It breaks because it is made thin as a ring and any decent pressure on it snaps it.

The guy that made ‘em

You working at the rock shop

Malcolm Tucker + Scottish Twitter

That word DOES NOT MEAN you’re making it up. It doesn’t mean you’re imagining the symptom. What it means is that the symptom ISN’T DIRECTLY CAUSED BY ANY OF THE THINGS THAT WOULD NORMALLY CAUSE IT.

I fought to get a PCOS diagnosis for 2 and a half years. For the ENTIRE time I was fighting, I was dealing with 3 cysts that were not going away by themselves and eventually required surgery to remove. At one point close to the end of the battle, I suddenly went blind. I was visiting my parents and was standing on the veranda looking out over the tree we had planted in memory of my dog and suddenly I got one of the shooting pains that I was quite frankly used to at that point and my vision started to go dark. It was like the sun was setting while being completely hidden behind storm clouds but it was 2pm in the middle of Summer on a clear day. Within about 30 seconds I couldn’t see ANYTHING. I was 27 years old and I was screaming for my mother.

My mum raced me to her doctor (he was a 15 minute drive away as opposed to 45 minutes to the nearest hospital) and he quickly worked out that there was nothing wrong with my eyes and what had happened was totally unrelated to them. Then he said it was psychosomatic and I freaked out, yelling that I was NOT making this up and I definitely wasn’t imagining it. Very quickly he calmed me down and said he believed me and I had misunderstood. He explained that whatever was going on with my abdominal pains (he suggested PCOS which I hadn’t even heard of at that point) had been ignored for so long that my body was starting to do things other than the normal pain response to try to draw my attention to the problem. My sight going was my body basically jumping around in front of me going “HEY ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME HELLLOOOOOOO??????”

He gave me some prescription strength painkillers and my sight started to come back as soon as they started to kick in. About 45 minutes after it started I could see well enough to walk around without help and within a day and a half I was back to normal. On top of that I finally had a scan booked to figure out what the hell was causing all the pain.

When I was 18, only a few months after graduating from high school, I started having seizures. Serious, triggered at the drop of a hat, knock me unconscious for an hour or more and leave me dazed for days kind of seizures.

I was rushed to hospital two or three times within the space of a week after passing out in the middle of cooking dinner or talking with my family, but the hospital could not find anything wrong with me. I spent a week in the hospital in a planned admission, connected to an EEG monitor for 23 hours a day with the doctors hoping to catch my seizures in action and finally figure out what they were. I don’t know how many seizures I had during that week, but at the end of it, they said that even after all that, there was nothing wrong with me. After that, they sent me to a psychologist.

I was diagnosed with PNES - Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Siezures. Essentially, it was explained to me, I had been ignoring my anxiety and PTSD for so long that my body was acting out just like @kamorth ’s had. When they started treating me for anxiety and PTSD, my siezures eventually turned into panic or anxiety attacks, and then stopped altogether.

When I was 22 I hit a wall. I called the suicide hotline from my car so my roommates wouldn't hear me crying. I explained that I could barely shower, feed, or dress myself. I needed immediate intervention.

They asked me if they could send an ambulance for me. They wanted to hospitalize me. I explained that I was a week away from finals. And graduation. If I were hospitalized, I couldn't graduate. The inpatient program also didn't allow phones or visitors, and I knew how disastrous it would be for me to lose contact with my family support system.

I didn't need to be hospitalized. I needed daily solutions. Simple ones, even. I needed a few precooked meals in my fridge so I could use my menial energy to keep my body going. I needed a doctor to contact my school and ask if I could have some extensions on my class assignments. I neededna few excused absences so I could catch up on my lost sleep.

They told me there was an intensive program that allowed residents to live in an inpatient care facility and get daily help with tasks like eating, therapy, medication, and showering, while still leaving for work and school, but it cost $30,000. I told them half the reason I was calling them was because of my financial pressures and fear.

In about 10 minutes of back-and-forth, it became clear that they had no true solution for me. I could go into the hospital and an inpatient program which would interrupt my entire life, and which I knew did not create very good results and had traumatized some of my own friends, or, well, I couldn't even go into debt for the other program. They didn't accept any new patients without half of the cost upfront. So it wasn't even an option.

No therapist or psychiatrists or social workers could fit me in for 3-8 weeks.

So I said thank you and hung up, emotionally spent. I felt utterly empty.

Sitting in my car I realized I had a choice, to live or to stop. Nobody was going to save me. Nobody was going to help.

So I went inside, and I cried myself to sleep, and when I woke up I still hadn't made a choice. So then I did. I chose to live no matter how terrible, just in case things turned around down the road.

It was unspeakably difficult. I didn't shower. I barely ate. I either slept too much or not enough.

But I did survive, and a year later I got with a therapist who started to make things a little lighter for me.

I still struggle now, but things are usually much better, and I'm glad I'm still here.

I just think it's important to acknowledge that for many people, especially in rural areas, and for people without money, which is most people, that the "help is always available" line feels hollow. Because often times it isn't, actually.

But that doesn't mean there will never be.

Overall, we need to build an entirely new system for mental health support in this world.

But for now, ask yourself or your friend in crisis what might make things a little more bearable until help actually is available.

A meal? Emailing a professor? Clean laundry? What might make things a little lighter?

source

‘…My school is older than your entire town.’

‘Sorry, you think *how far* is okay to travel for a shopping trip?’

“All right, it’s going to be a long bus ride, so make sure you’re prepared for that.”

We all brace ourselves.  A long bus ride?  How long?  We’re Americans; a long bus ride for us is a minimum of six hours with the double digits perfectly plausible.  We can handle a twelve hour bus ride as long as we get a bathroom break.

The answer.  “Two hours.”