The Martian Princess Chronicles
A Martian Princess living with the hidden disabilities caused by residing on planet Earth
This is not a rhetorical question. Can somebody please help me to understand how to utilise talking therapies? Because in all truth and honesty they have never made sense or been of any use to me. Continue reading “I Have A Penchant For Rejecting Talking Therapies. How Do I Overcome This?”
You never really know how close you are to the end of your tether until someone or something starts hacking away at it. To the outside world it may seem like an overreaction to something innocuous, unimportant or even frivolous; but for those of us hanging from that tiny thread, it is the whole world – or at least the only sliver of the world in which we feel we can survive in. Continue reading “Someone Snatched My Security Blanket!”
If we were having coffee I would probably be face down on the table telling you that I’d experienced the best worst night in a long time.
Fibromyalgia is a complicated and challenging syndrome, and living with it is something that I’m having to learn through a fair amount of trial and error. There are things that I thought, for years, were my body’s own ‘quirks’, that turned out to be quite well-known symptoms; but, simultaneously, it appears that every sufferer is a unique case. This poses a very obvious problem for patients, who will have to learn what their bodies are doing, and why they’re doing it: but it also poses a problem for physicians as a treatment that’s good for the Goose could actually be disastrous for the Gander. Initially, I believed this was why, after my initial diagnosis, I was immediately discharged from the Rheumatology clinic and left to my own devices. (I wasn’t exactly thrown to the wolves; I was put on a waiting list for a pain clinic assessment at the end of last year, but there’s no guarantee that they will accept me as a patient.) On the other hand, being left in treatment limbo may have less to do with the clinician who diagnosed me and more to do with the findings of more and more research. Rheumatology is a muscular-skeletal and autoimmune speciality, but a vast amount of evidence suggests that Fibromyalgia is a neurological condition: it really is all in our heads, but not in the way some overly dismissive people would have us believe. And, most importantly, it gives me a finer explanation as to why watching Ice Hockey sends me into temporary remission. Allow me to expand a little on that last sentence…
One afternoon in December 2012, I heard somebody thumping on my front door. The building is not the easiest to get into, so I assumed it was one of my neighbours in distress. I grabbed my keys, and opened the door to spot, not a panicked neighbour but an innocuous, yet unfamiliar looking young woman.
“Are you Jacqueline?” She asked.
“Yes” I replied; curiosity piqued.
“I’m from the Doctor’s Surgery. We’ve been trying to call you. You need to get a blood transfusion ASAP.” She handed me a referral letter to take to the hospital.
Allow me to add some perspective to that conversation. I have Endometriosis, an inflammatory illness that causes womb tissue to grow in all manner of unwelcome places, which then proceeds to create a tonne of internal bleeding. Continue reading “What Does Self Care Actually Look Like?”
The Martian Princess Chronicles 