"Don't call an ambulance. Just let me die." is how I start 90% of my conversations.

Delilah, I swear to god if you don't tell me what it's like to not feel shitty

Artist: ketnipz.com I changed to fit chronic illness

The Great British Baking Show but all the contestants are chronically ill and keep forgetting where they are and how to bake.

#chronicillness #autoimmune #chronicallyill #chronicillnesshumor #chronicillnessmemes #autoimmunememes #fibromemes #fibromyalgia #spoonie
#flaring #flareup #autoimmuneflare

"You wanna do something today?"

Me: But I just did something last month.

In my twenties, I was denied a medically necessary hysterectomy because I “might meet a man who wants kids”

I fought for years to get the surgery, spending weeks out of every month stuck in a hospital bed needing iron and blood transfusions. Too disabled to work. Fainting almost daily. In constant pain.

No matter how sick I got, the hypothetical future husband and baby came before my health. What these imaginary beings might want was more important than what I needed.

When I finally had the surgery, I had a severe post operative complication. The surgeon didn’t believe me. She sent me home.

I had to go to the ER four times before they found the life threatening internal bleed. Each time dismissing me as “attention seeking” or accusing me of not understanding some pain was to be expected.

My then boyfriend saved my life. He got loud and refused to take me home, saying he was convinced I would die.

It turns out, he was right. I had a giant bleed in my belly and an infected abscess that had been growing for weeks while they gaslit and ignored me.

It was a hell of a crash course in medical misogyny, as well as the need to always have an advocate in healthcare settings:

https://medium.com/@thedisabledginger/what-my-hysterectomy-taught-me-about-medical-misogyny-and-advocacy-e7d6e7294af8

When you’re healthy you believe you’ll always be healthy. That if you get sick it’ll be a temporary slow down & you will be back to normal after a few days.

When you learn that isn’t true, when you come face to face with the reality of how quickly you can lose your health, you become cautious.

This caution is part of protecting your baseline, and it’s a necessary survival skill when chronically ill.

https://www.disabledginger.com/p/maintaining-a-baseline-means-everything

When you’re chronically ill, your baseline means everything.

Non disabled people struggle to understand how easily we can lose function, as well as how hard it is to gain it back.

It’s one of the reasons many chronically ill people are still masking. We don’t have the luxury of denial. We know we won’t be “fine” if we get covid. We know what we’re risking.

My latest is all about how to maintain a baseline, as well as tips and tricks for family & friends to help us save precious energy:

https://www.disabledginger.com/p/maintaining-a-baseline-means-everything

Sicklihood is the most tiring of all of the hoods. It's also a fake word, so that adds another tiring level.