A Little More on Comorbidities

In my most recent health update, I included a bullet-pointed list of most, if not all, of my issues and talked a little about ‘comorbidities,’ which is a big word that just means having multiple conditions going on simultaneously (at the same time) that can also be, in some ways, overlapped (in terms of causes and/or symptoms).

In my list, I grouped a few of the items together, but I didn’t really explain the overlaps. That’s what I want to do today, and what I have tried to represent in the diagram above.

Before I get into it: it should go without saying that I am not a doctor and this post is purely based on my own experience, and my own limited understanding of that experience. But, you know, I’m gonna say it anyway: I’m not a doctor. Do not use this post as a guide to diagnose yourself.

Probably the biggest thing to note is how Fibromyalgia is right at the centre of the diagram and, also, at the heart of many of my issues. This is mostly because it’s an umbrella condition that has many different things rolled up in it. (Yes, that’s a mixed metaphor, but I’m sure you know what I mean.)

The main symptoms I have from fibro are chronic pain, chronic fatigue, problems with my joints (which can, in turn, make me more exhausted and my body more painful more quickly), Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), depression, and anxiety (and fibro fog! Can’t forget that!! Though I incidentally did, in my first draft of this post. Plus points for irony!). You can have each of these things on their own, or even a few of them, without having fibro, but when you have all of them, it’s a pretty big indication that there’s something bigger at play.

For me, fibromyalgia is a big deal and the diagnosis made a lot of puzzle pieces click into place. But there are things in my diagram (and on my original list) that are not fibro related. Asthma, for example, has no link to fibro. Except, in my case, it’s triggered by allergies and my allergic response often then triggers my sinusitis and/or IBS symptoms.

Polycystic Ovary Syndrome has no direct link to fibro (at least that I’m aware of), but they both cause me abdominal pain. My IBS also causes me abdominal pain; depression and anxiety often go hand-in-hand even in people without fibro; and I have a sleep disorder that has nothing to do with fibro, but it does double-down on the fatigue I get as part of my fibro. I’m not exactly sure my costochondritis (inflammation of the cartilage that joins the ribs and breastbone) is linked to my more general joint and muscle problems, but it seems fairly reasonable to me that it is.

Moving on from this, in the bottom right of my diagram, you will see a triangle of what I’ve labelled ‘specific learning disabilities.’ These are dyslexia (problems with words*), dyscalculia (problems with numbers*), and dyspraxia (problems with motor skills and judging distances*). All three of these are different and can occur on their own, but they can also often present themselves in the same person, and I am one of those lucky people to have hit the trifecta.

Bottom left of the diagram you will see I’ve listed my hearing problems, which I haven’t linked to anything. That’s because, as far as I understand, it’s a separate issue from all the rest. I don’t know what caused it and I’m still looking for a solution, but medical science is discovering new things all the time so who knows what I might find out in the future regarding it. Maybe it is somehow linked to my patchwork of other conditions and symptoms, or maybe it really is there all on its own.

I mostly wrote this post and made the diagram above for my own benefit, to help myself better understand how I do (and don’t) work, but what I want you to take away from all this is that it can all get pretty complicated.

It’s only in the past year or two that I’ve come to identify myself with the label ‘disabled,’ and it’s a big label with big implications. The diagram above might make it look fairly organised – simple, or logical, even – but the day-to-day reality is that I am really tired and sore pretty much all of the time.

Hopefully my explanation has been clear, but if you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comment section below.


*I just want to note that the explanations of dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dyspraxia I have given are super simplistic and in no way represent the full symptoms or definitions of those conditions.

On Friendship

This is, in part, a follow up to my blog post ‘On Adulthood.’ I’ve just reread it in preparation to write this and, wow, what a difference a couple of months can make.

On the first of March I said, and I quote, “My mental health is the best it’s maybe ever been… for right now, I’m okay.”

And then, of course, the world fell apart. Not just my world, but THE world. And I, like many others, am not okay. Far bloody from it.

But what has this got to do with friendship, you ask? Well, in that first post I talked a little about ‘Friends’ the TV show, and how I was relating that to my life.

I now want to do that again, because I’ve had some follow up thoughts. On both the show and reality.

I finished binge-watching episodes maybe two weeks ago. And where it had started out as a fun pastime, it kind of ended up as just another thing I wanted to power through and finish. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was taxing, in the end, but I definitely kept hitting up against some problems again and again (and again).

For example, despite being set in the extremely multicultural city of New York, did you know that Friends didn’t start consistently having black background characters until season seven? It took the show SEVEN years to make the token gesture of putting one or two people of colour in the background of each episode.

What’s more, there is so much anti-LGBT sentiment. By the end, there wasn’t a single episode that didn’t have being gay (or trans) as a punchline. And there were so many fat jokes for a show where every single character is skinny!

You might wonder why I even bothered to finish it if these things were bothering me so much, and here is the crux of the matter: you can both love and be bothered by the same thing at the same time.

Our experiences of things are rarely binary, where we either entirely adore it or cannot find a single thing to like. With everything, there is nuance. And that can be okay – because it is the intrinsic nature of things, it has to be okay – for the most part, but you need to draw the line for when it’s not okay. For when the bad outweighs the good and it’s time to give up and walk away.

If Friends had still been airing when I was making my way through the seasons, I may well have stopped watching. But since it had ended, and the end was a definitive thing that I was not far off, I decided to stick with it.

Recently, however, I decided I could no longer stick with a real-life friendship. Like the show, and like all of us, this person had good points and bad points. But my breaking point came when those bad things – like their sharing of harmful conspiracies and racist lies – became frequent enough that I couldn’t put up with it anymore. I challenged my friend, but they wouldn’t listen. They’d been poisoned by the same kind of crap they were sharing.

So, I broke it off. I unfriended them. And I walked away.

Sometimes things change – people change – and sometimes that’s for the better and sometimes it’s not, but sooner or later you will come to a line in the sand, and you gotta decide which side of it you want to be on.

It can be sad letting people go, but what’s the point continuing to share my life with people if I can’t live with myself?

Black Books on my TBR

I said I was going to read more books by black authors, and I love a good list, so here are some specific books on my TBR (to be read) pile I plan to get to soon:

Poetry

Novels

Non-Fiction 

I generally like to consume my non-fiction on audiobook, so I have my upcoming Audible credits earmarked for both of these.

Other

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy my other recent blog post about ten books by black authors I’ve already read and loved, which you can find linked here.

Summer Writing Update

My last writing update was in March. Before lockdown. Before George Floyd was murdered and the Black Lives Matter movement took to the streets again. Before so many things, most of them stressful and traumatic (and some of them both).

The world has changed in some ways, stayed frustratingly the same in others, and we all are struggling on. So, let’s catch up.

I’m going to be talking about my reading and writing for the first half of the year in this post, but I recently shared a health and fertility update here, if you’re interested. And if you want to read about my response to the BLM movement, see here and here.

Reading

Sadly, because of the aforementioned global shitstorm, there is not a lot to report here. I am currently four books behind in my reading target for the year – 28 books read so far out of 65 (43%) – but am confident I can and will catch up.

Writing

Shockingly, I have been writing more than ever. I genuinely don’t understand how or why this has happened, because I’ve lost count of the number of times in the past three months where I’ve been close to tearing my hair out with frustration at my supposed lack of words. (As my long-suffering husband can attest.)

Here is a little breakdown in stats:

  • January – 9,000 words
  • February – 29,000 words
  • March – 24,000 words
  • April – 28,000 words
  • May – 32,000 words
  • June – 22,000 words

Overall, that’s 144,000 for the year.

Obviously the numbers are a little rounded, but compare them to last year when I wrote a total of 166,000 words over the course of the full twelve months, and 2018 when I wrote 146,000. It makes me wonder what word count I’d be sitting with right now if the world wasn’t on fire.

But what I will note is that, despite the steep rise in my word count, the projects I’ve been working on are not what I had intended right at the start of the year. For the most part, I haven’t really had the brainpower to work on “original” fiction, instead sticking well inside my comfort zone of fanfic.

Going forward, I have some plans, uh… planned. July is Camp NaNoWriMo, for which I have set my monthly goal to 30,000, but outside of that I’m keeping my writing goals for the rest of 2020 fairly quiet. Things are going on in the background, but it’s too early to talk about them yet. By the time my end of year update comes out, all will be revealed, so stay tuned! And please let me know how your writing is going.

‘Till next time!