Tag: Chronic Illness

We Want To Live.

We want to live in bold white text in a red heart, over a black and white image of hospital beds.

The media has done an excellent job of suppressing this, but I will not be party to that.
Some sick & disabled people are being asked to sign Do Not Resuscitate forms, as ventilators will be prioritised for people who aren’t already sick.
This is eugenics disguised as a way of helping the NHS. So, instead of punishing the people who have stripped the NHS of it’s resources and staff, disabled people are being asked to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, because our lives are so pitiful as to be worthless.
Our lives are worth living, & we deserve equal access to healthcare.
If you agree with this idea on any level, whether you’re a healthcare professional who thinks it’s just helping the NHS out in desperate times, or someone who thinks it’s a worthy sacrifice, please unfollow me. Unfriend me. Don’t comment trying to defend the inexcusable. I don’t care. I will not have people who prescribe to eugenics on my social media.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-52117814

Keep the Change.

Despite our adaptability, humans are obstinate creatures who distinctly dislike change. Even when change is good, we’re often resistant to it at first, finding increasingly trivial reasons to avoid making the necessary effort to go through with it. Whether it be moving house, changing jobs, or something as simple as rearranging the kitchen cupboard, we often find reasons to procrastinate. Much as we dislike it though, change, much likes taxes, is inevitable.

Just like everyone else, there have been a lot of changes to my life over the years, & perhaps the most significant & impactful one of all was becoming disabled. Disability affects your entire existence; suddenly I had a new set of problems to contend with, mostly revolving around accessibility wherever I went.

At first, I resented the change. I had enough to worry about without contending with access in education, work, medical services, & social activities. Naturally I didn’t want to be in pain all of the time, disbelieved by everyone around me, & ostracised by those I called my friends. Even after a few years, I still resented my disability & wanted nothing more than to go back to being able-bodied.

However, when I started university, my perspective began to change. Had I not been disabled, I would have chosen to live in a much cheaper residence without catering, probably a small distance from campus, & I certainly wouldn’t have stayed there for more than a year. However, because I didn’t have the energy to both cook for myself & study, & because of accessibility concerns both for accommodation & transport, I remained in a catered hall of residence for my entire degree. Had I not stayed in this hall I would not have met one of my closest friends in the first year, nor would I have met my now husband a year later.

Accessibility concerns also mean that we reside in the city centre, which although it increases the rent has a significant impact on the resources available to me without the need to contend with public transport. I probably wouldn’t have applied for city-centre jobs either, making the chances of me obtaining my current role at the university highly unlikely, & although it has its rough moments, I adore that job.

It’s taken the better part of a decade, but I’ve finally begun to accept the change that I initially believed had destroyed my life. This doesn’t mean I’ve given up on getting better, or that I don’t want to get well, it just means that if this so happens to be my experience for the rest of my life, I won’t resent that. All in all, this attitude shift has had a significant impact on my mental health, which was the aspect of chronic illness I found the most difficult to deal with.

Life is chaotic, & fixating on long-term plans is, in my experience, a bad idea (note: having some sort of plan is not a bad idea, just don’t be inflexible with said plan). There will always be a curveball that changes circumstances in ways you never imagined, & not always in a negative way. The way I see it, you can either accept the chaos & just go where it takes you, or you can spend your entire life resisting it. There’s probably something to be said for trying to find order in the midst of life’s chaos, & maybe we need a balance between the two, but for my own purposes I try not to let any apprehension I might feel about change get in my way.

Pulling a Healthie.

If we’re all being totally honest, we’ve probably tried to pull at least one sickie (pretending to be ill to avoid school/work) at some point. I know I have (sorry mum). It’s said that sick leave costs companies billions every year, almost as much as a CEO’s monthly bonus, & that people pulling sickies probably contributes quite a lot to that. However, in the modern age of oh-look-there-goes-the-economy-again, a new & opposite problem has arisen. People are going to work when they are sick, potentially spreading infection to their colleagues & reducing productivity.

This little quirk of the modern age, where super lazy millennials drag themselves into their three underpaid jobs to be able to pay the rent on their rabbit-hutch apartment, has been named Presenteeism.

Obviously, you’re probably not going to be working at peak performance by coming into work when you have the flu, & even worse, you could spread your illness to colleagues. There’s nothing quite as dreadful as watching a cold work its way around the team like a snotty game of Russian Roulette, knowing that eventually it will be your turn to wake up feeling like a frog vomited in your nose (not that I know what a frog vomiting in your nose feels like). For the sake of any colleagues who may be more at risk from infections, it is definitely inadvisable to crawl into the office. If it came to it, remotely working from home is now an option for most offices anyway.

However, during a recent discussion about presenteeism, I distinctly felt some ableist undertones creeping through. The person speaking made no distinction between coming into the office with a temporary illness & coming in with a chronic illness. I had to sit at the back of the room listening to a speech about how sick people couldn’t do the same quality of work as healthy people, & had to bite my lip. By her definition every day I came into work was a day of presenteeism, & I was costing the company substantially for it, even if that wasn’t what she explicitly meant.

While not everyone with a disability or chronic illness can work, those of us that can should not be held back by the presumption that we’re all the same. The notion that we’re less efficient & more costly makes it nigh-on impossible for disabled people to find work. However, with the help of a government scheme, staff support, & my own experience of chronic illness, I have managed to adapt to the role of Data Management Assistant. After some teething issues I am now performing at & above the required level, which is closely monitored, & am easily keeping up with my colleagues. I may be sick but I can do my job, & do it well.

Fortunately, I am lucky enough to work somewhere that when I gently reported the ableist interpretation of presenteeism, I was listened to & instead of being told to stop whining (a genuine response I have encountered more than once), & my feedback seems to have been taken seriously. In future the distinction between temporary & chronic illnesses should hopefully be made when discussing presenteeism, & that I count as a success.

You probably shouldn’t be pulling sickies, however tempting.

You definitely shouldn’t be pulling healthies, if you’ve got the flu.

That said, if you have a chronic, non-infectious illness that can be worked with, the notion of presenteeism shouldn’t disadvantage individuals searching for work, which unfortunately is the current situation.

Perhaps, instead of blaming employees for spreading illness to others, we should be blaming the era of austerity that allows CEO’s to be paid 133 times that of their employees. But what would I know? I’m just a lazy millennial.

Know It All.

Every so often I encounter a doctor who was simply born for their role; knowledgeable, competent, & with an excellent bedside manner. Admittedly I see that many doctors that at some point it was bound to happen. Anyway, during a recent appointment with such a doctor, he sighed, looked at me, & said;

“I get the feeling you’ve been told there’s nothing we can do for you for most of your life, but again, there really isn’t anything to be done.”

I almost cried.

Not because there was nothing to be done about a particular symptom that, if I’m being honest, doesn’t reduce my quality of life by any significant margin. I almost cried because it was one of the first times a doctor hadn’t tried to soften the blow by pretending to offer some woefully ineffectual “treatment”, but had recognised that, unlike Tom Cruise, I could handle the truth.

I happen to live with multiple conditions that are nigh-on impossible to treat beyond symptom management, & even then the symptoms can only be lessened rather than eliminated altogether. As such, I’ve become very accustomed to hearing doctors desperately clutching at straws to make it seem like they could cure me, when the simple truth was that they couldn’t. I don’t know whether this behaviour stems from a certain arrogance that some doctors have, or whether it is something that is taught during medical school, but it is a rarity to hear a doctor admit that they don’t know.

The truth of the matter is that doctors simply couldn’t hold all of the information about all of the diseases in the world in their heads, even within specialised fields. Sometimes, they’re going to need to look something up, do some further background research, or consult with another professional, just like in any job. Unfortunately, many doctors refuse to admit when they need help, & so they will spin a good yarn instead.

Not knowing something in the vastly complex & ever-expanding field of medicine is not a failure. Admitting it is also not a failure. Giving a patient false hope, or just wasting their time, is. I would much rather not waste my limited energy chasing after an ineffective therapy, than to be told an inconvenient truth.

Of course, being told nothing can be done is still pretty disheartening. It would be nice if one day someone could tell me that something can be done & was also speaking the truth as they said it. I guess what I’m really saying is that I value honesty over pretending that everything is alright, even where my own health is concerned. Being a know-it-all doctor isn’t reassuring, & many chronic illness sufferers can see straight through the façade after a few months.

All of this being said, there is still something to be said for breaking the truth gently, particularly for those new to the delights of chronic illness. Breaking bad news to patients & their loved ones is an unenviable task. It probably wouldn’t be particularly useful to simply say;

“You’re sick as hell & I can’t fix it. Thank you, next.”

For example, the radiologist said “oh dear” as he did an ultrasound to find my gall bladder impersonating a maraca. This wasn’t particularly reassuring, but fortunately having studied gall bladder disease shortly beforehand, I already knew exactly what I was looking at.

However, the doctor who came to visit me on the ward afterwards perched on the end of the bed & explained to me what gall stones were, what the gall bladder’s function was, & how to kill it. It was something of a revision session for me, so I didn’t tell them that I knew what a laparoscopic cholecystectomy was until after having it explained, much to their amusement. However, the bad news that I would need emergency surgery (my gall bladder was extremely inflamed & potentially could have burst, which I think would look something like the chest-burster from Alien) was broken to me in a perfectly calm & composed manner.

In this situation the doctors knew what to do, which probably made it easier to break the bad news to me.  However, I do wish that when discussing incurable chronic illnesses, doctors wouldn’t dodge around the truth so much, but would tell it as it is in a straight-forward manner. Or maybe I’m just too Yorkshire for my own good.

One More Time.

It’s been quite a year.

Stood in front of the armoured War Elephant in the Royal Armouries in Leeds at our wedding.

In the middle of January, mere weeks after getting married, my husband & I began the search for a new home. Our current apartment was falling into disrepair at an alarming rate thanks to a disinterested landlord & unhelpful letting agent. It was almost impossible to keep warm, & we were both heartily sick of sticking our hands down the back of the toilet to reset the cistern after every flush. Almost immediately on our search we found a block of smart-looking apartments on the edge of the city centre, nestled behind the shops & arena. We booked to view an apartment which was cancelled at the last second, so booked to view another similar apartment, & despite making an appointment to pay the deposit were told that someone had snapped that one up at the last second too. Although it didn’t feel like it at the time, this was a good thing.

I viewed the third apartment alone as I had more lenient annual leave arrangements than Jarred. The letting agent surprised me with the higher rent, but once inside the apartment it was clear why. It was more spacious, easily able to accommodate the wheelchair in all rooms, & had large windows overlooking the little garden outside. Of course, the office of the letting agent was inaccessible, so much to their displeasure we were forced to do the paperwork in the apartment block’s reception. The agent bumped up the rent even more much to my displeasure, & repeatedly reminded me how much easier it would be if this could be done in the office. There were queries over their guarantor policy & my ID, & the agent added an extra month’s rent to the tenancy agreement, but eventually after a stressful couple of days, it was all finalised.

Now that we knew we would have a home once our current tenancy arrangement ended, we could move onto more pleasant things; arranging the honeymoon. We planned a week in London around a wrestling show, of all things; after all, Jarred did propose at such a show. At the start of March we hopped on a coach down to London, staying in a hotel near King’s Cross in the north of the city, & enjoying a range of activities including the London Eye & a matinee show of Phantom of the Opera (Part 1 & Part 2).

My husband & I high above the London Skyline on the wheel, drinking champagne.
Nelson perched atop his column in Trafalgar square.

All too soon we were travelling North again, & a couple of days & several loads of washing later, I returned to work. I was approaching six months in my job by this point, & my probationary period was up for review. I was disheartened to learn that my probation would be extended for a further three months, although my line manager was as kind & supportive as ever. However, it did seem that my difficulties in the job mainly stemmed from the fact that it was a step above entry-level, & I essentially had to learn everything the entry-level role should have taught me, & then learn my actual role on top of that.

After the Easter break came a succession of birthdays; a close friend, my dad, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, & then me. A couple of those birthdays were milestone one’s, although I think if I disclosed which milestones I would be disowned, & so my brother-in-law came up on a bank holiday weekend to stay with us. I had booked the rest of the week off work, & I spent most of that playing my birthday present; the much-underrated Rage 2.

In amongst all of the birthdays was a trip to the gynaecology department at the local hospital (yay?). I wrote about that saga rather recently (Part 1, Part 2, & Part 3) so won’t go into the details here, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well that appointment went. It was after that appointment that my journey towards getting an answer about my gynaecological issues truly began.

June was a stressful month as we prepared to move house, & I also undertook a trip across the Pennines to Manchester, for an ironically inaccessible conference on disability. The end result was essentially having to pack the entire apartment on my own in a weekend, which also turned out to be one of the hottest weekends of the summer. To make matters more awkward, our landlord was not too happy that I had disclosed the extremely long list of broken things to the letting agents they were working with, & kept trying to charge us for things that had been in a sorry state long before we moved in two years before, but after obtaining some legal advice they were forced to back down. Still, July 1st, the day we got the keys for our new apartment, could not come fast enough.

Inside the conference centre, looking up the staircase towards a glass ceiling.
Inside Manchester Piccadilly train station about to head home.

The day we moved was bright & sunny, filling the apartment with natural light as we unpacked the essentials. Both of us had booked the week off work, & with the help of my bridesmaid & her partner, we were settled within that week. We were all pleasantly surprised at just how smoothly everything had gone!

Looking up at our new home; a red-brick building styled to look like a large house, nestled behind some trees.

The day we moved house was also the day I passed my probation at work, earning my place working alongside a characterful team of like-minded individuals. I’m not sure I had ever felt so positive & confident before; I had a gorgeous home I could be proud of, a brilliant job I could be proud of, & a gorgeous husband I could be proud of (for the most part, anyway). For about six weeks I was rolling on cloud number nine, even going so far as getting a new tattoo, & then I had to return to the hospital.

The black & white skull & rose, with 5 red ladybirds crawling over it, on my right shoulder.

This appointment was harder. The temporary treatment I had been on had already worn off, & I had to work hard to convince the doctor that the best way forward for me at this point was diagnostic surgery. Fortunately, the man saw reason once I had explained the situation, & I was told to expect a letter in the post. Sure enough, a few days later I had confirmation; on 24th September I would undergo a diagnostic laparoscopy.

I’m lucky to have an understanding & considerate employer, who allowed me to take the necessary time off work for the surgery & recovery without needing to use any of my annual leave. As the date got closer I got increasingly more nervous, not necessarily because of what they would find, but what they wouldn’t. Above all else I needed the validation that my symptoms were not all in my head, as had been suggested countless times before.

Sat up in my hospital bed post-surgery, with a disconnected drip still stuck in my hand.

Unsurprisingly the surgery did find something, that something being the endometriosis I had been telling doctors I had for years. The next two weeks post-operation were miserable. I was predominantly alone & housebound, in a lot of pain & still without treatment despite now having a diagnosis. My stitches, which as it transpired had been applied incorrectly, became infected. Then my GP was less than helpful, but fortunately I had managed to wrangle a telephone appointment with the gynaecologist for the end of November.

In mid-October I returned to work, now having been employed there for over a year. Given the large pile of paperwork waiting for me, & the even larger bouquet of flowers, it would appear I had been missed. It took a couple of weeks, but by the start of November, the majority of the backlog of work had been cleared. My line manager also had a new daughter.

A large bouquet of pink, white & purple flowers, of many varieties.

As our first wedding anniversary approached, Jarred & I decided to book a mini-break in York for late November. York is always spectacular as Christmas approaches, & considering the nature of the historical buildings littered throughout the city centre, is surprisingly accessible. You can read about my trip here: Part 1 & Part 2.

Looking up at one of the famous towers of York Minster.
Looking west over the River Ouse, with the trees silhouetted against the sunset.

Upon my return to Leeds I had my telephone appointment with the gynaecologist. Fortunately, he was significantly more supportive than my GP, & proposed that I go back on the only treatment that had proved effective without miserable side effects in the past. Unfortunately, that did involve being injected in the stomach every few months, but it meant relief for the foreseeable future.

Now we have Christmas in our new apartment to look forward to, although of course when this is published, both Christmas & our first wedding anniversary will have passed us by.

As for the coming year, we know we have a home for well into 2021, so can relax on that front. My career in medical research could take several paths, & I look forward to finding where I end up. I don’t tend to plan as something will always come along to scupper plans; plans cannot be scuppered if they do not exist. I know I say this almost every year, but to have a less eventful year would be a pleasant relief; we will just have to wait & see.

I Am Not a Drug Addict.

Despite the world’s insistence on kale enemas being the cure-all for everything from colds to cancer, some illnesses require carefully manufactured pharmaceuticals for a cure, & even then sometimes there is no cure & we can only treat the symptoms. There is a plethora of such illnesses, & as of writing I live with at least 3 of them; asthma, depression, & chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis. Depending on the outcome of my impending surgery, I could be adding another to the list – endometriosis (note: I now live with 4, because having just 3 was boring).

All of these illnesses are chronic. For the most part their causes are unknown, making it impossible to cure them. Instead, all we can do is treat the symptoms for as long as they persist, & the word chronic should give you an indication that the symptoms last longer than a couple of weeks. Yet, as fellow sufferers of such conditions will all tell you, we are constantly being reminded by our doctors that the pain killers & symptom managers we rely upon to function are only meant to be used for 6 months, or at most a year.

You don’t need to be a doctor to know that chronic illnesses don’t have the good manners to abruptly stop without warning after 6 months of using a prescribed medicine. However, at this point we start to be pressured by medical professionals to stop using medicines, without alternatives being offered. We are faced with a choice; subject ourselves to debilitating symptoms, or insist on keeping our prescription & be labelled as dependent on drugs. As far as most doctors are concerned, this is no different to being a drug addict, living from one high to the next, consumed by the need to remain intoxicated. Very few of them seem to fathom that our dependency stems from the desire not to be in excruciating pain.

My prescriptions keep me alive; they mean I can breathe. On top of that, they dull the pain enough to allow me to move. They meant I got an education, a full-time job, a husband. They mean I can write blog posts & make videos, join protests & watch wrestling, socialise & play games. Even with them I remain in constant pain.

Back in early 2019, shortly before we were scheduled to leave the EU for the first time, my main prescription disappeared. No one would supply it. I argued with the doctors & pharmacy daily, watching the number of pills left dwindle day by day for an entire month. Eventually, just before I ran out, the supply returned, but for an entire month I had lived in constant fear. If they ran out, how would I work? If I couldn’t work, how would I pay the rent? If I couldn’t pay the rent, where would we live? Even scarier than the financial aspect was the knowledge that I would be in unbearable pain.

In the current unstable political climate of the UK, & who knows what madness will have taken place by the time this post is published, that fear has returned as the supply of my medicine falls into question. It made me realise just how dependent on these prescriptions I had become.

Dependent though I may be, addict I am not. Addiction is an entirely separate physiological & psychological dependency on drugs, often obtained illegally or for recreation in the first place, which still needs to be treated with far more compassion & understanding than it is given now. The stigmas & stereotypes that haunt addiction also haunt me, & that is what I despise. Chronic illnesses & drug addictions are two separate conditions, in need of different treatment options. To lump us all into one category & regard us all as lazy strays draining “the system” of money damages us all.

When all of this is said & done, there is one fact left to face. If we’re being honest, the pressure to get chronic illness patients to stop using prescriptions is to save money for the NHS, not for our own good as they like to tell us. What good is not being addicted to drugs if we’re in unrelenting misery instead, which ironically is something that drives people to use illicit drugs. While the NHS certainly does need more funding, jeopardising the health of patients goes against everything it was set up to do.

So, when you see scare-mongering on the news about people becoming dependent on prescriptions, just remember that there is an entire side of the debate supressed into silence. We are not drug addicts. We are just sick.

Womb of Woes: Part 3.

The clock had skipped forward almost two hours when I came to in a bed, oxygen mask on, with a radio playing quietly in the corner. For the first few minutes I could barely keep my eyes open, but eventually the fog lifted. When it did I wished it hadn’t, because I think that was when I discovered what being impaled felt like.

After a bit I was returned to the ward, & my oxygen mask was switched for a tube which was a lot more comfortable. I could barely manage sips of water, let alone the hot drink & food I was offered. By now I could feel multiple wounds which told me that they had found something; the surgeon had explained I would only have one incision for the camera unless they found something that required surgical intervention.

I think it was about 6 pm when one of the other surgeons came to my bed. Without bothering to close my curtains she loudly & bluntly exclaimed that I had endometriosis, & that the lining of my uterus had wrapped itself around my ovaries & had had to be cauterised. Treatment would only be offered when I returned to the clinic several months later, & I was good to go despite being unable to eat, drink, or use the bathroom properly. I would also not be getting any pain relief.

Fortunately, the head nurse on my ward seemed to have experience at handling M.E. after a general anaesthetic, & basically refused to let me go home until the morning. That evening, after my husband had gone home after a long day for us both, I sat in bed chatting to the other women staying overnight, & managed to eat & drink a little. After something of a concerted effort, I even managed to use the bathroom.

In the morning I was given breakfast & sent on my way, with documents explaining why I would be taking 2 weeks off work. We took a taxi home & almost immediately I returned to bed. For the next three days I could only manage to stay awake for a couple of hours at a time, & didn’t leave the bedroom except to use the bathroom. The most exciting thing I did was take a shower: I removed my dressings in the shower to discover that I would never be able to wear a crop top again with confidence; thanks to my previous surgery my midriff is covered in scars, & my belly button is warped.

By the weekend I was able to stay awake all day, & even made it into the lounge where I played video games & watched TV. It was over a week until I had the strength to get dressed & leave the house, & even then it was for less than an hour. By this point I was desperate to keep my brain active to avoid becoming even more depressed, as I was now able to fully process the emotional impact of my situation.

For 11 years I had been disbelieved & left in pain. For almost a decade of that it had been exacerbating the M.E, working in conjunction with it to obliterate my health. After 11 years I finally had an answer that shouldn’t have been anywhere near as difficult to get, & even though I now had that answer, I had been sent home with no pain relief & no treatment. Even now, with a confirmed medical diagnosis that cannot be disputed, I am left to struggle on my own.

We are supposed to be grateful for the NHS, because access to health care is considered a privilege & not a human right, & in comparison to most Americans we’re lucky. While this is true I think I can be excused in finding it difficult to be grateful for a system that has once again left me to suffer for years, so concerned on cutting costs that the wellbeing of patients is disregarded in favour of excuses. If I could afford private health care I wouldn’t even hesitate. I fail to understand why not having healthcare is considered the baseline & having healthcare is the privilege, when healthcare should be a right & failing to provide that should be a violation of that right. Quite simply I wouldn’t wish my experience on anyone, & everyone should have the right to not constantly be in pain.