disabled

leg pain has been pretty bad lately aggravated by the weather so i'm stuck using my cane more than i've had to in almost a year :') also having to deal with a lot of brain fog from my mental health medication and it makes me feel like i can't type a coherent sentence so there's that too. we push through i guess

I unlocked this new mini game with my brain where I take medicine to try to sleep and my brain keeps me up anyway. Last two nights I've hardly gotten any sleep. I usually have trouble sleeping, but melatonin usually gets the job done. I hope this is a fluke and not a trend, though.

As a fellow disabled person, transfem YouTuber Rain, the Radical Dame, is working on the clock despite getting tired usually. I just had to help her get some rest if she feels tired.

I'll be less active for the next few days while I attend a funeral out of town. Probably back later in the week since I'll be driving. Wishing all of you a better week, stay safe and keep lovin on one another.

This month is proving even more difficult than usual. Two recent foot surgeries, now infected, the endless struggle to get even a bit of medical treatment, the non stop tingling and pins and needles, starting to go bald, the car breaking down and needing repairs, the neurologist stopping the only migraine meds that work for me because "they aren't working well enough," and the endless struggle to get assistance. Several people came through after all my reposts, eventually we managed to get enough to fix and fill the car but that used up almost all the money on that, and it's so difficult to get replies to mutual aid posts now, thanks to the most recent reply, I can get by with food for maybe a week now but after that I'll have to keep reposting and if no-one responds I'll be screwed. Apparently someone was accused of being a scam artist on mutual aid and now people are less likely to donate for fear they are being scammed?

All avenues of help are closing. My local council cut the Household Support Fund (a small amount given out to the poor twice a year) right down, it started off as £150 twice a year, then they cut it down to £100 once a year, and then they decided they were only giving it to old age pensioners. So that support is gone. I was due to receive a £300 grant from the cancer charity macmillan in November, but they decided not to give grants any more, so that lifeline is gone. There is nothing else I am eligible for, the food bank takes up to two weeks to access and gives a tiny amount of food, mostly drinks like tea, coffee and milk, which all runs out long before the next food bank appointment, how am I meant to get by on that? Mutual aid is the final lifeline, and I am immensely grateful for all the help I've received here but it's getting more difficult to get responses there too, and with prices going up drastically (by about two fifths these past few months) money just doesn't go as far. Is it just a bad time of the month, far from payday, or will I have to keep reposting every week or few days from now on? I even made my mutual aid post as helpful as possible, multiple food voucher links with various different payment methods, amazon gift card link (can get dried/tinned food off there) and even paypal (as my need for food aid right now is bigger than my worries about the DWP checking my accounts). Don't know what I can do to make it easier. That's why I'm up so late tonight, i thought if I waited long enough and kept checking my emails I might get a gift card and could go to sleep in peace but it's 1.30am now and I'll have to go to bed worrying.

On top of this, the fact that I've been almost housebound for so long is really wrecking my mood even more. I need to get out and walk around in the fresh air but due to all my foot surgeries, foot infections, and the repeated injuries in my left side thanks to the weakness caused by my stroke, I can't wear closed shoes or walk for more than a few minutes right now. Like hobble into a shop, pick up a few items and out. I want to hike. I live right by the southwest coast path, a 630 mile hiking route that goes around the entire south west coast of England. I've got a free bus pass from the council (as I'm partially sighted) and a ferry pass from before all my walking problems started, that still has about 8 free journeys left on it. If I wasn't almost crippled I could use these things to go out on day hikes and then get the bus home, get the ferry to other towns and hike all around, which is what I used to do before all these problems began. It's not much to ask, wanting to walk around outside but the universe won't even grant me that. I feel like whatever controls this world is taunting me, placing me right by a brilliant hiking area and then crippling me so i can't use it.

And everything costs money, constantly. It's hard enough getting the necessities of life, never mind anything for pleasure. I'm a huge Outlander fan and the new Outlander spin-off series is starting on amazon next month. Will I be able to watch it? No of course not because you have to pay for that! Why does life have to suck so damn much all the bloody time? Maybe I was evil in a past life and this is my karma.

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I'm back. How is everyone?

I make jokes and then I realise two hours later that actually it could be taken as a sex thing and my interlocutor probably did 🙃

Took my mental health day on Friday as prescribed by my therapist and gingerbrat. It was actually pretty nice. I did light laundry chores and made it to about halfway through the 4th(chronological) movie in the Mad Max franchise. I did work on a bit of code stuff but it was correcting typos in my business sites. Nothing too brainy. I also gave Satisfactory another attempt and I think I still hate it.

Then Saturday came and I got hit with a huge wave of depression all over again... I can't really afford to take a day off a week to try and be happy, just to turn around and be more depressed than I was before. I think a lot of it is still tied to my shitty job, my education going to waste, and me just wanting to get out of this daily work grind bullshit. I need to stop setting my worth at what my income is and I don't know how. I don't want to be like generational wealth rich or whatever but I'd just like this dumb business to take off but no one wants or needs a websites and no one wants to pay the real price for one.

I wrote another mobile app in 2 days again. It was inspired by those dumb digital business cards that use NFC to send your info to someone else's phone. This one doesn't have NFC because Android sucks and we can't have nice things. But it does have a QR code generator in it that creates one for each url you add. Think of it sort of as an Android app QR code equivalent to Linktree. But that was how I realized I was back in burnout. So, there is that.

Next stage of burnout is me getting fired.

I joined dignitas recently, and was told they can even offer free assisted suicide if someone is very poor, but they have to pay their own travel costs. So I didn't do anything about it for a while. But over the past few days I thought I can at least get the ball rolling, if I can get accepted then as soon as I can get some money I can go. Also my medical conditions seem to be deteriorating and I have been feeling worse than usual. So I decided to go ahead with the matter, only to find that the documentation they need is insane. I thought it would be a simple issue of providing copies of medical records, but no. Aside from needing a ton of medical records, past and present, they want a ridiculous amount of identity verification. I don't have a passport right now but if I got one, wouldn't that be enough? NO! On top of that they want a declaration of your identity signed by a notary, your parents' birth certificates and all kinds of other crap. My father was from Turkey, they don't even have birth certificates in Turkey. If you're unmarried you even need to swear a statutory declaration before a commisioner of oaths, that you've never been married and this apparently costs £100. You also have to provide 4 types of other ID like bank statements, utility bills etc. I can get bank statements, but bills? I pay all that included in my rent. (Or at least I do when I'm in receipt of benefits and actually paying rent.) I guess I could provide a bank statement and a letter from the DWP. I have a government-issued bus pass, maybe that would do too? Don't know what else I can get.

Now, there are several other suicide clinics in Switzerland that don't require so much documentation. However, unlike dignitas, as far as I'm aware they don't offer discounted or free suicide. I have emailed them to check and I'm waiting for a response.

But the other thing with dignitas is they are quite insistent that you bring a relative along to show their support for what you are doing. This is because when people get assisted suicide against their family's wishes, the family complain in the media and it makes dignitas look bad and turns people against legal assisted suicide. But what if you have no family? There is so much to find out about all the hoops I'd have to jump through and they are slow to respond. Why is everything always so difficult?

Happy "Disability Independence Day", fellow 'muricans.

35 years ago today they passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in both private and state government sectors. Idk if it's worth any praise at this point, but at least it exists, I guess. We still have a long, long way to go to actually provide for our disabled population in this country.

seriously though...

Well, I've been feeling more tired than usual (a side effect of my new migraine med which I decided to take after all) but I thought I'd report on my assisted suicide plans. They're not going well. There are 6 suicide clinics in Switzerland. Two don't accept foreigners. One doesn't give discounts. One isn't accepting new members. So that leaves two - dignitas and pegasos. I'm still going through the process with dignitas but i thought I'd also try pegasos as a backup. I just heard back from them and they said given my "relatively young age," they would require additional documentation from me, including a notarised letter from family members saying they support my decision and they'd have to come with me. I don't really have any family, I mean I have some cousins who live hundreds of miles away who I haven't seen in years. They don't care about me at all, they never check to see if I'm alright or need anything. You can technically get 14 years in prison in the UK for assisting someone to commit suicide, there is no way these cousins will drop everything, abandon their kids, travel hundreds of miles, spend loads of money and risk prison to help me do this. So pegasos is off the table. That only leaves dignitas but I know they are also keen on family involvement. It doesn't look like it's going to happen for me but I'll keep trying with dignitas until i get a definite no anyway.

I'm so exhausted because of my thyroxine issues right now. It's making it hard to get on and deal with my benefit appeal and the dignitas stuff, but I'm managing to do at least a little something towards them each day like send an email or fill out a form. other than that I am so tired I keep falling asleep during the day. I'm still trying to get the money together to pay for the doctor's note but apparently the only GP that knows me personally there is on holiday for 2 weeks so I guess there's no point rushing right now anyway. I feel like if I do at least one thing towards these two issues each day then at least some progress will get made, however slowly. And i'm going to need to pay for ID documents but have no money for that either. It's all so overwhelming the only thing I can do is one small thing each day.

For once though, one tiny good thing happened. Recently the neurologist said she wasn't going to prescribe my migraine tablet, rimegapant, any more because my migraine diary shows it isn't working well enough to justify the expense. (Apparently a pack of 8 tablets costs the NHS £125 and I've been getting 2 packs a month. The pharmacist scolded me a few months ago for costing the NHS so much money.) She prescribed a new tablet in it's place, but that was only delivered today so i haven't tried it yet. I've been very, very worried about managing without the rimegapant. Last week I quickly put in a repeat prescription request for my two boxes of rimegapant, hoping I'd be able to get it dispensed before the neurologist's letter arrives telling them not to dispense it any more. Today I received it, and when I opened the prescription bag, not only did it contain rimegapant but weirdly it contained 7 boxes instead of 2. A three and a half month supply instead of a 1 month supply. I can only assume the pharmacist made a mistake but I am keeping them. A small victory at last.

After three days of trying to get a GP appointment or see the pharmacist for antibiotics for my infected surgical site, finally I managed to see the pharmacist and get some. It shouldn't be this hard to access medical treatment. And of course the infection has spread in that time.