And now, a wee rant
Dec. 4th, 2012 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
...which may just have been building for some time.
Migraine is not ... a headache.
Depression is not ... the blues.
Autism is not ... bad social skills.
Hyperemesis gravidarum is not ... morning sickness.
If you have, or know somebody who has, any of the problems on the right, this tells you nothing about coping with the problems on the left.
Migraine is not ... a headache.
Depression is not ... the blues.
Autism is not ... bad social skills.
Hyperemesis gravidarum is not ... morning sickness.
If you have, or know somebody who has, any of the problems on the right, this tells you nothing about coping with the problems on the left.
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Date: 2012-12-04 04:46 pm (UTC)....they just don't come with auras, nausea, hypersensitivity to light or the feeling that I'm slightly drunk (and the absolute knowledge I am impaired as far as driving goes.)
(I am also admittedly VERY lucky, comparatively, when it comes to migraine pain and always have been. But the other symptoms can be Exciting.)
/share.
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Date: 2012-12-04 04:49 pm (UTC)I always felt I was lucky not to have hemiplegia, so there you go.
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Date: 2012-12-04 09:16 pm (UTC)I am....less than thrilled with the apparent new trick of mine where the prodrome manifests as a violent and painful mood crash and self-loathing. But I'm lucky enough that I can use OTC painkillers for the actual pain, so I don't complain.
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Date: 2012-12-05 02:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:50 am (UTC)I also wound up in an ER convinced my retina was detaching after about half an hour of little flashy glowing patches, like the after-image from a lightbulb flash. No! Just a migraine indicator. WTF.
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Date: 2012-12-05 02:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 06:43 pm (UTC)Writer's block is not... being stuck.
Being stuck can be awful and leech a lot of energy, but it's related to whatever you were working on, and if you switch projects, you'll be fine again. Writer's [etc] block is anxiety-related, and can make one feel sick even just _thinking_ about the thing one is meant to do. Sitting down anf forcing yourself to do it is likely to result in more anxiety. (I had to stop coding for two years before I could face it again. Oh, and I lost a freelance business in the process because I just Could Not face it.)
A bolting horse... did not run away
A bolt is the equine equivalent of a panic attack - the horse will run without taking any sensory input whatsoever, whether from the rider/driver, nor from fences and other solid objects. They've a danger to everyone including themselves. It's extremely rare. Horses running away, on the other hand, is common and happens for a myriad of reasons. Most of which are preventable or easily remedied by a good rider.
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Date: 2012-12-04 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 08:07 pm (UTC)The (probably) second time was over very quickly, and the horse came out of it on his own, and again it was only in hindsight that I realised just *how* little control I had - we're talking twenty meters and blazing speed, so it was over quicker than I could have reacted, so that might not have been a true bolt after all.
The third time was the real thing. It felt like sitting in the backseat of a driverles car which was hurtling down the motorway - there was nothing whatsoever that I could have done to influence what was happening. The horse was in pain, as I worked out afterwards, but it was _frightening_. I've been run away with many times, sometimes at high speeds, sometimes across open countryside - it's never nice, but I learnt how to a) anticipate and b) stop it, so a runaway never struck me as particularly scary.
A bolt is... in a category of its own, and you definitely recognise it when you encounter it. Thankfully, it's extremely rare - in twenty years I've encountered three horses, all three extremely anxious types (the first one died thanks to running through a fence and into a car when she was two, I knew her as a foal). The first one probably was hereditary, the other two had major undiagnosed pain issues.
But yes - like all panic/anxiety issues, hearing someone shrug it off is infuriating.
Oh, it's like when I...
Date: 2012-12-04 08:10 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, it's like when I...
Date: 2012-12-04 10:55 pm (UTC)One of the most terrifying things that ever happened to me in my entire life happened when I was - what I have colloquially for the last thirty-seven years and (it would appear) apparently completely offensively referred to as - "bolted with on a pony" when I was a shade over my 13th birthday. It was painful, degrading (I experienced first hand that sort of ableism where someone speaks above the head of the person who can only sit down because of the broken leg and assumes that the injured person is deaf,too) and left me with a permanent weakness in the ankle in question.
Technically, I may not have been bolted with. However, I was shit-scared, and the physical and mental effects were permanent. Take the internet from me if you dare.
Re: Oh, it's like when I...
Date: 2012-12-04 11:04 pm (UTC)The point I understood green_knight to be making is that being run away with is, although bad, not the same thing as being bolted with. That's what I meant by the added title "Oh, it's like when I" and the discussion about analogies, and indeed what I meant in the original post.
Your experience with the runaway horse sounds horrible.
Re: Oh, it's like when I...
Date: 2012-12-04 11:12 pm (UTC)Sorry, but read what I said.
When you agree with
Re: Oh, it's like when I...
Date: 2012-12-04 11:36 pm (UTC)But even at the best of times, it happens that horses will take off - they're flight animals. Mostly, it can be dealt with.
(I also feel that your 'I was bolted with and got terribly injured' isn't a 'problem' in the context of the discussion. What is the problem are the people who say 'oh, the horse bolted and I was able to shut it down easily' because if you could shut it down easily, _it was not a bolt_.
And again, I am sorry to hear about your injury and the consequences thereof.
Re: Oh, it's like when I...
Date: 2012-12-04 11:55 pm (UTC)Either can be equally devastating or equally a non-issue for the rider (see: your story about the first bolt on the unathletic horse) depending on circumstances; but FOR THE HORSE, running away is just a thing, whereas bolting is a panic attack.
(Sorry to intrude, but I both want to check that this is the right reading, and I thought it might be useful to be seriously explicit about it.)
Re: Oh, it's like when I...
Date: 2012-12-05 12:25 am (UTC)That sums it up better than I did; thank you.
Re: Oh, it's like when I...
Date: 2012-12-05 02:46 am (UTC)Re: Oh, it's like when I...
Date: 2012-12-04 11:14 pm (UTC)Re: Oh, it's like when I...
Date: 2012-12-05 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 11:27 pm (UTC)But I think there are three things in play here.
(Zero: I can't judge what happened on that day and whether it was a genuine accident or an accident-waiting-to-happen: given how moronic the person chasing you back on the horse was, there's a good chance that there were other things lacking from their horsemanship.)
But assuming that the horse had run away with you -
- in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal, behaviourwise. It becomes dangerous due to outside factors (running away around cars, on slippery surfaces, when there are dangerous items or vulnerable people about), but _behaviourally_, it's NBD. Horses do this, and you can train them - and their riders - to avoid it happening.
- nobody said that the 'lesser' thing was trivial in itself, see painfulness of cluster headache. Just that they are not the same, and experience of one does not give you experience of the other.
- for you, personally, it was a lousy experience. It was dangerous, and it was extremely badly handled, and you're not overreacting to your pain and the consequences of your injury at all, nor are you overreacting to mistreatment you received when you said that you were injured - there's absolutely no excuse for that. Ever.
That you were just as badly scared or injured on a runaway as I was as the result of a bolt (shattered collarbone, torn rotator cuff, strained back muscle) isn't a reflection on the equine behaviour, anymore than the same injuries sustained if the horse had gone 'eek' and slipped on the tarmac would make that behaviour in any way comparable to bolting.
I'm sorry if I came across as trivialising your injuries - that's the last thing I meant to do, and just as you deal with the horse in front of you, regardless of what you think it 'should' be doing, you deal with the rider in front of you - and if someone is injured you don't tell them that the injury doesn't count because of how it was attained. As I said, that was not my intention.
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Date: 2012-12-05 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 07:27 pm (UTC)I've gotten panic attacks in motor vehicles since early childhood; they're why I've never learned to drive. They feel like an iron band tightening around my collarbones and forcing all the air out of my lungs. They're horrible.
And I get them in circumstances that don't make me the slightest bit nervous. Icy roads make me nervous. Riding with someone with road rage makes me nervous.
Long gentle curves at moderate highway speeds don't make me nervous. But one time in two hundred-- or one time in a hundred if the vehicle is particularly low-slung and there's a low hill intersecting the curve-- they will make me feel like I'm suffocating, for minutes at a time.
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Date: 2012-12-04 09:15 pm (UTC)(There are a few things/areas I am or have previously been truly *blocked* on; for me it doesn't manifest as anxious in a way I recognized, but it does manifest as being totally and completely unable to string words together around the ideas in my head, which is a thing I've lately realized is probably the most intense expression of anxiety overload. It just is a full shut-down, rather than FEELING anything as such.)
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Date: 2012-12-04 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 11:41 pm (UTC)Me, I just wanted to ride the nice ones because life it too short to get injured needlessly. Once I had the ability and determination to walk away (which I didn't have as a teenager), I would rather forfeit a ride than endanger myself. Back then, I simply was lucky.
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Date: 2012-12-05 07:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 07:28 pm (UTC)An awful lot of commentators are assuring us that hyperemesis goes away at 13ish weeks. Wouldn't that be nice?
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Date: 2012-12-04 07:47 pm (UTC)I have told the boychild that he owes me, pretty much forever. He tends to agree.
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Date: 2012-12-04 07:30 pm (UTC)Threw up blood? Holy crap. That's awful.
BTW, does Herself know about Nimona? She needs to. http://gingerhaze.com/nimona/comic/page-1
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Date: 2012-12-04 07:48 pm (UTC)No, but I will pass that on!
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Date: 2012-12-04 09:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-04 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:38 am (UTC)But, GOD, a migraine is not "a headache." No. It is not even "a bad headache." One comparison that seems to work is telling people that a headache is like a migraine the way acid reflux is like a heart attack, but then they just look all shocked. sigh.
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Date: 2012-12-05 02:44 am (UTC)And then assuring them they can have the worst headaches ever without, in fact, having migraines.
MMV, of course.
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Date: 2012-12-05 02:48 am (UTC)Oh, I like that! That makes sense. That would explain the freaky-ass visual effects and the mood stuff, too. - Sometimes I can get oddly excited right before a migraine. It's not hypomania exactly, it's like...agitation but not unpleasant? Weird. One friend of mine has auras so weird you would swear she was drunk -- staggering around, slurring her words, double vision, &c &c. Definitely something going on in the brain there.
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Date: 2012-12-05 02:51 am (UTC)MIGRAINES: freaking weird, man.
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Date: 2012-12-05 02:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-05 02:53 am (UTC)Weird, weird disease.
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Date: 2012-12-06 01:05 am (UTC)But a close second is when people say that someone (including themselves) is "totally OCD about [blank]" when what they mean is they have a preference.