Posts by Ngaire BookieMonster
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My personal thing if people ask for advice or anything with CFS is to say "I did... and I found that I felt..." - rather than saying "you should...". Because, as is obvious from what everyone's saying, it works in different ways with different people and when it comes to any treatment that does anything (even if it's a great old placebo effect) it's up to the individual to decide for themselves what to do.
But I hope I only really talk about it if people specifically ask.
I think to be fair to those who give advice though, part of what I noticed with people is that they tended to be people who really had an emotional investment in my well-being - so close family, friends, etc - and who, as time went by, really wanted to do something to make it better.
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With all due respect, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is not being unfit.
And if you had chronic tonsilitis that was cured by surgery you didn't have "a chronic fatigue syndrome" you had chronic tonsilitis.
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Oh man. Reading this has brought back the feeling, the fear... the everything.
But it's also been really cathartic. What Julie has said is particularly resonating with me - it sounds like our experiences of how it felt are very similar - plus I also saw Dr Vallings.I'm lucky. I get to say I'm over it now. There are probably three reasons for this - my family who saw me every day and lived with it with me for 4+ years and just let me deal with it and never for one moment questioned that I had an illness, my GP who saw that I was going very downhill and after 6 months told me I had to go and see Dr Vallings because I wasn't well, I had to accept I wasn't well and I wasn't going to just get better one day and I needed to do something about it, and Dr Vallings - one of the very first things she said to me was "You're young and your chances of getting better and getting rid of it are very, very good, and here's how we are going to help that happen." It was like she knew exactly what I needed to hear, what my biggest fear was at that point. I was so lucky.
And now it's 12 years later and I'm normal. Well, I'm not normal like I was before I got CFS (because who could be?) but I'm as normal as I can be. I get a cold and it's just a cold, I have a weird blood test result and it's a weird blood test result but I don't have physical symptoms, I can cope with large amounts of stress and I can make it through if I've had a bad night's sleep. Finally, after 11 years, I no longer have to take low dose medication to get a sleep that feels like I've slept.
And, most of the time, I don't even think about it anymore. Which was a huge step. Like any major trauma or illness it's like a ghost that haunts you, because you think it might come back as quickly as it started (which for me was literally overnight), but time gradually passes and the ghost starts fading and then one day you realise you don't see it anymore.
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@Danielle OMG made my day. I love Xanadu. ONJ had such great hair in that.
And I've just made the connection that the young guy was the guy from Warriors.
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Haha to "retweeted". Ah Twitter, you have changed us forever.
It's like you know me. Scarily like it.
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@BenWilson - it's okay, I didn't think you were judging me as cold - I know my personal feelings on the subject are quite different from a lot of peoples. It's not that I don't see why they feel that way or where they are coming from, it's more that I don't share so much in it.
@Amy Gale
You could make your cat a little sweater to wear while it plays...
Don't think this hadn't occured to me! :D
@recordari - cats, farts and Bukowski - it's a recipe for success! :D
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@Danielle - is it weird then that I made a cat toy for my cat from its own hair (gathered after brushing)? It had googly eyes, if that helps...
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Isn't a display a functional object?
Sure, if you want to say that. But that's different from my original point - talking about bodies as bodies, on display not bodies disguised as something else, on display. I don't think the two are the same or can be equated.
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Body parts made into functional objects seems like a different subject though than body parts/bodies displayed as body parts/bodies.
I wouldn't necessarily look to own a human skull ashtray (or a human skull drinking vessel or similar) but I wouldn't avoid viewing one.
Plus for me bizarre and macabre doesn't equal bad either, and I would totally be into visiting the aforementioned Museum of Funeral History! I realise not everyone feels that same way...
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(Can I get a Bookiemonster up in this thread?)
.....did someone say cats?
:)
I was lucky enough to spend a couple of months travelling around the US with my family as a kid (10) and found it eternally fascinating for exactly the sorts of reasons you describe here. Everything is at once intensely familiar (to a child of the tv age) and intensely strange.
And the many, many, many little historical places and museums and galleries and ... sometimes I wonder if my mum was a secret frustrated artist because she definitely seemed to love visiting all these places. And of course at 10 I was mostly like "whaaaaa?" but now I think, how lucky I am. How lucky.Dickinson - I just did a (much less literary) post on my favourite American authors in celebration of July 4, and was finding it hard to pick as many women writers as men - Keri pointed out Dickinson (yes, I forgot, the shame) whose poetry I really enjoy but like most poetry only sort of on the periphery of my reading.
Just on the mummies thing - maybe I'm a bit cold but I really have no problem with mummies on display. They're just another object. Maybe I'd feel differently if they weren't bodies that are so old, but I don't know - dead bodies are fascinating but in the way of a "thing" not a person.