Arthritic Artist

In the Netherlands, abortion is freely available on demand. Yet the Netherlands boasts the lowest abortion rate in the world, about 6 abortions per 1000 women per year, and the complication and death rates for abortion are miniscule. How do they do it? First of all, contraception is widely available and free — it’s covered by the national health insurance plan. Holland also carries out extensive public education on contraception, family planning, and sexuality. An ethic of personal responsibility for one’s sexual activity is strongly promoted. Of course, some people say that teaching kids about sex and contraception will only encourage them to have lots of sex. But Dutch teenagers tend to have less frequent sex, starting at an older age, than American teenagers, and the Dutch teenage pregnancy rate is 9 times lower than in the U.S.

I endorse evidence-based medicine, and evidence-based activism.

The Netherlands do a lot of things right.

I hate glamorizing over-working. It’s not healthy. The fact that there are so many people going without sleep, food, personal hygiene (not to mention time for relaxation, personal time, and socialization, which are very necessary for mental health) just to stay afloat is not something to be celebrated or applauded. It’s a problem, not a goal that all good employees should aspire to, or a norm everyone should be expected to perform.

Too true

financial advice: NEVER GET SICK.

The realest.

“lets try to get you down to a 0 on the pain scale” lmao I like your enthusiasm buddy but have I got some news for you

My doctor gave me that line recently. To Which I giggled and said "I'm so not that optimistic"

Has anyone else noticed how, when you have a chronic condition of some kind, that there’s always the basic assumption from people around you that you’re not already doing everything you can?

Love this

Thank you. It honestly helps so much to see that my experience is relatable, and I hope it has helped other people know they’re not alone in their struggles. The response to this post is why I decided to focus my tumblr more on my art depicting my experience of chronic illness (URL change from lavenderspoonie to chronically-illustrated). Thanks for your support, everyone!

One of the things that both chronically ill and non chronically ill people have to remember about chronic illness is: Recovery time is not free time. Sleep is not a hobby. You may have more hours in your life devoted to those things than others, but you can’t only take those hours out of what would otherwise be free time. It doesn’t matter if you just spent a lot of time sleeping or lying around with no spoons and in too much pain to sleep. It’s still important to spend time having fun, if you can. It’s still important to have actual free time, actual time off.

Why do people say that? It’s not encouraging. It’s insensitive and hurtful.

Plus chances are we've already thought about it and it terrifies us... So maybe don't continue use to terrify us on purpose...