brightlotusmoon | Streeeetch!

So, recently I have been doing these very specific limb stretches that were taught to me by my childhood physical therapists to loosen me up, since the cerebral palsy was extreme when I was a kid - I mean, for mild CP, you know?
But today has been a particular hell on my body. And no matter how long and often I stretched, nothing actually helped... until I took a combination of baclofen, tramadol, magnesium, skullcap, vitamin D, and vitamin C. Then it got better.
I was casually chatting with an old acquaintance and I mentioned what I was doing. The acquaintance immediately lambasted me for "giving in to evil Big Pharma and holistic quackery" and "being brainwashed into thinking those poison and placebo drugs help" (actual quote).
After I picked myself up off the floor and finished laughing and wiping away tears after more laughter, I typed, "Aww, sweetie! Thanks for looking out for me. It's so nice to know I'm loved! Anyway, I gotta go take my nightly seizure drugs and antidepressants and birth control pills and relaxing supplements. You know, because I am a member of the League of Evil Pill Taking Citizens. Don't tell anyone, but we're going to take over the world by treating our chronic illnesses with drugs and supplements until we feel better, and we're going to tell other patients what we're doing so they can make informed decisions for themselves. I can't give you specifics or I'd have to kill you. I've already said too much. Uh oh, my superiors are messaging me. Gotta go!"
I closed the chat window and signed out, and so far he hasn't replied. I'm currently coming up with a better, sillier name for this League. Just to fuck with him. I know I shouldn't, because it's cruel. But seriously. Whut. LOL.
Back to stretching. It hurts, but in a really good way, you know? Ahhhh, stretching! Also, the stretching brings back some amazing childhood memories. I remember being in a room with a blue floor, trying to manipulate tiny plastic figurines with my left hand while rolling on one of those huge exercise balls. When I was little, I called it torture. Now, I want one of those huge balls in my writing room to work out with.

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I called PT physical torture when I was a kid. I'm grateful for it in retrospect of course.

Also, can I join your League? I not only swallow Ebil Medisins, I even inject them!

Ohh, injecting! How Eeevil indeed! Welcome!

May I join your League of Evil Pill Taking Citizens? I'm also an Evil Supplement Taker, too. :P

Oh, yes! We shall become Legion, etc.

The League of Evil Pill Poppers and Addicts of Retro Drug Supplements cannot hear the oh-so-sincere advice and wisdom of all those who wish to warn them of the horrible horrors of Big Pharma and Old School Supplements. You are deaf to their pleas and cries.

Hence, you are the Deaf LEPPARDS.

You're welcome. ;-)

This message brought to you by Some Evil Pharmaceutical Company. We put the HARM in pHARMacy!

YES.

Also, I do in fact have a spiritual leopard companion with hearing difficulties, as Sir Terry Pratchett did in "Soul Music"...

"Putting the HARM in pHARMacy" has sadly been used by people who genuinely mean it. For example, I am an advocate for MMJ and such, but the way these people lash out at Big Pharma makes me back away slowly and insist I'm not with them. So it's no longer a punny joke. :(

See, that's just sad. People take a perfectly good pun and ruin it with their self-righteous misguided vendettas. I mean really. "Putting the MACE in pharMACEuticals" just doesn't have the same ring to it. What's this world coming to when you can't even make a perfectly good and funny pun? OH THE HUGE MANATEE!

(Fortunately, the huge manatee pun is ALWAYS funny.)

Someone posted a photo of a neon red Pharmacy sign with the P burned out, and they commented with, "LOL, truth in advertising! Big Pharma is truly harmful and they know it! I'm so glad I don't take their poison!"

Funny thing: She has fibromyalgia and finally broke down and got a prescription for one of the strongest analgesic muscle relaxant pharmaceuticals available (brand name Soma, LOL), because she saw how well it helped me. So now she's like, "Well... if it helps you get better, then it's okay. But overall, they are still evil!!"

It is so much fucking fun watching these people waffle between "Well, this pharma drug may be the best thing to relieve my symptoms, but I hate all pharma drugs... nnngghh... invalid flawed logic - does not compute - error error - restart from melon..."

*dying* Okay, you both are amazing :D :D :D

As a fellow member of the League of Evil Pill Taking Citizens (and those terrible injections that sometimes make migraines go away! The unspeakable horror!) *and* an oldskool heavy metal and hair-metal fan (with a particular fondness for Def Leppard, and I kind of really actually had concrete plans to marry Joe Elliott as a wee teenaged hormonally-nitro-fueled headbanger), I seriously love you both SO MUCH right now.

And I *still* get all kinds of funny around an indecipherable Yorkshire accent, although I wound up with a dandy Mancunian (raised in Suffolk) and a lovely lady from Cheshire (raised by two theater-loving parents, so she has a delightfully plummy voice and pronunciation!)

But, all humor (and fond reminiscence) aside, I've also seen the tunnel-blindness that exists in some communities -- and it also makes me want to back away slowly.

I'm very much in favor of MMJ being an available option (I don't know whether or not it would help me, but I'd like to be ABLE to find out), I take supplements, I have a friend with training in traditional Chinese medicine who makes me teas (and while I don't know whether or not they have concrete effects, I always feel bathed in love when I drink them, because I know they were made with love and sincere hope for me to get better, and I believe that Intentions Matter), I'm open-minded about trying *anything* that might help, as long as there's some explainable logic and/or science behind it, AND I take a boatload of pharmaceuticals every day.

There's a certain amount of privilege among some proponents of alternative medicine or MMJ, who talk about how everyone's problems would be solved if they only took Substance X and ate a "clean" diet and stayed away from modern pharmaceuticals, and then we'd all be healthy and happy . . . and, oddly enough, many of those people don't have health issues that are chronic, lifelong, and will not resolve even WITH things like surgery and commercial pharmaceuticals -- things that people like us have to LIVE WITH and MANAGE rather than "cure."

(I'm currently terrified by the anti-opiates hysteria going on among some physicians right now -- there's a group called PROP that is petitioning the FDA to make hydrocodone a Schedule II drug instead of Schedule III, and to restrict physicians to only prescribing opiates for 90 days TOTAL, and to make pain patients jump through yet more hoops to get their meds. Because treating pain patients like criminals is a great way to keep drugs out of the hands of criminals . . . NOT.)

It's especially scary that two Ehlers-Danlos patients from my support forum traveled to DC -- a difficult and painful trip -- and were then given a COMBINED five minutes to speak. Given that many of us need opiates in our pain toolbox, and our condition is lifetime, chronic, involves both chronic and acute pain due to the repeated injuries caused by our faulty collagen, and is poorly-understood by doctors and often under-treated . . . AND that I rely on having butorphanol available to take a few times a month because it's the ONLY thing that keeps me out of the ER when the TN gets unmanageable.

I'm a very responsible opioid user (I've refilled the prescription once since January, I'm technically allowed one bottle per month), but I *am* an opioid user . . . and if they force all of us to go to "pain management" doctors for our prescriptions, something that is not accessible to many people -- my closest one is 40 minutes away, and I'm LUCKY -- it's just going to lead to more untreated and under-treated pain, and an uncountable cost of human suffering.

I think you're walking a delicately-balanced path,

brightlotusmoon, but I think it's a good one, and that yours is a perspective that is both very valuable and one that is too seldom heard in the alternative/complementary medicine communities. The focus tends to either be on people who can be "cured," or people who are terminally ill (particularly with MMJ, cancer is the thing that gets mentioned most in terms of palliative care), but there's very little attention being paid to people with lifelong health issues who could benefit from having a foot in both worlds.

I'm glad you're speaking up :)

*hugs*

-- A <3

Edited 2013-05-17 20:56 (UTC)

Thanks, hon! I love it when I can at least reach out somehow. :)

I have a couple of those exercise balls at home--they're easy to find at sporting goods stores or Target these days, usually with some sort of instructional DVD included. :)

Streeeetch!

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