chronic illness

Restrooms of the public kind…

/ Shannon DeRose / Leave a comment

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Let me just take a moment..

Public Restrooms suck. They are so weird. Okay but lets break it down.

(Also I don’t take photos of public restrooms so here is a photo of trees… That has nothing to do with my post, but I wanted to add a photo.. Deal with it.)

There are different kinds of public restrooms. You have your store public restroom, restaurant public restrooms ,  chick-fa-la restrooms gas station restrooms, and then we come down to.. Beach public restrooms. I was at the beach the other day and beach restrooms, are some of the worst things. I mean they are dirty, people are undressing and they smell weird, and its so gross. Just no.

Lets move on to another thing about public restrooms..

So you walk in the restroom and there is a line, but you have to pee really bad, you wait your turn and then an some random person walks in and just takes the restroom when you have been waiting, maybe this doesn’t happen to other people but to me it happens all the time.

Oh the people who talk on the phone in public restrooms, what on earth? Why are you talking? Like shut up and go pee… Don’t talk on the phone its awkward for everyone else going to the restroom.

The handicapped stall, so when I’m with my niece who is 3 I will use the handicapped stall because its hard for us to both fit in the small restrooms, but I try not to do this all the time, but I hate when all the stalls are open and some normal person goes into it. I’m thinking what is wrong with you? Why must you use the handicapped stall…. And I mean if you have a chronic illness and you need to use the handicapped stall go for it. And I normally try to give people the benefit of the doubt, because you never know and someone might have an ostom bag and need to change it or dump it. You never know about people so.. Just don’t judge.

Also when you go to wash your hands and there isn’t any soap or papertowels or when there isn’t even a bowl dryer and you washed your hands and are standing there with nothing to dry it on and you’re in shorts and everything is bad… Just bad.

Oh when you go to the restroom and someone is waiting for someone but you stand behind them even though you see that stalls are open but you just go oh it must be dirty because this person is just standing here, and then they tell you after a few minutes and you just…. Ugg….

When you run out of toilet paper in public restrooms… Thats.. That is just bad…

Vomiting in public restrooms is annoying.. Its just annoying well vomit over all is just annoyed.

Oh weird people in public restrooms the ones who just start talking to you. They just start talking…

Over all public restrooms are a strange thing to deal with.. So as you use the public restrooms this week think of me… Wait I take that back that sounded awkward..

This is randomness about public restrooms want more? Come back on Wesday Friday and Next Sunday…. Its always random… Just yea.

(This idea behind the post is thanks to awesome Macy go follow here on twitter @missmacy1023 ) 
Shayweasel out.

I Won’t Fail My Failing Body

/ Shannon DeRose / Leave a comment

 

Today I ate lunch and then as my disease made up its mind that this food I had taken into my body was not going to stay, I went to the restroom and vomited, a few times. I tried not to make it a big deal or anything.

When I came out of the restroom, a lady stood there just looking at me and she said “Are you bulimic?” there are a few things about this question, one if the answer was yes that is not the way to ask a stranger in the restroom. But I answered “No I have a disease called gastroparesis my stomach is paralyzed and doesn’t work the way it should.” she then went “Oh well why do you have it?” I hadn’t ever had someone ask me this follow up question before. I answered “They don’t know the reason why. It might be genetics.” She followed up with this “Maybe you just haven’t taken care of yourself.” She then left the restroom and I stood there and looked into the mirror.

My collarbones have become so much more visible, its not by choice believe me. My legs are thin, my cute round face is less round theses days, even though I have a little left of my moon face from the meds a few weeks ago. I stood there and thought.

Its not fair to me, because I have a chronic illness that people feel the need to either tell me how to heal myself or tell me that I’m not taking care of myself. If I had cancer I would be brave, and cancer is hard to face, but I don’t understand why the fact that I “just” have a chronic illness that I should just deal with it. It doesn’t seem fair. I was born with illnesses and more illnesses have attacked my strong so strong body. I’ve been through more in my life health wise than most. I’ve had crazy days and I’ve been in a places where I had to make crazy hard choices.

My body is failing me. I didn’t fail it. I didn’t make myself sick. I just am sick. I’m okay with my illnesses hurting me but I’m not okay with people telling me Its my fault. I do not have cancer, no. I have an illness that is incurable. Its lifelong, Its painful. Its horrifying sometimes. I have things that are undiagnosed. I had a doctor straight up tell me that I’ll most likely be in some pain forever, and that he was sorry. I have had surgeries not many just two, I’ve had an air tumor in my nose.. What’s that? My doctors didn’t even know.

   So no I didn’t fucking give myself theses illnesses Its not my fault. You can tell me off when I’m vomiting in the restroom, but only if you will hold my hair and then give my toilet paper so I can blow my nose and get all the vomit out it. I didn’t make myself vomit, my body is not working. My stomach has just stopped. My doctors are working to either find a med that works or a feeding tube might come into play or I might have to do some other stuff that I truly just don’t want to do. I want to go and live my life. I really want to go on that long bike ride.

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I’m strong. I’m really strong, but you see me as an attention seeker in some weird public restroom, you didn’t ask my name, you didn’t tell me you were sorry this happened to me, no you blamed me. My body is not my fault. My mind is not my fault. The things that happen to me are not my fault. I only get to choose how I react to them. And man I’ve reacted damn well… I’ve done pretty good. I choose to wake up. I choose to keep going because I don’t see the choose to stop.

   My body is failing me, but one thing’s for sure, I’m not failing my body.

 

This has been Wesday the day where I rant about whatever I please. And today I ranted… Don’t blame me for my illness, I will not fail my body.

Thanks for reading~ Shannon DeRose (Shayweasel)

Why weekends are hard…

/ Shannon DeRose / 2 Comments

I hate mondays Fridays, I know what? Shay? How can you hate the weekend they are fantastic. One let me say I haven’t always hated them. And I still hate Thursdays more than I hate Fridays but for me I hate the idea of the weekend, that you have to go out and hang out with friends or if you don’t have plans then you are just going to die alone or become a cat lady.

I mean its not a big deal. I have been a nanny and my idea of a friday night was the parets going out and me making like 100 dollars thats my idea of Friday for a long time and when I wasn’t working I would sit in my living room watching TV shows or movies or I would be on tumblr for like nine hours.

So I don’t get where this you have to be busy on the weekend sleep in and go out and party or go to church on sunday. I don’t get it. I want to do what I do on a normal day. To me the weekend ends up normally being really boring and I don’t enjoy it because everyone is saying “Oh my I’m doing blah blah..” I mean even if I had a lot of friends who wanted to do stuff the weekend wouldn’t be when I wanted to hang out it would most likely be a random day.

But I want to say since my chronic illness kicked in over drive, the weekends end up being really hard on me. I feel like I am missing out on a part of live that I never knew I needed but I don’t need it. You might be someone in school or work the weekdays and when you get a free day its like fantasticness but to me it sometimes end up making me sad because I’m like I don’t have energy to do anything and its not going to change just because its the weekend sometimes I have good days but they are normally on a weird day like Tuesday and I get to make breakfast and go to the store, but my body doesn’t know that its the weekend. It does what it wants to.

So why am I telling you all this? Because I know that people with chronic illnesses might feel the same way, so if you know someone who has a chronic illness go over and watch a movie with them and don’t try and make them talk to much or anything just let them be but be there with them. It means a lot when you get a friend who can sit in the same room on their laptop as you and not talk but will say something like did you see this?

Or when we need to rant about shit you listen. Its hard because we might seem whiny but it really is that some of us aren’t around people. Don’t talk to people, and a lot of us don’t get to see very many people at all or only talk to people online.

The weekends are hard because its not just we can’t get out its that no one wants to stay in and no one wants to hang out with you.

When you are diagnosed with a chronic illness you normally lose half your friends right off the bat and it kills small parts of you. So yes, if you want to help make weekends better then just be there and say what’s on your mind.

My name is ShayWeasel and this has been a weirdish public blog post…

#spooniestrong #weekendssuck #fuckit

Internet people…

/ Shannon DeRose / Leave a comment

I have a problem. Its not that big of an issue, its more like well.. .Let me just tell you

I’m an internet type person, I enjoying the internet, I am not that social of a person, My sisters are mostly all very social.

They love people most the time, me? No. I can be highly rude and I sometimes would rather read blogs and watch youtube videos then talk to people. Yes this could be a problem. I like to say that this isn’t a problem at all, that this is totally normal, but lets take what I’m doing right now.

I’m sitting in a sort of dark room, my family is downstairs and I’m writing a blog post, yes I’m writing a blog post upstairs away from my family, while listening to Lady Gaga through headphones. I really fail at social things.

Today as we all sat in the living room I played YouTube videos that no one asked to watch on the TV using the chrome cast, but personally I know it seems weird that I’m not a huge social person but I do like how I am. I don’t think I’d change much about myself and the fact that I am an internet person is okay. I’ll stay up late watching YouTube videos reading blogs writing blog post and well sometimes making YouTube videos which I make private because I’m so nervous to show people.

I might not be social face to face, I might be shy and I might get upset when people don’t want to hear what I have to say but I like myself I’m weird as well… I’m just Shay

and I like that about me

My name is ShayWeasel and I’m an internet person if you’re an internet person let me know and we can be internet people together and maybe we can be awesome and weird as shit together from a far.

  So yea thanks for reading… I guess thats cool…

The Medical World Has failed

/ Shannon DeRose / Leave a comment

This post should really bother you, if it doesn’t….

 

The medical world has failed horridly for people with chronic illnesses, they have failed us. I as someone who has multiple chronic illnesses I know. Because as the doctors talk to you like you are either stupid or like you are suppose to understand everything. I have health issues and the doctors they act like I’m suppose to put up with being in pain and being sick because they have no fucking clue how to live with chronic illness, when I go to the doctor and I say well I had one good day last week and then I say “I only threw up twice all day.” Yea thats a good day, I’m fed up with doctors treating people with chronic illnesses like its our fault, and oh they do.

in the medical world you sometimes have to wait nine weeks to nine months to a few years to get to see the only doctor who has any clue what they are doing, people are either misdiagnosed or they are called insane and sent home, or better yet put somewhere like an mental hospital when they have a physical illness that needs to be treated by a doctor who will listen.

Living with an illness is hard but personally what’s harder is hearing the words “It is all in your head” “You are already on the treatment” “the medicine I put you on is suppose to help”

My sarcastic answers to these questions are much easier for me to say then really dealing with another doctor and another treatment that didn’t work. The medical world is not helping because out of the 7000 rare diseases there are only 200 that have cures and most of the rare diseases don’t have treatments, theses diseases are unknown and so most of them are undiagnosed so you have a ten year old child whose body parts body out of place and everyone just says she is loose jointed and then they go on and act like this is fine and then when she is 15 her body hurts and other weird things keep happening but what happens when that same girl gets in a car crash and she is rushed to the ER and she is talking and all is fine but then she dies her heart burst because she has EDS and it wasn’t on any of her paperwork and she didn’t even know, because no doctor put all the pieces together, what happens then?

They die, okay lets go back a little, sometimes doctors want to put us into small little boxes when in reality some of us have multiple rare diseases, and we don’t fit into the boxes of us, well the people with EDS might be able to fit into small boxes but not health wise. The medical world needs to admit they failed the people with chronic and rare disease.

It needs to change, we don’t need to be treated like we are insane every time we walk through the door, my stomach when I throw, I just throw up like a gush of water, if you didn’t want to know that then I’m sorry, but it seems the doctors they don’t want to know either, because as soon as they come into the room, they have made up their minds, when are blood test show we are normal, maybe you aren’t doing the right blood test, maybe its you doctors, because every chronic illness person thinks its there fault, and I don’t know where doctors got this idea that everyone is making up their illnesses, but they aren’t. Maybe five people are but most of them aren’t and you need to deal with the fact that maybe you doctor have no clue what is wrong but do tell me that you know something is wrong, tell me you believe me, even if you can’t help me, just be honest with me and say you can’t because as the person with the illness, I’m not just trusting you with my illness, I’m trusting you with my life.

We have illnesses, we aren’t fakers, we are sick, so dear medical world right now you are failing the people with chronic and rare illness/diseases, and we know that we may never get better but we want some help. So please help us.

  As always I might be a spoonie for life but I just hope I’m not always in pain.

Chronic Illness living…

/ Shannon DeRose / Leave a comment

I thought today about how I feel like people don’t understand what a chronic illness means, I mean I have an illness that I will always live with. But the physical pain isn’t the worst part of having this illness its the emotional pain, sometimes you feel like you talk too much about it, other times you want to just not talk about it for the rest of your life. Its the way people act to you. Its hard to know do I talk about my illness or do I want other people not to know or am I allowed to say blah blah or is that wrong? Its not something I’m okay with, I don’t want people to feel sorry for me I want people to just I don’t know understand.

In my first blog post on here I talked about oversharing and it comes into play here as well, how much do they want to know, part of me really does want to talk about it not because I’m obsessed but because at least seven times a day I’m vomiting or feeling weak or I bend down and feel as if my heart rate went up. Its because every part of my day I’m dealing with the illness inside me. I am having to deal with it, but I don’t want to just deal. I want to be alive and I want to live, but living is hard, so I am sorry sometimes when I have a bad pain day or just feel really yuck I might overshare and tell you to much, but I hope you understand that this pain I feel doesn’t go away I either numb it with pain killers or I go out through my day. I know I’m not going to be cured and I know life isn’t easy but I just want you to understand that I’m living with a chronic illness.

 And guys my fellow spoonies, know that most people aren’t going to understand its not going to get easier, but you will have to deal with people being rude, but every now and then you are going to get this person who will change everything, it might be a spoonie friend or someone who just tries and understands, or someone who has dealt with illness and they are going to be your friend.

 We spoonies have to stick together through the misdiagnoses and through the mean doctors to all the people who are just “dumb bitches” we will no matter what get through this!!