Anyone who’s anyone has been following my health odyssey for the past few years (er… since i started blogging that is) has seen that i’m kind of getting diagnosis after diagnosis piled on. i officially have one of those lists that looks like it is made up and couldn’t possibly be real, since how can one person have so many things? Especially when, overall, i appear to be mostly functional, yes? i mean. i’ve been able to hold down a job. i can clean and stuff. i can cook. Overall, i’m a pretty good Adult, all things considered.

Except but not really. That’s the thing with being human we aren’t actually perpetual motion machines. Even your regular, garden variety human (as in Not Disabled) can burn out if they push themselves for too hard and too long.

So much the worse when you are disabled and don’t know it and push yourself for too hard and too long. When things fall apart they Fall Apart. My rapid accummulation of diagnoses isn’t because I’m having fun trying to collect them all but rather bc I spent years without adequate access to health care and ignoring a lot of my problems. Now I have access and everything is catching up with me. Not accidental that my 20s are past and I’m hitting my mid-30s and my body is now going “I’m done. I’m done. No more”.

i saw my liver specialist yesterday. If anyone recollects, i have a fatty liver. i don’t drink, so its a result of a bad diet, genetics, and no exercise. At this point, glob is still with me, because i don’t have any scarring and (i guess) it doesn’t look like my liver has significantly declined. i’m happy to hear this. Less happy about the fact that there is no solution to a fatty liver other than…. lifestyle changes. In this case: diet and exercise. Particularly the exercise. 30 minutes everyday was recommended.

Recently, i was also told to eat more fibre and whole grains because my cholesterol is high. i’m already on a boatload of medications so i didn’t really inquire about that, i figured, ‘hey, i can totally do this!’. Of course, all that happened is a pretty long stretch of binge eating only to get handed my Official diagnosis of a binge eating disorder like a week or so later.

Currently, i’m on sick leave because i taking myself off this medication the neurologist put me on for my chronic headaches. It was making so fatigued and full of brain fog that i couldn’t work. Of course, this means that as more of the med leaves me my headaches are increasing in intensity making me realize that they were actually much worse than I had realized, I had just become somewhat accustomed to the chronic pain.

But i’m also realizing, during this wonderfully long break from work, that i actually feel like a human being for the first time in a long while. i don’t, in actual fact, feel like garbage all the time. And its amazing. Unfortunately, i still can’t actually do much since that fatigue is still riding me hard and i’m still disabled, but i don’t feel like garbage.

Lifestyle Changes

i hate these words because i know what i want them to mean but i also know what they mean in terms of my doctors and such. for my doctors it means eating a low-fat diet, high fibre, whole grains, and getting 30 minutes of exercise everyday. For me, it increasingly looks like not having to work. And then maybe I can accomplish the rest of it.

Sadly. i know this isn’t what’s going to happen. We live in a capalist society and i don’t quite think i’m at the point where i could get away with not working (ie, get gov’t assistance), under the very strick rules i don’t think i’m disabled enough yet. As long as i can still function enough to work, then work is what i must do. Even if it means driving my health further into the toilet. Perhaps if i spend enough time doing this, my health will decline enough that i will become disabled enough to not have to function as a capitalist cog.

The worst thing about all of this is that i would, in actual fact, like to be the healthiest me i can be. i’ll never not be disabled. But. Given time and space, i could address things like my fatty liver and such. i could probably deal with my eating disorder and start a healthy diet. i could even maybe exercise for 30 minutes a day. It isn’t going to happen, though, not if i have to go to work and do chores and feed myself and survive.

Lifestyle. Changes.