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Things that illness has stolen from me

July 19, 2012 By 3 Comments

I can’t:

  • Walk more than a few steps
  • Ride my motorbike
  • Go out to work
  • Concentrate long enough to write
  • Concentrate to read a book
  • Sit for too long
  • Stay awake very long
  • Be happy
  • Eat sweets or crisps without anything nice without going blind and having a stroke
  • Have a day without pain

Fuck life. I want out.

 

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Filed Under: Depression, Illness
  • Miriam

    Things illness has stolen from me:
    I can’t:
    Walk
    Dance
    Go to work
    concentrate long enought to write
    hold a pen
    get dressed by myself on the lower half of me
    concentrate long enough to read a book
    concentrate long enough to watch the t.v.
    can’t have sex
    sit for too long
    stand for too long
    lie down for too long
    sleep properly
    not be exhausted all of the time
    stay awake for very long
    brush my hair properly
    brush my teeth properly
    eat with a knife and fork
    carry anything heavier than my mobile phone
    stop worrying that I’ll die from the side effects of at least 2 of my medications
    see properly
    go to the beach and feel the sand betwen my toes
    have another child
    cook
    sew or knit
    swim
    stop people from saying I’m too young to have arthritis all over my body
    fasten up buttons on my clothes
    tie laces up on shoes
    put my hair in a pony tail
    put make up on
    go to the toilet properly
    have a relaxing bath….I can’t get into one now
    go too far away from home incase something happens to make my health worse
    stop my brain from being damaged by swelling when my spine swells up leaving me in fear of a stroke or severe brain damage
    have a moment without pain, minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day
    my hair falling out because of medication side effects
    my face swelling up so I look like a monster
    my body swelling up so I look like a fat monster
    my actual eyeballs swelling up so I look like an evil vampire
    my eyelids swelling up so much I can’t see then looking like I’ve got 2 black eyes and been in a fight
    being depressed and crying when I ‘m bed bound

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Clare-Julia-Fernyhough/789324594 Clare Julia Fernyhough

    All of the above and most of the things Miriam wrote below.

    Life’s already hard enough for us isn’t it? Yes, each day you wake up from a painful and fitful sleep wondering just how you’re going to get through each day. As I just posted on the other article, having to also face slashed benefits and care plans, the future isn’t just dim, it’s total blackout for people who genuinely cannot sustain activity without become very ill indeed.

    And, I’m not even allowed to say that at the moment I’m thinking of suicide on a daily basis. If I even mention it to my anxiety therapist she has to do a ‘risk assessment’ with me. What, so they’d section me to try to make me feel better about the cuts to disability benefits, the slashing of my care plan that will leave me cold and stinking in a stinking house living off sandwiches again, and the risk of losing my home due to the bedroom tax? What happens after they’ve tanked me up with drugs, are they going to insist that I keep smiling and humming about it like the social worker who came to tell me the devastating news did?

    They want happy homeless people then? Happy disabled people sitting in their own shit and pee after a spasm, because they only allow a carer for a half hour per morning and tea time? Ecstatic disabled people sitting freezing in a house because they won’t fund someone to clean out fires/light them/fetch coal in when it’s the only form of heating and hot water? I’d better get singing then. It’s not only going to be a choice between ‘heating and eating’ for me now, it will be heating, eating, or care; if I have one I can’t have the other 2, or at least very little of the other 2.

    Another disabled friend, very poorly, was humiliated at her DLA appeal yesterday. She says that she thinks this government want her dead, and I can’t disagree with her. She is absolutely desperate. I had to keep texting her late into the night last night to reassure her and to tell her that whatever happens we have to help and support each other now. I’ve even offered her a place to live, and her me. It’s like the blind leading the blind though.

    Yes, perhaps like others this ‘wanting out’ was always ever present even before this persecution of disabled people. That’s especially why we must not give up now. Our illness has taken everything from us, and the government the rest of what’s left over. We have to stay alive as a record of what they have done and are about to do to us, in hope that in time they will be forced to act. Then we can return to just managing our illnesses again, and the ‘stolen things’ from our lives.

    My heart goes out to you Steven and Miriam.

  • princesstech

    I stumbled across your blog and I am in shock now. You could be me! I have several physical issues and a deep depression which nothing seems to touch. I lost my job, my home, my independence about 3 years ago. Due to my illness I can also no longer ride a bike and as I never learned to drive a car I am screwed. I am having to fight and claw to get help for my mental health. My MH team seemed to think that putting me on the strongest dose of mirtazapine available, sending me on a pain management course and to a well being group drop in centre will be all fine and dandy.
    I am also diabetic and have developed multiple neuropathy. That combined with osteoarthritis has left me needing a wheelchair. The reality is the one they gave me is just too bloody heavy to use on my own arghhhh

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