If you carry one thing with you today, let it be this: you are beautiful, you matter, and you are loved.

As always, we ask that in order to participate in the weekly megathread, one self-identifies as some form of disabled, which is broadly defined in the community sidebar:

“Disability” is an umbrella term which encompasses physical disabilities, emotional/psychiatric disabilities, neurodivergence, intellectual/developmental disabilities, sensory disabilities, invisible disabilities, and more. You do not have to have an official diagnosis to consider yourself disabled.

Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.

  • DisabledAceSocialist [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    4·
    18 days ago

    It took them 3.5 years to diagnose the cancer in the first place. My symptoms were vague, mainly tiredness and brain fog. They tested me for anaemia and viral infections. When those came back clear they refused to test for anything else. They said I was “too young for it to be anything serious.” So for the next three years I kept going back and first they said it was depression and gave me antidepressants. When those didn’t work they said maybe it was chronic fatigue syndrome/ME. Then I just got called a hypochondriac. At the time I was working as a carer in a nursing home, and my employer decided to give the employees private health insurance as a perk. I eventually found a lump in my neck and used the private insurance to go to a private hospital to get diagnosed. So it wasn’t even the NHS that diagnosed me. When I could no longer work I had to go back to the NHS as I could no longer have the private insurance.

    A similar thing happened with my stroke (a side effect of the cancer treatment I wasn’t even warned about). If I’d been treated promptly I might not have been left so disabled. But it took so long on the NHS waiting list to start physiotherapy that the damage is done.

    • gingerbrat [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      18 days ago

      My point exactly, you got fucked, and you deserved better. God I wanna slap everybody who didn’t take you seriously, even though that won’t change anything. I’m so glad you are still here, despite the odds.

      And I overlooked the iron water question, sorry. I tried getting some here but there’s no brands available, and ordering water online is too expensive. I have supplements that work, however my Celiac’s makes it hard to absorb much iron from the food I’m allowed to eat. The iron levels are rising, but my scalp does not seem to be happy either way.