Part of the Spoonie Life is getting to explain to befuddled doctors that, no, that medicine will not actually work. Explaining that I can't take the standard array of pain meds to new drs is always super, super fun. I guess they don't cover disabilities in med school.
@LianaBrooks Ah yes. I am familiar.
First, explaining my decades of medical history, then on top of that, having to convince each new doctor that no, I am not making things up or ignorant of my health conditions. I really _can't_ take certain meds, or already know what they do to me.
"But this medicine is well-tolerated. It only causes a second evil head to grow on less than 1% of people!"
Yes. I am _in_ that 1%!
@AskTheDevil The confusion is that I'm a chronic pain patient. I have dislocated joints a couple times a day. My body is a wreck and should be buried.
... and pain killers don't work. Opiods don't work. We have yet to find a way to treat my pain and we found this out during a c-section because I thought otc pain killers were placebos. People took the bitter tictac and said they felt better, but I never did. So I figured they were better at faking it.
@LianaBrooks Argh! I don't blame, you and I can relate.
One of the obstactles I've encountered, too, is when I try to explain that many pain meds do nothing for me, they'll think I'm trying to get _more_ of them. They think it's "drug-seeking" behavior, and try to give me the lecture, and I have to explain, "No, no, I'm not asking for more. I'm saying they don't work!"
@LianaBrooks I keep thinking about it, and I think it would drive me up the wall having one of my leg muscles going through my kneecap. I think it would take longer to get used to than the surgery would last.
@AskTheDevil It also wouldn't fix my kneecaps. They move of their own accord. Although wearing a slight heel (2inch or so) usually prevents hyperextensions and dislocations.
@LianaBrooks There are some who believe that some of the oldest souls who come here to work choose bodies with something awful wrong with them, so someone else doesn't have to.
Of course, it invites the alternate theory that everyone else scrambles for anything but, and by the time we've made a reasoned, compassionate decision, we get the ones with the wrong number of working parts.
I'm not sure how other people pick, but I usually go for the ones that have something weird nobody wants.
@AskTheDevil It's either I picked this body out of compassion for someone else, or God nerfed me (pick a God, any god), or my body has the bones and joints of someone born in 600BCE because that's when I was born.
I let other people decide which seems most likely.
@AskTheDevil This also means future surgeries are really, *really* not recommended. Because, yes, drilling a hole in my kneecap and looping a muscle through it would keep it from dislocating, but I'd need the surgery every five years and I'd be doing it without meds.
It's not happening.