I feel just awful. Every medication has side effects. My cancer meds gave me food intolerances so now I have this folate deficiency. The folate supplements give me UTIs. So I have antibiotics for that, and they have given me a migraine. It just never ends.
this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2026
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disabled
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My thoughts these days go to the medical professionals who, despite the pressures and stress they're facing, are putting in the effort and time to understand our struggles, take them seriously, and try to help to the best of their ability, sometimes even beyond. All medical professionals should be like this; I'm glad there's at least some who are.
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Mask up, love one another, and stay alive for one more week.
I got a proper period for the first time in years today. After two days of taking folate injections. Now I'm wondering if my periods stopping were more nutrient deficiency related than perimenopause.
Could the bloody urine you experienced have been a part of the period? If it were then it would be a great sign.
I don't know, but I hadn't started bleeding yesterday or the day before when the urine was bloody, I mean blood was in the urine but nowhere else. But maybe, I'm not sure.
I don't know, but I feel like you're due for decent news.
CW: Paranoia, COVID trauma
spoiler
I'm not smart, at all. So it actually gives me real anxiety just how many people seemingly are having trouble understanding very simple things or understanding reality in a basic level. Like ignorance on an almost callous level too. It's like everyone is doing vibe based thinking and the vibes are all fucked. Such thinking can be easily led to accept and even commit atrocities and I find that very, very scary. An example of what I mean is something that still haunts me from during the height of COVID. I remember when people were being forced to return to work again even though COVID death numbers were getting worse, and a coworker I previously thought of as a kind and decent person smiled and said to me (when inquiring about me wearing a mask to work) "Don't worry, I don't need a mask, it's only weak and old people dying anyway."
I feel like they just don't care. You can spell something out so blatantly and they go nuh uh. It has to be deliberate ignorance.
realized I was exhibiting depression symptoms these past few months. Just got my SSRI dosage (prev for anxiety) upped after talking to my psychiatrist 
good luck
also finally pushed myself into deleting X The Everything App off my phone 
sorry umatter but I'm not eating a shit sundae just in case some of it's fudge, it's been real
Two good steps for your mental health then.
My psychiatrist f%#ked up and gave me too little pills to last until the next visit with him, so I went without my antidepressant medication for at least a week. The withdrawal symptoms were horrible, anxiety, depression, head and stomach aches, etc.
I'm so sorry sweetie. Do you have your medications now? And I hope your symptoms go away quickly 
Yes. My symptoms largely went away after a day or too. Thank you for your sympathy.
So I have a psychotic disorder, so I sometimes experience things that didn't really happen. This does not make what happened any less traumatic, but it does change how people treat my experience. If someone came to me saying what I'm preparing to say, I know I would try to be as validating of their trauma and try to help them as much as I could, but for some reason I just can't extend the same treatment to myself. So I'll put it here and throw myself on your mercy. Even if you can't be validating, please be kind. I'm not trying to hurt anybody.
CW: SA
When I was younger, I had a hallucination that affected all of my senses that was of a woman SAing me. I guess that's the whole story. I used to have more frequent, vivid, and senseful(?) hallucinations than I do now, before I started taking medication. I've been terrified of the dark ever since, and still hear her voice in my head from time to time. I feel like I can't move on in part because I can't escape her and in part because I feel like its unreality invalidates every feeling I've had about it. I try not to invade spaces where people talk about this kind of trauma, because I do understand there is a big difference between what happened to me and what happened to them. Mine was a fabrication, an image of something; while theirs is real, and many of them have physical consequences of that. I just want somebody to tell me it's okay to feel afraid and hurt and a little sick about it. I need to move on... somehow.
Spoiler
I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with that, especially so alone since many people don’t understand. A trauma is a trauma and the event itself doesn’t matter as much as the harm its done. 🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂🫂
same CW
I have Dissosciative Identity Disorder so not quite the same, but a lot of us struggle with this sort of "trauma that isn't actually real". Though we call it intratrauma, as it is trauma that happens internally (in headspace, usually).
Generally my opinion is. Even if something isn't "real", if you are having a trauma response to it, then it is real according to your nervous system. If you have meaningfully changed your behaviour due to your trauma, you are experiencing real trauma symptoms. While I do agree that it's not the same as actually being assaulted, it's still traumatic and you deserve to acknowledge it as such. Anything else is doing the thing where you don't consider your trauma valid cos some people have it worse and that's no good
That makes sense, thank you.
A nurse who is friends with my landlady brought over a couple of folate injections for me, to see if they'd be any more tolerable, and now my bladder infection is even worse = there's so much blood in my urine it looks like a strawberry smoothie. So I've been given more antibiotics and there is clearly no form of synthetic folate that I can tolerate.
It's a really frustrating experience to think very carefully about exactly what I'm feeling, and why, and pick all the perfect words that to me perfectly describe what I'm thinking. I will sometimes spend days or more with an idea rolling around. And then for people to not get it. Like I was so intentional with how I said things, and now I'm just disappointed that I still didn't get it across. A heat of the moment misunderstanding doesn't really hurt, happens to me a lot too, but when it's something I've spent a lot of mental energy getting 'right' to still feel like people don't get it is a real let down.
if I could scream, I would never stop
"You have a mouth and you wanna scream", the collective work of most disabled people.
My disability support person at school got a different job so I don't have any support until March, and also I was technically assaulted at work and also I am still spiralling about that person I gave bad directions to.
Volunteering has been good though. Everyone has been nice to each other there. Doctors love giving vague references to future appointments they then don't book and not telling people about their rights but once reminded they do their thing pretty well.
I hate this country so much I hope ww3 happens very soon and we get 1000 nukes dropped on us to obliterate us from the earth. Why is it so difficult to get even basic healthcare? My neuropathy got so bad I started taking my folic acid again. My bladder flared up so badly I can't get a wink of sleep. The bladder sachets the GP gave me are useless. He referred me to the NHS dietician because of all this, to try and find some kind of substitute for the folic acid tablets. The dietician said I'm on the waiting list but in the meantime I should ask the GP to refer me to the hospital for a folate infusion - where they would put folate directly into my blood with an IV drip. So yesterday I went through the whole rigmarole of trying to get a GP appointment, turning up at the crack of dawn, getting in line, waiting, got put on the triage list for a phone call, and in the end they didn't even bother phoning me. So I went back again this morning and went through the whole thing again to be told they didn't bother phoning me as they can see I haven't actually had an appointment with the dietician yet, and they need the dietician to tell them to do this. The dietician department say they don't know who said I should get the folate infusion and they're trying to find out. The whole thing is a mess and in the meantime my neuropathy is so bad I've now lost movement in two toes on the right foot. Just nuke this shit hole now.
to be told they didn't bother phoning me as they can see I haven't actually had an appointment with the dietician yet, and they need the dietician to tell them to do this. The dietician department say they don't know who said I should get the folate infusion and they're trying to find out
What the actual fuck is going on over there on the island? Like, holy heck, does anyone of these people communicate with each other? I'm sorry again that you have to deal with this, and losing movement in two toes is absolutely terrifying. Is there any other option left? Anything you could try?
I got an appointment with a GP today, because of the folic acid I now have full blown cystitis again. Also my blood test shows that the folic acid has raised my folate level just enough to not be currently eligible for an NHS IV folate drip. Still low level though. The doctor gave me some antibiotics for the bladder and said if I can't take the tablets any more, all we can do is wait for my folate level to drop down lower again and then maybe I can get the IV. She told me to get my levels retested at the end of March. And I am really terrified about the neurological symptoms and loss of movement in my toes but I am still on the waiting list to see a neurologist about that. Although all the GPs tell me it's almost certainly the low folate levels causing it and nothing the neurologist can do. Like everything, I have to wait until the situation gets worse before they do anything.
That's... literally not a solution, that's just leaving you hanging. What the actual fuck?!
I've just accepted that this is what passes for medical care and there isn't anything I can do about it. I've even tried complaining to my local MP but he does nothing, usually doesn't even respond. I'm just powerless to change things.
I'm very self concious about my disability and haven't stayed around a lot of people for over a day since getting it.
How do you explain that mocking/insulting others for struggling with GI issues(gas, bowel movements, and stomach issues like indigestion, nausea, and vomitting or nearly vomitting) can be ableist at certain extents? How do you respond in general? I have let out a 30 second long fart in private and might often pass gas if I will be around others for a whole day. But I don't want to take the fact that gas(and other GI issues) can be gross and internalize that as me being gross. One of my bodily functions is not me as a whole being gross.
I guess "Grow up, everybody farts and has GI issues"?
I think the approach "grow up, everybody farts and has GI issues" is the best one here. Sure, farts can sound funny (speaking from experience, I have GI issues too from chronic diseases), and it's okay to laugh about it, but that doesn't mean you can mock someone for it. I laugh at my own farts a lot, and it has helped me grow more resilient while interacting with others when I have to fart, but in general, getting insulted for body functions is fucking no-go, always. You should definitely tell people off who mock you for it.
I hope your GI tract gives you peace today, HexaSnoot, and that nobody laughs at you
I'm often entertained by own farts. Laughing fine. Just with me, not at me.
I'm more worried about feeling a little nausea to the point I gag like a cat smelling a strong smelling food. Idk what to say about that. Whether if they're concerned, neutral, or if they're mean. I'm having sensory issues.
I'd suggest that if you can, explain to those who are concerned what the cause is, don't say anything if people don't react to it at all, but tell them off when they're being mean. Gagging will often elicit a strong reaction from people around you, I don't think there's any changing that. But why anyone would be mean about that is beyond me. Then again, people can be horrible, so what do I know. I hope you find more people who accommodate you and don't laugh at you or mock you for your disability.
They’re changing the way you pay for public transit here. You used to have a card that you tapped on terminals, now you have either an app or a different card. What's the difference? Why do they need to get rid of the old card to make a new card??? Capitalist fucking "innovation"
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Its so much sillier. The new card is split into two kinds, a version that just makes you pay with your card the total sum at the end of the day or an "anonymous" version that works EXACTLY LIKE THE OLD ONE.
Now the differences are that you need to check out at every stop, it won't show you the price of anything and there will only be one scanner instead of a check in and a check out scanner.
This solution was implemented to head off criticism of the removal of the old system. So they made the old system but more convoluted.
Edit: I used a term I should not have. I apologise.
What a joke. They could have just made the app and continued with the old system at the same time. Like... what was wrong with it?
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Supposedly the new system was developed in cooperation with some disability rights orgs and the DaneAge association because checking out more and not having to "fill up" the card is better for people with bad memories or something. I don't know if that's true. I feel like given that there was already a system where you could automatically fill it up each month, you could easily build whatever payment system they felt was more suited on top of the old one.
But they wanted to get rid of the old system, didn't want to make anyone mad, so now we have the old system 2.0
there's tech debt reasons not to do that, like maybe APIs aren't available or complete enough, but they could also just be getting swindled or bribed by somebody. ought to be journalists looking into it
Great! More work to put in for an already running system. Gotta love those moments 
Shit. I gave someone bus directions and I forgot to tell them when to get off. If they don't realise theyre gonna be screwed. I'm having a bad time both with the guilt over that and about making their possible misfortune about me.
Oh no :( Is it possible they can guess when/where they have to get off?
Given the context (They were discussing how to get somewhere with someone over the phone and were running out of power and neither person was communicating well) probably not. I'm so worried I screwed this person
Maybe, but honestly, they sound all over the place already, I don't think you made it worse.
I guess. I still feel bad about it though. I want to help not just not make it worse.
I'm sure they eventually arrived where they wanted to go, but I understand where you're coming from. They'll be fine, and so will you
Can you still make jokes about posting on company time while working for the government? Either way. This has been the easiest shift ever.
Glad the first one was such an easy start for you! And yes, company time is always posting time, no matter who you're working for!
I literally did nothing all day. Making tea or coffee for doctors and nurses is strictly against my union contract, but otherwise I would probably just have done that.
Another 5 hours of sleep another day of being horrendously tired.
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I'm sending you mental calm and as much sleep tonight as you need