#it’s similar to stuff that tends to give me really bad headaches/migraines— which tend to be overexertion generally speaking

[organized-chaotic-disaster]

This might sound dumb but as a chronic pain haver I have a little headcanon that my octoling gets headaches super easily if they squidbag too much

Like I’ll still do it in-game if someone else is doing it in the lobby or after a salmon run win bc it’s not a super serious I must obey this headcanon all the time kinda thing, but idk, it’s kind of… weirdly comforting? For me

[franeridart]

Anon said: [Spoilers for non-manga readers] opinion on Baku's hero name?

Very Bakugou, honestly don’t mind it at all! Mostly just surprised it’s, like, legal in the bnha universe for heroes to call themselves stuff like explodo-kills (and also that there isn’t a character limit for hero names??) but that Bakugou would stick with it is pretty damn in character for him so I like it xD still, I’ll probably just call him Dynamight if I’ll ever need to use his hero name lmao

Anon said: not to be the most romantic sap but uh just a kiss by lady a is killin me

Nothing sappy about letting romantic songs get to you!!!! I say, as I’m constantly crying over romantic songs so this mindset benefits me as well lol

Anon said: i may or may not have stumbled across some of your older kiribaku art, the stuff with akane, and she's the best child oc tbh. i actually like her and i tend to not be a fan of child ocs but she's just the cutest darn thing 🥰

I’m so glad you like her!!!!! She was a lot of fun, what a good gremlin ;;;

Anon said: uve heard of dragon!kiri w his hair spikes up, now get ready for dragon!kiri w his hair dowm lookin like the softest boy

AW HECK I think I’ve drawn him in the past, actually!!!! Spike-haired Kiri will forever be my fav Kiri, but there’s just something about hair down Kiri isn’t it!! What a cute boy ;;;; all sharp edges and soft curves, what a lovely sight

Anon said: can i just say your itafushi art is so cute? these two already make me feel and then your art just (つω°̥̥̥̥̥̥̥̥｀)

THANK YOU SO MUCH I really need to draw them more, don’t I! goge kinda monopolized my attention there, but the way itafushi makes me feel..........boy the way they make me feel ;;;;

Anon said: good day, poké au thought: 12 y/o bakugo somehow catches a dreepy as like his 2nd pokemon and never questions it

WHY NOT WHY NOT I have a whole team in my mind for the boy tbh but dreepy is so cute ;;;; and anyway, I like my poke!bakugou with as many dragon types as he could possibly get his hands on hahaha

Anon said: Please know that, amongst other factors, you were one of the maon reasons I stsrted Jujutsu Kaisen two days ago and there isnothing more to say except thank you and I'm absolutely in debt with you for that, thank you so much 😍

I’m so so SO glad you’re liking it!!!!!! It can get kinda heavy but it’s such a great story.... honestly I’d been wanting to start it since I saw the first pv for the anime all the way back last year but I was like, you know it’s a mappa anime! so I wanted to watch the anime as a new thing, cause I love mappa, but three episodes in I couldn’t hold back and just binged it. It’s kind of story that just makes you wanna drink it all in one go, isn’t it? so good so good

Anon said: makeup artist kirishima and model bakugo or makeup artist bakugo and model kirishima? :0c

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm can’t say I see either of them much into fashion tbh, but if I had to pick probably model Kiri and artist Baku? I just don’t think Baku would be able to stay still enough to get photographed, and he wouldn’t like the photographer bossing him around anyway, and catwalks would be impossible for him to stomach imho, he’s too restless for it! At least it’s the way I see it haha

Anon said: fdgdhdkfhdafs i had a thought, what if bakugo prefers dogs and kirishima prefers cats and when they meet each other and become friends it's like, "oh." because they have some striking similarities to their fave animals

That’s been my headcanon for a while now, actually!! I think for me it came from two characters in a manga I like that are a lot like a dog and a cat but have inverted fav animals and when I read about that I was like “oh, right, makes sense since they like each other” and then my brain turned it krbk because when does it not lmao

Anon said: your art is the soothing balm to my soul recently, thank you for posting so much beautiful content. i hope you have a lovely week. ♡

sob thank you so much, I’m glad my doodling can help you feel better ;; <3

Anon said: Friendly reminder anon from last time: that post I left last time I had only eaten 7 gingersnaps that day and hadn’t drank any water. So that encouraged me to actually self care. Thank you.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! well I hope you’re taking care of yourself today too! And as fair trade, I’ll do the same myself! <3

Anon said: Hi! I'm an artist and I'm thinking of making a sideblog for my art. Do you have any tips?

Ah man, I’m sorry but I’m not the best person to ask this to! I started this sideblog cause I had too many followers on my main and I didn’t want my stuff to be seen by that many people at first, so whatever I did probably isn’t what you’re looking for :( but really there isn’t much to it, just post whatever you like to draw, tag it as best as you can (but remember that only the first five tags appear in the search page) and be patient, since whatever you do at first you won’t get much attention anyway - the only real advice I can give is to draw something that makes you happy and that you’d draw anyway even if no one were to see it, it’ll make keep posting despite a possible lack of activity a lot easier!

Anon said: Your goge art🥺🥺

I just love them so much ( TT’’’TT)9

Anon said: how the fuck have i not been following you? I remember seeing your bakushima art in the bnha tag and always thinking it's so cute. Now you're into JJK too??? and the satosugu art??? fuckin, diabetes incarnate. I love it. I love you. Your art 10/10. I'm tired lmao.

WELL thank you for the follow!! And for thinking my stuff is cute!!!!! I do my best with that, I want all the soft things for my favs 😌

Anon said: Are you gonna draw Gojou/Getou comic?? 👉🏻👈🏻 WOULD LOVE TO READ IT

you mean an actual doujin? I don’t think I will, sorry! I’m really no good at long projects orz but thank you so much for wishing to read something like that from me!!! ;A;

Anon said: Hello! YOUR ART IS SO FREAKING GORGEOUSSSS!!! I love them so much!! If I may ask you one question. Between Getou amd Gojou, who do you see as top/bottom? Just curious

THANK YOU!!!!! And I honestly don’t care as long as they’re happy and together!!! please let them be happy and together 🙏🙏🙏

Anon said: i want you to know!!! i followed you for your kiribaku art but!!! i love your art so much that idc what you post because it's all just!!!! incredible and wonderful and stunning!!!

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!! this means a lot to me so seriously thank you so much!!!!

Anon said: d'you think bakugo has like headaches or migraines after training or battles because of how loud his quirk is? like, i listen to music slightly too loud and my head is sending me to hell. (unless you go with the hoh hc which is also 👌)

I like to think Baku’s body is attuned enough to his own quirk that he wouldn’t get drawbacks of the kind tbh, though that wouldn’t be a bad thought for when he just starts to increase the output/width and strength of his explosions............ well, I myself suffer from chronic headaches and migraines so I’m always up for projecting on my favs ngl lmao

Anon said:  so like... dragon kirishima's eyes glow right? like, if we equate his dragon-ness to unbreakable his eyes glow? they also glow when he's half shifted? honestly i just live glowing eyes

Oh hell yeah I’m all for that, definitely definitely, I love glowing eyes with my whole heart and Kiri’s eyes in unbreakable are just so!!!!!! NGH *chef kiss* the more of unbreakable there is in his dragon form the happier I am ( TT^TT)9

Anon said: me, scrolling through your blog: ah shit guess im gonna have to start watching jjk

!!!!! hope it won’t hurt you too much, anon!!

Anon said: dragon!kiri and bakugo having a tug-of-war match over a piece of meat. both have it in their mouths. both are determined to win.

Kiri is turned into his dragon form and Baku still wins, hell yeah

Anon said: your satosugu is top tier!! it's hard to find stuff for them that isn't straight up angst so your art has been super cool and also very very cute!! (tho if you went with angst, it wouldn't be a bad thing obviously)

AH I’m so happy to hear you like them!!!! but also happy you wouldn’t mind angst, as I do like them the best happy and soft but my brain, my brain has been throwing sads my way for a while now 👀 I got some ideas

Anon said: What program/device do you use??

Easy Paint Tool SAI and a wacom intuos!! Though I got myself an ipad+procreate just yesterday and I’ve been messing around with it, let’s see how that one goes!

Anon said: *inahles* i am simping for mohawk man please tell me everything about your ocs immediately or i will detonate

THANK YOU FOR LIKING HIM HE’S CALLED DAVIDE Dav for short, he’s a cat of a man and a music instrument enthusiast (mostly string ones, but he’s very good with the piano as well) - he works in a music instruments store, and he’s a uni student majoring in philosphy! He doesn’t like bothersome things, he isn’t very good at taking anything seriously or putting effort in stuff, but he’s very chill to spend time with and generally a nice chat both if you want mindless thoughts or deep conversations (he’s a philosophy major after all). He can’t sing for shit, he’s got two cats (tago and schelly!), and he just wants a quiet life to laze around but all his friends are hurricanes in human bodies, but then again, he picked them himself so he can’t complain. He’s a good boy!! I’m planning a comic for him and his boy Ross >:]

[nomazee]

Fever

sugawara koushi x reader

word count: 2000+

content: fluff, sickfic, sugawara being a mom friend, friends-to-lovers but not really it’s just very,,,, out there

cross-posted on my ao3

☾.:°∗★.:☆:.★∗°:.☽

There was a faint knock at your door that you just barely processed in your feverish state. You were tangled in your bed sheets, drenched in an uncomfortable sheen of sweat yet finding your feet too cold and shoving them under whatever sheets you could find by flailing your legs around. 

The knock was obviously just a formality, as you soon heard the lock of your front entrance turn and the door open with a familiar noise. Even in your mildly delirious state, you listened to hear the footsteps. They were light, gentle, not as heavy or firm as your mother’s. There was only one other person with the key to your house, so by process of elimination--

“[Name]?” A soft voice called out your name, and the footsteps slowly got louder as they approached your room. 

You pried one eye open just in time to see a familiar, gray-haired form peek through the entrance of your room. Sugawara gave you a gentle, comforting smile, and you noticed two plastic bags held tightly in the grasp of each hand. 

“Hiya,” he mumbled, keeping his tone soft as to not make your pounding migraine any worse. 

You tried to reciprocate his friendly expression, failing as your eyes fluttered shut once more in exhaustion. 

You heard him step closer to your bedside, and the rustle of plastic indicated that he set down the bags on the floor. “I brought some stuff,” he told you. “I’m staying the night and taking care of you. I told your mom already.” 

You huffed a laugh from your nose, gathering the strength to respond. “That’s extra. You don’t needa stay for long...” You heard him let out a playful sigh and remove items from the bags he brought. 

“What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t?”

“A normal one.” 

“Well, we aren’t really normal friends, are we?” 

Prying your eyes open once again, you were met with his face yet again, this time different from what you’d seen of him before. 

He looked at you fondly, softly, and knowingly. It was quiet, but the gaze between each other was enough to fill the silence. 

You produced a smile, painful but necessary, and allowed your eyes to close yet again. The sound of moving plastic became white noise and you found yourself drifting out of consciousness and into a content sleep-- 

“Hey.” Suga cut into your pleasantly tired haze and you couldn’t help but let out a discontent groan. He chuckled softly and a warm hand found its way onto your forehead to brush sweaty locks of hair away from your face. “Don’t fall asleep just yet. I’m going to run a bath for you. 

You’re really sweaty, it’s kind of gross.” A noise of discontent slipped from your lips once again at his heckling. 

“I don’t feel like getting up…” 

“I’ll carry you. No worries.” The way he was so willing to do these things for you made you simultaneously calm down and feel even more nauseous at the implications. Your head swirled with affection as you blinked up at him slowly, with adoration unabashedly lining your features. 

Sugawara’s smile persisted, and his eyes closed for a moment of contentment. 

“I’ll get it started. Just wait here. Don't fall asleep on me.” With that, he shuffled away and closed the door behind him. You heard the water of the bath begin to run loudly a few rooms over. 

Against Suga’s request, you still closed your eyes and tried to shuffle back into dreamland only to be interrupted yet again with the sound of your bedroom door opening and Suga’s voice sounding out. 

“It’s ready. Do you want me to carry you?” 

Rather than giving a verbal response, you pushed yourself up to sit on your bed, waiting for your head to stop spinning so heavily before lifting your body off the bed in an attempt to stand. 

Your legs gave in quicker than expected, and Suga jumped forward to wrap his arms around your shoulder and keep you up. “That’s a yes,” he laughed out, and in one quick movement he hoisted you up into both arms, letting you cradle his form and rest your head on his shoulder as he made the short walk to your bathroom. 

Once there, he set you down on the seat of the toilet and walked around to prep some things, setting up a soft towel and a set of your most comfortable pajamas on the sink. 

An aroma drifted through the air, not strong enough to be nauseating but enough to be recognizable. It was comforting and warm, and you soon realized that it was a similar scent to the one that Suga had. The fact that you recognized it as such made you the slightest bit embarrassed and you face heated up more so than it had always been. 

“Are you able to take your clothes off?” The implications were innocent enough, and with how comfortable you tended to be with Suga regardless you didn’t find much issue with the question. 

Deciding not to attempt to stand up any longer, you gave an honest shake of your head. 

“I can help you with them, but only if you’re comfortable.” You considered it for a minute. Suga was no stranger to seeing you… immodestly, or rather with a lack of conservative clothing. And he was enough of a gentleman to do his best to avoid directly staring at any of your more intimate areas. 

“Promise not to look?” You croaked out. He smiled. 

“Promise.” 

With that, you let him move his hands slowly along your body, slipping off your damp shirt and loose pajama shorts. You watched him make a playful show of firmly clasping a hand over his eyes as he slipped off your undergarments. 

“I can’t really pick you up now. Are you fine walking over to the bath?” You hummed an affirmation and pushed yourself up to slip into the water. 

The temperature was comfortably warm, and once again you felt drowsy at the pleasant sensation. The water smelled faintly of lavender and other comforting floral scents. There was a thick layer of soapy bubbles floating on the surface of the water and you smiled at the lengths Suga took to make a simple bath. 

“I can wash your hair for you if you want.” You almost immediately agreed to his suggestion but stopped yourself from responding as another thought crossed your mind. 

“You’re… doing a lot for me…” A pause, then, “I feel bad. You really don’t have to do any of this.” 

“I want to. Really, stop worrying so much!” His tone was lighthearted and made you feel that this was less of a burden from him. He seemed so enthusiastic about taking care of you and your stomach fluttered, not of nausea but of another bout of affection for Sugawara. God, you were in deep, huh. 

You felt gentle hands take hold of your hair and water slowly be poured onto it, likely from a cup that Suga set up earlier. Shampoo was lathered and massaged into your scalp gently, and his calming ministrations certainly lasted longer than the typical shampoo wash--not that you were complaining. He dipped the cup into the bath to gather water and poured it over your scalp, repeating the action in comforting movements that you melted into. 

Time passed. It seemed like quiet a while in your drowsy, half-conscious state. “Let’s get you out,” Sugawara said, standing up from the edge of the bathtub to retrieve the towel. 

You straightened yourself up, lifting yourself out from the water slightly only to be immediately wrapped in soft cloth by Sugawara. Securing it tightly around your shoulders, he smiled at you and guided you out. 

“I can dress myself, you told him as he moved to reach for the set of pajamas on the sink. “I feel a little better now.” 

“Are you sure?” 

You gave a nod, which was enough confirmation for him as he left the bathroom to leave you to your devices. 

Once you put your clothes on (a laborious task, you may say), you entered your room to find Suga unwrapping the flimsy plastic covering of the lid of a pill bottle. At the sight of your entry, he waved you over to your bed and directed you to lay down. 

“This is for your headache,” he explained, twisting the lid open and pouring out the suggested amount of tablets. “I also have water for you, and some other light snacks. I don’t think you’ve really gotten up to eat much.” 

You let him drop the tablets into your awaiting palm and tilt a water bottle towards your lips once you’d put the medication in your mouth. After sipping for a bit (he was right, you hadn’t gotten up to eat and it was to the point that this water was starting to stave off your hunger), he replaced the cap of the water bottle and gently pushed your shoulder to make you lay flat on the bed. 

“I have gatorade and crackers. What color do you want?” 

You responded in incoherent mumbles. 

“Blue it is.” 

He took a bottle from the neat group of gatorade bottles next to your night stand (overkill, you thought, but you figured you could always drink the gatorade even after you got better) and placed it on top of the small desk, then moving to cover you more securely with one of the thinner blankets thrown onto your bed. 

“No heavy sheets. Your fever will just get worse. This should be good enough for a little bit.” 

You groaned out random syllables, not even entirely sure what you were attempting to say in the first place. He gave a breathy laugh and you felt a weight dip into the mattress at the far side of your bed. 

Soon enough, Suga’s form was right next to yours, and you turned around to face him, blinking up at his features blearily in a mixture of sickness and exhaustion. His lips turned upwards--an expression you’d been seeing a lot today, but not one that was unwelcome. Though you were already half-asleep, you did your best to mirror his content expression and heard him laugh at your attempt through closed eyes. 

“I’ll sleep on the couch tonight,” he spoke in low volume, careful not to shock you out of your drowsy state too much. “I’m just going to stay here for a bit to watch you and make sure you’re alright.” 

You made a noise of protest, shaking your head and pressing it further into the mattress as you struggled to string a coherent sequence of words together. 

“You can… stay. Sleep here.” He was silent, and for a minute you were snapped back to your full senses and scolding yourself for making such a bold, stupid request. 

“Are you sure? I don’t want to make you more uncomfortable…”

More uncomfortable. He talked like you were uncomfortable at all in the first place. You trusted him well enough to know he wouldn’t try anything--and you were sick, too--which you were sure would be a turn off for the average hormonal teen. Luckily for you, Sugawara was not the average hormonal teen and knew how to respect a girl’s boundaries, and you were well-aware of that. 

“Suga,” you croaked, becoming annoyed at the amount of energy you had to exert simply to respond. “J’shut up.” 

He exhaled long and deep through his nose and you felt his body shuffle closer to you. Minutes passed and you found yourself slipping deeper into a far more comfortable sleep than earlier. 

A hand, warm and soft, slipped its way onto your cheek. You leaned into the touch, adjusting your face in a nonverbal request for more. Suga complied easily, inching even closer to you, bodies brushing against each other gently in a way you could only describe as innocently intimate. his hand moved to wrap around your shoulder and pull you closer to him, and you rested your forehead against the crook of his neck, seeking warmth from something other than the thin sheet covering you. 

You sighed. The painkiller Suga had given you had begun to kick in, dulling down your previous headache into a faint ache and making your body feel comfortably somnolent. Suga’s breathing had slowed, shifting into deep, steady breaths that brushed against the crown of your head whenever he exhaled. 

Being sick sucked. But Suga was there, and that’s what mattered.

[eds-zebra-warrior]

2021 Ehlers Danlos Society Awareness Month (Day 18 Prompt: Words to Parents)

I am interpreting this prompt in two different ways so will address it as such starting with explaining how my parents are with my condition and then words to parents of kids newly diagnosed or who present with a wide array of symptoms.

My parents were awesome prior to my diagnosis. There were things I wish they had known and even now wish they knew but I almost always had that support system some don't have. Sure there were a lot of times I would tell my mom I was having chest pain or my heart was pounding where she would say “It's probably just anxiety” and of course when anyone has a headache, runny nose, stuffy nose, scratchy throat or generally coming down with some kind of bug her notorious saying was “It’s probably just your sinuses” which me and my dad still talk about to this day. She went decades of her life taking Sudafed every morning truly believing she just had bad sinuses to find out years later she was actually having an allergic reaction the entire time due to Systemic Mastocitosis and really needed allergy meds and since she had bad sinus issues she seemed to think anything and almost everything that someone was experiencing from the lungs lungs up, weather it be a migraine, eye pain, sore throat, coughing, going horse, runny nose, bloody nose etc. it was just your sinuses which usually wasn't the case because soon after I would test positive for strep throat, oh the times I had strep throat. I had it so often that when I got it, I started not even noticing the throat pain believing my mom that it was my sinuses but more major like a sinus infection, to go to the doctor and find I had strep again and was desensitized to the pain. Sometimes my whole throat and mouth would be covered in blisters before the pain was bad enough just because I always had strep. Occasionally it was other things like my migraines growing up I now know were from Occipital neuralgia, craniocervical and atlantoaxial instability. So she didn't always take me seriously but I have to admit, after two decades of your life being told you're a hypochondriac and your symptoms are all in your head, I started to believe I was crazy myself and that my symptoms either weren't real or much less severe than they really were.

My dad being autistic never really dealt with my health stuff very much. He just isn't knowledgeable in it and has no clue what to do so my mom was the one who did that. Though she pawned off a lot of my more serious issues on it all being on my head she was always there for me. She took me to the hospital if it was needed and knew I didn't say I needed to go to the hospital unless I really felt like death. There have been several times where doctors have tried to say nothing is wrong and send me home where she has literally refused to take me home or argued with doctors but this was mostly after my diagnosis. I kind of wish she would have done this and pushed harder when I was a kid as she very much has, I guess you would call it brand loyalty but it went further than only grocery shopping at Meijer, literally fighting with me for years about leaving Verizon because in her mind Verizon was the only company that was any good, only allowing one person to cut her hair even if it meant following her to a new job, she had a doctor she liked and stayed with him for most of my life and denied he wasn't a good doctor after an incident in high school which caused me to switch. It's hard for her to move on even if there is no progress or things start to get worse so one thing I wish is she would have done a little more doctor shopping when I was a kid.

Doctor shopping is oftentimes frowned upon at and when most people hear of doctor shopping they tend to think of it as someone who goes from doctor to doctor looking for drugs or or to sign disability papers so they can get a free ride at life but when you have a rare disease doctor shopping means something totally different and can even be so vitally important your life and future depends on it. I had so many doctors who simply invalidated my symptoms saying I was making them up for attention or had a mental illness. Many of these doctors did nothing at all but the majority of them did the exact same tests over and over. If it was a doctor outside of the hospital they did a CBC, Chem. and a 7 (Basic Metabolic Panel) which always came back normal or borderline normal therefore they deemed me healthy, slapped a psychiatric disorder on me or simply said there's nothing wrong and sent me on my way,

If I went to the hospital, they would do the CBC, Chem. 7, accuse me of doing drugs or being pregnant or when I was really little bring in case managers making accusations of child abuse that wasn't happening, then do a drug test, pregnancy test and STD testing, say the CBC and Chem. 7 were normal or near normal, congratulate me on not being pregnant, having any illegal substances in my system or STD’s, slap a psychiatric disorder on me saying they tested everything and sent me home. When I got older, lucky me, I got two drug tests, the urinalysis drug test and when it came back normal, they would come in and draw my blood assuming if I was having seizures, passing out or having heart palpitations I must be on drugs and tampered with the urine test. I wish prior to my diagnosis my dad would have had a computer and learned to use it and both my parents would have done more research. I also wish they had advocated for me better and if one doctor said they didn't know or didn't believe me, they would have moved on to another doctor because if I could have gotten diagnosed sponsor it would have saved me some permanent damage to my body that I have now and possibly spared me some of the medical abuse and neglect though even with a diagnosis you can't avoid it, especially when it comes to the hospital.

Doctors and nurses are just as lazy as everyone else. It's just like every other job where 5% of the employees do 90% of the work and 90% of the employees do 5% of the work. The ones who actually take their jobs seriously are used to the max by their coworkers and like me when I was a nurse, didn’t believe the patients deserved to suffer or pay for their staffs laziness and neglect and those are the ones who try to play superman taking on their patients and everyone else's, answering call lights that aren't theirs, bringing food to others patients, making sure they are turned or their catheters have been emptied and generally running around like a chicken with their head cut off and I can always tell who falls into the 90% who uses the 5%, carrying less about the patient as long as they get a paycheck and the 5% who look like they are about to fall over yet still giving what they don't have to make sure the patient doesn't pay for their lazy staff member.

It's very easy to tell when you have spent a large portion of your life in doctors offices and hospitals and learn how rare it is to get one of the people in the 5% as your medical personnel and watching the lazy staff you have out your door at the nurses station sitting with other lazy staff in front a computer laughing at a YouTube video their watching, gossiping and talking badly about another patient loud enough for you to hear, playing pranks on each other, one nurse who drops her pants moons another in a room of 9-11 year old little boys, The nurse who has the pediatric patient who flat lines, on bad days, it's not uncommon for this to happen 20 times in one day and at their best, at the very least multiple times a week. The patient's vitals are linked to a pager the nurse carries so if the patient's heart stops the pager will alert them yet they consistently leave the pager in the patient's bed, on their night stand, at one of the computer kiosks where nurses chart, in another patients room, in the activity room or god knows where. I've found it in the bathroom on the toilet paper mount, in the linen closet on top of some towels, you name it then this same nurse who is buddy buddy with the nurse slips away with a coworker to the activity room or to the nurses lounge for you to later walk in on them playing cards and talking bad about patients or other staff. The two nurses going through a wedding magazine, looking at dresses and hear one say “That's my room”, and the other one say “Just ignore it and let Janett get it” Yes these are true stories down to the name used for the poor nurse who was running around like a chicken with her head cut off. All experiences I have seen either in the roll of the nurse and in the roll of the patient.

I was mostly around nurses and of course you don't see doctors very often but being in a chair I have been forced to use a bedpan before and seen examples similar to this with doctors as well. Once I was taken downstairs for a cardiac ultrasound, asking to go to the bathroom before they took me down because I had my call light on to go before transport even came in my room. They told me I would only be down there 10 or 15 minutes and asked me if I could wait. They took me down there to beds of people lining the halls and I had 18 people in front of me. Well, 15 minutes turned into 4 hours. I asked multiple times to go to the bathroom and they said they don't have a wheelchair down there and if I can't walk to the bathroom I have to hold it. I even asked if they could call up to my room and have my mom bring my chair down and as gross as it sounds, I even got desperate, breaking into a sweat I had to pee so bad and asked them to wheel my bed outside the bathroom and lower it as low as it goes, and I would put my blanket and pillows on the floor and slide out of my bed onto the floor myself and they can pull me on the blanket to the toilet or I could army crawl and use my arms to pull myself up onto the toilet. They still said no. I asked earlier on if they could take me back to my room or bring a wheelchair, still no.

Eventually I told one of the nurses that I had to pee for 3.5 hours, she saw that I was all sweaty and shaking. I said if they don’t get me somewhere to pee within the next few minutes they were going to have a huge mess to clean up. She grabbed two bedpans, a small one and a bit one, said you're tiny and I told her no, use the big one, I have EDS so my bladder can stretch really far and I can easily pee 22 oz. so she rolled me into a doctor's personal office, he was in there watching a movie on Netflix on his computer, yes a full blown Netflix movie. He tried to flip the screen back to an ultrasound image really quick when the nurse stormed in with me to make it look like that's what he was doing but he fumbled around a little bit and wasn't fast enough. The nurse told him to get out so he left and I had to pee in a bed pan in his office… then spent the next few weeks having to wear diapers for bladder leaks because they let me hold my bladder so long my bladder stretched out too much from hypermobility and it folded on top of itself resulting in bladder leaks until it shrink back down. Thank you OSU. Doctors can also be extremely lazy and I wish this was something my parents acknowledged more or took more notice of and fought more for me, looked more into my rights, such as being able to call a patient advocate or fire doctors and nurses which is something I had to find out myself.

I found out I had EDS before I was even diagnosed which is what made me fight so hard to find a doctor who has heard of it. I got desperate being sick and spent years learning how to find and read medical journals. When Facebook started having groups I started joining groups to ask questions, I started going to doctors and no longer letting them call the shots. If they said they wanted to do a Chem. 7 and CBC I would say that's fine if they want to but it will come back normal and start requesting tests that aren't considered standard and that are used to test for specific conditions rather than just evaluating me for acute conditions. I started walking in and telling doctors how I felt and when they either said well we will see you in a year to see if things change or wanting to run just the basic CBC and Chem. 7 I would start saying “Could you run a 24 hour Tryptase Urinalysis”, “Could you run a gastric emptying study”, “could you run a 24 hour urine for Cortisol levels”, “could you run an ELISA”, “would you write for a flexion/extension MRI with contrast”, “What about a rotational CT” “Everyone wants to do a colonoscopy but instead of ordering that can you order an Endoscopy this time?” “I would like to get an “ATCH Stem test”, “I know you have never heard of one but if I email you the information will you order a Tilt Table Test”, “You’re doing that Aortic Ultrasound without contrast? It’s supposed to be done with contrast. Could you call up to the doctor and ask him to add contrast before you start?”

Sure a lot of doctors would downright refuse. I have gone in 5 and 6 times asking for a test and being told no, only to go in the 7th time and be told “It will come back negative but if I order this will you quit bugging me about it?” for them to order it and the test to come back positive for the condition I wanted it ordered for then they treat me like total crap to the point the office staff is mentioning about how bad he is treating me to find out he’s doing it on purpose to try to get rid of me as a patient, probably because he realized what he said was really wrong and he made himself look bad. I have learned that if a doctor isn't willing to listen to move on and find someone who will. You need to find one who is willing to run the test or even just ask if I can email them some medical journals or information about the test or showing the importance of it or why I believe it needs done, willing to learn and if I can prove my case they will order it no problem.

I wish I had someone who started this for me as a child who did the research or helped me do the research to know what tests to ask for and to find a new doctor for me if one was either trying to slap a psychiatric label on me or acted interested but simply refused to run any tests so my care went stagnant. I still wish my parents knew the ins and outs of EDS like I do and really researched it because it makes me a little nervous when a squad is called and they are stumbling over my diagnosis or saying “She has oh, that one heart thing that makes it go really fast. Oh what's it called or only naming like two of my conditions. It also scares me that one day I will be rushed in internally bleeding since things like Aortic Dissection, Carotid Dissection, Mesenteric Dissection, Iliac Dissection or Femoral Dissection as well as uterine and bowel rupture are common and can happen very suddenly in EDS that my parents may not know the common areas for bleeds or know them from most to least common so they may not know where to look or may not realize its actually internal bleeding at all until it's too late.

With all of the craniocervical manifestations I also fear I will be sent in for respiratory distress a or something else emergent relating to my craniocervical instability and my family family won’t realize its from the instability and if they do they wont know where to find information to prove this to a doctor or who the five surgeons in the US are who can operate on it so I will either end up on life support until someone gives up on finding the root of the problem which I knew all along what it was but couldn't tell anyone and pulls the plug, unable to tell anyone what is happening and advocate for myself, die before they even get a chance to hook me up to life support or end up under the knife of a surgeon who has absolutely no clue how to do the surgery I need and what modifications and special precautions need to be made for someone with EDS and I will die on the table like a few others I know or the last scenario, where I will have the surgery, wake up from it and it will be so botched that I’m one of the ones walking around with broken hardware, screws drilled into my spinal cord and paralyzed from the neck down, in more pain than I am now and the damage is too extensive to be repaired.

It's so important for the patient and their family to have very extensive knowledge of the condition since it's very complex and there are a lot of things that can go wrong at any given time. It's important to know what symptoms you are experiencing at any given time are associated with or at least the ability to know what medical emergencies are more common in EDS patients and the ability to narrow it down to 2 or 3 possibilities because most medical professionals don't learn about EDS or learn very little.

Just to put the complexity of the condition into perspective let's say you wanted to buy a book that taught you about diabetes and it was 500 pages long but you wanted to also buy a book on Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and be just as knowledgeable by the time you finish about EDS as you are when you finish the book on diabetes, there are about 15 common comorbidities of diabetes and about 250 common comorbidities of EDS. Diabetes can affect a handful of other organ systems however EDS effects every single part of the body so if you wanted to be just as knowledgeable about EDS as you would about Diabetes after reading a 500 page book about it and its comorbidities, given they were only allowed to give you more basic knowledge of comorbidities, say 10-15 pages per comorbidity, depending on its complexity and the rest on Diabetes you would have to read about 4,573 pages and that's only for hypermobile form of EDS which is broken down into trifecta so I gave 15 pages to each comorbidity of diabetes, were going to assume this book is on type 1 diabetes given there are 2 types of diabetes and 13+ types of EDS so after giving 15 pages to the comorbidities the remaining was for the condition itself. Since hypermobile is usually seen in the trifecta I had to multiple the remaining pages by three then add 15 pages for each comorbidity to get the total number of pages and even this is a very rough estimate since we need to consider how many organ systems are involved in each and how complex the comorbidity.

In most medical textbooks EDS is not listed at all or is only condensed into a few paragraphs at the very most while learning about collagen and connective tissue so if anyone in the medical field learns about it at all its very very little, so little that they can easily forget those one or two paragraphs they read our of the thousands of pages they read during medical school.

Now I know it sounds like I’m talking bad about my parents but that's not the case at all. My parents are incredible and so much better with my condition than a lot of others. They may not know the ins and outs of this but they know I am not faking anything, I’m not exaggerating, they know, especially with my PTSD, that if I go to the hospital I am pretty darn sick and know when to make me go if I continue refusing to go to the hospital. They don't want to talk about it or admit it so will often downplay the fact that death can happen very easily and at any time and I am not going to live an average life expectancy. They may avoid talking about it or downplay it but I know they know just how serious this is but they already lost their son and don't want to lose their daughter so avoid the topic.

They refused to let me be sent to a nursing home or long term care facility when we were told I could no longer live alone and brought me into their house. They help me with a lot of my needs. Heck, my mom has given me baths as an adult because I have been too sick to do so. My mom helped with training Maggie to be a service animal, making sure I made it to all of her classes, helping me teach tasks I struggled with due to being in a chair, using her commands so she gets practice and doesn’t forget what she has learned. My dad not so much. He's a softie that has let every animal we have ever owned, own him. If it were up to him to do the training, Maggie probably wouldn't even be house broken yet if I’m totally honest lol. They have taken on so much with me and though I appreciate it more than they could ever know I also feel terrible guilt surrounding all that they do.

They have to drive me everywhere. The safety of public transportation in America for people on Medicare is downright deplorable. Only one agency contracted by Medicare has seat belts for wheelchair users, most of the vans are from the 90s and not up to code. They are actually so old that someone who is disabled isn't even allowed to buy one for personal at the age the ones the state provides transportation in here in Ohio because they don't meet the safety requirements even for the minimum amount of insurance yet a cab company is allowed to purchase and insure them to transport the disabled in. Its one of those things where it's illegal for the members of the state but the rule doesn't apply to the government kind of things. Their extremely dangerous, I have been in ones in my 425 lb. wheelchair, with my112 lb. self my 17 lb. service dog in her one or two pounds of gear and a backpack on the back of my chair with my meds and maybe some food and a drink in it to take to a doctors appointment so maybe another 10 or so lbs. of weight, riding in a van and staring through the rust holes in the floor looking at t the rusty parts under the van and the pavement of the highway underneath me, hoping to god the floor doesn't give way to all of this weight so I don't fall through.

I've been in two accidents with drivers, most of these drivers smell of mamajuana when they come and one of them had a rink that had a little tiny canister on it (If I remember I’ll post a picture I secretly took of it” at a stop light he opened the little can, poured white powder into his hand, used his other finger to brush it into a pile in his palm and then snorted it up his nose. I have ridden in vans someone threw up all over, one that the door to the wheelchair lift had 3 of its 4 hinges rusted all the way through so when the driver opened the door he had to hold it with one hand because it was hanging on there sideways like a broken cabinet door with only the bottom hinge still attached, got me up the lift then shut the door, came inside and used a bungie, hooking it in a hole that it looked like was drilled into the door and then a natural hole where the raised roof of the van and the bottom of the van attaches in a hole that didn't have a bolt. It was a really windy day and on the way back, we were driving down my road, a gust of wind blew, the bungee snapped, almost hitting me in the face, the door flew open and the last hinge snapped with the door flying off and into the gutter along the side of the road. We were right down the road from my house and the driver casually said “I'll go ahead and drop you off first and grab that on my way back.” like that kind of thing happens every day or something.

I have had a driver ask to stop at a gas station and I told him that was fine thinking he needed gas. He pulled up beside the end pump and instead of getting gas we sat there for about 3 minutes when another guy in a red truck pulled up along the side of the building. The driver got out of the van and went around the side of the building where the truck was. All I could see was the back of the truck sticking, about a minute later my driver came out from behind the truck, sticking something in his front pocket, the truck left and then we left. I was hoping to god it was just his brother or roommate or someone giving him some money for lunch or something but for real, a wallet goes in the back pocket and what he had was smaller than a wallet since you couldn't see what was in his hand and most people carry plastic these days so I’m pretty sure I was just hoping it was lunch money out of wishful thinking because with along the side of the building out of view of most of the public and all it seemed pretty sketchy to me.

Anyhow my parents do a lot, they drive me to appointments when they can to try to keep me out of the appalling care of the state, they let me live with them, they provide a lot of care, cooking, doing my laundry, vacuuming and doing a lot of the things that I feel like I should be doing for them at their age. It really does make me feel extremely guilty and like a terrible person. They help with Maggie taking her out just to help me out even though I can usually take her out myself unless it's icy or snowy since she basically takes herself out lol. I can go in the yard with her in the late spring to early fall when it's warm and dry out so my power chair won't sink into the mud. They will pick up food at the store or meds for me they do a lot and with my mom having EDS too, I have seen my mom go down hill a lot since her botched surgery that left her on life support so I hate asking either of them to do anything or for help. My dad is almost 66 and my mom, though 8 years younger gets around worse than my dad does so it's really hard to need so much care and feel like I put it on them, especially when my home health aid was taken away when the pandemic started but of course most of the home health aids I had were so English incompetent's and fresh out of countries where they didn't have stoves or washers and dryers and what not, living in huts that they don't know how to use modern appliances or understand me when I relay my needs which actually made things oftentimes harder with a home health and than without one as my parents were always coming home to fixing messes the aids made too.

With all that being said, here is my advice to parents of kids with suspected EDS. Get them diagnosed as early on as possible. Do lots of research, I know it's a pain and may be a lot of work but the more you know about the condition the better. Don't stop there, learn your rights and laws around medical care and disability rights as well as techniques for advocating for your child. Get them on a 504 plan at their school so they can get the accommodations they need. Learning disabilities aren’t uncommon and the prevalence of high functioning autism is incredibly high in EDS patients so if you suspect they may have a learning disability fight for a diagnosis and have that added to the 504 plan. A 504 plan isn't just for learning disabilities, it can be for physical disabilities as well.

You don't want to caudle you child of course and many don't have a lot of severe symptoms as kids but make sure the plan accommodates for things such as food allergies, if they have POTS or low blood sugar make sure they have it in their plan to be able to bring their own food, be able to eat in class. I know on mine, I was allowed to use the teachers lounge microwave during lunch to heat food brought from home and they allowed me to use the bathroom in the nurse's office if I needed it. You can ask for things like that they not be punished for arriving to class after the bell within reason, especially if the school is large and they may have several classes on the opposite side of the building as their locker so they aren't forced to carry books for multiple classes or for them to have two sets of books, one that they keep at home and one that is in each classroom they attend class in so they aren't having to carry heavy books around or teased for having a backpack on wheels. This is one thing I would have really liked to have written into my IEP as a kid if I had been lucky enough to get diagnosed sooner. If they are more symptomatic, more prone to injury or have VEDS they may have more needs.

Again you don't want to be a helicopter parent and want them to do as much stuff for themselves as it is safe for them to do and want them to have all the experiences other children do but if gym is an issue you can request they don't participate in high contact sports or even have it put into their IEP that they can swap gym out for another elective like music, art or home economics class or in the lower grades where they may not have options for alternative electives you can ask if they have any teachers or aids available during that time frame who can create somewhat of a study hall for the younger child, helping them with their homework, studying for tests, able to sit there and let the child read a book to them and help them with any words they struggle with or even just play some educational games with them or let them play an educational game on the computer.

Some schools also offer physical therapy for kids, especially the ones with developmental delays who may not be mainstreamed and the therapy replaces gym for them. Even if your child has cognitive abilities cohesive with their age, you could see if they are allowed to join therapy with those children. With being able to do so much online now, I have heard of some requesting that on their bad days the teachers live stream them into their classroom so they can participate in class from home when needed or if the child needs a surgery or has a doctors appointment they can live stream in instead of going to school or live stream in part of the day before or after an appointment, going to school the other half of the time. You may also request extended time on homework like instead of turning it all in the next day, ask that they have the week, for example, they have to have all homework turned in from that week by the following Monday so say they are having a really bad day Wednesday and in a lot of pain or very fatigued and can only get their math homework done but not their English, science and history. They will be able to work on that homework throughout the week possibly adding the English to their Thursday homework, the science to their Friday homework and catch up on the history over the weekend so they at least aren’t failing or losing credit on homework if there are a few days a month where they are really struggling or not feeling well.

Another reason I suggest learning everything you can and really fighting for a diagnosis early is because if you work you are more likely to have a PPO insurance plan which covers a lot more than Medicare. You can get some things that Medicare won't cover out of the way in case the child has a possibility of being disabled as an adult. Genetic testing is one thing you really want to try to get done as a child as hospitals in some states like my own will not do genetic testing for EDS on adults unless they have another family member who has tested positive for one of the rarer forms of EDS.

You don't want to be in the situation I am where you have four doctors sure you have Vascular form and have been fighting to get you tested, your brother died before he had any testing, your uncle had an aortic aneurysm and died never getting diagnosed, you were referred to a geneticist who won't test you because you are under 21 and no one in you family has tested positive on genetic testing for VEDS, your mom is referred to genetic testing after coming out of a coma and being on life support after a major organ rupture that almost took her life and turned away for the same reason and your grandfather is referred and turned away leaving multiple members of the family suspected of having EDS but no one able to be tested because we are all over the age of 21 and I can’t have children nor would I want to because of the fear of passing this down to them there will not be anyone under the age of 21 to get tested in order for us to get tested so your stuck without a diagnosis. This is why you need at least a hypermobile diagnosis so you have time to fight for the genetic testing to ensure it isn’t a more serious type, especially if a doctor suspects it.

If your child has severe enough symptoms you can also get them listed as disabled under the state in order to get extra financial aid to cover medical needs not covered or special equipment like gait trainers or possibly a power chair for school and a manual chair at home It can cover the cost of tutoring and several other things insurance may not cover. If they grow up and work for so many years and end up getting worse, needing to go onto SSDI their SSDI it will also make it so that their payout will be higher if its on record that they were disabled before the age of 18.

Having a child with a complex health condition, especially when the condition is rare can be a lot of work and very stressful at times. Definitely learn everything you can and fight for a diagnosis for your child. If you suspect you may have the condition fight for a diagnosis for yourself as well. The sooner anyone starts treatment and can get regular screenings such as those for aortic dissection the more they can prevent damage early on and also prevent life threatening complications so that’s my advice to any parent out there.

[ad7803]

“Okay, I think I might need to give you just a little bit of background as to why I keep waffling on about clouds the whole time. When I was at school I studied geography, I did three years of geography and the whole three years were clouds, because we kept having different teachers changing all the time and every single new one that came in was clouds again, so we all got to the point that we were all sick to death of clouds, but the problem you then have is in later life you suddenly look up and you see a different cloud formation and it takes your interest because you actually do know something about that subject. I am in no way an authority on it, and a lot of the terms I use are things that my mind have linked to what I feel it does or it feels like, sometimes certain cloud formations I can’t remember the technical name for because I’ve made my own name up for it, so please excuse me if I’m not too technical. You get certain times of the year where the weather will do the unexpected, and we’re in that time now, this is spring. Because it’s now going to go from cold weather to warm weather, and then you hit a day that’s really cold again, then you might get a couple of hot ones then you might get a lot of rainy days, the clouds you will get all kinds of combination in the sky at the same time which you wouldn’t get in the summer when its just primarily warm or you wouldn’t get in the winter when it’s primarily cold, but because we’re getting all the changes you will get all sorts of stuff. I’ll also give you little bit more background; I’ve suffered two strokes which has left me visually impaired. I also suffer from very bad migraines, and I’ve learned over the last couple of years that, that is I’m very susceptible to what the weather is doing, I think everybody probably is but because they’ve never had anything really bad they haven’t linked it to anything, they haven’t realized that quite a lot of thing that you are going through are actually linked to the weather, are linked to the clouds formations, but I’m aware with mine. Outside my window right at the minute is what I call a blanket sky, it’s just one solid lump of cloud, you can see no sky through it, it’s very white, that is what I call a blanket sky because there are no gaps in it whatsoever. As I stand today it’s reasonably warm, it’s not terribly windy, my head is absolutely is fine. What it looks like out there at the minute is what everybody else would recognize as looking like a snowy kind of sky where the whole sky is just white. I can guarantee you there is no snow in the atmosphere whatsoever right at the minute because my head’s not tingling; my head is not telling me snow is out there. If you get a snowy blanket sky my head will be killing me until the snow has come down, fallen, and the sky is a lot lighter. Once that’s happened and the snow is already down my headache will go, if it is a thundery sky as that’s building up and you’re getting the big thick black clouds rolling across and then they become solid, again my head will be killing me but on the opposite side of my head to where the snow is. I would imagine that this is the same for everybody, perhaps to a lesser degree, but you just don’t think about it; you have a headache today, and people will perhaps not realize that the weather has had any influence on that whatsoever. I can usually tell if we’re going to be into a heavy day of rain, and the sudden downpours they can make my head hurt. So, this is all not based in science whatsoever, it’s based in what my head feels like in certain conditions, which is not a reliable source or anything else but it’s very reliable to me. Right, another part I wanted to expand on from what we were discussing last time is ancient civilizations and their beliefs; the one I’m going to pick on today is Pagans. A lot of people think ‘oh god the Pagans were horrible, nasty…’ they weren’t, they were just normal people, but they had a whole different set of beliefs as in a lot of the civilizations they didn’t have just one god, they had different gods that were responsible for different things, but what they had an awful lot of was negative things. They were more scared of doing stuff because it could bring bad stuff on them, than they were about doing stuff that would bring good stuff to them. An awful lot of myths and legends and fables were made in the Pagan times. The biggest ones were to do with the moons, and the cloud formations around the moons. We were luckily enough last night to find a wolf moon. The wolf moon is an easy one to recognize, it’s in and around the full moon, usually three or four days before the full moon including the full moon, but only up to a day or so after the full moon. You can see the moon very large, very, very bright, on the top right hand corner there is a vague outline that looks similar to a wolf’s head pointing downwards with its mouth open. That is the wolf moon, but you cannot use it as a wolf moon unless it has heavy thick black clouds around it, and the moon shines directly in the middle of the black clouds. That was a really important moon to the Pagans. As far as the Pagans were concerned, every bad thing in the whole wide world is going to happen around those times. A lot of their original beliefs we still tend to hold onto, in recent years your horror movies makers have used the wolf moon for their horror films, it’s the epitome of what looks like a scary sky, it sets your whole idea into ‘oh my gosh this is going to be scary’. All your folklore and tales of your werewolf’s also came from that, it’s a wolf on the moon, that is why people would turn into a wolf and howl at the moon, this is where all the stories have come through from, the Pagans truly believed that people would turn to a werewolf, howl at the moon and run around a mock killing people. When you think about it in reality no, they probably just had a murderer on the loose, but that’s not the point, it is what they believed in. A couple of days after you get the wolf moon, if the conditions are right, the picture in the moon slightly changes from the wolf and you can make out on the opposite end, where the wolfs ears would be, there becomes something that looks rather like a stick, and that’s called the witch moon because it looks like a witch riding on her broomstick. Again right back in Pagan times, and right up to fairly modern stuff, that’s where your Halloween stories would be based from, witches suddenly all coming out, anything from the undead will be out on that night, so full moons have always very much been linked with the bad side of supernatural stuff going on, I’m not trying to tell you it’s real, I’m not trying to tell you it’s real in any sense whatsoever, but it what they believed at the time. As you go through the year they will also have other moons will come, and most of the other moons that they will recognize are good moons, and they are usually surrounded by very clear sky, not much clouding involved, and that will tell them when they’ve got a nice harvest moon, ‘we’re safe to be out harvesting, and we can do all these things’. But during the Pagan times, and a lot of other civilizations as well, they paid big attention to bad things, so as soon as there was, say there had been a very, very heavy cloud form all day which is actually telling everybody it’s going to rain, but it absolutely ends up in a complete and utter flood, that’s because the wolf moon was out, that’s what they will blame it on. It isn’t, it’s weather conditions and it’s what’s coming but they would blame it back to the wolf moon, ‘I looked up and saw the wolf moon and this is why this has happened to me’. Those kinds of people very much lived in superstitions, and it isn’t really until you get to more modern times where you’ve got proper scientific people looking at things that are saying ‘no, this is nothing to do with superstition, this is just weather conditions that you could expect to find at that time of year because of the weather temperature, because of the amount of water in the atmosphere..,’ but back in those times they didn’t care about any of that. Things were used in those times to trick people; you would have someone who had set themselves up to be very high up in these civilizations, someone that everyone admired, and believed everything they had to say. Very often the linked themselves to something within the healing world, but your normal joe blogs in the street would see them as some kind of a witch or a wizard or a medicine man type thing, they would use things like eclipses to say ‘you have been a very bad person’, or ‘the whole of our nation has been bad and we are going to lose all of our light’, and they will know roughly when this is coming. No-one else understood any of this stuff so hey presto, the world goes black, they are paying the price for that they’ve done, they have believed everything this one person has had to say on the subject, but this one person was probably just born a little bit before their time and actually worked out what these things were doing, perhaps didn’t even know why but they knew they were going to happen, but no-one else did, and if someone has told you ‘oh my gosh the whole world is going to go black’ you’re going to go ‘don’t be ridiculous’, and then it does. So, it just reinforced their beliefs in this particular person that ‘whoa, he made that happen’. As far as they were concerned this not a natural thing, he made it happen. So now you can see where an awful lot of superstitious tales and things have their bases, a lot of the other things that they would believe would be certain skies would tell you that the seas had dried up, there are no fish in the sea anymore. It’s because the kind of cloud formations that have happened, all our weather is produced from deep in the seas, whatever the seas are doing underneath will help to produce what we can see in the sky. When the sea is too turbulent the fish that are normally in that area will move slightly away, which means yes, there aren’t many fish in that particular part of the see, but because they, these people only know that particular part of the sea as far as they’re concerned all the fish are gone. The fact that they’re going to be back tomorrow when the weathers settled down doesn’t seem to link in. But again, any clever person within their tribe or their group, will link that back ‘we did this, and now the fish have all gone’, but he won’t necessarily tell them as soon as when all the fish have come back, they will suddenly be aware that the fish are back so they must have been really good last week or so because these fish are back. I think everybody knows that the weather is very much affected by massive things in the world, and the results that the weather can produce, you’ve got your big tsunami waves, you’ve got your earth quakes, tornados, hurricanes, all that kind of thing. We all know they’re to do with weather, we all know they’re to do with geology, but the effects on the weather from a geological point of view from an earthquake, the earthquake will affect the weather, Some of other things like your tsunami’s its usually a combination of an earthquake or an opening of some kind of fissure (of the deep sea trenches) underneath the sea, mixed with the top weather, weather above it, that will cause it to happen. But unfortunately for most of us, we don’t know it’s coming until you can see it and then, it’s a little bit late. Your proper geologists will probably know a bit more in advance, but we are still not in a position that we can do anything about them, just because we know a volcano is going to erupt it doesn’t mean we can stop it. If we know an earthquake is due because the tremors have started to get a bit more violent, we still can’t stop it happening. The absolute base point on any of this in my mind is nature is unstoppable.

Are you superstitious?

Am I superstitious?  Yes to a degree, and no to a bigger degree. I am superstitious in as far as I do believe that things go on in this world that we are not capable of understanding at this point. I am not willing to outwardly say that if I walk under a ladder something terrible is going to happen to me, if I open an umbrella indoors something terrible is going to happen to me, but because I don’t know I actually still won’t do those things. I can give you one horrible example which takes us away to anything to do with weather, but this is now just me. A couple of years before my grandmother dies she did ask me,  she was in a nursing home and very ill, she did ask me if I ever knew she was going to die would I go to the cemetery and ask my grandfather to wait for her. A couple of years later she had a massive stroke, she was put on pathway in the hospital which basically meant we were waiting for her to die, so I did go to the cemetery, and I did sit at the grave, and I did ask my grandfather to wait for her. My auntie asked me why I did it because I don’t believe in the afterlife, I don’t believe that, once somebody is buried as far as I’m concerned that’s it they’re gone. And I said I did it for two reasons, the first reason I did it was because my nan asked me to, and there was no way I would not do what a dying woman has asked me to do. Secondly, because I don’t categorically know that there is no afterlife, my nan believes that when I die I will go up to heaven and when I walk through the gates she will be waiting for me. On the off chance that she’s right, not me, I am not walking through those gates to find my nan going ‘and you didn’t tell him!’ so, there’s my reasoning on it. If I can categorically see something and it has been proven in science, yes I will believe it, but just because it can’t be proved doesn’t mean I will not believe it. I’ll just sit on the fence and wait and see, and when it come to the ultimate of the afterlife, by the time I find out the answer I will be incapable of telling anyone else, so at the minute I would just hold it, but I don’t particularly believe in it but I have an open mind if that’s that happens that what happens so there we go. Your normal superstitions about being scared of certain colours, or numbers, no, not particularly, but there are still quite a few things I wouldn’t do, just in case. My sister on the other hand is the opposite, she’s massively superstitious to the point that she absolutely is terrified of green, her husband has taken her on coach trips, he’s taken her on train trips, where she’s refused to get on because the seats are green so they’ve cancelled their day and gone and done something else. We did have a little bit of a laugh because a couple of years ago me and my family went to Fuerteventura with my sister and all of her family and not only did we get on the airplane and find we had little green pieces of material on the back of our seats, we also left through gate 13, so I am amazed that we didn’t have a complete and utter melt down an fight to get her on the plane, but she was so late getting to the gate I don’t think she had time to think about it until she actually sat down, but I do know it made the rest of us laugh somewhat because we weren’t entirely sure we were going to get her on there, but needless to say no matter what her fears were the holiday was absoloutley fantastic and nothing major absoloutley went wrong, so her supersticions were unfounded on that point anyway, but it does show that some people will react to things a lotstronger than others, it comes down to your own beleifs and your own thoughts, but I am very open on most things.”