Sigh... I remember when the International Consensus Criteria for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis was published in 2011. I thought we were finally beyond the psychobabble nonsense.
The nonsense is like a leech... securely attached & draining our blood...
Tho I think you have really good points, sarcasm in writing isn’t a good way to convey messages that are this important. It’s way stronger and clearer if you don’t use sarcasm. Just my two cents.
Thank you for writing this amazing piece. Although I have a lot of childhood trauma myself, I absolutely know my condition is not pyschosomatic and the ignorance when people suggest that is infuriating. Everyone is so quick to label and put people into boxes these days rather than address the problem itself. I have seen friends enter terrible relationships and have chronic migraines until they are out of those relationships sure, and I have felt anxious in dealing with an alcoholic mother and all the chaos that emerges from that since a young age but I never became unwell during those periods. It was only until I got covid that I became seriously unwell. I remember a close family member saying I had made it up!! It was only when I had my biopsy and took them with me to my neurologist that they could see and hear that I had handled 30 years of chaos and what had happened to me post covid was very real. I actually just wrote a quick piece on it yesterday. https://open.substack.com/pub/gcassandro/p/covid-took-my-nervous-system-chumbawamba?r=1utjs6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
My first instinct was to ask about flat earthers. However, my child had headaches & stomach problems, she was then given an off-label drug by a pediatric neurologist for her "depression." She had a terrible scary reaction to the drug, Nortryptiline, & had to be taken off it right away. It was so bad we were thinking of taking her to the ER (or we did, can't remember). My husband & I were frantically doing 1/2 life calculations to see when it would be completely out of her system. I believed there was an unfound physical cause, and that her illness was not psychosomatic. Several months later, after diligent testing, she was found to have reflux & a re-emergent allergy. She went on Prilosec, and voila!! She was completely fine & back to her vigorous self. I am a scientific materialist & believe that physical/chemical/biological mechanisms are behind every illness, whether they have been quantified, or are yet to be discovered. It's horrific that someone is out there undermining patients with this pernicious psychosomatic bullshit.
Sigh... I remember when the International Consensus Criteria for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis was published in 2011. I thought we were finally beyond the psychobabble nonsense.
The nonsense is like a leech... securely attached & draining our blood...
OMG but you have an amazing way with words. Thank you. You are so strong to even read the ....book!!!
Just reading some of the things in it has given me a blood pressure headache!!!
Tho I think you have really good points, sarcasm in writing isn’t a good way to convey messages that are this important. It’s way stronger and clearer if you don’t use sarcasm. Just my two cents.
Thank you for writing this amazing piece. Although I have a lot of childhood trauma myself, I absolutely know my condition is not pyschosomatic and the ignorance when people suggest that is infuriating. Everyone is so quick to label and put people into boxes these days rather than address the problem itself. I have seen friends enter terrible relationships and have chronic migraines until they are out of those relationships sure, and I have felt anxious in dealing with an alcoholic mother and all the chaos that emerges from that since a young age but I never became unwell during those periods. It was only until I got covid that I became seriously unwell. I remember a close family member saying I had made it up!! It was only when I had my biopsy and took them with me to my neurologist that they could see and hear that I had handled 30 years of chaos and what had happened to me post covid was very real. I actually just wrote a quick piece on it yesterday. https://open.substack.com/pub/gcassandro/p/covid-took-my-nervous-system-chumbawamba?r=1utjs6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
My first instinct was to ask about flat earthers. However, my child had headaches & stomach problems, she was then given an off-label drug by a pediatric neurologist for her "depression." She had a terrible scary reaction to the drug, Nortryptiline, & had to be taken off it right away. It was so bad we were thinking of taking her to the ER (or we did, can't remember). My husband & I were frantically doing 1/2 life calculations to see when it would be completely out of her system. I believed there was an unfound physical cause, and that her illness was not psychosomatic. Several months later, after diligent testing, she was found to have reflux & a re-emergent allergy. She went on Prilosec, and voila!! She was completely fine & back to her vigorous self. I am a scientific materialist & believe that physical/chemical/biological mechanisms are behind every illness, whether they have been quantified, or are yet to be discovered. It's horrific that someone is out there undermining patients with this pernicious psychosomatic bullshit.