The Potato Witch

Oh well!

I'm still waiting for that specialist appointment. Not surprised I'm still waiting, really, since I've been told it can take 6 months, sometimes more, to see a rheumatologist around here, and even though it feels like I've been waiting forever, I've been waiting a little less than 5 months so far, so I'm not too concerned about that.

I am concerned, though, that my symptoms keep getting worse. Some days are decent, I feel practically normal, though I still have to concede that my normal isn't most peoples' normal, not anymore. Other days... The pain can get very bad, and I can't always attribute it to me pushing myself too hard. Last week, I had an incident involving the worst pain I've experienced thus far (at least, related to my current issues), with painkillers and muscle relaxants not able to do a thing to help me, and sleeping pills only just barely allowing me to slip past that edge into sleep, but it was a near thing. The pain kept spiking in waves, hitting an 8 before receding back to a more manageable 6... for about 2-3 minutes. Then spiking again. I could barely stand up, and needed to support myself against something if I had to walk anywhere. All of that, precipitated by me tensing my legs for 5 minutes in the car, to keep something at my feet from shifting on the drive. That's it. 5 minutes of engaging my leg muscles, over 24 hours of agony.

Aside from noise issues from upstairs neighbours (long rambly stories, I'll leave them for another time), this place only has one bedroom. That was fine when R and I were on the same schedule and slept at the same time, but then that changed for me. I sleep whenever I can sleep now, and if that means sleeping in the day, okay, or at night, okay. But I also have a hard time sharing a bed, due to pain, and tossing and turning to get comfortable, and the methods I use to distract myself from discomfort can be annoying to others (I basically have background noise, like old TV shows of YouTube videos I'm familiar with, to give me something to focus on that keeps my mind from pain just enough to let me drift off to sleep). So if I want to sleep at night, I'm stuck sleeping on an old not-so-comfy couch, or an air mattress that leaves me too cold. (That's another sticking point; I need the room far warmer than R does, in order to convince my weird body that it's not going to die of hypothermia if it falls asleep.) We need an apartment with 2 bedrooms, so that I can sleep in a proper bed when I need to, without disturbing anyone.

This apartment has a shower but no bathtub, and lemme tell ya, when pain and fatigue flares hit, hygiene becomes a royal pain in the ass! Taking a shower now often leaves me pretty useless for the rest of the day, because of the energy needed to stand up and clean myself. A bathtub would at least let me lie down, and the heat would probably help a lot with pain issues too.

It's not an essential, but we'd also love a dishwasher. The apartment I stayed in before moving here with R, it had a dishwasher, and it made cleaning so much easier that it enabled me to cook more often. If I had limited energy, I could use it to cook a decent meal and not worry about cleaning. It was great. And since R and I both have health issues... Yeah, a dishwasher would be lovely, and let us eat better food.

The problem is, we can't afford to move anywhere that has these things. There are some 2-bedroom apartments with bathtubs and dishwashers in the city, but the rent on them if higher than what we're paying here, and what we're paying here is pretty much at the end of our budget. If I were able to get disability cheques, that would likely be the little boost we need to move somewhere that's far better suited to our needs, which would improve our physical and mental health.

But unless I find that miracle job, or unless I get a diagnosis and am told that yeah, I really can't be expected to work like this, then what we need it out of our reach, and we continue to have to make do in ways that are actual detriments.

Right now, an extra $400 a month would make all the difference. But that's money I legitimately don't know how to get, because I lack skills, contacts, or health to do all the typical things that bring a person income. And it's frustrating as hell. I feel guilty, and like I'm a bad person, for thinking what a relief it will be if I can get disability cheques.

I mean, ideally, I'd go to a doctor and be told, "Oh yeah, this thing that's wrong is super treatable and you just need to take this one pill every day and all your symptoms will disappear." But, uh, I kind of doubt that's going to happen. And I can't hinge my life on hoping that it will. I have to go forward assuming that what's happening will continue to happen, at least until something else changes, and from everything I can see and control, I'm already doing all that I can. I've made all the changes I'm able to make, made the modifications to life as much as I can, and the rest is in the hands of a bunch of other people now.

So yeah, that's where things stand with me. I'm no better, I'm continuing to decline little by little, and I'm still waiting to see someone who hopefully can set me on the path to recovery, but for now it's just... keeping on keeping on. However unsatisfying that may be.

Now wasn't that all worth me coming back to this journal? I know you were all just dying to hear about how pretty much nothing has changed. -_-
 

~ It's raining right now, with some thunder and lightning, which is nice. After August's drought, I like hearing the rain fall. Though it's always a little worrying because I can hear the water draining through the sump pump under the kitchen sink, and after the leak this past winter, I'm a bit paranoid about the same thing happening again, if the pipes are too stuffed full off roots that the landlord hasn't been arsed to remove and can't handle the water flow.

~ R and I took a look around a local used book store today, and came away with more books than we intended to. I wanted to go because I've found ebooks harderto focus on lately, and most of my physical books are in storage right now, so I wanted to have a few books on hand for when I'm done the current batch I'm reading. I found a copy of Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, Ursula LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, and a treasure for me, a full box set of the Narnia books, the old ones published in 1980! I have The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, as well as Voyage of the Dawn Treader from that set (I've had those since childhood), but now I have them all! The store owner said the box set had arrived only about half an hour before we did, and he seemed pleased that I was so excited by the find. I mean, for only $7, why wouldn't I be?

I'll definitely be visiting that store again, because they keep all their zombie books on a high shelf, away from the other sci-fi and fantasy novels, and all of them clearly marked. I don't know why that decision was made, but I'm extremely thankful, because I have a phobia of zombies (an actual phobia, not just an "I don't like them" fear), and so I don't have to worry about accidentally seeing cover art that would stress me out or anything of the sort. Next time I'm there, I might ask about why they do that, and thank them for it.

~ The library is giving away free passes to King's Landing this month, so we're going to take a trip there tomorrow to pick up passes, and then hopefully have a chance to visit King's Landing either this weekend or next. The passes are only good this month, so we won't have a lot of time to use them, and who knows what the weather will be like on other weekends this month, so we might head out there on Saturday or Sunday. It's a long weekend, so R doesn't have to worry about not having enough time to get things done for work, and so long as I'm careful to rest a whole lot next week, I should be able to handle the trip out.

I haven't been to King's Landing since I was a kid, and I love historical recreation and living history stuff, so I'm really excited at the chance to visit!
 

He seemed confused, said he reread his message and couldn't see anything objectionable in it.

"The objectionable stuff is that you've honestly been trying to convince me for nearly 2 decades, and every time I say I'm not interested and ask you to drop it, and every time you don't drop it. It's not that this one message was particularly objectionable, it's that it's the most recent incident in a long line of incidents that I'm tired of having to deal with. If this was the first time you'd ever asked, then it wouldn't be a big deal, and I wouldn't be so annoyed. But it's not the first time, and every time I give you the same answer, and every time you keep trying to convince me despite me asking you to stop."

Could I have been more polite there? Yeah, probably. But this is something that's been bothering me for, as I said, nearly 2 decades. Nearly the entire time it's been legal for me to potentially drive, he's been on at me about this. And I'm tired of it.

Then came his reply.

"Let me understand, it's OK for you to double down calling me a racist and homophobe but not for me to mention that you may enjoy driving?"

...Yeah, because those two things are entirely equivalent.

Last two times we've talked, he's been the one to bring up me calling him racist and homophobic. Which, to be honest, I haven't done. I apparently called him homophobic when I was 17, when he said to me that he hoped I don't grow up to be gay (his thought process was that if I was gay, then life would be harder for me than if I were straight). I don't remember this at all, so I take his word for it that this conversation happened. And the thing is? Yes, that was a homophobic statement. Because he can change neither me sexuality nor the world in which I live, but rather than wish the world wasn't harsh to gay people, he would wish I wasn't gay at all. That is, at its core, homophobic.

Do I think my dad thinks that gay people are wrong and nasty and degenerate? No, not at all. Do I think he's said some homophobic things that he really needs to acknowledge the wider context of? Absolutely. Do I think he needs to educate himself about why saying certain things might offend people because words carry meaning, and that "I don't mean any offense" is not a valid excuse? Also, very much yes. I believe it's possible for people, in ignorance, to say homophobic things without being what people typically think of as "a homophobe."

Same with racism, and sexism.

My dad and I have also talked a lot in the past about how, because society benefits straight white cis men above all others (and he is all of those things), what seems innocuous to him might be loaded for someone else. It's easy to not think about the impact of things when those things impact you. We've talked about how unlearning this stuff is a process, and that I'm also learning and unlearning and catching myself thinking or saying things that I need to work harder to stop because they're problematic. We've talked about how much growth he's shown in recent years, just being willing to listen and learn and go beyond, "I think marginalized groups ought to be more patient with me."

But suddenly all of the rest of those conversations get thrown out the window, and he's back to focusing really hard on me calling him a racist and a homophobe. Also, that this is the equivalent to him "mention[ing] that [I] might enjoy driving."

My dude, it's not that you just mention it. It's that you keep doing it over and over, despite my insistence that I don't want to learn, and despite my requests for you to stop. Also, even if I did call him a racist and homophobe, he seems to be prioritizing not wanting to feel bad about that stuff rather than respecting my request for him to not pressure me to do something I don't want to do.

So I kind of tore a strip off him after that, told him his argument was a weird damn false equivalence, told him that he's repeatedly ignored and disrespected my wishes regarding something that is far more my choice than his, and then said I was done discussing it. If he wanted to talk about something else, fine, I'm here for that, but I'm not continuing the discussion about driving anymore.

Silence for 2 days.

Then: "I'm still quite angry at the way you drop bombs on me so I'll not be stopping by on Monday."

...

It seems like he's utterly incapable of seeing anything he does as anything other than an isolated incident. Him trying to pressure me for years and disregarding my personal choices? Nah, not a pattern of behaviour at all, just a bunch of random isolated incidents. That's the only reason I can think of why me saying, "Please stop it because you've been doing this for years and I'm sick of it," is some sort of surprise bomb-drop. He either doesn't remember any of it (which makes no sense because he acknowledged that he knows I have no interest in driving), or he can't actually see why repeatedly telling me something even when I repeatedly tell him to stop is an ongoing problem.

Also, say hello to the petty man who is so angry at being told to not do something that he's dropping a 5 minute meeting with his kid.

My reply to him, though? "Suit yourself. I already expected that you wouldn't want to see me anyway, so it's not like this comes as a surprise."

The only part that surprised me was that he gave me the courtesy of telling me in advance. Because I honestly suspected that I would hear nothing from him on Monday, nothing at all about when he'd be available to meet so I could walk down the street, absolutely nothing. I had already predicted that he would do this, because it's not the first time he's done something like it. Granted, it's been a very long time since he did so, but still. I had already accepted that he probably wasn't going to want to see me after that, even if just for a couple of minutes to hand off a package.

And honestly? I kind of hope my comment about how it's not a surprise stung him a bit. I kind of wanted to hurt him a little by saying that yeah, I already figured he was going to not want to bother with me. I wanted him to know that his pettiness was expected, and that any sting he wanted me to feel from the surprise of him cancelling our meeting was a sting I'd already braced myself for.

That doesn't make it hurt less. It just means I was prepared to deal with it.

So yes, my father is a fucking child who got so butthurt over being asked to stop harassing me that he cancelled a 5 minute meeting in which he'd barely have to deal with me, to hand over things he'd bought for me.

And I'm here once again wondering why I keep bothering to let my parents in when I know that more often than not, all they do is hurt me.

(Actually, I know why. Years of conditioning that make me feel like I'm the bad guy for hurting them, and like I'm a bad person for not being close to them when they raised me. Regardless of what they did before, and what they do now, somehow when I stand up for myself, I always feel like I'm in the wrong because they're my parents, and aren't parents and their adult kids supposed to acknowledge each other as adults and just go from there, but also aren't the adult kids still supposed to defer to their parents because of the prior power dynamic? It's a complicated and messy issue, and I'm working hard to deal with it, but still, when either of my parents do something that hurts me and I call them on it, any satisfaction I may feel about standing up and speaking up for myself is tainted by the feeling that doing so was the wrong thing because it hurt them, and that's supposed to be a worse sin than them hurting me.)
 

Probably it wiggled its way up and out of my pocket thanks to the motions of my arm and cane, and the wind caught it and blew it away. I was at the ATM when I discovered it, and promptly panicked, and the went and searched around the building, but I couldn't find it. That was £100, which would have become roughly $150 Canadian, and I really could have used that money, so of course I lost it!

- So it looks like I have some edema issues in my left leg. I got some compression boots (ones that inflate with air to simulate massage and to help reduce swelling) a while ago, for review, and it took until this week to try them, and I was amazed at how much smaller my legs and feet looked after using them. But my leg leg seems to show a more pronounced change than the right one, and more than that, my left leg can't fit into the boots as well as my right leg. It's larger, and it seems like it's larger from fluid build-up. I can't say for sure why that leg is retaining fluid more than the other one, or how long this has been going on. I suspect it's due to my lymphatic system, since pretty much all the other potential reasons for leg swelling don't make sense given the presentation and history. If so, it's not that the lymphatic system is completely shot in that leg, or else I'd see worse swelling.

But some years ago, I took a bad fall on an icy day, and ended up with damaged nerves in that leg. The nerves might have recovered, had it not been for the critically low B12 levels I didn't know I had at the time, but even once I got on B12 injections, nerve damage can't always recover, and there's a large patch on my leg leg that can pretty much only register numbness or pain. And that kind of damage can mess up the lymphatic system. So it's distinctly possible that the fall and resulting damage screwed something up there and that leg can't quite rid itself of fluid as well as it could before the fall.

At least, I hope that's the reason. Because any other potential options are worse. Either way, the compression boots help. They don't help with my other leg pain, or any other symptoms but swelling, but it's nice to get a deep massage and to have unswollen legs for a little while, so I'll keep using them.

- Rain woke me up twice today. Couldn't even be mad, because it meant that forgetting to water my vegetable garden was rendered moot. Both times it sounded like a huge downpour, though!

- Been feeling the urge to rewatch Lucifer before the new season comes out. Sometimes I forgot just how much I enjoyed that show. Then something draws my attention to it and I'm all, "Oh hell yes, gimme gimme!" Kind of makes me miss my fandom days, though, because I'd probably be reading and writing all the fanfic for this show!