Tag Archives: cancer

ankylosing spondylitis, chronic disease

The Disease Everyone Loves to Hate

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Content note: this post discusses the topics of suicide and death.

I had a pretty good treatment day recently.

I didn’t even get upset that a new nurse tried and failed to get my infusion started. What’s another blown vein, anyway?

The infusion team was excited because they thought they’d seen a picture of me on a Facebook ad (it wasn’t me) – they’d even saved a screenshot to show me. My conversations with the nurses were light-hearted before I transitioned into catching up on emails.

I hid myself in my favorite corner where I can sometimes pretend I’m the only one in the room and I nearly forgot I was in a building with the word “cancer” all over the front of it.

I love the infusion team. And I better love them – these are treatments that I’ll need for the rest of my life unless this drug stops working or a better treatment shows up. I’m what you call incurable.

But as I was leaving my appointment I almost walked into a vendor table being set up for an event. On the table was a sign reserving it for a lingerie business. And then my eyes caught something else: pink.

Pink was everywhere. Rose petal fabric. Pink shirts. Pink everything. Pink was in the air. It smelled pink.

October. Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I can’t explain how crushing it was to leave my better-than-usual treatment, then turn the corner into an explosion of pink for an event that screamed, “You’re in someone else’s space.”

I have Ankylosing Spondylitis. The infusions I receive for my disease happen in a medical complex named Mercy Cancer Center. Every time I enter the building I see the name in big bold letters above the door and behind the check-in desk. While I wait for my appointment I see poster-sized lists of support groups and special events specifically for people with cancer.

Continue reading The Disease Everyone Loves to Hate →

Gender, Healthcare, LGBTQ

Medical Pinkwashing and the Gender Binary

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Content advisory: this post discusses experiences and examples of medical spaces being uncomfortable/unsafe for people who identify as transgender, genderqueer, nonbinary, or another related identity.

I made this a blog post after publishing it on my personal facebook page and several people commented that they had no idea these experiences existed. I realized it should reach a wider audience. I’ve posted it below without editing except to emphasize certain words and I’ve also added some links for further education.

I’m pretty sure you are aware of the pinkified, radically femme and feminized culture of breast health issues, breast cancer, and the typically-broadcast stereotype that only cisgender women experience them.

I’m pretty sure you all are also aware that all genders and body types can have breast medical issues despite the above-mentioned stereotype.

But I think many people aren’t aware of what it can feel like to be in a medical space intentionally geared towards women’s breast care if you are a nonbinary, genderqueer, or transgender (and other identities) person. Or a cisgender man.

Continue reading Medical Pinkwashing and the Gender Binary →

#sickbody, chronic disease, chronic pain, health

Chronic Doesn’t Go Away

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Chronic does not mean predictable. Chronic does not mean temporary. It also doesn’t mean consistent, monotonous, predictably repetitive, or habitual. It’s not banal or soporific. Except that it is.

It can be seen, yet it is invisible. It’s tedious, at the same time that it’s not. It’s not a routine, at the same time that it is. Everything changes, at the same time that nothing really changes.

Which is why we have such trouble understanding it.

Like the Greek word agápe, with no direct English translation, chronic disease – chronos – does not translate into something we can make sense of at first either. The idea that anything will last until we die is far-fetched (except for happy marriages and twinkies).

‘Chronic’ doesn’t fit our understanding of how health and sickness works. We’ve been conditioned to believe that our illnesses are curable; if we just try enough treatments we’ll get better. Injectables, swallowables, stitchables, chemicals, radiation(ables) can fix anything.

Except that they can’t.

Chronic disease is like a parasite; surviving off its host, always adapting to resist being eradicated. The intense throbbing of an anxious and overburdened body is an unwelcome, yet familiar, intrusion with the dawning of each new day.

Chronic disease is unpredictable and that unpredictability makes it nearly impossible to control. The drugs may not be permanent but some side effects are, and the progressive nature of the disease introduces new symptoms when least expected – symptoms that will be forever crashing workdays, nap times, parties, and vacations.

Imagine every injury or mystery pain is there to stay. No longer are muscle strains and sprains healed with heat/ice and stretching; the pain never goes away. No longer are a stuffy nose and sore throat symptoms of a common cold; they are now permanent. No longer is an all-over, throbbing ache a warning sign of the flu; it is reality 24/7/365.

We who have these forever conditions don’t get used to them. There is a degree of accepting them, and though we adapt to these changes in our bodies with no other choice, we still remember what we used to be capable of. Even if we’d prefer not think about our losses, our medical charts track them for us. We can hope for remission, but anyone who knows anything about cancer understands that remission is a sleeping dragon.

Chronic is the wicked word, not disease. Because chronic is the reason our diseases stay.

Chronic doesn’t go away.

 

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#sickbody, Advocacy, ankylosing spondylitis, Arthritis, Charis, chronic disease, chronic pain, disability, Grief, health, Healthcare, Invisible disease, Patient Advocacy, Relationships, Role Models, sickness, spondyloarthritis

My Struggle With Three Simple Words

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How are you?

Just three words.

Just three words silence my voice but incubate my thoughts.

The responses I want to give get caught in my throat as I open my mouth to speak; I gag wordlessly without any outward signs of panic; I feel a glass wall erect itself to support and contain my stoicism while I suffocate.

The words I want to use expand in my chest like air being pushed into an empty balloon, threatening to leak out of my mouth in a jumble of hot air and exhaustion.

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Usually I manage to push aside the wordlump in my throat so I can still breathe and respond in a socially acceptable way. I say polite things, or I say I’m not ok and try to change the subject.

Or I stand there awkwardly, ashamed and lime-lighted, drowning in my reality until I realize someone is waiting for my next move. Continue reading My Struggle With Three Simple Words →