The Latest Dirty Truth About Smoking

Posted on April 29, 2011 in Addictions Bipolar Disorder Pulmonary

square718Few things are as pathetic as a smoker who has been deprived of his habit. When I was locked up at what was then called South Coast Medical Center ((It is now known as Mission Hospital Laguna Beach)), the behavioral ward had just adopted the rule that there would be no smoking allowed on the floor. Each nicotine addict was given a patch to get her/him through the cravings but for most this didn’t satisfy. I watched one woman repeatedly attempt to break through the doors just to have a cigarette. Others smuggled them in and blew the fumes through the bathroom fan. It was open rebellion.

Other hospitals built special outside areas for smokers. At Huntington Beach Hospital, to cite one example, a cage was built where the smokers were marched out at intervals to indulge in their habit. Other hospitals went so far as to supply their charges with free cigarettes, though some complained that these were inferior brands. In some hospitals, nonsmokers had to stay inside while the smokers frolicked. (You can just imagine what my cardiologist had to say about this!) ((I know of one person who said he never smoked until he was locked up simply because smokers got to go outside while the rest of the floor remained in lockup, away from the fresh air and sunlight.))

The reasoning was that first the smokers needed to bring their mental conditions under control before they should have been put through quitting smoking. Now a new review of the literature suggests this is downright off base:

We review studies published in the PubMed database that include the keywords smoking, tobacco, nicotine and schizoaffective or bipolar disorder. Comorbidity of bipolar and schizoaffective disorder with nicotine consumption is 66-82.5 % and 67%, respectively. On the basis of this review it can be concluded that smoking results in poorer prognosis and greater clinical seriousness of bipolar and schizoaffective disorders. ((Emphasis mine.)) Use of other substances, psychiatric diagnosis, clinical seriousness and caffeine consumption are risk factors for nicotine use.

This jives with what I see in support groups. Those who smoke relapse into episode more than those who don’t. ((No studies exist on this, but I’d like to see one.)) My guess is that it is either a pharmacological effect of nicotine or just the fact that the failure to challenge one bad habit coincides with others such as failure to be med compliant. If you can’t get up the gumption to address one issue, I surmise, you will fail in others. This conjecture, of course, must be tempered by the fact that [[nicotine]] — the main reason why smokers smoke (they don’t do it for the tar) — distorts thought processes.

Which leaves us with an overwhelming question about current practices regarding smoking in mental care facilities: should ending the smoking habit be a key aim of therapy? Maybe so!

Migraines without the Headache

Posted on April 28, 2011 in Body Language Neurology Psychotropics

square717The pain behind my eye used to be excruciating. Unlike my gut pain, this wasn’t a burning pain but a [[minie ball]] ((Minie balls don’t look anything like a ball, but let the image stand.)) lodged deep between my eye and the socket bone. That alone double would double me over, but on top of it I felt nausea and a stiffness in my neck. Then a few years ago, for no reason I could immediately trace, I stopped having those cold gray visitations.

I didn’t miss them: I believed that I had grown out of them. But around the same time, I was afflicted by attacks of nausea that stood alone. Sometimes they were so bad, I bent over the toilet and stuck my finger down my throat just to bring on the gut-relieving evacuation of my stomach contents. Was it something that I ate? Did it have something to do with pollen levels? The lack of a headache perplexed me. Then following my misadventure with my left hand last year, the answer began to piece itself together.

For many people, migraines include headaches. nausea, vomiting, photophobia (increased sensitivity to light), and phonophobia (increased sensitivity to sound). Some people (not including me) experience an aura which is a kind of hallucination. There are some odd symptoms that also present themselves such as “altered mood, irritability, depression or euphoria, fatigue, yawning, excessive sleepiness, craving for certain food (e.g. chocolate), stiff muscles (especially in the neck), hot ears, constipation or diarrhea, increased urination, and other visceral symptoms.” ((See the Wikipedia article on [[migraines]] for more information.))

And, believe it or not, some people don’t get headaches when migraines strike. I’m now one of these.

When I have my episodes, I experience nausea and stiffness in the neck. If I take my [[Compazine]], my nausea swiftly disappears and the contents of my bowels run out the back door. There’s a restlessness in my body that no sleep or rest can cure: I will cry out in my frustration because no relaxation exercise will cause the strange, vague shimmering of my limbs to find their ease. But why no headache?

The answer to this began to form last year when I lost sensation in two fingers of my left hand. My little finger and half of my ring finger — split neatly down the middle — lost all sensation. It was difficult to employ the little finger in even the simplest tasks such as putting pegs in holes. I worked the whole summer to regain what I had lost. It did come back. But one thing mystified my neurologist who confirmed damage to my ulnar nerve with a painful test: why was I feeling no pain?

He found the answer in my drug formulary: I was taking [[carbamazepine]], a mood stabilizer which also functions as an anti-convulsant and a prophylactic for nerve pain. It obliterated the soreness but left the other symptoms to bewilder us. Just as the drug works for [[neuropathy]], it also works for migraines. I get no headaches anymore, but feel all the other elements of my old complex. I wasn’t eating wrong or poisoning myself somehow as I dreaded when I thought about all the metals around me: I was merely undergoing the hell I had known before but now without the throb. So I am partly relieved of my fabled duress, but not entirely, and I will stay so until my liver cannot take it anymore and forces my transition to another med to calm my moods.

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What the Koch Brothers Can Do & Dare Not

Posted on April 28, 2011 in Morals & Ethics Scoundrels

square716The Koch Brothers are on the defensive with a bright new campaign describing all the charitable causes to which they are giving money. “How can you possibly say we are inhumane (even though we financed the Tea Party which is now out to destroy Medicare and Social Security along with collective bargaining and unions?)” You’re giving part of your millions to help others while investing more to make yourself more money through lobbying efforts and hot houses like the Cato Foundation and the Foundation for American Growth is how.

Jesus set a high standard for charity:

As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’[a]”

20 “Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”

21 Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”((The full passage is Mark 10:17-31))

Everything. Not just a piece of a vast empire, but everything. Then we can start talking salvation. Christians, take note and do not be fooled by the Koch Brothers. They are nowhere near meeting the level of commitment that is expected of this passage.

But let’s take a kindlier tack. What could the Koch Brothers do to start meriting a little more respect from the average American? Not God, — certainly not one of their paid lobbyists — but a member of the 98%:

  • Stop giving money to self-aggrandizing “think tanks” like Cato.
  • Support free speech and the right to make up one’s own mind about one’s vote. Stop interfering in your employees’ decision about who to vote for, ending the cycle of threats that you resorted to in the last election.
  • Come clean about your role in buying the Citizens’ United decision and call for a rehearing with Scalia and Thomas recusing themselves
  • Stop taking the glory for cancer research with your board membership in the [[American Cancer Society]] while supporting government efforts to cut it.
  • Give a substantial amount of cash to some less glamorous causes like literacy and research into mental illness
  • Improve your employees’ health benefits beyond Obamacare.
  • Leave Medicare and Social Security alone unless you have a plan to make conditions better for those who rely on them without privatization.
  • Support the funding of the [[Environmental Protection Agency]].
  • Support [[OSHA]] so that your employees’ lives will be safer.
  • Let the Tea Party fend for itself. Be honest about how you started this pretense of a social movement.
  • Be honest. You’re no libertarians. Stop calling yourself ones.
  • Publicly repudiate [[Ayn Rand]] and those who follow her.
  • Sell off your gold and give the shares to charity.
  • Give your tax rebate to the government to help fight the deficit like able Patriots should.

Do this, Charles and David Koch, if you want to rescue this country from the economic crisis and the shadow of fascism that you have cast upon it.

And if they don’t, America, vote them and all their candidates down down down to the hell of powerlessness.

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The Scary Guy Defense

Posted on April 25, 2011 in Depression Fear Mania Stigma

square715A friend of mine who is a mental health professional in Germany and I often watch a certain social media site for signs of distress among the denizens. Recently, I dropped her a note about one fellow who struck me as being on the proverbial roller coaster. She shuddered when she checked him out and told me that she was sure that he was going to be explosive.

All this causes me to look back at my own behavior when I was in extremis. The world looks as if it is always about to teeter and dump you and anyone close by into a pit. Some people find this fascinating. They hover around you, watching you as you rant and rave about your unsteadiness and the threat the world poses toward you. They are often nice people, kind people. You think they don’t know you, they can’t possibly know you. And their proximity adds to your sense of [[Koyaanitsqatsi]]. ((In Hopi: “crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living”))

They laugh at your jokes. They find you interesting. The edge of an episode cleaves your consciousness. You are beginning to repeat yourself. What can you do to right things again so that you can resume stability? The problem, your troubled mind jumps to conclude without reasoning, is that you are dangerous. So you have to show them that you are genuinely and truly mad. You launch into what is called the Scary Guy Defense.

Thanks to your mania or mixed state, you have already emitted a series of cues that suggest you are losing it. You raise your voice. You shake. You wave your arms. Words pour out of your mouth at an erratic pace. The lids of your eyes roll back and the orbits bulge out. The euphoria squares your shoulders and tenses every muscle sliding across every bone in your body. A terrible strength props you up. And it seems fit to exaggerate these symptoms because you want people to run away, because nothing scares you more than the prospect of your body flipping blindly about and striking one of the gentle ones. You pull on a monster mask because you don’t want to hurt anyone. ((One time I got into an email exchange with a Berkeley student who shared my interest in [[Stephen Sondheim]]. With each long letter, I felt encroached upon. So I suggested she come down to Palo Alto to have a threesome with my wife. It worked. She never contacted me again.))

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Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #94

Posted on April 24, 2011 in Roundup

The word liberal comes from the word free. We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us. -Eleanor Roosevelt

square714As I write this, it is Holy Saturday and I am giving hard thought to the state of the nation. Traditionally, this is the day of the [[harrowing of hell]], when Christ paid Satan a visit and made him remember just who was boss in the Universe. Lately, I feel that it is the good people who have been harrowed by the hell-spawn of the Tea Party. It seems to me in this age of megachurches that the number of True Christians has dwindled. Witness how some preachers quote the atheist [[Ayn Rand]] approvingly from their pulpits and speak against the Word. Others, too, feel this despair. Agnostic me thinks this is a fine tragedy that we are in when people fail to trust in God and choose instead to take the side of the worldly and the wealthy. What will [[Easter]] bring? I just have to remember how dark things looked for [[Dietrich Bonhoeffer]] and [[Martin Niemöller]] in the middle of the [[Nazi]] repression. Is there rebirth due? Will we rediscover the wisdom of the [[Gospels]]? Sorry if I scare my compassionate atheist friends with this, but as a freethinker, I may reflect on these things.

Indian Paintbrush 4/22/2011

Indian Paintbrush 4/20/2011

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Stupid White Male Progressive Tricks: Tantrumism

Posted on April 22, 2011 in Hypocrites Liberals & Progressives

square713Since 1980, when I voted for Anderson instead of Jimmy Carter, I have followed the rule that unless the man or woman the Democrats elect is Adolf Hitler, I will support her or him over the Republicans. That is my personal narcissistic contribution to the defeat of good Democrats. But I have seen white male progressives repeat the act over and over again. And they do it when it is most critical that they don’t.

The first time was when a fine Senator named [[John Tunney]] (father of [[Robin Tunney]]) was defeated by [[S.I. Hayakawa]] back in the seventies. Tunney’s crime was that he had withdrawn an early health care reform bill. Otherwise, his record was exemplary. But the white male progressives who first ran [[Tom Hayden]] against him and then either voted for Hayakawa in the final race or didn’t vote at all saw the health care move as unforgivable. An example had to be set so that future Democrats would understand that you don’t do this kind of thing. So Tunney went down and California was stuck with a conservative who spent his six years sleeping in the Senate chamber, earning him the sobriquet “The [[Sominex]] Kid”.

They did it again, with Carter and Anderson, then again with [[Al Gore]] in 2000. You can thank them for ensuring that [[George W. Bush]] became our president. You can also thank them, in part, for the results of the year 2010 election when many worthy Democrats went down to defeat at the hands of the Tea Party. And some are talking about doing it all over again even though Social Security and Medicare are both on the block.

The style of white male progressive of whom I speak is to throw tantrums — perhaps we should refer to them as Tantrumists — and not brook any discussion.

Perhaps because of their affluent backgrounds, Tantrumists don’t worry about economic matters such as these. They can ride out the major disasters in a way that the rest of us can’t. They keep hoping that one day society will shut down and they will will rise to power, worshiped as all-saving and sanctifying deities. Do one thing wrong, make one compromise and they feel that you have betrayed them.

But there’s another angle: does this make Democrats listen to them more? I think Leftist Democrats do, but they peeve Centrists off because of the no-compromise matters. It must all be done now whether or not you have the votes. If it is not done now, they will work towards your political doom. Who wants to listen to someone who will not hear a word you say or engage in discussion that is not entirely accusatory?

Let’s also not forget their tendency to abuse or to limit their political activity to flaming people on billboards. They claim not to be racist, but they attack other whites as inbred and stupid. And they are not there when minorities and women truly need them such as is the case now. The higher the price that will be paid by Republican victory, the more strident the Tantrumists are.

I am white, male, and a progressive. I do not understand the testosterone poisoning that impels Tantrumists to fling the whole Center and Left onto the sword that Right wing extremists gleefully hold out for them. In these times what we need is unity so that the Tea Party may be defeated. But the Tantrumists would rather that the Tea Party triumph again and destroy everything than acknowledge one good, make one tentative compromise to save citizen rights and security from the plutocrats.

We can’t afford this kind of narcissism in 2012. That is why I am calling them out.

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Relentless Self-Examination & the Loss of Genuineness

Posted on April 20, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder OCD Reflections Spirituality and Being Uncertainty

square712The Harding Truck Trail took one last broad left turn. Just before the silver Irvine Water District gate, I called “Stop!” to my little dog. Drake came to a halt as he was trained to do so and let me fasten his leash to the ring of his harness. We made our way around the gate post, then turned right down the hill to the [[Tucker Wildlife Sanctuary]] parking lot.

The thought that I had forgotten something ((I had already gone out without my cell phone)) came in a rush. Panic swept my hand to my pants pockets. I felt each in turn. The leash! Where was Drake’s leash?

If you read this even marginally closely, you will immediately see the absurdity of my condition. The leash was in my hand! I was walking Drake with it! I realized this, of course, and ended my panic then and there. But I cannot help but ask why this happened?

I often joke with the members of my support group about this kind of thing. It’s like that moment when you are standing at the urinal and you think to yourself “Hey wait a minute! Have I walked into the women’s bathroom by mistake?!” The only ones who have ever admitted to me that they feel the same are other people living with bipolar disorder or [[OCD]]. Is this experience of mine really that isolating? ((I think the confessional nature of the support group and the safety of that environment makes people more likely to admit to such things is all that is happening here.))

As a young [[Catholic]], I was trained in the practice of self-examination. You looked at what you said, what you did, and what you thought. You weighed it against what you had been taught as right. Everywhere you went you performed this task, in each moment, in all seasons. This was how you saved yourself from “the near occasion of sin”.

Somewhere along the way, I adopted a more liberated altruism. You did good because that was the emotion that rose up in you. You acted in a certain way because it was consistent with who you were. You weren’t a slave to church fathers who probably wanted you looking at yourself so that you wouldn’t be looking at them. Nor did you fall into the Randian kneejerk of being selfish for selfishness’s sake. By rejecting both, the relentless self-examination was replaced by an earnest motivation to be genuine. ((The Randian — follower of [[Ayn Rand]] — is little more than a negative image of an obsessive altruist. The genuine human being strives to acknowledge both her/his individuality and her/his membership in society. You don’t eliminate one for the other and expect to have a healthy mind.))

Yet it remains in puzzling ways. When it does so usefully, it serves as a check against creating agony for myself and others. But then there are these other times when it just clicks along so that the wheels can turn. It ambushes me in strange places, forces odd thoughts upon me. At the deepest points, I see a certain logic to each of the panics: You need to keep your dog on a leash so he doesn’t get run over by a car. Men and women stay out of each other’s bathrooms as a courtesy to each other’s privacy and dignity. The moments where these occur, however, are not genuine.

When they happen, I am a slave not to society, but to an odd sense of self. The way I deal with them is to acknowledge their drollness and move on.

This post is in response to Day 19 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Health Activist Choice Day”.

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From Anxiety to Stupor: My Daily Routine

Posted on April 18, 2011 in Activity Anxiety Routine

square711Lately I have been waking to alarms and excursions of horror. My therapist suggests that these anxieties preclude any explanation for them, but I am not convinced of this. The news starts in my head before I have even read it. My future looks grim. I turn over, hoping to obliterate some of the empty time through more slumber. When I do arise — either out of resignation or at the end of a nap — I head for the kitchen where I take five meds, then eat some fruit and maybe a bit of cottage cheese for my breakfast. As I eat it, I read the latest fears on Twitter and move some of the more electric links to my Facebook page. If I see bad news, I call Lynn to tell her that the world is ending.

Before I do anything else, I stop to take a picture for DailyBooth.

Then I break from this. If I have an appointment, I go to it, bearing my Kindle and my day planner. If it is Thursday, I pack up my laptop and head for the Foothill Ranch Library to lead my English conversation group. On other days, I put on my hiking boots, fill my [[Camelbak]], and dress the dog for a hike up in the hills if it is not too hot. If it is, I head to the gym instead where I tread for about thirty five minutes to an hour, hoping that I will not hear abusive talk in the locker room. Men like that kind of thing, alas, and they feel most excited by it when they are naked and dripping from a shower. I get out of there and spend a few more hours on the computer or nap. ((I am always worried about getting enough sleep and prefer too much to too little because the latter might segue me into a mania.)) If I haven’t walked the dog, I take him out to the park where he can play with his friends and bark at their owners.

On weekends, my activities include Lynn. We shop at Trader Joe’s on Saturdays and take Drake for a long walk on most Sundays.

During these hours, I sneak in various foods to still my anxiety. Nibbles of crackers, cheese, and other snacks quell my shaking, but these can inevitably lead me to a place where I feel sick to my stomach. Somehow I keep my blood sugars in line, but my [[triglycerides]] have been abominable lately.

Lynn comes home, we either go out to dinner or stay home. If it is a Monday, we go to the bipolar support group that we run. On other nights, we may go out and run a few errands like picking up my meds at the pharmacy. Then we come home to watch a dvd. ((Lately we have been wending our way through [[In Treatment]] and the first season of [[Babylon 5]].)) I either get on the computer for more intellectual torture or upload my recent photos to my flickr account. Then during the last hours of consciousness, I take my night meds ((This is the hour I ingest my various mood stabilizers and my antipsychotics as well as some meds for my diabetes and my blood pressure.)) and read The New Yorker or The Nation on my [[Kindle]]. I brush my teeth, rinse with Peroxyl and Phosphlur, then lie down. I pass out swiftly thanks to the potentiation of sleep meds I have just ingested and some good sleep hygiene. There is little or no sign of the anxiety that broke me into consciousness. I dream intensely, but do not always choose to remember my night hallucinations.

This post is in response to Day 18 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Your Daily Schedule”.

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Mindful Moment

Posted on April 18, 2011 in Anxiety Imagination

square710Hands open, palms upward as I call the paradise within to mind. Oh that it were tangible, real! A gentle hill green with grass slopes away from me. My line of sight is clear in all directions. Blue sky swells above. A layer of clouds at my feet obscures that frantic world of freeways and streets and appointments. Wisps of these clouds break away and give substance to the empty firmament. Cool breezes and warm sunlight decompress my anxieties. There is no Internet here, no television, no reason to fear the intrusion of politics or aggressive media. You are not oppressed by the vexations of daily life. This place is away, beyond. The grasses stroke your tense limbs, neck, and scalp. The creak of mental torment gets sucked away into their roots and dissipates into the ground.

Here, I can be free and true to my own person. ((I’ve been suffering greatly from anxiety these last several days. The chief cause has been uncertainty about the economy and about the future of my health care. I failed to write this yesterday because an attack of nausea prostrated me. I took my anti-nausea meds and experienced a several hours long bout of diarrhea. Nothing that I ate seems to have precipitated this. When I set my mind to relaxation, I started feeling better. Nausea, they say, is a product of the brain, but new research suggests that a lot of our emotive processes lie in the gut. Could this be the reason why we eat food to calm ourselves and throw up when our fears shake us?))

This post is in response to Day 17 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Mindful Moment”.

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Insert a Trite Metaphor for a Corral #93

Posted on April 17, 2011 in Roundup

Of all the strategies, wishing, is the worst. ~Andrew Young

square709My wife and I are keeping a running chart of our predictions. This week I scored a point: the Republicans voted to abolish Medicare. She says this doesn’t count until they actually get it past the Senate which they will never do. But in this land where freedom of speech means that significant political points of view won’t get heard thanks to the landslide of corporate media and [[robocalls]], I have my doubts. The founders most certainly did want to level the playing field, to prevent anyone from preventing opposing points of view from being heard. The mistake they made was that they limited the restriction to the government. Now we know the corporations need even tighter controls.

Drake 4/11/2011

Drake 4/11/2011

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Rand, Anthem, and Genocide

Posted on April 15, 2011 in Morals & Ethics Reading Scoundrels Stigma

square708[[Ayn Rand]]’s Anthem is included in many summer reading programs these days. It tells a story of a young man who is trapped in a world where there is only “We”. He escapes and finds an ancient library where the books are filled with this wonderful new word whose concept he embraces passionately: “I”. It was, for the teenager that I was, a heady perusal. All my life I had felt locked into what was “good for the family”. Rand offered a way out of this, but I did not see the future and the full implications of Anthem.

One thing that her hero declares his independence from are “the halt and the lame”. Now I realize that he meant people like me — someone who lives with [[bipolar disorder]]. I can only ask just what did Rand want to do with all the people who didn’t measure up to her “heroic” ideal? ((Never mind the heroism that it takes to live every day with this disease.)) I hear here an echo of the [[Nazis]], who took people like me and, first, sterilized them, then “euthanized” them to cleanse the gene pool. When I see Rand devotee [[Paul Ryan]] promulgating a Medicare/Medicaid scheme that will leave the disabled with precious little insurance, I can only recall Rand’s paean to selfishness. Despite my education and my intelligence, I am one of her “halt and lame”.

This “I” feels life. But the years and the illness have taught me a larger lesson: that “we” is also essential because we do not exist alone. I see a language without either first person pronoun desolate and untrue. I see a nation unwilling to cherish its people regardless of their infirmities doomed to incompleteness.

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Poem of Lies

Posted on April 15, 2011 in Bipolar Disorder Poems Stigma

I have a hockey mask in my closet ((Of course, I don’t. I’m not Jason.))
When I get mad, I murder. ((Studies show that the mentally ill are more likely to be the victims of violence than to commit acts of violence.))
Ups and downs are normal. ((But not like I have them!))
I am worthless, best ignored, ((Many of the world’s great thinkers have lived with bipolar disorder))
and just like the rest of my ilk. ((Symptoms can vary widely between individuals. Medications that work for one person, may not do well for others.))
It’s all in my head, it’s all in my head. ((Recent studies point to the possible implication of the neural clusters in the gut as being implicated. And this is not imaginary.))
Just wait it out and it will all go away. ((Despite the episodic nature, the disease tends to get worse over time if left untreated.))

This post is in response to Day 14 of the Health Activist Writers Challenge: “Write a poem” where every line is a lie or misconception about your health condition.

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