#my autoimmune conditions were flaring so bad

[vizthedatum]

You’re not horrible for engaging in a reactive response to prolonged emotional and/or physical abuse.

They do it on purpose, and then they will use it against you. And you will think to yourself, “am I the abuser?”

[fabiosofabz]

The great thing about chronic illness in the winter is I don’t know which contortion is causing the fatigue but I sure am passing the fuck out the minute I sit down. And one or all of them causes cold intolerance, so like. I’m suffering in seasonal hell. (Tho like the cold intolerance has had me in shambles since it was 100F+ / 37C+ outside because I work in an air conditioned building. Truly cannot win!!!)

I am in a fight with this flesh prison that barely knows how to keep itself alive, the body is a curse and I live to spite it.

[thechthonicherbalist]

A belated Hiatus Post

I have been rather inactive for the past 3 months & received a lot of notifs about it. I won't be able to answer all of them, sorry for that. Here's my attempt to try & lay open a little why I've been gone and what the coming months will bring. I have pondered long how to write this in the least hurtful way, while also expressing my own emotions & experiences.

Those of you, who have followed my journey on pretty much any other page, probably know that I'm chronically ill with autoimmune disease, homebound since over a decade, that I got cardiovascular damage as a side effect & that since 2021/22 my condition severely worsened & often leaves me mostly bedridden for weeks at a time. I shared about the numerous surgeries & medical treatments I had in the past year, how I've slowly lost the ability to digest food before & require parenteral nutrition via an IV port since September '23. As well as how I tested positive for GI cancer in March. I've been waiting for an appointment to remove growths, cauterize multiple ulcers & take tissue samples to test for malignant cells since & been gone for a 6 week long hospital stay with a number of surgeries after September 16th & was taking time to recover from that since.

My mental health has gone really bad in the past year as well, for a number of other reasons but also this. I've experienced the biggest cptsd relapse I've had in the past 20 years in the past 14 months. I went from stable & happy, despite my illness and a low-contact situation with family, after almost 2 decades of therapy & inner child healing to escape and recover from an abusive childhood home; keeping my cortisol low and my nervous system calm to prevent further autoimmune flares & to be able to cope with my fatigue enough to do my work and happily make art and write... ...to the point where since about a year I'm in the middle of a full blown relapse of complex PTSD, severe depression and anxiety that has little to do with my offline life. Despite numerous attempts to resolve or remove myself from the underlying situation in order to preserve my well-being and safety, requesting acute intense psychiatric care during hospital stays more than 8 times, as well as consulting regular therapy sessions in social psychiatric help centres since January and ultimately return to therapy since June, I've only started to experience relief more recently.

🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐

And this is where the good news start!

🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐🌟⭐

In the past 2 months, I have finally been able to take care of myself, my work, household and hobbies & properly rest again, without constant exposure to anxiety inducing situations. And while the time in which I had surgery was still horrendous for a number of situations related to this, I have at least started chemotherapy now, without having to constantly fear that something terrible will happen again when I'm most vulnerable right before, during or right after my treatments or other crisis in my private life. So far the treatment is effective, even though I have all the unpleasant side effects that come with it. Overall my life is much calmer now and I don't live in constant anxiety anymore, which is a huge win for me. Moving forward, I want to return to doing things that are good for me & were originally intended for this blog, now that I can finally rest, heal, take care of my health and actually thrive & be productive at my own pace in peace.

So despite the fact that I won't be super active, here are my plans for the future:

Make more original art and art dedicated to my own passions and projects again and actually post them. I had started a series on learning to do folkloric art as well as a series on intrudcing MBTI personalities, glimpses into their lives, lots of research, writing small articles and doing my own art for this, in 2022.

Return to my passion projects from 2022/2023 (all NSFW): - My 9-pieced fanfiction series "Lestat's Lovers" and Art for it - My 8-pieced fanfic series "Things I didn't tell Thetis" - My 4-pieced series "To love a thing Death can touch" I have wanted to continue writing for a long time. The plot for the first one has been with me for 17 years & is deeply intertwined with my internal universe. I've always hungered to write & share it with the world with the art I used to make for it, but never finished or even started. It was devastating to be unable to do that for so long.

Post about my journey as a native practitioner of Bohémien Romani Culture, Slavo-Celtic Shaman-/Druidism and Kabbalistic Judaism, as well as the taught believes of Hellenism, Christianity and Christian Satanism in the past 20+ years, present and future.

Translate & publish the vast knowledge I've assembled about herbs & other natural substances, their uses in historic and folk medicine, magic, alchemy, spirituality, etc, their historic significance and much more. It's been a big interest since my childhood, I was taken on hikes to collect herbs & materials for homemade remedies and other things and taught how to make them from scratch, since I could be taken out in a baby sling.

Make blog posts about my culture, including its folklore, mythology, rites, magic etc. and post them here. (I borrowed books about this from the library, so I can give reading recommendations and cite interesting sources! :D)

Create a side blog about my music recommendations, as I'm very passionate about a lot of genres and want to keep things more sorted. <3

Stop being scared to make posts for my mental health & healing journey again, even if they might still get misinterpreted. I can't take the responsibility to manage others' perception & emotions or literally anything else they should work out themselves.

[squadrah]

Any way we could get a comprehensive list of all the conditions, allergies etc. that you HC Melone with? Your characterization of Mel is my absolute favorite!!

First, thank you for the kind words, I'm very happy you like my characterization so much! <3

Your ask made me realize that I actually had something from my CuriousCat, so I will put that whole thing here! I also found some other drafts of mine that hinted at Melone stuff, so I will look those over and add anything that isn't here (and after that I will hopefully also finish up and queue those drafts just to stay on topic!)

From My CuriousCat

"What are all your medical HCs for Melone?"

The first time I discussed Melone's potential health issues was when I listed some conditions for him in my La Squadra headcanon/drawing meme, the full version of which is here. For this post I'll include my original portrait of Melone separately since it demonstrates some of what I'll be talking about:

(For the meme, I listed the following conditions: comorbidities, amblyopia, allergies.)

Originally I didn't think a lot about medical conditions, but after listening to some friends talk about potential clues to Melone having poor health (his mask hinting at eye problems, the fact that his Stand works remotely so he doesn't have to engage his targets directly, and even things like his stiff gait in the now-defunct JoJo's Pitter Patter Pop mobile game), I decided that this reading of Melone made sense, and started thinking more about it. That said, since I'm not chronically ill and have little experience with chronic illness in my everyday life, I can only talk in vague terms.

As mentioned above, I had amblyopia listed in the drawing meme, meaning one "lazy" eye that Melone might also be mostly blind in. I've seen others say that his covered eye could be an implant, which is also interesting! In the end I went with amblyopia for the aesthetic.

By comorbidities, I was thinking an autoimmune disorder and some comorbid conditions exacerbating it and causing symptoms like joint pain, chronic pain, or insomnia. My portrait shows Melone with vitiligo both as an aesthetic choice (adding even more visual interest, which makes his portrait one of my all-time favorites I've done) and as a way of reflecting this condition, and an added motive was that I just feel like these little things make a difference and might make people with vitiligo feel more seen. Basically Melone is usually in mild to moderate pain, and on his bad days, it gets progressively worse, so he takes a lot of medication and indulges in hot baths. I would also add in retrospect that I could see him having occasional seizures, which tend to land him in the ER from time to time - along with stuff like minor accidents, having alcohol too soon after taking medication, or allergy flare-ups.

Speaking of allergies, my headcanon came from talking to a friend and joking about Melone figuring out through trial and error what he can and cannot have. Lactose intolerance is definitely among those in my land, so Melone has to take his lactaid if he wants a milkshake. Other allergies that I can remember later thinking about were to gluten, possibly sea food, and maybe even stuff like latex.

I didn't go into more detail in the original draft because it sometimes makes me feel sad to think about these things (and as I am editing this, the sentiment holds true), but because of Melone's general design and Stand design, these do make sense to me and honestly, it also helps to flesh out other aspects of his character. Thinking about potential medical conditions for him led to my absolute favorite headcanon for Melone, which is him taking ER selfies of himself and with friends, so for every trip to the emergency room, he has a few photos of himself flashing a victory sign while hooked on an IV, etc. It's funny and eccentric but also heartwarming and heartbreaking in a way: he is just making the most out of his condition and he has friends to help him and make the journey feel less harrowing.

I hope this answers your question, and thank you again for your kind words! It always makes me so happy when people enjoy my version of the characters! <3

[seeminglyseph]

I got my new pair of glasses with the altered prescription that's from the new optometrist, and I can read my phone without taking them off. Reading close and far things, having a general clarity of vision and lack of distortion... it's really nice.

I'm realising exactly how bad my old prescription had been and that I'd been wearing a bad prescription for... an extremely long time. Even scrolling through the past few years of prescriptions, they're very different from the prescription I've gotten for these, and I wonder if my ophthalmologist who had been writing my script before, and now sent me to an optometrist because of some technicality which made it so I needed to see an optometrist instead to get a prescription was like... really good at detecting eye disease. As she was the first and only person to warn me about the risks my eyes faced due to my autoimmune conditions which turned out to be extremely vital to my visual health when I had iritis flare up on me, and also she was able to spot the pressure building up in my optic nerves and send me for help there.... however, perhaps. When it comes to writing glasses prescriptions and figuring out visual strength... like. That might not be the field of study she excels in. Which like. There are two different kinds of eye doctors for a reason... to each their own specialisation.

And like. I know there's a different, more correct name than iritis, but like that's the one I remember, so that's what I'm calling the thing where my immune system attacked my eye because it malfunctions like crazy. But. It seems that like. It took like. Almost a year of recovery for me to be able to get an accurate prescription because of the time it took for that and the fucked up optic nerves to heal.

I mean the fucked up optic nerves were like. Under pressure from spinal fluid in the skull that I had to make chill out but my eyes currently do not demonstrate extremely high pressures...

Anyway. All that to say. My new glasses are definitely an improvement. It's very cool. I mean my left eye is still fucked, but like. My combined vision balances out to something more like... balanced.

[illycanary]

Gonna add to this: We have actual names and known triggers for dozens of chronic illnesses today that would have been called “a sickly disposition” a hundred years ago. In fact, many of these conditions are still severely under-diagnosed today, and most people who have them are walking around thinking that vaguely feeling bad all the time is just a normal part of life.

Celiac, Hashimoto’s, Lupus, Ehlers-Danlos, mast cell disorders, Crohn’s, Ulcerative Colitis, POTS, Rheumatoid Arthritis, cancers, allergies with hundreds of potential triggers… These things have been around centuries longer than we’ve had names for them.

Personally, I have a few of these conditions, and regardless of which one is responsible, when I’m having a flare, heat is one of my first lines of treatment to alleviate symptoms. Fanny Price could have had any of these, and being in a cold, damp room would have made her feel worse.

There’s a lot to be said for germ theory’s improvements in modern medicine. And there’s also a lot to be said for knowing the triggers behind chronic illnesses, which are notoriously difficult to suss out through trial and error even with a working knowledge of autoimmune malfunction — which is a relatively recent discovery.

Just as an example of how recent: my still-living grandmother was alive when doctors believed bananas could cure sprue (now called Celiac) because symptoms would go away when patients ate nothing but bananas (a coincidentally gluten-free food).

When your body’s already wrecked by chronic illness, even something as innocuous as a common cold, an injury, or a normal bodily stressor like pregnancy can be too much for an overtaxed immune system to deal with.

And finally: Yes, authors liked to play up illness and its ramifications for added drama, but it worked because severe illness and death were common and seemingly fickle vagaries of life in the real world. No one who was reading these books at the time would have thought those characters falling so drastically ill was unrealistic because chances were, they knew someone it had happened to.

Do we have an idea what the reason for Fanny's constitution is? Since she doesn't seem to improve (much) it must be chronic but im not a doctor. To be fair her aunts don't really take her health into consideration so it might be treatable if anyone actually bothered.

Also following the health aspect: I find it really hard to judge health and illness in older novels bc 1) words and medicine have changed over the centuries so that makes it harder to grasp what's happening from my modern understanding of medicine and 2) the people in fiction seem to be almost comically prone to die. Something shocking happens? They get a delirious fever and die. Got rained on? Instant pneumonia. Were people just more vulnerable without vaccines and antibiotics or did the authors just like the added drama? (I'm specifically thinking of Wuthering Heights and older Cathy's death here)

I do generally think that if anyone paid attention to Fanny, she might be healthier, if not entirely strong. It cannot be good for her to be sleeping and spending her downtime in an unheated room! I get a bad feeling that she doesn't always get the best food, Mrs. Norris probably glared her away from even trying long ago. It doesn't seem like she's ever seen a physician or anything either, though we don't know. No one really seems to care about her health.

To your second question, I think it's both. Some deaths are just for Romantic/Gothic effect and can be caused by very little. However, without germ theory of disease and basic imaging technology, I do think a fair amount of deaths would feel completely random. A person can die of a heart attack or stroke in minutes without much warning. That said, there were autopsies and doctors were not completely clueless, but generally disease was not well understood.

Austen mostly avoids this trope, Marianne Dashwood just wasn't out in the rain (in the book she never was, she had wet socks), but we are told she has been neglecting her health since the revelation about Willoughby. Tom Bertram was drinking heavily and fell from a horse, he might just have a wound infection. Louisa Musgrove has a very realistic head injury in Persuasion. To be fair to Emily Brontë, Catherine 1 didn't eat for three days straight and had been weakened by an earlier sickness. She died soon after giving birth, so it wasn't completely out of nowhere.

Also, when considering the poor, they had chronic food insecurity and malnutrition. When you are already vulnerable, it doesn't take as much to kill you.

ALSO, getting measles (not the vaccine) weakens your immune system overall for years. So yes, lack of vaccines would hurt you long term. Many childhood illnesses can have lasting effects.

[noicevibes]

You and me getting the easy period symptoms haha I never got cramps or bloating or any of that only the period shits (but I’ve also got mild celiac so it’s probably that AKDJSKDJ) I always felt bad hearing all the symptoms cause I never got those

Like I feel blessed every time I get mine bc I know I won't have to deal with any painful stuff (which sure, that could totally change on any given month, but it's been about 14 years since my first aaaaand I sincerely doubt it will change lol) but then Satan's Waterfall kicks in and basically I'm running to the bathroom every 1-2 hours to fix myself LMAOOO

I have soooo many health conditions that I basically have to pick and choose which one of them's making everything else act up that specific day, just pluck it out of a hat or a fishbowl and move on lol (I did used to have celiacs, too, in a weird autoimmune flare-up once, but it only lasted a few months after I'd been tested then re-tested, but then it said the marker for it was just... gone??? but those were an awful few months (◞‸◟ㆀ))

SAME like I once had a friend who'd be on the ground just sobbing bc she was in so much pain; I had to call an ambulance once bc she was just not getting up, it was crazy ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;) 

GOOD ON US THO FRRRRR

[myownjadedpieceofmind]

Let's catch up, shall we?

So... sometime Tuesday I came down with a migraine from hell. I attributed it to looking up at the fireworks the night before and working front desk that morning. Well, Wednesday that migraine progressed into a full body flare of every symptom I have. My skin broke out in hives, I couldn't hold down any food or water, every single inch of my skin hurt and my joints literally burned.

I spent all day Wednesday in the hospital due to a kidney infection that put my autoimmune system into hypersensitive setting. I got iv fluids and antibiotics and figured I could just go home and deal with the rest of my issues from there. Honestly, I'm a veteran to the kidney issues, so I generally just self care once I get the antibiotics to kick the crap.

That was the wrong idea. I went back to the hospital that night and was admitted. I got out late yesterday afternoon.

When I came home, I got the mail. A large envelope from social security letting me know I "do not qualify for disability under the definitions of disabled conditions, and there is no reason why I can't find suitable work given my conditions." Weird, because every single thing I've been diagnosed with, and continue getting diagnosed with, are all listed in their qualifying disorders. The disability advocate group that took on my case probono seems to think they can help me out, so it just means i get to wait til we appeal and battle it out. At least I have someone to help, and they aren't trying to stick their hand out for profit.

I had to work this morning. Don't know why when the majority of the morning was spent watching the boss train the new chick how to do morning routines. Oh well, it's $44, and right now, that's a whole lot.

The boyfriend has a problem and we are headed to the cherokee nation hospital where he has coverage to get his shit checked out. It's a hard thing to talk about as a dude, but... he's had a lump on his testicles and has played off like no big deal. Until it became a painful lump, and now it's looking like an emergency surgery to repair some damages. He's done Jiu-jitsu and mma for the last 17 years, at the very least. The amount of damage he's taken to that area, well, it likely contributed to the issue thats going on. Anyway, the local dr didn't want him to waste any time getting this figured out, so, that's what's next.

I'm working tomorrow. My daughter lost her job and smashed her phone in the same day, so her luck is about like mine. I feel so bad for her, but what can I do??? I told her if she could make the drive here, she could have one of my older samsung phones. But, as it is, gas isn't cheap and her car hasn't had an oil change in FOREVER.

If I played the lottery, I'd be praying to get just a tiny chunk of the win, like $6k. Enough so I could pay my bills, stock my fridge, take care of my daughter so she isn't without a phone, pay for my son's gym membership (the best mental health the kid could ask for), get my truck serviced, and maybe buy some new fucking underwear.

The irs owes me around $10k over 3 years in returns. Like... 2 years of the returns were filed late, and I get that they are short staffed. But, how entirely awful is it to know that I've got that kind of money out there, but I can't touch if til the irs deems it worth their time. Imagine the penalties I'd pay if I owed them money for years??

Oh yeah... and since I was in the hospital, the orthopedic dr put off my appointment for another week. I've been sneaking my arm out if the splint from time to time over the last 2 days...my skin couldn't handle the restriction while I was so sick. The nurses that were doing my iv screwed up so bad, I have 9 bruised punctures up and down my arm. They only had the one arm to abuse thanks to the splint. But, I look like hell. I don't even know how I'm gonna dig out of this shithole.

Here's hoping for some good news to roll in. I could use a silver lining.

[chaoskirin]

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about the people who are specifically waiting to see how the vaccine might affect their pre-existing medical conditions? (like if they have an autoimmune disease and can't normally have vaccines because of the risk of it flaring up)

This is something different. People with reactions to vaccines or who can't have vaccines are the people we are supposed to be protecting.

Those who don't get vaccinated because they think somewhere down the line the vaccine will give them cancer (it won't. biologically impossible.) or that it contains a microchip (stupid, not just for the size a needle would have to be to insert a chip but also... wtf?!) or because they just don't want to (The ones who say the virus isn't that bad or who say "you can't tell me what to do") are the problem, and honestly they can all DIAF.

I have two people in my life who have historically reacted to vaccines. One is my co-worker, who has an immune condition that makes her allergic to E V E R Y T H I N G. She ultimately decided to get the J&J vaccine because it's shown the least reaction in people who are vaccine reactive. She did not have a reaction to it other than the normal soreness.

The other person is my nephew, who is 10 years old. After he got the MMR vaccine he spent the next year of his life with a full-body rash. He cried all the time, and bled, and itched, and it was awful. I saw this for myself, so I can vouch that it actually did happen, and it was terrible.

He recently asked my sister if he could get vaccinated. The risks were explained to him and he decided to do it anyway. He was watched very carefully because historically, he'd reacted poorly to several vaccines and everyone was afraid this could make him very sick.

He received either Pfizer or Moderna (IDK which and it doesn't matter. They're similar enough) and he had no reaction at all except a bruise where he was injected.

That was his choice (and his parents' choice) though, and he couldn't have been faulted if he decided it was too scary to risk it. If he went without being vaccinated, that would have been fine, because like I said before, he is LITERALLY the type of person vaccinated people are supposed to protect. If everyone around him is vaccinated, the chances of him getting sick are incredibly low.

So I can say two things with confidence:

1. Those who are immunocompromised can probably get one of the vaccines. Talk to your doctor if you're interested. Make sure you're monitored closely.

2. If you decide it's too much of a risk because it could cause you months of pain or illness, that's valid, and you're welcome here. You are someone us vaccinated people are here to protect.

[sadsongsandwaltzes]

you have eczema? what do you use to treat it? i’ve been using topical steroids and i’ve looking for something else that works

Okay yeah I use prescription steroids (I have a couple different ones of varying strength) and I carry Eucerin Eczema Relief with me everywhere and apply after every single time my hands get wet and also anytime they just start feeling dry in general. So that’s multiple times a day. And why I can’t go anywhere without my purse lol.

And then I haven’t don’t this in a long time but it did help me during different periods when it was really unmanageable, and that was I would take A&D ointment and put it on my hands (that’s where I get my flare ups the worst) and then I’d wrap my hands in gauze so that the ointment could sit on my hands and work it’s way in well. I know some people do this with their actual steroids as well. But yeah so basically like this:

Mostly I’d do it overnight and that would help a lot, but if it was a really bad — like to the point that my hands were unusable anyways — I’d keep them wrapped during the day too (changing it periodically of course).

I haven’t had to do that in a few years though. Staying on top of applying your moisturizer and avoiding triggers helps a LOT. don’t use smelly lotions or perfumes or cleaners. avoid extreme weather conditions — especially cold!!! My eczema is always worse in the winter. And I start wearing gloves when it drops down to about 50 even in the fall. Not cuz I’m a wimp, but because I need to protect my hands.

And you can’t stop living life — you gotta shower. You gotta wash your hands after the bathroom or before prepping food or after working outside. And sometimes you just gotta go have fun at the lake. BUT do try to avoid needless exposure to water or other liquids. Like use gloves if you’re gonna wash the dishes, ya know what I’m saying? Or wear gloves if you’re doing hands on baking or something like that. Trying to make bread with my grandma when I had to work the dough caused my hands to start bleeding later. I should’ve been wearing gloves. Ultimately, eczema is just an autoimmune response to topical exposure. Wherever you get your eczema bad should be protected. Which is why you shouldn’t wear smelly lotions or get it wet or expose it to extreme cold or anything like that. I mean, I can just spill some pickle juice on my hand and my hand will start burning because it’s reacting to the pickle juice.

So just in general try to keep your problems areas protected.

[soranis-sunshadow]

I was reading that post about Hordaks defect and thinking about how, at first, it was probably pretty subtle changes. But the more noticeable they became, the more stressed Hordak would get over them. I could see him getting stuck in a loop. Stressed because his plans aren't working, then stressed because he's getting worse, and because he's stressed out over getting worse, he can't focus properly and his plans keep failing... overall just not a good situation.

This happens to people in real life too!

Initial stress causes one's autoimmune disease to flare up.

Said flare up prevents that person from doing the thing that's stressing them in optimum conditions (or at all) which causes more stress

The stress makes the flare up worse

It's a cycle that's nigh impossible to break on your own.

Autoimmune diseases are hell.

When I was in medschool, I had this case, a young guy in his early 20's with Chronn's Disease (an autoimmune intestinal disease) that was desperate to gain weight and pass his faculty exams (he was 1,8 m tall and weighed about 67 kg). The more he stressed about it, the worse it got to the point that he couldn't eat at all because his intestines were so inflamed and he had to be comitted for a whole month and fed parenterally (intravenous). It had gotten so bad that he lost 15kg instead of gaining it and to make matters worse, he had to have almost 1 m of his small intestine resected.

It's hell when your own body fights against you. The unfairness and stress of it makes it fight even harder.

You get anxious that your body might punish you for something and your body reacts because of your anxiety doing the very thing you feared. Ofc, that makes the anxiety worse making your condition worsen.

He would tell me that the more he feared a flare up, the worse the flare would get. He'd joke that "his brain was giving his gut ideas".

Poor man.

I don't have a happy ending to this story, I finished the 2 month internship in that hospital before he his case was resolved and he was discharged but I hope he got better.

Healthy and hale people can't understand the hell that their own body is to the people living with these conditions.

I was there, I saw it but I still can't possibly begin to imagine what it would be like to live with that spear above my heard, always poised to fall.

[argyrocratie]

(...)

Let’s look at life expectancy:  In Italy, average life expectancies in the solidly Medieval 1200s were 35-40, while by the year 1500 (definitely Renaissance) life expectancy in Italian city states had dropped to 18.

It’s striking how consistently, when I use these numbers live, the shocked and mournful silence is followed by a guy objecting: those numbers are deceptive, you’re including infant mortality—voiced as if this observation should discredit them.  Yes, the average of 18 does include infant mortality, but the Medieval average of 35 includes it too, so the drop is just as real.  If you want we can exclude those who die before age 12, and we do get a smaller total drop then, average age of death 54 in the 1200s dropping to 45-48 in 1500, so only a 12-16% drop instead of 48%, but the more we zoom the grimmer the Renaissance half proves.  Infant mortality (within 12 months) averaged 28% both before and after 1348, so the big drop from Medieval to Renaissance Italy is actually kids who made it past the first year, only to die in years 2-12 from new diseases.  We also think of the dangers of childbirth as lowering women’s lifespans, but death from childbirth stayed steady from Medieval to Renaissance at (for Tuscany) 1 death per 40 births, while the increase in war and violence made adult male mortality far higher than female even with the childbirth threat.  If we look at the 20% of people who lived longest in Renaissance Italy it’s almost entirely widows and nuns, plus a few diehards like Titian, and poor exiled Cardinal da Costa of Portugal languishing in Rome to the age of 102, with everyone he’d known in the first 2/3rds of his life long gone.  Kids died more in the Renaissance, adults died more, men died more, we have the numbers, but I find it telling how often people who hear these numbers try to discredit them, search for a loophole, because these facts rub against our expectations.  We didn’t want a wretched golden age. (Demographics are, of course, an average, and different bits of Europe varied, but I’m using the numbers for the big Italian city-states precisely because they’re the bit of Europe we most associate with the golden Renaissance, so if it’s true there, it’s true of the Renaissance you were imagining.)

Why did life expectancy drop?  Counter-intuitively the answer is, largely, progress.

War got worse, for one.  Over several centuries, innovations in statecraft and policy (which would continue gradually for centuries more) had increased the centralization of power in the hands of kings and governments, especially their ability to gather funds, which meant they could raise larger armies and have larger, bloodier wars.   Innovations in metallurgy, chemistry, and engineering also made soldiers deadlier, with more artillery, more lethal weapons, more ability to knock a town’s walls down and kill everyone inside, new daggers designed to leave wounds that would fester, or anti-personnel artillery designed to slice a line of men in half.  Thus, while both the Middle Ages and Renaissance had lots of wars, Renaissance wars were larger and deadlier, involving more troops and claiming more lives, military and civilian—this wasn’t a sudden change, it was a gradual one, but it made a difference.

Economic growth also made the life expectancy go down.  Europe was becoming more interconnected, trade increasing.  This was partly due to innovations in banking (which had started in the 1100s), and partly, yes, the aftermath of the Black Death which caused a lot of economic change—not growth but change—some sectors growing, others shrinking, people moving around, people trying to stop people from moving around, markets shifting.  There were also innovations in insurance, for example insuring your cargo ship so if it sinks you don’t go bankrupt like our Merchant of Venice.  This meant more multi-region trade. For example, weaving wool into fine-quality non-itchy thread required a lot of oil, without which you could only make coarse, itchy thread.  England produced lots of wool but no oil (except walnuts), so, in the Renaissance, entrepreneurs from England, instead of spinning low-profit itchy wool, started exporting their wool to Italy where abundant olive oil made it cheap to produce high-quality cloth and re-export it to England and elsewhere.  This let merchants grow rich, prosperity for some, but when people move around more, diseases move more too.  Cities were also growing denser, more manufacturing jobs and urban employment drawing people to crowd inside tight city walls, and urban spaces always have higher mortality rates than rural.  Malaria, typhoid, dysentery, deadly influenza, measles, the classic pox, these old constants of Medieval life grew fiercer in the Renaissance, with more frequent outbreaks claiming more lives.

The Black Death contributed too—in school they talk as if the plague swept through in 1348 then went away, but the bubonic plague did not go away, it remained endemic, like influenza or chickenpox today, a fact of life.  I have never read a full set of Renaissance letters which didn’t mention plague outbreaks and plague deaths, and Renaissance letters from mothers to their traveling sons regularly include, along with advice on etiquette and eating enough fennel, a list of which towns to avoid this season because there’s plague there.  Carlo Cipolla (in the fascinating yet tediously titled Before the Industrial Revolution) collected great data for the two centuries after 1348, in which Venice had major plague bursts 7% of years, Florence 14% of years, Paris 9% of years, Barcelona 13% of years, and England (usually London) 22% in the earlier period spiking to 50% in the later 1500s, when England saw plague in 26 out of 50 years between 1543 and 1593.  Excluding tiny villages with little traffic, losing a friend or sibling to plague was a universal experience from 1348 clear to the 1720s, when plague finally diminished in Europe, not because of any advance in medicine, but because fourteen generations of exposure gave natural selection time to work, those who survived to reproduce passing on a heightened immune response, a defensive adaptation bought over centuries by millions of deaths.

Today thousands of cases of Y. pestis (the plague bacterium) still occur each year, largely in sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia where it was not endemic so immunities didn’t develop.  And if geneticist Mihai Netea is correct that the immune mutation which helps those of European descent resist Y. pestis also causes our greater rate of autoimmune disorders, then the Black Death is still constantly claiming lives through the changes it worked into European DNA over 400 years (and literally causing me pain as I type this, as my own autoimmune condition flares).  While the 1348 pandemic was Medieval, most of the Middle Ages did not have the plague—it’s the Renaissance which has the plague every single day as an apocalyptic lived reality.

Economic growth also made non-military violence worse.  Feuds (think Montagues and Capulets) were a Medieval constant, but the body count of a feud depends a lot on how wealthy the head families are, since the greater their wealth and the larger their patronage network, the larger the crowd of goons on stage in the opening scene of Romeo & Juliet when partisans of the two factions are biting their thumbs at each other, and the larger the number of unnamed men who also get killed in the background while Romeo fights Tybalt.  In Italy especially, new avenues for economic growth (banking and mercenary work) quickly made families grow wealthy enough to raise forces far larger than the governments of their little city states, which made states powerless to stop the violence, and vulnerable to frequent, bloody coups.  The Bentivoglios of Bologna and Sforza of Milan (whose marriage alliance produced Ercole who wrote that letter to Machiavelli) had risen by force, ruled by force, and were in turn overthrown by force, several times each, in fact, as rulers were killed, then avenged by returning sons or nephews, and cities flip-flopped between rival dynasties every few years

[scarecoen]

Trigger warning ⚠️ domestic violence.

I've typed this story a million times so I'm just going to summarize as much as I can.

A few days ago I was assaulted by my partner's family members. And as I've mentioned, I've typed this a million times and I'm honestly just exhausted thinking about it, but we could use some help.

My partner has always had a transphobic family. (I don't have anyone but my dad, who's in no position to help anyone.)

Her mom used her disability against her and manipulated her into giving her MOST of her checks. She's abused the system and my girlfriend.

When I met Jackie, she was with a terrible biggot. Jackie had came out, and her mother conspired with an abusive long distance ex, to fly her here, to stage an "intervention" and stop my partner from transitioning.

It worked. For years.

I met Jackie here on tumblr, we became good, SECRET friends because she wasn't allowed to talk to anyone.

I told Jackie openly about my views regarding gender and how I myself, was not cis.

Eventually she told her partner about us playing games together, which she responded to by harassing me.

Jackie ended up spilling the beans to me, about her mom, about the ex, everything. I realized that she had been extremely isolated and controlled her whole life.

So I intervened.

I got the two of them to separate, which wasn't smooth because Jackie was scared. She had been with her abuser for 9 years at this point. She's never known anything else.

The ex moved back to her state, and I started seeing Jackie, although she was stuck at her mom's... who was trying to play innocent at this time.

Eventually, I kinda just came and picked her up, she stayed the night, she didn't want to go back home. And I can't blame her. The house wasn't only disgusting, her family microagressed her all the time and they would tell her to pretty much stay in a dark room all day.

Ofc I didn't bring her back.

During early quarantine, we had a lot of self reflection and she started distancing herself from her mother, coming around to holding her accountable for her horrible actions.

Her mom messaged her things like "Why won't you talk to me? It's like you're trying to punish us!" Ect, just every fucking manipulative thing she could say, without ever apologizing.

Unfortunately the place we were staying fell through when my best friend's ex husband decided he wants a divorce and decided to throw in some transphobic hatespeach towards me.

We were all looking for somewhere to go.

I'm sure you know where this is going but listen, she told us EVERYTHING we wanted to hear. She told us she's not hateful now, told us she would go to trans support groups, pride, said she's realized how much she loves Jackie and it's time to accept her- and look- we had NO WHERE TO GO. We have 2 cats and at the time, a car that has no a/c or functional locks. AND I have a chronic autoimmune condition that I recently started taking chemo meds for. (Methotrexate.)

I'm too sick to be on the street, and survive. I had to think about me, Jackie, Zoe, and Boops.

And Jackie wanted to go..

I told her we'd be cautious and try to get out asap.

Well, looking for places right when the housing market crashed really fucked us up. That- and because I had only just finally got approved for disability, means I was set back in life- and had no credit to my name. No credit= no place to live.

I had almost built enough, but things went down hill very quickly with her family. Which leads us to right now:

After weeks of microagressions, giving us breakthrough covid cases, yelling at us to clean other's messes, and forcing us and our cats to isolate in our room, many broken promises, and straight up transphobic hatespeach (because she promised to get vaccinated but then said nvm as soon as we moved in and she went on vacation and got covid and gave it to us, which nearly killed me--) she said not getting the vaccine "IS A CHOICE, JUST LIKE YOU BEING TRANS AND TAKING *gestures to my testosterone* THOSE DRUGS."

We just were avoiding each other while I desperately try to gather resources for us to get out, NOW.

Of course, that wasn't good enough, so when her step father messaged her in all caps about our cats having to stay in our room and "I WON'T FUCKING TELL YOU AGAIN" my partner had a breakdown..

Her mom had let her step dad talk to her like this her whole life, basically.

Out of desperation, we went to her sister for help, maybe hoping she'd give us a place to stay for two weeks while we sign off on the lease for our new apartment.

She pretended to want to help and even said... something fucking weird? She made the comment that I'm a good person and I'm so much like her own boyfriend, that it's "scary"...

A few hours later she came to the house. She talked nicely to us, to gain access to our bedroom.

Then she attacked me.

I called the police right before, and was on the phone with dispatch when she lunged at me because she was aggressively trying to MAKE Jackie go into a separate room WITHOUT ME and Jackie was saying no, BEGGING her to STOP.

I wasn't going to let her take Jackie into that room. She looked fucking crazy.

All of the family came into our room, her two sisters, her mom, and her cousin- When they heard yelling.

It was actually me telling her mom that she's a terrible mother, that triggered her sister to try and attack me- although I knew she was planning on trying to from the moment she came into our room.

And that was after her mom was screaming in my face that if I have something to say, say it now.

Dispatch heard everything and sent emt as well...

But the police stayed outside, talking to them for a WHILE before even asking for us.

Her cousin is the only one that would have stood up for me, saying her sister never should have tried to hit me. But he was in the room with Jackie, giving her support...

I faced the cops alone.

He already had "that look."

He shined a light into my eye, letting the family stay on the porch, throwing insults and just letting it happen. He asked me where I'm hurt, and before I could even show him the scratches on my arm, he said "how do I know YOU didn't put those there?"

I wanted to fucking die in that moment.

This is a conservative city.

No one has equality stickers here. No one flies gay flags. People here that are lgbt- they LEAVE.

This is EXACTLY WHY.

I said "well is there any reason I should tell you anything when, clearly, you're already bias?"

I looked at the emts. I looked at his partner. I looked at all the lights and people coming out of their houses-

And behind me was her family.

Her sister that assaulted me, was laughing about having work in the morning.

All of them were looking at me, with hate in their eyes.

He tried to feed me bullshit about "well if I'm taking someone to jail, there has to be proof."

He dismissed everything I attempted to say, until I just stared at the ground and he decided he did his job here.

I told him my whole fucking body hurts because I had 4 people fucking toss my 100lbs ass all over the fucking room, which was a mess that he refused to look at.

He said "I don't see bruises."

I SPAT "BRUISES TAKE TIME?"

He retorted IMMEDIATELY- "YOU'RE NOT EVEN RED."

I asked what about the dispatcher- she seemed concerned- to which he said "you see, sometimes when people call us- they scream and be dramatic- for a quicker response."

I asked what we could do while the two weeks go by for our new place, and he fucking said "I DONT KNOW. BARRICADE YOURSELF IN YOUR ROOM OR SOMETHING."

Needless to say, we are now safe, in a hotel and I've gotten in touch with a few lgbt organizations that are attempting to help us get justice.

Unfortunately because it's a holiday weekend, all we can do is wait right now.

Our first order of business is getting a protection order, so that we can retrieve the rest of our things without her sister trying to attack us again. (I say us because she kept jumping towards Jackie, like she was threatening to hit her.)

I've been so gaslit and victim blamed that I was too scared to go to the er, even though this all happened in the midst of a flare, possibly including my liver health.

There's so much more to this story, as I'm sure other trans people can relate.. unfortunately.

The emts reluctantly offered to take me to the er, but I was like "and leave my partner here with them?" And he just fucking shrugged dude.

I hate this city.

I want out so bad but unfortunately I've committed to a year, but at least it'll be *our* apartment.

We could NOT stay there for two more weeks. Her step dad is a violent offender that has attempted to murder a homeless prostitute over some fucking pocket change- and he has a GUN in the house.

This hotel might run us into a hole, despite it being the cheapest, shittiest hotel in town, it's still going to be about 700$ for ONE week.

To ADD INSULT TO INJURY, SOMEONE ATTEMPTED TO STEAL MY VEHICLE WHILE WE'VE BEEN STAYING HERE.

I'm feeling incredibly paranoid and unsafe, but I'm on anxiety meds now at least and its SORTA helping us cope (My partner and I have the same Dr and she gave her permission to have some.)

The organization BRAVO is trying to help us with a hotel voucher, but because of all the natural disasters, it's hard to find room in charity for people like us, which is fair enough. We aren't immediately on the street, and for that I'm incredibly thankful.

However, if you or anyone you know wish to help you can donate to venmo: kittyzibby. Or you could just signal boost this.

If you can't help, I understand. And IF YOU'RE STRUGGLING FINANCIALLY, don't worry about it, for real.

Right now I'm just scared we'll go into debt before getting the apartment settled in.

I will update on things once our case moves along more, and we were already considering turning to OF sexwork before all of this, so if there could be support that way, maybe we'll get that going once we get moved in. That way, I feel good about providing a service in return.

Thank you so much for sticking with us during all of this. And really- we're doing much better today. We've given each other pep talks, but we are still determined to start our lives together.

Her family was merely trying to scare me away from her, but I got my girl's name tatted on me for a reason.

I know I'm not the bad person here.

Every time Jackie is feeling more gender euphoric, and showing me her changes, and seeing her get more confident, the more I know that what I'm doing with and for her, is right.

I love her so much. And I will never abandon her, like they tried to get me to do.

Jackie is taking a break from some socials, but she's given me permission to talk about what's been happening.

She needs justice too.

I will update as much as I can, but seriously, I think we both just have a fire under our asses now.

Mentally, we're stronger than ever.

Thank you for reading. My heart really goes out to the rest of the queer community that have experienced or are going through similar things.

It's really made me realize why we need to stick together and fight this bigotry bullshit! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

[xerospaced]

I just want to be able to swallow like a normal fucking person omg.

Yknow how you're swallowing all the time without knowing it. Without even feeling it. Because it's constant.

Your mouth would overflow with saliva and mucus all the time if you didn't.

But you don't really know you're doing it. It's an automatic thing.

I would just like to go back to experiencing that. Coz boy. If I am not presently eating or drinking I just... cannot do it without effort. Sometimes so much effort that I feel like I'm choking. So much effort that I cant fucking breathe because my throat blocks and I struggle to release to allow air back down my fucking windpipe.

I'm dry. Af. Quite literally. I. Am. Dry.

I am not producing enough saliva/bodily fluids full stop and it is a low and pathetic constant torture.

It's like that blocked nose "I can't remember what it was like to breathe clearly" on fucken crack. Times 100.

I cannot remember the last time I wasn't in discomfort. I can't remember what it feels like to simply breathe and swallow as automatically as nature intended.

I have "good days" where the stuffiness is to a minimum and I can ignore the blockage in my throat and I maybe only feel like I'm choking a couple times.

But I also have lots of days where I am driven to tears. Where I sleep all day to avoid the sensation. IF I can get to sleep.

Because I also have days where the discomfort and restriction is so bad that I can't sleep at all. Where I experience waves of distress and I legitimately want to just stop existing for the moment coz I am tired of existing with strain.

This is the main symptom of my condition. Dryness. And when I first found out I had an autoimmune condition that included dryness I thought, ok - annoying.

It sounds... so. Fucking. Minimal. You get congested. Your eyes itch. You struggle to swallow at times.

Except congestion is a constant bother and clear nasal passages are a thing of the past - you spend the first half hour, at least, of every day trying to clear whatever built up overnight and is attempting to suffocate you by morning.

Your eyes itch red fucking raw - internal pain that I can only liken to having dull pins pushed into the back of my eye - build up in your eyes that either glues them shut or blurs vision and has to be cleared multiple times a day - bleary eyes that has people asking if you're OK coz the streaming just will not stop no matter what you do.

Fucking... I could go on. Dryness isn't limited to the head ofc. God forbid you have a fucking vagina - I won't get into the details of irritation and painful- no excruciating sex because your body won't cooperate. Vaginismus anyone??

Just. Fuck me man.

The inflammation. The random skin ailments. That one time the blood vessels in my hand were literally swollen to four times their size just coz. The chronic swollen lymph nodes. THE FUCKING LETHARGY.

The beautiful reality that you could have a flare up at any time with no warning and who daphuck knows what it will be this time. Maybe I won't be able to so much as turn a door handle. Maybe walking downstairs will take half an hour. Maybe whatever frenzy of symptoms will lead to a battery of tests and fears of a more serious diagnosis just to be told they've come back clear.

But still. The congestion. My worst enemy. Never leaves.

I... rarely talk about my health on here anymore. I've struggled to come to terms with it and... if this is anything to go by, I still haven't.

I'm just. Really terribly uncomfortable rn and I wanted to nap but I couldn't simply swallow comfortably enough to drift off.

So here we are...

[sweet-day13]

im jaebum || i can’t let you lay here in pain

warning(s): none :)

word count: 484

a/n: title sucks because i couldn’t think of anything c’: also, if you don’t know what flare ups are, flare ups occur when a chronic disease in the body has suddenly gotten more severe. it often causes a lot of discomfort, stiffness, pain, and/or swelling. if you guys get flare ups, please go to the doctor. flare ups are linked to a lot of autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis so please go to the doctor if you can.

“Hello?“ you didn’t check the ID on your phone when you answered, that was the last thing on your mind.

“Hey, baby. My schedule’s almost finished for the day, how about we go out to eat tonight?“ Jaebum’s voice was so happy. He’d finally be able to see you after preparing for so long and since promotions for Lullaby began. And no matter how much you wanted to agree, you knew you’d have to deny it. You weren’t in any condition to be moving.

“I don’t know... I’m not really feeling up to it tonight.”

“Is everything okay?“ Jaebum’s voice changed drastically, you’d never pass up an opportunity for food.

“Yeah, I’m-“ you cut yourself off with a sharp hiss once you moved to shift your phone to the other hand, “I’m fine.“

“Where are you?“

“At home, why?“

“Stay there,“ and then the line went dead. Jaebum knew about your condition but he also knew that you’d been following the doctor’s and the specialist’s orders to try and lessen the severity of it. He’d helped make sure you don’t do too much so that you don’t irritate your body. That doesn’t mean that your condition and the painful symptoms go away.

One that you’ve dealt with since a few months before you were diagnosed were flare ups. Of course, it took a few different doctor’s and a specialist to properly diagnose you and give you a strict regime to follow. JB only found out about all this a year ago when you first started dating and you kept dropping everything. You had to explain your condition the pain it caused you.

You didn’t expect him to baby you until it subsided. He wouldn’t let you hold anything unless it was plastic cup, utensils, your phone, clothes, or your toothbrush because he didn’t want you to aggravate yourself. Remembering all of that, you weren’t surprised to hear your front door open and close, followed by the sound of feet shuffling to your room where you lay on your back.

“How long has this one lasted?“ you felt your bed dip from Jaebum’s weight before he placed a soft kiss to your forehead.

“Since yesterday morning.“

“Where does it hurt? Your hands again?“ he gently took your hand and started lightly massaging it.

“Not as bad as last time but my hips and ankle hurt a lot.”

“How about I order in and then we can lay here and watch movies all night?“ you nodded before smiling up at him, “Let me go get you some water and a heating pad real quick and then I’ll order the food.“

“Thank you, babe. You don’t have to do this.“

“I can’t let you lay here in pain, now can I? Now get comfy so you don’t have too much tonight,” despite your pain, you were always grateful for your boyfriend who helps you without question.

[tk-duveraun]

okay friends.

I am home.

I have slept.

There are no issues and I didn’t even get sent home with medication (except a taper for one of the steroids)

I have to say, as much as I was crying from pain, I was also very emotional at how accepting all but one of the staff were about my condition and how much they trusted my own self-assessment of my condition and respected my theory of why I was so ill.

It’s very rare for me to receive such validation in a professional, medical context and hopefully this means my friends won’t have to fight to get me to visit the ER in the future.

Assuming I am at 90% tomorrow, I should still be able to knock out all of the Fics as Gifts that I intended to write, but it MIGHT get a little spotty since I’m going to focus on recovering.

For those wondering, my speculation, supported by the lack of results from tests and how it presented and how it responded to certain medications, is that getting my vaccinations triggered a very bad flare of my autoimmune condition.

Vaccines do not make you sick. I very strongly encourage everyone who can to get vaccinated for the flu to do so.

My immune system can’t handle aspirin; introducing dead viruses to it probably just overstimulated it and caused a cascade failure. The doctor and other medical staff reassured me that given my age and the EKG results, it’s highly unlikely there was any permanent damage to my heart from the extended tachycardia.

That said, I still think going was the correct choice.