ditchadderband - Tumblr blog

[ditchadderband]

A tale of sacrifice

I have been unable to get to sleep at night because of fibro pain for something like half a week. Last night I surprised myself by sleeping and rather than wake me to stop me snoring my wife spent the last 4 hours downstairs. That woman loves sleep more than almost anything. Honoured to be one of the things she loves more.

[ditchadderband]

I have decided to be positive today

I look forward to my body perceiving this as a challenge.

[ditchadderband]

Used up all my energy for the day.

Went to the Lidl across the street.

[ditchadderband]

Another sleepless night

I am in all the pain. Again.

I have a running average of 2 hours of trying to get to sleep before I have to get up. Today I speed ran it and hit 1 hour and 50 minutes.

Because I'm back on gabapentin (which I begged my doctor not to stop before I was diognosed with fibro because it was pretty much the only med I'd been give at that point that had worked at all) and have to get up to 900mg a day before I'm going to be able to talk about increasing pain reduction meds.

I get it. Polypharamacy and opioid enhancer... blah blah blah. But I hurt so much and we are talking about 3 months or so before I feel any better besides the possibility of random pain remission.

I would become an advocate of some type to change this, but I can't sleep and my face has been twitching all week, so I'm gonna settle for shouting into the void and play Crusader Kings 3.

I used to do things that had consequence outside of simulated, fictional europe, but not for somewhere between 5 years and an eternity.

[ditchadderband]

Nothing is safe from my fibro fog

I would love to do the last bit of re-recording for the new song (I went wierdly quiet during a literal scream!) but I can't because my brain is pudding.

I literally forgot the word rabbit. While referencing a rabbit directly. And looking right at it. For so long I just gave up and stoped talking. defeated.

It never gets easier.

[ditchadderband]

A stunningly pointless Tribunal

I, like a fair number of people in the UK with fibro, have been in an ongoing battle with the DWP over if i should recieve the disability support known as PIP.

I have now reached the stage where I have to go to a tribunal to determine if I should get this allowance. What's wild is I am actually open to the idea that I don't need it. What I am not accepting is that the DWP has any idea.

For 2 seperate assessments I have recieved a zero on criteria that it is outright impossible for someone with fibro and chronic migraines to get so low a score on.

So what are they using for their assessment here? It isn't my doctor's opinion, she diognosed my fibro. It isn't the professional opinion of the Neurologist that recognised my chronic migraines and it certainly isn't my multiple self assessments that they have put me through.

What happened is that for 2 assessments somone with a degree and a willingness to work to a predefined criteria over common sense has worked hard to find a reson to tell me I can't have support. Including outright ignoring the proof they are given.

How is this the way it is done? Because the calousness and disregard are the point. This process is designed to gaslight chronicly ill people into beliving that they are asking too much when they seek help.

We won't form sufficent resistance you see, because we are sick and tired and just looking for help.

It is a cruel catch 22. If they were not victimising the chronicly ill, if we were fine like they claim, the thousands of us that they refuse PIP to yearly would have the energy and focus to resist.

Cruel Irony. Emphasis on the Cruel.

[ditchadderband]

How I learned to love the vocals

Something explicitly about Ditch Adder, how novel...

So, the lyrics for the upcoming song have been written for ages. Besides my health issues there has been an issue that has slowed the new song getting released.

I have no idea how i want Ditch Adder's default sound to sound! I know that this is a dumb issue and I understand that I could just do whatever I feel with the vocals and it will be whatever it is. But...

That's a hard thing to just accept when recording. I must have recorded the vocals for the upcoming song at least 10 times, and deleted all but one.

In the end it was simple. I knew what I wanted when I heard it. It may not be the best choice but as long as Alvo and I love it, it will be what we do.

If we are lucky, you will like it too.

[ditchadderband]

On the joy of my body deciding for itself how I should be moving

So. As a part of yesterday's glorious (and music edit ruining) migraine I got to experience something that I, at the time, mentaly assigned the term 'muscular tourettes'. (Post migraine I had the brain power to realise that tourettes obviously has physical ticks, but migraine brain is dumb). What happened is: while I was trying to sleep my muscles kept moving whenever my sleepy brain thought of moving them, despite me having no intention of moving them. Not a twitch or a spasm, both of which I know pretty well. Also not because of sleep, this was happening alsmost as soon as I laid down. Wasn't exhaused either.

As ever, nothing to be done about it. Just another thing to calmly observe and a further barrier to you hearing our upocoming song before the week is out.

P.S. I would genuinely love the tourettes comunity to clarify how my experience differs or does not from actual tourettes ticks involving the body.

[ditchadderband]

Sometimes what you get is just going to have to do

I promised myself that I would post today after a long fibro flare up. Today I have a migraine. And so I present this post: bask in my aspirational mediocrity

[ditchadderband]

[ditchadderband]

Perspective...

It is important to remember that other people are living a life as complex and difficult as your own and to try to have empathy rather than give in to selfish instincts.

...

But...

The person who sold me a copy of Jade Cocoon on ebay and then took 2 days to mail it is a menace to society and should face highly punitive criminal charges!

[ditchadderband]

this might be a hot take but i don't like the sentiment that being disabled doesn't make me a burden. like maybe this is just me but i AM actually a burden. i can't work and can't do many other important things and my wife has to take on that burden (and does so happily). i think what should be said instead is that it's okay to be a burden. humans are meant to lean on each other and take care of each other. it's not a personal or moral failing to need help. but i think just saying "you aren't a burden uwu" will end up making people feel bad because they still feel like a burden even if you say they're not

[ditchadderband]

hey I'm sorry I stopped in the middle of that sentence my brain decided to flush its cache and I totally forgot what this conversation was

[ditchadderband]

I swear my migraines can be vengeful

So, as I type I’m having a brutal migraine.

My hands are shaking and my legs can barely hold me up. It’s 11.54 and I just want to sleep.

The real kicker is that I tried to use sumatriptan to prevent it. Not only has that clearly not worked but this is noticeably more vicious than average. I swear it feels like this happens to me every time I try to head of a migraine by using medication.

I don’t have a point here, Im just exhausted. Alvo sent me the music for a song that I wanted to have out days ago and I can’t even listen to it right now. I also have the added insult of a Universal Credit questionnaire sat on my desk because they don’t think my doctor sending them a sick note of my migraines is sufficient proof of my illness and insisting that their utterly non-medical opinion is more important. If their goal is to make me feel less like a person then, for today at least, they succeeded.

[ditchadderband]

[ditchadderband]

What am I doing here?

I have been putting off posting because I knew it was this that I wanted to post. I wanted to address the question, why did I make a band tumbler? Is that a thing? Honestly, I don't know, but this band, as small and doomed to obscurity as it is means a lot to me, and I’m going to explain why.

So, 5 years or so I lived in Germany. I was about to qualify to do my dream job for the rest of my life, which would have guaranteed that my new wife and I would have a house in our lifetime (a pretty wild dream for a millennial) and could start making those good solid long term plans.

Then my muscles started to twitch and I started to forget things. At first infrequently, but over time more and more. By the time I realised I had to abandon my dreams I couldn’t rely on my memory to get me through tasks I’d been doing for years and I all but never slept at night.

I left my career behind thinking it was stress and I had just burned out. It happens more than people admit and is talked about far less than it should be. I’m pretty certain it shouldn’t be possible for people to be traumatised out of any job if its expectations of them are reasonable, but either way. That was the assumption.

Then it just carried on. For 5 years I have been tired, in pain and had hypo-mobility. Eventually I was told it was migraines. This was hard to accept, as I am unbothered by loud noises or light and don’t have a particularly high rate of headaches, but I’m not a doctor.

What is important is that on some days, and I can never predict when, I am useless. Other days are anywhere between useless and fine. So I find myself unemployed, while my wife (who is a star) works all day.

I get lonely. I get bored. I am perpetually depressed. I was doing nothing with my time and hating myself for it.

Then I went back to visit friends in Germany. At some point we realised that our limitations and abilities overlapped enough for us to form a band.

From 2 different nations the 2 of us work slowly but dedicatedly on producing songs that will, hopefully, make a hand full of people go “Hey, that was alright.”

And it is, quite honestly, what gets me out of bed most days.

Ditch Adder and related things make me able to feel like I’m part of the world and for that I’m always grateful. I decided a while ago to keep a diary to assist with my failing memory and I have decided that the less mundane parts belong here. I don’t know if I will end up better or worse and what medication may be able to do for me, but I want this to be a record of the journey to that. You will always be welcome to come along with me.

Jensen

It would mean the world to me if you considered looking at-

Our first song “Sex Manticore” if you’re feeling musical. https://open.spotify.com/track/2Wbq5ln3IHomklnwFT9uKs?si=ff9c5502b39e447e

Our youtube – featuring a career retrospective set of interviews from us in 2065 (post massive fame)

[ditchadderband]

Origins of Sex Manticore 3

So once the song was pretty much finalised Alvorado decided to double the speed of the track. This made the song too short, the lyrics almost to fast to sing and a whole middle section that Jensen wrote utterly unusable. It also sounded, in our opinion at least, really good. So we changed the format, and went for the more punk sound. This was almost entirely done over three very wram days in the middle of munich. By the end, we had the song we chose to release, we were also exhausted.