Catnap Unicorn

The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country.

Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

- John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

if you are in pain within minutes or seconds, that is not normal. that is a Symptom. poke your doctor into finding out what it is or connect with disabled and chronic pain groups.

if you are in extreme pain, not just "ugh my feet ache" pain but "i am going to pass out" pain, that is not normal. that is a Symptom. poke your doctor into finding out what it is or connect with disabled and chronic pain groups.

I mean, I can walk just fine, but standing in one spot for like 15 to 20 minutes will leave me in pain for days.

So that didn’t help

Meanwhile document the actual effect the pain/etc has on your life. Document how it impacts your ability to cook; your ability to clean; your ability to clean yourself; your ability to sleep; your ability to work; document all attempts to be more active and how the pain interferes with them. If you have to do something other than just go stand in the kitchen for ~1hr to cook a meal, that's something to write down; if you have to choose not to have a shower because it'll hurt, write that down. If the pain prevents you from going for a walk, write that down.

Every single time you make a decision about what you're doing based on the pain, you document that; every time you have to endure the pain for a necessary activity which then impacts what ELSE you can do, write that down too, with a direct connection.

(Warning: this will probably be depressing as all fuck and you will probably hate it. You are almost certainly ignoring the impact of pain on you way more than you think you are, and having to face it will feel bad in the short run. Very bad.)

And then you bring it either to your new doctor or if you MUST, to your current doctor, and you say: this is how the pain currently affects my quality of life. This is what I would be doing if I weren't prevented from doing it because of the pain.

Say that you would like to find the reason for this pain and you would like them to order relevant diagnostic tests. If they refuse, or hem and haw, ask them to document clearly in your records that you requested this and both that they refuse and their reasons for refusing.

If you must deal with the same doctor, document the concerns you have with the weight-loss drugs, and ask your doctor to be explicit about why she thinks that these risks are worth something that does not directly address your actual concerns. Ask why this is their first line treatment for the rest of what you've described, and why they are more concerned with pushing an overprescribed treatment than actually investigating the cause of your pain and addressing it appropriately based on an evidence-based diagnosis.

Bitch before enriched flour, neural tube defects like spina bifida were far more common. Even now, spina bifida clinicians and researchers are begging to have salt and maize fortified to reach groups that don’t use as much flour. Before iodized salt, the United States had a fucking GOITER BELT. Eleven years after the introduction of fluoridated water, a city in Michigan found the rate of dental caries among school children dropped a staggering 60%— in an era where tooth decay regularly fucking killed people

I’m literally not even going to start on vaccines, which are among the most successful and robustly studied public health measures in world history