Have you tried _____ ?

Bitch, it's better to get a dollie and a stick at that point then.

yeah...that is basically what people do. or they are forced to use pieces of crap folding wheelchairs that hurt the user because they are intended primarily for being pushed. if you have someone with you 24/7 who can push you everywhere? a wheelchair costs a couple hundred for one that might cause a little less bruising than a hospital model. want to be independent at all? you need thousands of dollars for a proper fit or be willing to constantly injure yourself.

I would super appreciate it if healthy/abled people reblogged this post, because when people say these things it is so harmful to disabled, chronically ill, and mentally ill people

also! saying “I can’t do this because im disabled” is NOT “negative self-talk” or a “bad attitude”!!

[Image Description: A photo of a mannequin in a wedding dress sitting in a wheelchair that is decorated with ivy vines. The caption reads: The new wedding shop in town has a wheelchair using mannequin and it shouldn’t be exciting but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen disability portrayed in a shop window. End Description]

What’s a referral?

In the US, you can’t get an appointment with a specialist doctor until you go to your normal doctor and they check you out and refer you to an expert.

They usually do this because of insurance reasons — in order for insurance to pay for a specialist, you have to get checked up by your normal doctor first, and they have to officially recommend you see someone else.

Hi everyone!

As a medical professional and a medically complicated human this is very important to me

These are both true

Both are very very true.

!!!!!

Just going to point out that as much as this excerpt here describes it as affecting “fertility” and oh woe, they can’t get pregnant as easy…uh, it’s also something that can make them fucking miserable and POTENTIALLY KILL THEM Here’s the thing: ovaries normally do produce cysts. They’re supposed to! To an extent. They produce like, a tiny number, maybe one, each menstrual cycle, because the egg that is ready to be hypothetically fertilized, is PUSHED OUT to the fallopian tube, by an actual cyst. This is the normal process, in the “4 out of 5″ women who don’t have PCOS. In PCOS, though, my understanding is that the cyst production does not happen in this nice, orderly fashion, only happening approximately every few weeks; instead, it goes haywire and happens all over the place and WAY too much (hence “polycystic”).  Left unchecked, this can cause the organ to become damaged, it can cause it to swell and even press on other things in the abdomen and put OTHER parts of the body at risk, can cause all sorts of awful things. IIRC ( @tekka-wekka I think you know more about this than I do, by all means please correct me if I’m wrong about any of it?) it tends to cause a lot of pain or heavy bleeding during many people’s menstrual cycles and, as noted, causes them to be more irregular - so it’s basically a disability, one that can be LIFE-THREATENING. And guess what the main treatment for PCOS is, to keep the cysts in line and regulate the menstrual cycle properly? Hormone-regulating pills. You know, the ones normally labeled “birth control”.  This was what Sandra Fluke was testifying about a few years back, during health care debates, by the way. She had a friend who had EXACTLY this condition, and the fact that Georgetown’s student health coverage would NOT cover her “birth control” medication meant that she went without it for three months…and her ovaries, filled with cysts, enlarged so much that she required EMERGENCY SURGERY (to remove them entirely, IIRC).  Which is why Sandra Fluke was FIRMLY arguing for increased access to “birth control” medications; because leaving aside questions of autonomy, it’s an actual literal life-or-death health necessity for many people! Such as those with PCOS in specific! But I digress. My point is: this is a condition that goes beyond “fertility” issues; it requires a LOT of people to go on pretty much (IIRC) permanent hormonal regulation to carefully regulate their menstrual cycles in order to NOT DIE. Because, left untreated, it can, in fact, literally pose that risk. (And depending on the specific hormonal birth control in question - this may have the trade off of things like a higher stroke risk, so that’s…that’s a thing, too, oops) So uh. This? This is REALLY good news. But not JUST for folks with PCOS who want to have biological children; it’s literally just good news in general, because this could be LIFE-SAVING research?? I just wanted to point that out because, like, I don’t think a lot of people are aware of PCOS and how it can potentially KILL YOU,  and there’s a lot of misconceptions about ovarian/uterine health in general, and like… and I think some folks might scroll past this thinking it’s mostly about “fertility”? When it’s actually a condition that impacts WAY more than that, and chances are very very good you actually know someone with this condition, whether you realize it or not.

Reblogging for the additional info. Most of the folks I know with this don’t give a shit about fertility. They just want to stop needing S5+ painkillers to function at least 25% of the time.

The thing about this is, if IVF drugs were an effective treatment for PCOS, there wouldn’t be so many women with PCOS who go through multiple rounds of IVF. 

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?

It’s all about the illusion of control. People who are healthy like to believe they can always keep being healthy if they do the right things. They don’t want to think about how good people get struck with terrible circumstances for no reason. So they keep assuming that if they got sick, they could do something to make it better. And if you’re still sick, that must mean you’ve done something wrong or not done enough.