I am ill. This is not a particularly unusual thing for me. But still, irritating on a Saturday evening. This time it's because I'm a human guinea pig yet again. I warned the doctor in the pain clinic that I have a dodgy, EDS-y heart and autonomic nervous system, and that the medication she wanted me to try had already caused me chest pain and palpitations and high blood pressure and headaches. She assured me that she knew best (although she did say I could come off if I got side effects). Well, I gave it ten days, but I've had a seriously awful headache - as distinct from a migraine - every day since I've been on it, and today the chest pain and heart fun started up. So I think we're giving up on that one. It wasn't doing anything for the pain anyway. So, I've had a really thumping bad headache all day, and the only way to improve it seems to be lie very flat all day. Which precludes the writing of very much. Instead I have done a picture. It is me with a headache. I thought I should make this clear, since when The Girl saw it, she thought it was me "being a mental". It is not. OK then.
It's funny how you redefine concepts like 'ill' when you have a chronic condition. There was a time, soon after I gained my latest impairment, when my perception was that I was always ill. Then daily life became more about disability, impairment and other more neutral or even positive terms, because I couldn't live life with the negative self-image that I was bestowing on myself with the concept of 'sick person'. Nothing changed, in physical terms, but I learned how to extrapolate my concepts of injustice and social barriers onto a physical, rather than a mental health related, situation. It's surprising how much of an effort was involved in that extrapolation, considering how much I understood and believed in the cause of disability rights. But I digress (what else is new). I try not to see myself as a 'sick person' anymore. Inevitably, though, when you get ill more than most people, you're going to find the whole thing a bit dull. While I know I should be grateful that more isn't 'wrong' than just aches and pain and headaches, at least most of the time, I still can't interpret these things positively. So, I shan't. So there.
I'm really very behind with my blogging schedule - haven't written about France (chair-skiing!), or done my other two 'protest' posts, or written the slightly more political stuff I wanted to do for the BBC. I shall endeavour to do all that starting tomorrow. Just as soon as I stop wanting to throw up.
The Girl is going away for a month as part of her course. She's going to Moscow. Apparently she blogged about it for her audioblog, but I don't know if she remembered to upload the thing. A minute ago she thought she had lost all the photos in her phone, which was causing some stress. Not because she thought she had lost photos of me, or anything nearly that romantic, but because she thought her one hundred and something snaps of *London Underground station signs* were gone. Oh, the tragedy... Don't ask me to explain why she collects pictures of tube station signs. I don't really understand.
This is a headachy lilwatchergirl signing off for now. Please stand by - regular daily creativity will resume tomorrow.
1 comment:
Good for sticking with the thing a day and for your pic. Bummer about The Girl taking off for Moscow which sounds so very chic and European. I do get what you say about being ill, though I don't know if I do it in the same sort of activist and deep thinking way you do; but more like once I get bored then I don't really consider that being ill anymore. I mean, yes, I have to regulate my BP all the time and I have naseau but unless the naseau makes me like, curl up in a fetal position that isn't "ill" - just, like, annoying and even more so when people say, "So how are you today?" Maybe I need to redo a scale where like moderate pain and naseau means, "Having a FINE day!" and then do it down from there? Dunno, sorry you are having a not fine day.
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