entirely possible. Grumpy lady in the main secretary’s room Held Forth about how phased return isn’t done in cases like the regular secretary’s and she’ll be back full-time. I think I’m going to wait until the Occupational Health people have their say. You know, since it’s their job to decide that shit? (Sorry. I don’t like Grumpy Lady. She so seldom has a kind word to say about anyone and Holds Forth a lot in a particularly entitled way.)

[thessalian]

Thess vs Grandmastery

While I haven’t played Overwatch in quite some time, I have been keeping up with the basic situation as regards it, specifically the Mercy nerfs - because, you know, Mercy main. Given some of the recent bits and pieces in other games, I think I’ve finally figured out the core issue as regards the constant insistence that Mercy should be nerfed to hell because she’s a “low-skill character” etc. Basically, people seem to have forgotten that Overwatch ... is a game. And games are supposed to be fun.

Between competitive rankings and the OWL, both Blizzard itself and the ‘git gud’ crowd effectively decided that Overwatch was going to be all about the competitive and that everything should centre around high skill (or rather, good aim) characters. I guess what I don’t understand about the ‘git gud’ crowd is ... why don’t they follow their own advice in that regard? You can’t hit an ulting Mercy? You can’t hit a Mercy mid-rez without her being frozen to the spot? Don’t demand that she be nerfed; ‘git gud’ - as in, good enough to hit your target. Ironically, the people who are saying, “Mercy players have it too easy and need to git gud so the nerfs are fine!” are the ones who are effectively saying, “I don’t want to get better at noticing and shooting Mercy on the battlefield so make it easier for me!”

Those people who insist that she’s still viable because she does the most healing? Yeah, that only matters if she survives long enough, and given that almost no team protects their healers properly, Mercy players are at a distinct disadvantage from the start. A healer who can stay on the field long enough to continue healing instead of being punted back to respawn point because someone shot them down again ... they’re going to do more healing per match than someone who has had to run back from spawn eight times in a single match without even seeing the objective because the other team put a flanker in position right by your spawn point and no one on your team noticed or gave a shit. So yeah, someone like Baptiste or Brigitte or Ana ... or hell, just about any other healer stands a better chance of hitting gold healing in a match just because they might actually survive to reach the objective in the first place.

And, y’know, this isn’t fun. Trying to play the straight-up healer whose mobility, heal numbers and ability set in general has been crippled ... it’s not fun. Games are supposed to be fun, and not just for grandmasters. But that’s who Blizzard is catering for right now - grandmasters and the OWL. That means the ‘git gud’ crowd. There has got to be a better way to deal with this, because all some of us really want to do is play a few quick play matches to unwind and we can’t do that when everything has been balanced for a high skill cap match with no middle ground for the people who just bought the game to have a good time. But I guess until someone figures out a better way, I’m still avoiding Overwatch.

(Also, good job on Baptiste, but could we actually have a WOC instead of a Widowmaker clone who you’re trying to sell us as an albino despite the brown eyebrows and the fucking suntan?)

I guess the point I’m trying to make is this: it’s not just Overwatch. There are way too many people who insist that there should be no recourse in video games for people who just want to play video games for fun. Those who don’t have the time or the physical / mental health or just the inclination to ‘git gud’ to a grandmaster sort of level are called ‘filthy casuals’ and made to feel unwelcome because they haven’t devoted their entire lives to video games. That’s a kind of privilege I don’t entirely understand, because I ... don’t have the time or physical / mental health to ‘git gud’ in that way. Either I’m working or I’m stressing about not having a job. I have RSI issues, chronic migraine, depression, anxiety, you name it. None of these is conducive to grandmaster level gameplay. But I like video games. I like the stories and the art and the progression. I can still feel like I achieved something, even if it’s not nightmare mode. But that’s not enough for these people, and it’s not fair. We’re not all grandmasters, and there’s no reason we should have to be, and these gatekeeping assholes are just ... mean.

I know they want to feel special by being the only people who can beat X game, or not have the special taken away from them by a Mercy with a clutch rez, or whatever? But their fun is not the only thing that matters and honest to gods, someone needs to tell them that.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Disability

I watched a YouTube vid about Into the Spiderverse and I kind of want to scream (more than I already did because of the political situation in my country of residence and the state of my health and how it has fucked with the state of my employment, I mean). Because that is the kind of movie I ... almost literally needed to see in the cinema. And I couldn’t. Why? Fucking migraines. Fucking. Chronic. Migraines.

I mean, the thematic elements that I’d even just got from gifsets here were enough to convince me. The video I watched just rammed that home to me. This is something I need to see in full. But even just watching those snippets on my computer screen, I know full well that seeing it in the cinema would have left me with a migraine that would have lasted at least a week. I mean, Mama was bad, but that was largely because of one scene. This is the entire film, with glorious visual effects that I can never see in their wide-screen glory because it would cripple me with a host of migraine symptoms bad enough to make me wish for death. I mean, maybe I can see it on my TV. Because my TV sits across a good-sized room from my sofa. But I couldn’t watch it up close. Which sucks because a lot of those details need to be caught - the onomatopaeic stuff, for example.

There’s a lot of stuff I just can’t do - not if I don’t want to suffer, anyway. I can’t go sunbathing or have picnics in the park - direct sunlight is one of my major migraine triggers and transition lenses do not cut it. I can’t actually work in overly-lit buildings; fluorescent lights are bad, overbright LEDs are worse, and transition lenses do jack shit for those. I can’t go to the cinema - ever. I can’t play first-person perspective video games. I have to have my computer screen set at a very specific lighting level and with very specific amounts of contrast, or I can’t use the computer at all. Hell, going home after dark is a crapshoot because waiting for a bus and having to stare down oncoming headlights to see if my bus is coming is - you guessed it - a migraine trigger. Some of these things aren’t necessary to life. Some of these are. They are unavoidable and the results are crippling.

One time when I was explaining the issues that were making my then-workplace difficult in terms of my migraines, she gave me the most scornful look and said, in sarcastic, ‘this will shut you up’ tones, “If it’s that bad, you should be on disability”. I don’t know if she sees things differently these days or if we just don’t talk about it, but she hasn’t said it since, which is good, because I don’t want the fallout that would come from me saying, “Well, given that it affects my daily life in every facet - work, travel, shopping, leisure, everything - I probably should, but since this fucking country won’t even let chemotherapy patients claim disability, I don’t stand a chance in hell”.

My mother doesn’t want to think of me as disabled. She didn’t want to think of me as mentally ill, either, even as I was attempting suicide. My mother wants me to be healthy and happy, as all mothers want for their kids. More, she wants me to be normal. All of those and her own “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality (which I admire on a lot of levels, don’t get me wrong) tend to add up to “You can power through this; it can’t be that bad!” And that’s the way it’s always been, and that’s always the voice that talks to me when it is that bad. She doesn’t know the feeling of being in so much pain that it’s impossible to string a sentence together without at least one pause mid-sentence to grope for even a simple word, of having such bad vertigo that you need to hyperfocus on one thing just to keep the world holding still for a little while. How can I explain that sometimes I will do leisure activities like reading or some really mentally unchallenging video game in the worst pain moments not because it doesn’t hurt, but because the only other option would be being alone with nothing but my pain for company, and that just makes it worse? And how do I follow that with, “No, that doesn’t mean I can actually work because being able to do it doesn’t mean I would want anyone to be reliant on me doing it well“?

In the end, the question is simple: even if I can never claim the financial support that is supposed to come with it ... do I count as disabled? There are things I literally cannot do, or can only do under a very specific set of circumstances, and sometimes even that won’t stop the bad flare-ups. On top of that, I am in low-grade pain literally constantly. I mean, I look at the pain scale and my baseline is a 4. I have forgotten what a 0 feels like. I guess I just want to know. Is this chronic illness, or are the people who just liken it to ‘getting bad headaches sometimes’ right? I’m having something of a crisis, I guess - I am tired of being in pain, but there’s nothing anyone can do about the pain, so I at least want a way of accepting that this is just how it is and that ... I don’t know, that having my baseline be less than 100% productive isn’t laziness? I always get “You’re just lazy” when I don’t push past reasonable limits ... but I learned to fake it so well that no one can see. I don’t want them to. Or ... I do, but I also don’t, because we don’t show weakness in my family. Not even when we are literally incapable of being what my family defines as ‘strong’. We can be weak but we don’t show weakness. We do everything right without batting an eye and if we have to cry or be angry or anything ‘unseemly’, I guess? We do it behind closed doors. Showing emotion is a luxury. Showing vulnerability is a luxury. And it’s one I guess I have a hard time believing I deserve.

So I blame myself for my body’s weaknesses, and break myself on my own supposed strength. None of this is right. I just don’t know what else to do.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Norovirus

Letter I will never send, but want to (maybe in a way more polite way).

Dear [Agency Guy]

As [Other Agency Guy] has likely told you, I was unable to report to my new role today owing to a case of stomach flu. I can only apologise; I appreciate the timing is horrible and I feel very guilty about it, and I assure you I would have tried to struggle through it if I had been able to. It’s probably just as well that I couldn’t, though, because there are signs all over hospitals saying that if you’ve been vomiting, stay out of the hospital because you might end up spreading norovirus - the fancy term for stomach flu - and no one needs that, particularly not the very old, the very young or anyone with compromised immune systems, so I seriously think the hospital will understand.

However, I wanted to flag up an issue I had when I called in with [Other Agency Guy]. His initial reaction was to tell me how much of a problem this was because of a previous incident of illness at the same hospital. I think he may have been misinformed, because he claimed that I had missed my first day at my last booking there, whereas I was actually sent home halfway through my third day because of a migraine directly caused by the office environment, for which the department took full responsibility to the point of taking steps to ensure it wouldn’t be repeated. The one full day I did miss was owing to a household emergency, but given that someone in the chain of communication managed not to tell the hospital I was not going to be in despite my calling in as per agency instructions, I suppose I’m not surprised that someone managed to fuck that one up. Regardless, the fact that he led in with a censure that verged on a guilt trip does not speak well for the overall relationship some of your agency staff have with their temp staffers. While I appreciate the pressure that a staff member not being able to report on their first day puts on the agency, I would hope that the agency’s staff would have enough confidence in their staff to know that any given staff member does understand the pressure missing the first day puts on the agency and would not do so unless there was no other option. [Other Agency Guy]’s reaction edged on an accusation of malingering, and it was not appreciated.

This is less a formal complaint and more of a general concern. You have been kind about my well-documented health problems, and while I understand that other agency staff may not be aware of them, the judgemental and accusatory tone from [Other Agency Guy] was uncalled for.

Thank you for your understanding, and I will report in tomorrow as per the terms of my assignment since clearly the hospital is at least more understanding than your dickwaffle of a colleague.

Regards,

[Thess]

Seriously, I cannot help legitimate illness when it comes on top of chronic health issues. Besides, my last absence was a month ago, and the department I was in took full responsibility for the flare-up. They’re not going to bitch to HR about malingering when I went through half a week in excruciating pain and only going home when they made me and got all the work done besides. Ugh. But at least I still have the contract - I’m sure they would have emailed me by now if I didn’t. Still, way to panic me, [Other Agency Guy]; worrying that I’m going to get told that having to miss my first day cost me the contract has really helped my recovery.

[thessalian]

Thess vs Gatekeeping

It distresses the fuck out of me that game devs seem to be actively supporting a gatekeeping culture when it comes to video games.

It’s like this: not everyone can strafe comfortably in a video game. Having to flail around with your in-game camera going in all directions very suddenly is problematic for a lot of different people. This is why tab targeting is useful.

However, a lot of games seem intent on taking that away, leaving people with chronic migraine, issues with vertigo and similar health problems in a situation where either they suffer through an endless string of sicknesses or they just don’t play.

And people are fine with this.

Seriously, you get people going, “Tab targeting is the old way, live in the now!” and I’m going, “This might be your ‘now’, but migraine and vertigo are eternal and people who have those problems have no less right to play this game comfortably than you do”. And still no one cares. You get, “Well, if you have a problem with it, then it’s not for you so you shouldn’t play at all!” Which is the point where the question is ... why do you want people to not play games?

It’s a valid question, really. Having the option to tab target doesn’t take away the option of strafing, or it shouldn’t have to. Giving more options doesn’t take anything away from people who want the ‘now’ - the growing default. Not every game has to be CoD. Not every game has to involve perfect aim and strafing. Games that are friendly to those who can’t do those things comfortably have a place.

Except they’re apparently being slowly phased out. Why? Because the people who serve as the target audience as far as marketing execs are concerned say that “this is what The Public wants”.

Way to tell the disabled that they’re not ‘the public’. That they don’t count. That they’re not worth supporting.

If nothing else, I run a gaming mouse and it’s highly sensitive. I twitch and the mouse moves. Boss fights largely involve me keeping line of sight and watching for AoEs and adds. If my targeting moves every time my line of sight does, how the fuck am I supposed to manage? How is anyone? Not to mention the fact that I’ve got some repetitive strain issues in my wrists, hands and fingers, and holding the mouse veeeeeeery still is a strain I don’t need.

And still people are fine with this. GAME DEVS are fine with this. They’re actually making their games to cater to the “live in the now!” people who entirely ignore the not inconsiderable segment of the gaming community who have legitimate health issues with this CoD-inspired ‘now’. It’s really starting to piss me off.

There’s a lot I can’t say at the moment, but this, at least, is generally public knowledge - hell, it was in the Twitch stream. This new SWL reboot is bringing in reticule-targeting as its sole targeting option. I don’t see how I’m going to get through an entire dungeon with that kind of targeting. Hell, I needed regular breaks every ten minutes playing Overwatch. It just disturbs the fuck out of me that there’s always a whole bunch of people gatekeeping who can and cannot play video games. I know that coding multiple options is probably expensive, but this game in particular did it before. I also get that artificially shrinking your core audience is helpful in streamlining your marketing structure, but it also shrinks one other thing: the number of people who want to give you money.

Don’t shut people out this way, game devs. Make a little room in your game worlds for people who can’t strafe, who need to be able to tab-target. Don’t make us feel more broken and left out than we already do. We will love you for making a space where we can play and have fun. You’ll just hurt us if you cater only to those who think we can just stop being disabled any time we want. Because we can’t. And our money spends just as well as theirs.