#I’m also allergic to nickel so I know that makes it a little more complicated

[rosicheeks]

15. Do you have any piercings?

No ☹️😔

[crystalkleure]

Man, I've been putting this post off. For like...weeks.

Alright, if anyone's interested in knowing why I haven't been online much lately, there's a wall of text under the cut:

I'm deathly allergic to just about everything I touch. No, really.

It turns out I have the same really horrible illness that my grandmother has. It skipped right over my mom, but it got me. Gran's always called it 'environmental illness', but I'm not sure if that's really the actual name for it or not. Basically, whenever I'm exposed to something, I become severely allergic to that thing in a day or two. So, that's a real good way to literally starve to death; whenever I eat something, I'm allergic to it the next day and it makes me really sick, and it's like that forever now.

But it's not just food. It's progressed to the point where just touching some things, like nickel and some dyes, can make my skin peel and blister. And it's going to get worse, to where further exposure to anything I've become allergic to is going to make my airways swell and seal up.

I'm taking tons of Benadryl and Ondansetron tablets [antihistamines and antiemetics] right now, so I'm still a semi-functional human being sometimes, but that's not going to work forever. It's already not working as well as it was at first, and it's not ideal anyway. Because sure, I can actually eat and keep it down, but it still hurts like a bitch for hours. And sure, I can touch certain things without my skin peeling and bleeding, but it still itches sometimes. Over-the-counter antihistamines just aren't strong enough, and what they can do won't last -- I'm already nearly having to OD on it just to get a few hours of relative peace. And Ondansetron is NOT something that is meant to be taken every seven hours for months on end [which is how I’ve been having to take it], so who knows how that’s going to fuck me up eventually.

But there's no actual real cure for this. The only known reliable treatment available is a weekly shot that would make me not be allergic to just enough things so that I can exist in a tightly-controlled space without immediately keeling over dead. It doesn't cover much. My grandma takes that shot, and she can only eat the same 10-20 unseasoned foods, and nothing else, just the bare, bland essentials, forever, and she can only wear pure cotton clothing. She spends most of her time shut up in her house, and she always has to have someone around to take care of her. She can't go out in public for more than a few hours at a time, because whenever she does she'll inevitably run into something she's allergic to and she'll suddenly get so sick she has to go straight to the hospital. So, she can be exposed to other things for a little while, but not for very long, and not two days in a row. And everytime she IS exposed to the outside world, she's taking a huge risk. She doesn't know exactly when she'll suddenly stop being okay.

So that's the kind of fun I'm looking at for the rest of my life. I'm not even sure when I'll actually be able to get that shot, though.

See, the doctors around here don't seem to believe that this is a real condition. Gran had to go all the way to Texas before she found a doctor that would actually take her seriously. And it also doesn't help that one of the fuckwit doctors I've gone to has put it down in my medical records that I'm just anorexic, there's nothing else wrong with me.

I'm not anorexic, and I never have been.

Of course, don't you know that ANY time a young woman suddenly loses a lot of weight and is reluctant to eat anything, the ONLY possible diagnosis is anorexia! It can't be anything else!

They won't even LOOK for anything else now, for the most part. It's because they don't believe me when I say there's actually something really wrong, they just berate me and threaten to lock me up in some eating disorder clinic if I don't improve, fast.

And I know they don't believe me because anorexics lie. They lie about their weight so you won't nag them. They lie about actually having a physical ailment as a cause for the dramatic weight loss, to keep the doctors trying to treat them running around in circles looking for something that isn't there. They lie. And so, if a doctor thinks you're anorexic, nothing you say can convince them otherwise. Sometimes they won't even listen if a family member tries to vouch for you too, because they just think they're an enabler.

But, it's in my records now, which any new doctor I go to will read before they even see me, and I can't change it. So that's everyone's first impression now. Even if I try to change to a new doctor, I'm fucked before they even talk to me. I'm probably going to end up in some eating disorder rehab torture clinic before anyone even considers that something might really be wrong with me, because then at least they could SEE that their 'treatments' won't work; they'll just make me very sick.

This is actually even more complicated than just all of that though, if I go into all the nasty details of how lower-class American healthcare works [or doesn't work], but that's already been what, ten paragraphs of text? Here's some more bullshit anyway:

I had to pay $800 out-of-pocket for an independent allergy test because me and my mom had a hunch that this might be what was wrong, but we couldn't convince my doctor to order an official test for it [which would have been free for us]. She didn't think it was 'medically necessary'.

Even now, these stupid fucking MedicAid doctors won't accept those results as any sort of real evidence or information because a test supposedly has to be 'officially' ordered by them before they'll put the results down in my medical records

I've already been thrown in a psych ward once. Not an eating disorder clinic, mind you, but an ordinary psych ward. For suicide watches and violent people. I spent the night in there with those people. Didn't get a lot of sleep. The only reason I got out the very next day was because normal psych wards don't accept 'eating disorder' patients. Do I have to say it was the same fuckwit idiot doctor who put “just anorexic” down in my official medical records who fucking improperly Baker Acted me here? I could sue that fucker if I had the energy for it, I'm sure of that.

Doctors who accept MedicAid like to triple- and quadruple-book multiple patients for the same time slots, so I generally never actually get to speak more than about two or three sentences to any of my doctors before they throw me out of their office and move on to the next guy. They do this because MedicAid apparently doesn't pay them 'enough' per patient, so they try to make up for that in quantity over quality.

It's almost impossible to get any of my doctors on the phone. And they won't call back if I leave a message. So I have to spend an hour or more calling back repeatedly before I actually get a person instead of a machine on the line, just so I can ask for a prescription refill. Every time.

Changing my primary care doctor would do me no good. I can only pick from a very short list of them that is provided to me by Humana [my insurance provider]. If I go to anyone who's not on their list, they won't cover it. And these people are all the same, because they all take the same crappy cheap insurance. They all do the multi-booking thing and don't listen.

Also I'd have to get 'referred' over to any new doctor I want to see by my current PC doctor before I can officially change. And there's NO WAY I can get this one to do that; everything I've tried to ask her to do, she's said is 'not medically necessary' and I need to go home and 'just eat'. She really wants to send me off to some eating disorder clinic.

And because of the constant threat of being locked up, I've been putting off going back to the doctor at all for about a month now.