Now That’s Some Serious Chronic Fatigue. Spoon Theory 2.0? (Patreon Link Within)

Many chronically ill people eventually learn about the “Spoon Theory” of chronic fatigue, which is basically a way to explain to healthy people what it’s like when you no longer possess (or never had) virtually unlimited mental and physical energy to do what you want.  Because it’s always the responsibility of the weakest and sickest to explain ourselves to healthy people innit.  A person’s spoons are a visual representation of their physical and mental energy reserves for the day, where a physical or mental activity “costs” one or more spoons to perform and when the spoons are gone the sick person has no choice but to stop acting and rest.  With adequate rest and recovery time, hopefully their spoon reserves will replenish by the next day but that is not always the case.  Many days, seriously ill people may have no spoons at all.

Spoon Theory was described and named by a chronically ill woman and it is pretty accurate in my own experience.  For the first time in my life, after putting myself through law school, studying for and passing the bar exam, and then working more than full time in a stressful and demanding career in addition to a lifetime of “adulting” meaning maintaining a household and nurturing various parasitic males I no longer have anywhere near the energy I once had and can now barely get anything done, regardless of urgency or import.  It’s not a matter of how important anything is anymore, nor how badly I need to or want to do it.  I am not in control of that now and it is debilitating and terrifying.

Healthy people have no idea that’s even possible and they often refuse to believe it.  And that’s an example of ableism, or discrimination in policy and practice against disabled people and in favor of healthy people.  Young people seem acutely aware of the concept of spoons, chronic illness and ableism while older people seem to have not a clue; the implications of that are terrifying but I will leave that for another day.

I recently attempted to describe my own limitations to my mother, and even though as a nurse who claims to have rigorously studied the issues and thinks she knows everything there is to know about health, wellness and chronic illness (LOL) she had never even heard of “spoons” or spoon theory.  Considering that that information is literally everywhere if one only cares to look, her research skills get an F.  Her practical knowledge gets an F.  Empathy F.  Effort F.  Fucks given on behalf of the chronically ill F.  Fucks given about me and my new normal F.  Decent human being D+.  Maybe.  Maybe there’s hope, I think to myself, and at least a D+ is better than an F in that department, although the D+ is likely generous.  It’s a pretty important department and I like to think it matters but maybe it really doesn’t.  Maybe there is just no way that healthy people will ever understand or care what it’s like to be seriously chronically ill no matter how decent they are but I decide to try.

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Holy Shit Y’all. Morgellon’s Disease (Aka “Delusional Parasitosis”) is Actually Real. #gaslighting #fuckdoctors #killallmen

Whilst performing my daily catch-up with my favorite conspiratard sites, today I found this: recent peer-reviewed medical research indicating that so-called Morgellon’s disease is actually a real, physical ailment and not all in patients’ — usually female patients’ — heads.  I have had a slightly more than casual interest in Morgellon’s disease for at least a decade if not two, and I am seeing the year 2002 thrown around as the approximate date that reports of this confounding, untreatable and disabling medical condition first appeared in the United States.  People — usually female people — started presenting to their doctors for diagnosis and treatment of a condition comprised of skin lesions, often with strange “fibers” protruding from them or embedded in the unbroken skin or in the scabs, as well as maddening feelings of itching, crawling, burning etc. under or on their skin as if “bugs” were crawling there.  There were almost certainly additional complaints considering what Morgellon’s actually turned out to be — a tickbourne infection that is often comorbid with Lyme disease — but let’s leave it there for now.

Morgellon’s patients routinely brought in a collection of scabs and fibers to show their doctors, intending to be good patients and their own “advocates” to help the doctors do their job, which is the current advice given to particularly women in order to insure that they get the best medical treatment possible (and so that the women themselves as actors or co-actors on their own “care team” can take part or all of the blame when they are not effectively treated).  Whereupon the doctors proceeded to mock the women and their attempts to document and provide physical evidence of what was happening to them by referring to such evidence as “matchbox sign” because women allegedly brought the fibers and scabs with them in empty matchboxes.  Of course, matchbox sign was a euphemism for evidence of fraud and mental, not physical, disease.

Here is an example of “matchbox sign” where the woman brought her evidence in a folded piece of paper, and not an empty matchbox, but whatever right?  The point of inventing and naming matchbox sign was so that doctors could warn other doctors that the person sitting in front of them covered in lesions and in terrible, ongoing and relentless pain, cradling a sad bundle of phony evidence was crazy.  The point was obviously not to tell the truth or describe anything accurately or even neutrally, or in a way that was likely to get these women meaningful treatment or relief.

Just Because You “Refuse to Believe” Something Doesn’t Mean It’s Not True. Ft. Greta Thunberg.

I guess this is the speech that gave Donald Trump an excuse to mock 16 year old climate activist Greta Thunberg, calling her “a very happy young girl looking forward to a bright and wonderful future.”  In it, she says she refuses to believe the “adults” who rape and pillage the environment living planet are evil.  She doesn’t say why she refuses to believe it.  She offers no evidence that it’s actually not true and that the worst of the worst industrial polluters rapists and pillagers of the living planet including water, soil, air and biomass (read: food, pets and ourselves) are actually good, or even neutral actors.  No, she just refuses to believe that the literal monsters responsible for global industrial pollution and its effects are something other than evil because (unstated) reasons, or because no reasons at all.

But I have news for Greta and for anyone and everyone self-inflicting and/or spewing thought-terminating cliches and “refusing to believe” thus and so: just because you refuse to believe something doesn’t mean it’s not true, and your or anyone’s refusal to believe doesn’t make anything that’s actually true, untrue.

Mkay?  People think and say that Greta Thunberg is brutally honest but “refusing to believe” is not honest.  Greta herself thinks the reason she is able to be brutally honest with herself and others is because autism, but Greta’s self image isn’t entirely realistic is it?  She is just a child afterall.  In fact, I’m not even entirely sure than any autistic person would naturally “refuse to believe” anything, and instead would either tend to believe or disbelieve depending on the evidence.  If they didn’t have enough evidence to make an evidence-based judgement they would look into it further until they knew for sure, especially if the subject matter was an autistic “special interest” like climate change seems to be Greta’s autistic special interest.  But Greta isn’t interested in looking further into it in this case to find out for sure whether industrial polluters, corporate overlords and lapdog politicians are evil or neutral or good.  Why not?

More Evidence of Autoimmunity? Surgery “Complications” and Delayed Healing from Medicalized Trauma

This is mommy vlogger Bonnie Hoellein.  I have written about this woman before after both she and her sister were constantly vlogging about crapping themselves in public and I wondered aloud if one or both of them suffer from autoimmune conditions, specifically inflammatory bowel disease including ulcerative colitis or the hideous, disabling disease I suffer from, Crohn’s disease.

In the last year or so, Bonnie has had at least 2 rounds of cosmetic surgeries to correct various things she didn’t like about her body.  Both times, she suffered horrific complications from the surgery including delayed healing, infections, and what her husband has described as being at “death’s door.”  Based on my research this woman’s surgical complications and delayed healing from medicalized trauma is more evidence that she probably has an undiagnosed (or even a diagnosed yet publicly undisclosed) autoimmune condition.

Whether or not she knows she is ill, this woman — like a lot of women surely — keeps putting her health and life in danger by undergoing elective surgeries.  The medical research indicates that autoimmune patients do indeed suffer from delayed and complicated wound healing:

A Middle Class Credo

Never let a person in pain threaten your accumulations.  Aka. “Don’t let a drowning person drag you down with them.”

But gambling is cool, if you think you might get a return on your investment at some point, go ahead and throw your money around like beads at Mardi Gras.

And paying for sex is awesome, if you think you might get a good dicking out of it, by all means, give your money to someone transactionally in exchange for catching friction off of them, preferably literally anyone with a dick.  What could go wrong right?  Men are awesome in fact, especially middle aged men with absolutely nothing to show for their first 5 decades of life on this planet as privileged apex predators.  They just didn’t know how to accumulate properly (by hurting people and other living things, including the living planet) but that’s going to change (under your tutelage and with your money) and you might get a return on that investment at some point (see above, “Gambling is Cool”) so it’s all good.  Really just give all men whatever they want.  Nothing bad has ever come of that exact thing ever.

Consumerism is fan fucking tastic.  There are trinkets, environments and experiences available at every price point.  Because you’re worth it, you see.  You are!  Don’t let anyone even imply differently.  If you don’t purchase trinkets, environments and experiences it’s because you have low self esteem and low self esteem is totally real and like the worst thing ever, you know that for a fact because you heard or read it somewhere and you believe everything the media says because it loves you and wants the best for you and anyway, you’re way too smart to be fooled by corporate propaganda.

In conclusion, if you are or want to be or to stay a member of the middle class, never let a person in pain threaten your accumulations, but let other things threaten your accumulations as much as possible.

Comments open.

 

Antiauthoritarianism: Illustration via Juxtaposition.

If the above vid is not the perfect illustration of concept I don’t know what is.  This is the most recent YouTube upload by Royalty Soaps, what used to be a one-woman soapmaking business that has grown over several years into something else.  The backstory here seems to be that at some point, the eldest yet still teenaged daughter in some freakishly large Quiverfull-type family consisting of a mother, a father and a dozen(ish) Irish twins* started making soap and with the help and support of that family has become very successful and has now delegated some of her substantial duties to others.

As described in this vid, this woman’s business recently experienced an unexpected and frightening setback and she relied heavily on her family to correct the situation and save the day, which they did in spades.  They also had the time, energy, material resources and desire to throw her an Insta-worthy backyard 25th birthday party in the midst of this family project.  The party was beautiful and the familial love and care given and received there, as documented in this vid…well watch it for yourself and see what you think.  For me, the experience of watching this was somewhat complicated.  I enjoyed it, was moved by it but it made me deeply uncomfortable and thinky…and hungry for salad, cake and sun tea.

What was so deeply disturbing to me about this footage was the backdrop against which it was shot and I’m not referring to her (albeit somewhat disturbing) home state of Texas, or a photo prop.  The backdrop here, as it is most everywhere, is the social context of capitalism and patriarchy and what that means is that, in order for this situation and this footage to exist, this woman has had to comply, comply, comply in order to reap what must be conditional rewards of love; affection; physical presence and caretaking; emotional care and concern; and finally, material things that, under the current system, really only money can buy.  Doesn’t it?  In her case, she has had to buy into the religious, political and social traditions of her family including the patriarchal authority of her parents, the heterosexual and mommy mandates and more in order to have what she has.  Of course, the traditions of her family mirror the traditions of her culture more or less exactly.

Luckily for her there does not seem to be any obvious conflict between her own values, conscience etc. and that of her family (or culture) but what if there was?  What would happen to her if she woke up one day with, say, environmental concerns implicating overpopulation and natalism, or economic concerns implicating capitalism and the money system and the ethics of making and selling soap (or doing anything) for profit?  What if, God forbid, this Quiverfull (or whatever) daughter woke up one day with feminist concerns which implicate all of that plus the destablization of the patriarchal authority of her father/parents, her husband, her church and the State?

Weaponizing Autism? Greta Thunberg And Her Autism Are Being Used. Note the Absence of Gaslighting. Also, Nuclear.

The above vid is an illustration for those “climate change activists” who believe that hydroelectric and/or nuclear power, in other words, dam/ning the world’s rivers and waterways is going to save us.  It’s not.

Greta Thunberg is an international “climate change activist” that probably everyone has heard about by now.  She is also autistic and shares characteristics with other autistics, namely, she is serious and sullen; nonverbal by default unless she has something important to say; starkly observant, brutally honest.  Although still a child she does not suffer fools gladly or at all, and instead is mercilessly critical of the “adults” who have poisoned, penetrated and otherwise wrecked the “climate” (read: planet) we all rely on for survival.  Even worse, especially to an autistic like Greta where autistics characteristically respond with an intense Trypophobic-like revulsion to deceit and lies, the Baby Boomer generation (and the generations immediately preceding and following) lied about what they did and continue to do to our shared world, they covered it up, they continue the lies and cover-ups even as they smile (or cry, or don’t react at all) and lie more and cover up more, right to our collective face.

Greta isn’t falling for it which isn’t odd in and of itself.  What’s really odd is that anyone is listening to her, and taking her seriously, a female in end-stage patriarchy, an uncoiffed, disabled nonconsumer and nonworker in end-stage capitalism, a child.

A cynical (or seasoned adult) observer might note that Greta’s story and presence in the cultural conversation has put everyone in their feels and in their imagined political, social and interpersonal power which is right where the “adults” want us to be.  In fact I can only conclude that this bizarre spectacle isn’t bizarre at all, but is what. it. looks. like. when end-stage capitalism and patriarchy uses a female autistic to serve its own ends.  How can we tell?  Because even as she criticizes and shames them, hitting them in their egos and accumulations and rituals (right where it would seem to hurt the most) the “adults” aren’t gaslighting her, they aren’t telling her not to believe her lying eyes, they are encouraging rather than shutting her down, she hasn’t been medicated or institutionalized or driven to suicide or killed.  Yet.

(Let’s see how well Greta fares after some time has passed, after a season, a misspent youth or a lifetime of activism seeing clearly how things really operate and what the consequences are and how little things actually change.  Or how particularly capitalism and patriarchy don’t tend to change over time except to reliably get worse.)

Instead of punishing her, the adults and other children who inhabit this failing global politic/planet are hailing Greta Thunberg as an autistic savant, a climate change warrior, an infant Wonder Woman but in my estimation she is just a misguided Cassandra.