Let's Be Chronically Positive

Hey. So. I wanted to talk to you about the test. And my disability paperwork, and the book.

He says: Okay. Sit down. (but not so much in a scary professory way, this guy is a lot like a Professor Snape mixed with a toned down movie Dumbledore [3-7, not 1&2] personality) 

Me: *tears start happening automatically* so is there any way I could of prepared better?

John: You didn’t do that bad. You did good compared to many in the class. You got a high C low B.

Me: What? 

John: Yeah, the score was out of 100.

Me: I thought it was out of 120. I thought I had gotten a D.

John: Ahhhhhh. I see why you were so upset.  That’s how many possible points there were but it was out of 100. 

Me: Well that makes me feel better.

John: blah blah blah blah blah (aka other stuff he said that isn’t important to the point I’m trying to make in this post) Though I get why you were upset you cry REALLY easily. 

Me: In my defense I’m on enough mind altering drugs to kill a small child right now.

Now this as you can imagine is probably when I get a really funny ass look. 

So then I was like:

I have a disease I’m not a druggie.

He then said “Oh.” and gave this look like he wanted to know more but was afraid to ask so I said “Would you like me to just explain it?”

So I explained it to him, and let me tell you, RSD patients: nobody understands allydonia like a philosophy professor. Probably because they believe sound is really just waves. He got that concept so fast.  

But what I am really getting at is I have never seen someone give me such an intense and so miserable of a look of absolute pity.

I don’t like pity. I love sharing my story. I love telling people about my disease. 

I hate the attention I get from it. I hate the looks I get. I hate people feeling sorry for me. I hate pity.

But I need understanding.  It’s sad but true.  I, and people like me, need people to know it’s really NOT okay to touch strangers.  

I need my teachers to know that sometimes I do need extra help.

I need them to understand.  

I have one amazing professor (who I now know reads this so the “amazing” might just be sucking up…who knows) who I’ve gotten to know fairly well.  He seems interested in my disease and we talk about it and I like taking his classes because if I’m on new meds or I’m having a really bad week I know I can talk to him and he will help me out when it comes to covering my bases, among other reasons.  He also talks about pot a lot and plays a lot of youtube videos.  He also seems to actually know what he is talking about and does not care about making anyone mad with the truth.  For any college aged readers out there a note: get to know your professors.  Usually they are pretty awesome people and you could end up having conversations with them for hours.  It will help. 

I also love telling my story because it raises awareness.  And every once in awhile someone will go “Hey, have you ever heard of RSD? It’s this really weird disease….” and so on.  And then they’ll do it.

I ask you readers to do that. Say to one person “Hey, have you heard about RSD? It’s this really weird disease that causes the person to have it to be in constant severe pain in the area they have it.  There is no cure right now so we need to raise awareness for it.”

ALSO

There is this blog I absolutely love, love, love called http://project3x5.tumblr.com/  check it out.

Linda RSD/CRPS, POTS, Fibro