Chronic Illness Memes

if there's a task, especially a recurring one, that you find difficult to do and that you keep avoiding, check whether you're in pain or physical discomfort.

For a long time I would avoid doing tasks like showering because they nebulously made me feel 'bad' or i just instinctively felt like avoiding them. It wasn't until I got a shower chair that I realised standing to shower was causing me pain. My bodymind knew that on some level but didn't tell the conscious me.

Similarly with sensory aversions (things you don't like). Before I got kitchen gloves, I did the dishes but it took me a long time and I never wanted to. Afterward, it got a lot easier to motivate myself.

"But how can you not know you're in pain/uncomfortabke?" Extremely easily if your brain is wired a specific way or if you were taught, intentionally or not, to downplay your own experiences or distance yourself from your body.

I am good at coming up with workarounds for accessibility issues by identifying some type of existing product that may help fit the required niche. And I get a kick out of it.

So I would like to offer this service to you, dear readers. Here are my terms:

'Accessibility need' is defined in the loosest sense possible. You do not need to consider yourself disabled to send a request. If you find something challenging in your everyday life that you think could be solved with tools, but you don't know what, you're invited to ask.

You may submit your accessibility need via ask, anon or not. DMs are not available for this as I would like people other than the asker to have the opportunity to benefit from my research.

No response guaranteed, and definitely not timely response. I will work on this at my own pace, so submit time sensitive needs at your own risk. I will answer based on my energy levels and ability to address the need, though I may also prioritize by how major the impact of solving it could be.

Payment accepted in the form of pictures of anything interesting you saw in nature, anecdotes regarding same, or a different type of funny story you would like to tell me. No one turned away for lack of these things - send the ask anyway.

Providing as many specific details as you can of your need and any parameters around it will improve the likelihood that my response will fit your situation. For instance, if you have low grip strength or unreliable vision or a specific budget ceiling to solve this particular problem, or anything else that may be relevant to whether a given solution will work for you, in particular. I'm not trying to solve a general need here, I'm trying to match your particular situation.

In that vein, I may ask follow up questions to clarify if I have understood the requirements correctly, or if more information would help. You may decide not to answer them if you don't want to disclose more information. This may affect whether I am able to successfully find the right thing for you.

So, may I recommend:

Here's his actual website which I feel is easier to navigate than the YouTube channel on its own and organizes things in a way that's easy to understand. He explains everything you need to know about the routine and each individual exercise has both a text description and a video tutorial

I don’t see much about conditions effecting the urinary tract so i thought i’d make my own.

The basics: neurogenic bladder (aka; neurogenic lower urinary tract dysfunction) is a broad term for bladder and lower urinary tract dysfunction caused by neurological disorders

Types: there is 3 types of neurogenic bladder; overactive, under active, and mixed type

Overactive: a hyper active bladder, it will have involuntary contractions

Under active: a bladder that is not active enough and doesn’t contract enough and when needed

Mixed type: a mix of symptoms and features of both under active and over active bladder

Symptoms (not a full list)

Overactive bladder

Urinary hesitancy (difficulty urinating)

Urinary incontinence

Frequency

Urgency

Under-active bladder

Urinary retention

Urinary hesitancy

Overflow incontinence

Not being able to tell you have a full bladder

Causes: neurological disorders (a few examples; spina bifidia, stroke, CNS tumors, Parkinson’s, and much more)

Treatment (not a full list, it also depends on the symptoms and underlying cause)

Urine schedule

Medicine

Sacral nerve stimulation

Catheters

Certain surgeries

Stigma: theres a lot of stigma around urinary disorders and disabilities. Many with them are scared to talk about them. It’s often seen as “gross” and “unsanitary”. Those of us with urinary issues often get shut down in conversations even in disability spaces because people think our disorders and symptoms are taboo and shouldn’t be talked about. All of this not only makes it hard to live with by constantly hearing part of your daily life called gross and unsanitary, but it makes people afraid to talk about it, including to doctors, when they really need to.

Sources

https://www.urologyhealth.org/urology-a-z/n/neurogenic-bladder

Black man named Daniel Cressy!! (23) in Louisiana has been the first person cured!! (Happy Black News!!!)

Keep using your brain and trying that hard thing no matter how foggy. Feel stupid! It's ok! I promise you are not stupid. I promise your brain will appreciate it. And that with time it will be valuable that you tried.

It's so easy to lose a whole week to brain fog. But your brain and body don't just stop existing that week (though it can feel that way). It's so important to try to incorporate puzzles anyway. Cook a meal from a scratch, do a jigsaw, the wordle, sudoku, use your other hand, learn a new card game, watch a brand new show, do simple math equations, write words backwards, learn a new language (or even just random phrases from a few), play a podcast, read a fun article or magazine, try a new creative project. Something! To help you feel better longer and keep your brains synapses synapsing.

Find a way to push yourself into it. Ask a friend to do it with you, set a timer, build it into your routine, have a bunch of fun games on your phone, puzzles by the bed, set your google to open straight to wordle.

TO CLARIFY: neuroplasticity is magic. And CONTRARY to prior belief it does not just stop after like 25. The brain can recover in exceptional ways so if you feel behind, or feel like you lost so much of what you knew due to a deep spell of illness or depression or injury; it's never too late. Never too late to nuture your brain to a better state of health.

Discovered last year I couldn’t look at my 2015 MacBook Air without it triggering nausea and migraines, and figured the screen died. Have been getting by on my phone, but concluded I really need a laptop again.

Saved up, realised I could afford a brand new MacBook Neo, and got one.

-And I couldn’t spend more than five minutes looking at the screen without massive eye strain, nausea, vertigo, and if I pushed it, I-need-to-lie-down-in-a-dark-room-for-hours migraines.

Looking up MacBook and Eyestrain explained what is going on. The liquid retina displays that Apple currently has uses Pulse Width Modulation or PWM. In order to give the screens a deeper depth of colour and contrast, PWM flickers between several hundred to thousand times a second.

And there is currently no way to turn it off. There are settings and apps to reduce it, but there is no way to stop the screen from flickering. Checked Apple forums, called Apple Support, and the time I could look at the screen kept shrinking. Got the laptop Tuesday, returned it Friday, today is Sunday and I’m still dealing with a vertigo migraine.

For MacBooks, it seems to vary on the computer model and the software it uses. In retrospect, the issue with my MacBook Air started after a major software update.

And it’s not just an Apple thing. Current Windows and Android screens do the same thing. There’s even a Reddit for people who are sensitive to PWM flickers to help find computers and screens that won’t trigger eyestrain and headaches.

So, yeah. This week has been a learning experience. But for those who are prone to headaches and migraines, this may be something to be aware of, cause I was not.