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what's your ailment? (physical/mental health issues)
forgive me if this has been brought up before. i'm creepy and i like reading about this stuff. what do you have, how do you manage/treat it, how does it affect your daily life, nice/horror stories, etc. also if you have some acronym malady please say what it is
i've posted before but i mainly deal with generalized anxiety and depression as well as chronic migraines which have just recurred and so i'm not taking any medication for them as of yet....i've never had anything more serious though
oh yeah and I have trouble sleeping. could me some form of insomnia but it's most likely anxiety related. i'd webmd it but i would end up being diagnosed with cancer. i've been on medication for sleep before and it never really seemed to help, and i've taken some pretty strong shit.
Wow, not the 1st post I thought I´d make but hey, why not.
About 3 years ago I fell from the attic of a summer house (well, more like a cottage really) where my family was on vacation. I´ve seroiusly injured my left shoulder to the point where I wasn´t capable of using my left arm even slightly for nearly a year. It´s better now though, after nearly 2 years of rehab I´m able to use it again almost fully.
There is still the pain to deal with, but in the end it´s just pain, aslong as I can use my arm again it´s all good. As for how it impacted my life, well it was pretty huge since I play the drums. I honestly couldn´t imagine myself stopping because of an injury, which was the main reason I´ve undergone rehab. As for any medication, I just take a painkiller now and then, and that holds me over.
Mild schizophrenia (mostly auditory and some visual hallucinations with rare delusional episodes) but it really isn't much of a problem anymore, the last time I had a significant delusion was like 4 years ago and it hasn't acted up since.
I feel kinda unsure if I should post in this thread, considering how many posts were jokes but...
I actually have very bad eczema. My skin is REALLY bad... it is very sensitive to a lot of things which causes me to get rashes just about everywhere, really. However, since I usually cover up with a shirt and pants and shoes, it's mostly only seen on my hands. It affects me in a few major ways...for example, nobody wants to hold my hand for anything, and nobody wants to eat a bag of chips after I've reached into it and stuff like that. Worse is that people don't really take much care to be tactful, they just go right ahead and rudely talk about how gross my hands are. It's been getting a little better since I've been using a lot of medication but it's still pretty bad...
To be honest though, I just don't think of it much. Lots of people talk about how people who are born with ailments don't think about it much because they don't know anything else, and I think that's very much true here.
I don't really want to pull the sympathy card here, but I do feel like this is one ailment that doesn't get you any sympathy. Most people are very kind and give special treatment to disabled people and such, but that doesn't really apply to me. Nobody thinks I deserve special treatment, they just think I'm gross.
Not a bad 100th post, I suppose. I was looking for something meaningful to use my 100th post on :)
to be honest i think that that kind of thinking eg. "i'd be happy if i didn't have this; why is there no sympathy for this specific condition," etc is pretty common to almost every single problem there is. george orwell once said something like "men with toothache must think all men without happy," basically if something is fucked up in your life physically or mentally you think "well if i didn't have this problem everything would be O.K," and of course once you're cured you find a new fucking disability to plague you in some other sphere of your life, so the fun never ends.
i mean just thinking about it, from where i am i feel like i would much rather have rashes on my skin then be literally unable to do my homework because i have panic attacks and fits of nervousness when i even try to start -- i feel like if my mind was secure and safe and confident, i could get over any strictly physical setback. once i even remember saying something like "i'd rather be an amputee than this," which of course is such tremendous bullshit i can't even begin to kick myself for it, but basically i'm sure that if i had any other problem things would still feel pretty bad. realize please also that having "sympathy" for your condition is not always so great. before i was fucked up with x,y,z i was fucked up with some other pain Q for like 2 years and the great thing about it was even when i felt my appendage was going to explode with burning pain nobody could know about it. also having some kind of disease that engenders sympathy can make you feel like you're supposed to own it or something, and that can lead to a frustrating inner battle...
and yeah lol i felt a little guilty making the thread simply because it implied the solicitation of a beautiful and detailed jumpluff post wherein the facts contained would be shamefully to be held to a standard of necessary on-topic reiteration
Sorry! I didn't mean to seem like I was being unfair in regards to how bad I considered my own personal condition, compared to others. I am very appreciative that this is all that's wrong with me. And I'm not really looking for sympathy per se, I was more focusing on the latter, that I just wish people wouldn't be so rude about it. To be completely honest, I hate being pitied.
I honestly don't think about my condition so much, since it is just so familiar, but when this thread came out it I just wanted to put in my thoughts.
EDIT: By the way, perhaps you should have tagged this thread Serious? A lot of people are putting joke answers.
Posted this in an early thread so some of you will have read it before. It is a pretty interesting read because the condition is quite rare.
Sorry for the longish post.
I have a condition called Bi Lateral Chronic Exertional Compartment Syndrome. When I got to college and had to start walking around campus a lot, I noticed that even after walking for only a few minutes, my entire legs and feet, but especially calves, felt like they were on fire - which gave me excruciating pain and made it quite difficult to do just normal things like walking to class. At some points I could not even make the 10 minute trip to class and would have to stop, especially to classes that were an uphill walk (amplifies the pain even more). After stopping for about 30 seconds, the pain recedes; but if I start again, then the pain returns at nearly the full amount previous to stopping.
So after my Freshman Year I went to see a sport's medicine doctor at John's Hopkins. After undergoing an MRI and a few other tests to rule out other conditions, we did a Pressure test on my legs. At rest, the pressure is supposed to be under 4 (not sure on the units, just going by what my surgeon said). The pressure was 8 at rest, so that was a bit unusual. Usually compartment syndrome is at least 10. Then I ran on the treadmill for 5 minutes and came back and had the pressure tested again. It was 25. So it was over 6 times the maximum amount that should normally be had.
So we decided to schedule the surgery for that December (3 days before Christmas). The surgery is described as "barbaric," where the surgeons cut through soft tissue to allow the muscles to expand properly, lowering the pressure. My surgeon, who does about one of these surgeries a month, told my family after the surgery that it was the worst case he had ever seen - after he initially opened up my legs during surgery, they swelled to near tree trunk size. He compared my compartment syndrome with the compartment syndrome usually found in patients that need emergency medical attention or the limbs will need to be amputated (such as a foot being rolled over by a car). That was how much pressure was released when the surgeon opened my legs. The surgery was fine and I recovered extremely well - I was actually walking on my own in normal shoes with no help in two weeks, which really surprised my surgeon given what he saw during the surgery.
My legs did get a bit better - I could now walk to class without too much trouble (still very painful, but not enough to cause me to need to stop). Although my legs were better, my feet were not. My surgeon, who is a doctor for the Baltimore Orioles, had never heard of compartment syndrome in the feet; only the legs. So he referred me to the Foot and Ankle Reconstructive Specialists at Mercy in Baltimore (my pre-med friends always laugh that John's Hopkins had to refer me to a different surgeon). After doing the same pressure testing on both of my feet (which is done with the biggest needle I, or my mother, had ever seen - causing my feet to bleed quite badly because there is very little muscle to protect from the needle, unlike when I did the testing on my calves) it was found I also had abnormally high pressure in my feet. We scheduled to have the surgery in June, after my Sophomore Year.
The surgery again went well, and the recovery was about the same as the first. I had to use crutches and could hardly walk for a few weeks: attempting to walk caused intense pain. I remember the nurse trying to get me out of my hospital bed and into the wheelchair. When my feet touched the ground for the first time, I almost passed out from the pain. Some of the surgery had to be done on the compartments on the bottom of my feet.
Unfortunately my feet have not gotten as well as my legs did after the surgery. Walking around campus is not too bad anymore, thank god. For some reason the pain gets much worse if I am carrying more items in my backpack, such as my laptop. On Tuesdays/Thursdays I have to make a 10 minute uphill trek across campus and then walk up 4 floors to get to my class - if I bring my laptop, the pain is nearly unbearable when I get to my class. I've been able to manage ok - my real problem is that I am not able to enjoy things I like such as tennis (can only do a bit before I need to stop) and I haven't been able to go to the gym and run/bike. I can push myself through the pain if I am motivated enough on certain days, but keeping up that motivation has been the issue.
For those wondering, Chronic Compartment Syndrome happens to athletes in repetitive sports such as Swimming, Tennis, Running, Biking, etc. (I swam for over 10 years before college). It is quite rare in the legs, and almost unheard of in the feet (my surgeon at Mercy had only ever seen it once before).
Thanks for reading.
I have 2 more scars on my legs and 2 more on my feet for a total of 10.
My hearing is pretty bad, not deaf, but I really do strain at times to hear in conversations. That and I have some constant ringing at times even though nothing is causing it.
And no, I've never listened to anything overly loud or anything, bad genetics. My brother on the other hand has the volume cranked up to max on just about everything and his hearing is fine, how fair is that >.>
I can't compare to that up there, but I have an ingrown toenail on my right big toe.
Fucking annoying, it basically never goes away. So I always have to dig it out with my second toe.
At one point I kind of had to have a mini-surgery, and I considered just killing the root, but I just had the toe dug out and kind of hoped it never came back. And it always does.
Also, I always need to get two anesthetic shots, then a third one.
it's not that bad but i've got a congenital lack of cartilage in some of the joints of my body, most noticeably my knees and hip. the pain from it neither unbearable nor constant, but it flares up when i spend long periods of time walking briskly or standing up, because my posture deteriorates and puts pressure on my knees. my dad has the same issues and had them at my age, and had to have surgery due to stress on his knees from playing football (afl not american football, a really high intensity sport) regularly, so i'm hoping it doesn't reach that stage for me. it doesn't stop me from doing anything; it's just something i live with.
The only thing I can think of is that I was hit in the face by a baseball and it caused my vision to go in my right eye. Before the incident, I had 20/20 vision in both eyes, but after the incident, I now have 20/20 in my left and 20/100 in my right, last check-up. My right eye is also sensitive to light and it's misaligned, so it drifts out.
Honestly, I have a bunch of minor things that are annoying I guess but I am absolutely happy to have them over something legitimately debilitating.
I have asthma; I am really allergic to Pollen and fatally allergic to peanuts (likewise allergic to all other nuts); the cartilage in my nose has been crooked since birth, so I can only breathe through my mouth--getting surgery soon; I walk toe-heel and always have so I have difficulties walking quickly without running--it's made my calves muscular though!; I have a random rare medical condition called "Hypoparathyroidism" in which I do not produce parathyroid hormone at all, meaning I am really calcium / Vitamin D deficient and frequently have an excess of phosphorous levels. The last thing is something I learned recently, but it's not a huge deal since all I have to do is take my 12 calcium pills a day and watch the phosphorous I consume. It's just funny because 99% of Hypoparathyroidism comes from someone's surgeon fucking up in a surgery regarding Hyperparathyroidism and taking too much out...or some sort of genetic history, neither of which are in any way related to me. "Oh well"
