The Blogging Platypus

TW/CW: Sexual assault, drug abuse, suicide Hmmm, where to start? There’s a song that says that the beginning is a very good place to start, so that’s what I’ll do. I was born and grew up. The end. Lol. I am still growing. I came into this world in this current form during the Summer of 1977 in the San Francisco Bay Area. So, that makes me...carry the 8...42! I thought that my early 40s would be different, but, alas, the Universe had other plans. Image via Pexels By the time I was 16, I had graduated from high school, was enrolled in community college (which would be the first of three degrees I would go on to earn), held a job as the Assistant Printer for the school district, had been through drug and alcohol rehab, and experienced my first sexual assault. What can I say, I like to get in as many experiences as possible. I obtained my AA Degree and my Emergency Medical Technician certification by the time I was 18. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for a living at that ...

Sometimes, life seems like one thing after another. I realize that that is precisely what life is: one second, one hour, one day, one year, one decade...after another, but when the events that are hurled at you seem insurmountable, what else is there to do but say fuck it? Well, this year has felt like I am getting the karma intended for someone who stole my identity, only to conduct nefarious deeds. Over the past two years, I know that good and happy events have happened in our lives, but the challenges we have faced have been, well, quite challenging. We moved into a place that used to be a meth lab that wasn’t remediated correctly (or at all) and was already inhabited by invisible forces,  I was denied SSDI for my disabilities,  I have been unable to work on a regular basis,  Repeated visits to doctors out of state,  A few visits to the emergency room,  One of our cars had a mystery issue that ultimately resolved (after the new battery didn’t do m...

Cannabis has been a part of my life for the last couple of years. I started out with my medical card when we lived in New Mexico. I still remember the first strain I bought. Let me tell you, after not having used cannabis in a decade or two, starting out with Gorilla Glue may have not been the best idea, but it gave me a good couch lock. For those outside the chronic illness community, couch lock may sound like a boring vegetative state, without the artificial life support. However, for me, and I would guess many others, the couch lock effect is exactly what I need at times. In some of the research I have been doing to figure out what exactly is going on with my body, I stumbled across something that made total sense. In addition to Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and hypermobility, there’s something called autonomic dysfunction, or dysautonomia. The autonomic nervous system regulates so many of our automatic responses that keep us alive. From breathing and blood pressure, to digestion a...

Coffee has been a part of my life for, gosh, nearly half of my life. However, over the years, I have cut back on caffeine, only consuming it before noon for the most part. Coffee and caffeine can sometimes lead to anxiety, irritability, and sleeplessness in some, but others may report no undesirable side effects. Just another example of how different one person can be from the next on a molecular level. Undesirable side effects are nothing new for us in the chronic illness community. The medications some of us have to take can be accompanied by some uncomfortable side effects that may require an additional medication or two. It seems like a laundry list of potential symptoms that could occur, with some of them worse than the initial symptoms for which you are taking the medication. It becomes a vicious cycle. Due to what seems like playing a medication shell game, I have started to look for non-traditional approaches to health. It started first with cannabis a few years ago when we...