Check out the cute stuff my mom sent to me for an Easter care package! She did really good this year! It definitely helped cheer me up since I had been feeling pretty lousy lately between my depression and my chronic health issues.
I think the title and video pretty much say it all:
I love the tv show House. This medical drama, based around the character of a doctor with Sherlock Holmes mystery solving abilities is often smart, informational, and amusingly ridiculous. The main character (House) is often a total asshole, but he is so lovably grumpy, enormously flawed, and irresistibly outrageous that I can’t help but like him.
Last night I finally caught their episode that features an Ehlers Danlos patient, an episode I had been looking forward to seeing for a while. Unfortunately, I was really disappointed with the portrayal. First off, very little of the episode actually had anything to do with the woman with Ehlers Danlos. It focused more upon her husband for the first half at least.
When she was finally introduced into the storyline, she was presented as someone with a horrible mental illness (hoarding), which a casual viewer could easily think was due to her forthcoming Ehlers Danlos diagnosis. The last thing those of us with EDS need is to be confused with mental illness conditions even more.
Also, the only symptoms that are even discussed to be related to EDS in the show (and thus lead to the official diagnosis) are the fact that the woman’s heart responded badly to some medication and she had suffered several miscarriages. That was it. Yes, EDS can contribute to miscarriages, but it is far from one of the hallmark symptoms of many EDS sufferers. Nothing was mentioned about hypermobility, chronic pain, dislocations, joint issues, gastrointestinal issues, autoimmune issues, bruising/scarring, loose skin, etc.
Overall, a very disappointing experience as a viewer and EDS patient.
The prompt for this week’s Twittering Tales writing challenge immediately brought back sad memories of an ill-fated tour of a great entertainer (one of my all-time personal favorites), so I went with it. Here is the photo prompt and my entry:
“It was meant to be my swan song. I pulled out all the stops…the moonwalk, the sequins, the white glove, the gangster getup for Smooth Criminal.
It was the only chance my children would ever have to see me live on tour. When I said This Is It, I meant it, but it came too soon…”
(280 characters)
I wanted to add the video and song by the same title as well. It is a beautiful, though sad song and the video features footage of rehearsals for the tour that never was…
You ever go to a doctor’s appointment and feel like you somehow disappointed them? That’s how I’m feeling today. I went to see my psychiatrist and while he didn’t say anything overly negative or mean, I just left with the feeling that somehow he was a little disappointed in me.
Perhaps I am projecting here, but I kind of feel like he isn’t quite as supportive as my other doctors about my going on SSDI. Not because he doesn’t think I have real problems and medical conditions, but because he seems to think I have a lot of potential and maybe he thinks if I get disability I’m just going to sit around and do nothing the rest of my life.
This may be partly my fault if he has that impression. After all, I don’t normally talk about all the stuff I do enjoy doing while there. I only see him every couple months for a short visit, so I tend to focus on what is going wrong, not what is going right. I don’t talk about all the art I make and sell or the books I write and sell. I don’t talk about my blogging. I don’t talk about all the people I correspond with on social media. I didn’t mention that I was recently made a board member on the International Board of Sensory Accessibility. I didn’t tell him about the art contest I submitted three artworks to this month. I don’t tell him about the online communities for chronic illness, chronic pain, autism, and other conditions that have given me a chance to support others and receive support myself.
I kind of wish I had mentioned some of those things now. Maybe next time.
I’m still struggling quite a bit. Feeling lethargic, numb, and exhausted all the time. Still not wanting to get out of bed, even though I’m not finding much refuge in sleep either, since my dreams the last couple nights have been overrun by nightmares. Quite an assortment of bad dreams too: A dream about my husband not loving me anymore, a dream about giant ants, a dream about trying to get kicked out of high school. Even in my dreams I’m miserable. During the high school dream the reason I wanted to get kicked out was because I was so depressed I just couldn’t function and wanted to go home and crash.
I’m hoping this depressive episode passes soon. I’m not sure if it is maybe exacerbated by seasonal affective disorder since I haven’t seen the sun in a while, or if this is just a shitty coincidence, but I wish I felt better.
Ugh. Turns out we have to replace the entire water heater. Over $1,800 (which we can’t afford)! This seriously sucks. To make matters worse, the guy couldn’t put the new one in until today, so we had to go all day and night without any water at all (they had to shut it off entirely due to the enormous leak). The guy said he would be here around 11am to put in the new water heater and it is now 12:30 and no sign of him yet, although he says he’ll be here soon.
Due to all this I am grumpy and feeling yucky and just want to whine lol. I can’t even flush the toilet!!! I know this may seem crazy to non-autistic people, but the huge change in my daily routine has driven me freaking crazy and brought on a nasty IBS flare. God, I hope this is over soon.
This seems like a good time to remind everyone that I do have a PayPal donation button set up on my blog if anyone ever wants to send a few bucks to help out or support my blog. You can donate any amount and don’t even have to have a PayPal account of your own. You can find the button on the right side panel of my blog home page, or access it through the Support My Blog page. If you are able to help out, that is great, but if you aren’t, your kind thoughts and well wishes mean the world to me.
A couple days ago, I was watching Kanye West’s “interview” in the White House Oval Office with Donald Trump. I must admit I mostly wanted to watch it just to see what kind of crazy stuff Kanye would come up with. To be frank, he has always seemed a little like a loose cannon, even back in the days when he announced that George W. Bush didn’t care about black people, or when he interrupted Taylor Swift during her award speech to say that Beyonce should have won.
However, when I heard Kanye say during his recent interview that he had been diagnosed bipolar, suddenly, a lot of things clicked into place. I hadn’t really thought of it before, but Kanye does come across as highly manic in his speech sometimes, especially when he is all worked up about things and causes a scene. He definitely seems to have pressured speech (his words just flow out everywhere and in every direction), and I recognize flight of ideas as well (his train of thought is often hard to follow, he shares his thoughts in a way that definitely isn’t always linear or seemingly coherent). Kanye often appears paranoid during these times as well.
I heard that after the interview, Kanye was asked about the bipolar diagnosis and said something along the lines that he thought he was misdiagnosed or he had somehow been cured (contradictory thoughts together). Even this reminds me of manic episodes, after all, what is more predictable than someone with bipolar denying their disease or refusing treatment when in the throes of mania?
Anyhow, my main point is that as someone who has bipolar type 2 myself, I do have empathy for whatever Kanye is dealing with mentally, even if I don’t agree with some of his bizarre or outlandish statements.
