Neck pain update!
Okay so last time I wrote about this, was when I got the MRI results for my neck, which was blank, zero issues found. However the pain in my neck was still so bad I can't walk without pain, can't jump or run at all, and can't carry anything over 2kg. I was too scared to try and fix it on my own, because messing with an injured neck without training is dangerous, and can do damage, so I didn't want to risk making it worse. However, if the scans say the neck is fine, then I can't really ruin it, right, so I've started looking for exercises that don't hurt.
As I was looking for neck-related exercises on youtube (they all hurt too much), youtube was starting to recommend me back exercises as well, some of them specifically for Rhomboid pain. Now, I didn't know what this rhomboid was, but it so happened that I had pain in that exact spot, between shoulder blades, but that pain came and went, so I thought it must be psychosomatic (when you have chronic pain you assume most of what hurts is psychosomatic).
Anyway, I decided to do those exercises because it's much less scary to work on back pain, and they didn't hurt as much. Then I found, in the same source, some neck exercises that seemed a bit dangerous; they instructed me to lay down with my neck hanging over the bed, then hold my own head with my arms, and move it, like I'm fixing it in place. I was shocked to find out that this didn't hurt me, so I did that exercise twice. And then the shocking thing happened.
That exercise immediately changed how the pain felt while I was walking. Before, I used to feel every step as a punch to the back of my neck; now it was to the back of my head. This made me dizzy, nauseous and want to vomit, the first time it happened, and I was very scared that I made it worse. Pressure and pain where my brain is, felt even more serious than neck pain, and I didn't repeat that exercise ever again, in hope the pressure and pain in my head would go away. It didn't, however, go away, but I learned to deal with it, and it became somewhat bearable. I am due in few months for a brain MRI so if there's something actually wrong with my brain, I will find out then. I am suspicious though that maybe there's some muscle in my back that is extending up to the head causing issues. But I don't know if there is such a thing.
I kept doing the exercise for the back pain, but the back pain did not go away from it, the exercise just keeps getting more painful as I keep doing it, unsure whether I should just stop.
After that I fell depressed for a while, and just played stardew valley laying down using my touchpad, and this is where the pain got worse in my left arm. Before that, my arm hurt a little, if I was bending it backwards or extending it too far or carrying anything, but now, it hurt a lot, at all times, whenever I was trying to do anything at all. I thought I made it worse with my irresponsible video gaming, my wrist was now hurting badly too, and I couldn't bend my arm to use the laptop anymore. I tried with my right hand and then my right hand started hurting too.
I was trying various wrist exercises thinking it was the video game problem, that made no difference whatsoever, so today I finally looked up all possible causes of pain in the arm, and found something that was close to the pain I felt - coracobrachialis muscle pain. I've never heard of that muscle, but it's under the arm and connects the back and arm, and can get damaged from overuse. I found instructions on how to locate it, and upon pressing on it, I felt such intense pain I was crying and curled into a ball for a while, it's clear to me that this muscle is in bad condition.
Now, all the pain relief instructions for this were to give this muscle a massage, but I absolutely cannot do that, I can't touch that muscle, I can't press on it, the pain of just the smallest pressure is insane, while I'm happy to have found the source of my arm pain, I am absolutely lost as to what to do with this. Does anyone have any knowledge or experience with this specific muscle? I can't force myself to massage it until I find a way to somehow relax it, or relax the area around it, so that it would be this painful to touch.
Also, the neck itself has shown some tiny improvements. It feels like it got a little stronger, because now I can lift my head while lying down, which I couldn't do before. I can sometimes sit for a bit more than I could do before, I was limited to 20min of sitting before I had to lie down, now I can sit for an hour (with discomfort, but not pain). It still hurts while I walk but now it's more like pressure than being hit with pain, my head instead takes the hit. If I try to run, I get intense pain and pressure in my head, and it extends to my neck as well.
I think I did something okay along the way, maybe few mistakes. There's probably more than one problem with my muscles, I suspect, and I hope I will find ways to resolve them one by one. I even thought for a second that I maybe lack collagen because I'm vegan but then when I looked it up, it's something body produces by itself and doesn't need a supplement. So it's just a big mystery at this point. I still blame that tree-falling accident because this wasn't going on beforehand.
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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Danny needs a few...odd things. A few dietary and emotional requirements unique to his physiology.
Meat is one of them.
But like, raw meat. He doesn't have to eat it often, maybe twice a month, but it does need to be completely raw.
He also needs to eat non-sentient blob ghosts, which are very different from sentient ones. Same amount, maybe twice a month.
He's weak to hot temperatures, where most humans require some sort of positive contact he needs to fight, if he gets too much sunlight his dopamine levels drop, and oddly enough as he got older milk or products with a lot of milk started to affect him like alcohol affects humans.
Now that he's made it to college, hiding most of these things is easy enough.
He chose Gotham, because of minimal sunny days and naturally cold weather. He regularly goes for walks at night, to fill his need for fighting. He says he has a milk allergy, and avoids milk products.
The blobs and the raw meat are a little uh. Those are a little hard.
He's taken to ducking into a bathroom stall to just swallow the blobs whole. But the meat...
He decides to sear the outside and leave the inside entirely raw. Does this detract from the nutrients by cooking them off? Yes. Does it mean he needs to eat raw meat four times a month instead of twice? Yes. Does it mostly hide that he's doing this in front of humans? Kind of.
Until he got a vegan roommate.
Said roommate is far too sharp-eyed for his own good, and now the guy is being weird.
Or: Damian's roommate is a meta who clearly has dietary restrictions outside the norm. It's fine; Damian understands that like animals in the wild, people have different diets. But the cuts of meat Fenton is eating are...subpar.
Damian isn't sure how to be...civil, or appear polite, or not be a "snob" if he suggests Fenton allow him to procure farm fresh cuts of steak from cows raised in an open pasture and were well taken care of.
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