(Repost) Gillette, Piers Morgan, and Steve from Hull.

AN: This is a repost of a piece I uploaded to other social media platforms, but realised I never posted here. It is from early January.

Gillette have just released an advert calling for people to stop dismissing toxic masculinity and abusive, bullying or harassing behaviours as 'boys being boys'. The advert shows children being bullied, women being touched inappropriately and without consent, cyberbullying occurring through texts, and men stopping themselves from crying or showing emotion when looking in the mirror.
Piers Morgan, embarking on one of his regular tirades, has taken to national television and the medium of Twitter to slate the advert and threaten to boycott the entire company of Gillette. (I'm sure they're shaking in their boots, Piers. Just absolutely quaking.)
Piers Morgan is well known for taking issue with companies attempting to promote basic human decency and equality, as his most recent issue with the Greggs vegan sausage roll provides a good example - a large food chain creates a product for the vegans among us, the dairy-allergic vegetarians, those with egg allergies, or consumers who simply wish to try something new. Morgan took it upon himself to slate the company, accuse Greggs supporters of bullying him (a really poor joke aimed at bullying sufferers and survivors), and even bite into one of the new products and 'vomit' on national television to show how disgusting he thinks the idea of food without carcasses in is. I mean, who would ever eat a vegetable?
Having scanned through Piers' tweets briefly and the replies to them, it's come as an absolute shock to me that there are a number of people actually supporting his latest tirade and boycotting Gillette for their advert. Whilst I'm sure Gillette aren't going to cry themselves to sleep at night over Steven, 47 from Hull refusing to buy their razorblades anymore, it just baffled me enough to make me want to write a post addressing those supporters and Morgan himself.

By boycotting a company as a result of such an advert, I hope you realise that you are taking a direct issue with that company calling for an end to abuse, bullying, sexual assault and rape, and the method of brushing it under the rug that is referring to the actions as 'boys being boys'. I personally saw nothing in the advert that struck me as 'PC gone mad', 'man hating' or any of the other phrases you are all throwing at the campaign. The images shown include a young boy being chased down by other children, made to cry in his mother's arms, a group of men with tears pricking their eyes forcing themselves to hold them back when looking in the mirror, and an audience of men watching and laughing at an actor pretending to 'grope' a woman's body when her back is turned for the sake of  entertainment. I had hoped that anybody with an ounce of humanity in their body would be opposed to such things and would support any attempts to stop them and reduce the excuses made for them on the grounds of them being 'kids being kids', 'natural' and 'masculine traits', yet Piers Morgan and the Twitter Brigade have surprised me once again. I can only pose this question to you, as you are clearly incapable of assessing issues unless they are directly related to you; what if it was your mother? Your sister? Your daughter? Your grandmother? Or your father? Your son? Your brother? Your grandfather?

If we start showing our children, our friends, our parents and siblings that it is okay to cry, it is never okay to touch somebody without their consent, and that bullying destroys lives then perhaps in the future we will actually live in the civilised world we should realistically be in by now, in this day and age. However, as long as blindly following media 'stars' because of their lack of a filter and the edge they apply to debates continues, we are never going to get anywhere and men are going to continuously think that campaigning for basic human rights to be adhered to is absurd and the result of a 'generation of snowflakes'; Morgan's evident favourite term.

Bravo, Gillette. Thank you for creating such a poignant advertising campaign and for addressing very serious issues in an understanding, respectful way.

And for everybody who takes an issue with the campaign, shame on you.
Shame on you for opposing to a male-targeted company campaigning for an end to the same toxic masculinity and abuse-excusing behaviour that kills people.

The rampant transphobia of Emile Ratelband

I recently had an argument with an oh-so-entitled stranger on the internet, who claimed that because she knows a couple trans people, she can decide what is transphobic and what isn't.
Emile Ratelband, if you haven't heard of this absolute imbecile, is a transphobe. He is the man who achieved internet fame by proposing to his country's courts that he should be able to change his age, as, and I quote, "people can change their gender". His reasoning behind this? He "would be able to get more women on tinder".
Perhaps, Emile Ratelband, at the age of 69 and a single father, you should focus on raising your nine children (two of whom you originally wanted to name after such materialistic goods as cars, which just says it all,) rather than how many romps you can attain on a dating site.

Ratelband's new-found fame has rightly offended and disgusted many LGBTQ+ people and their friends and families over the world, and has further enabled transphobes by giving them yet another bigot to agree with and quote in their narrative of how the world should work. By comparing a ridiculous choice such as changing your age so you can 'attract more women' to the absolute battle trans people face every day, you are belittling trans people and making a joke out of us. It further fuels the fire of hatred towards us, and that is one hundred percent Ratelband's sole intention. It only takes one look into Ratelband's personal beliefs and history to realise that he is a bigot and a transphobe. For one, he is a trump supporter - and a vote for trump is a vote for transphobia. He also claimed in one BBC interview that age is the biggest cause of discrimination, which is closed-minded and frankly laughable; try telling the black trans teen that he is privileged just because he is young. He reduces being transgender to a choice, and claims that in the Netherlands, there is absolutely no transphobia at all.

In addition to being transphobic, Emile stated that homosexuality is "not human and not healthy". The fact that people can still support this man after his rampant discrimination of the LGBTQ+ community is absolutely beyond me - and how people such as the individual I had a debate with can say that he is not transphobic purely because they know a trans person and thus can apparently make that decision, is mind-boggling.

The attitudes of people such as Ratelband directly contribute to the oppression of transgender people, and are one of the many reasons why 89 percent of trans people have thought about suicide. Bigoted viewpoints shouldn't be tolerated in a society that claims to be so progressive, yet they still are, and people such as Ratelband are given screen time and fame simply for being discriminatory. This has to end.

72 percent of trans people have self harmed at least once.
27 percent of trans people have attempted suicide.
89 percent of trans people have had thoughts of suicide.
55 percent of trans people have experienced workplace discrimination related to their gender identity.


48 percent of trans people in the UK have attempted suicide.

Why, as a disabled person, I shouldn't apologise for living life.

As a chronically ill disabled person, I spend a lot of my life at specialist appointments, with doctors and in the hospital. I've been chronically ill since the age of 16, when contracting infectious mononucleosis left me with myalgic encephalomyelitis. From then, my health spiralled, and I am currently diagnosed with more than five chronic physical conditions, along with multiple mental health conditions. I'm under the care of two physiotherapists, a neurologist, a cardiologist, a mental health specialist, an eating disorder specialist, an ehlers danlos specialist, a respiratory clinic, and a surgeon. So needless to say, trips to and from doctors' offices and hospitals can get tedious very quickly. This tends to impact my mental health quite severely, as whilst I am very aware that a lot of people have conditions that take up more time and are more life-limiting than mine, I feel like I'm spending my entire life in medical environments. Constantly wondering when my next flare will be. Wondering when my next admission will be.

This is why, when I am able to take a spontaneous day out, trip away, or just do something fun that doesn't fit with a healthy person's idea of how I should behave as a sick person - I refuse to apologise.

On a Tuesday morning in November of last year, I woke up unable to walk. I had partial paralysis, and my nervous system was sending signals entirely to my left leg as opposed to my left and right in equal measures, so my right leg was suffering hemiparesis. I'm incredibly lucky that I regained the ability to walk mostly unaided by March of this year, though my wheelchair and crutches are in the living room within easy reach as my neurologist informed me it's inevitably going to happen again with my condition.

This is why I will not apologise for having fun. For dancing in public. For spending a little extra money to go further afield so I can explore a new town. For walking when I can. For proving that disabled people don't have to fit your narrative and that sometimes we have fluctuations in symptoms, we have pain free days, or we choose to push through them to carry on living. I have been given the gift of movement in both legs again and I refuse to let it go to waste.

An open letter to all the people who left me when my conditions became too much for them

On one hand, I get it. Who would want to deal with this? Who would want a friend that gives fatigued half-replies when you need them, is never able to meet up with you spontaneously, is too anxious or tired to have facetime or phone calls? Who would want a friendship as tiring as ours, especially when you have your own fights and battles occurring? If you don't want to talk to me for a while to focus on your own issues, or just to unwind and be alone for a while, you are entirely valid and you don't have to justify that to me.

On the other hand, some of you hurt me.

You hurt me by leaving me when I needed you most. You hurt me by making me feel like my conditions are worse for you to witness with than they are for me to live with every day of my life. You hurt me by making me feel alone, different, and excluded when all I wanted was to feel included and just the same as everybody else.

Maybe I should specify; if you went about it in a negative way, you hurt me. To the friend who told me after 6 years that we were going in different directions in life because I couldn’t get a job, and that you never wanted to speak to me again because of that, you hurt me. Our friendship was never based on my employment and that should have never come into the equation. To the friend who told me I’m never around anymore and I’m no fun when I am, you hurt me. The day you told me I would never be loved if I ‘carried on like this’, I realised who you really were.

Ultimately however, I thank you.

I thank those of you who went about leaving with human decency, for being honest with yourself and with me, and for admitting that your own issues are the priority for you, as they should be. I thank you for taking time away from me to focus on yourself and work on your own health. I thank those of you who went about it in a negative way, for revealing your true colours to me. Thank you for not wasting my time any longer. Thank you for not pretending anymore.

Finally, I thank those of you who never left. Those of you who are still here, watching the chaos of my life unfold and offering a helping hand, even if it's just a quick "Hey, how are you doing?". I will be eternally grateful for those of you who try, as well as those who tried and couldn't handle it. You all help me to feel a little more human whilst I go through things that make me feel so alone.

Where the hell have I been?

It is so weird to realise that the last time I published a blog was in May. I was so convinced I'd be posting every week, but I suppose life happens and often, major life events kind of get in the way. But I do agree with my partner, my family and my friends when they say I need to get back into regular writing.
So sitting here at 9am with a cigarette and a Dr Pepper Zero, I decided my free day was the time to start again with this entry.

I got a 2 in 1 laptop / tablet when I was in Brighton for Christmas. The main idea is to use it for university but I've realised it's the perfect size to take around with me and blog or write poetry wherever I am, and currently that's going to be my bed for a little while.

Shortly after my last blog post at the end of May, I had a neurology appointment for suspected epilepsy. Luckily, no significant epileptic activity was found in my brain scans. Which is awesome. However, I was given a diagnosis of functional neurological disorder. I love medical sciences and in my spare time I enjoy studying about rare diseases and disorders and increasing my mental dictionary of medical terms, practices and treatments. I suppose this started when I took biology at high school, but definitely increased when I became sick with myalgic encephalomyelitis at 16. Learning about diseases, disorders and disabilities helped me to feel not so alone, engage with and meet other people with similar conditions, and at one point was a subject I wanted to pursue at university. I digress, but the point I'm making is that I'd never heard of functional neurological disorder and I was upset. When my neurologist used words and phrases like psychogenic, psychiatric and emotional trauma to describe how some doctors and specialists view FND, I was distraught. I walked out of the appointment in tears, phoned Nick and bawled to him about how everyone would think I was faking it, or that it's all in my head and just part of my mental illnesses.

In reality, functional neurological disorder is a serious and very genuine condition. In a normally functioning brain, signals are sent and received to enable you to perform motor tasks such as walking, talking and eating. In the brain of a person with FND, these signals are disrupted, mixed up, and don't work as they should. Signals can not be sent and received in the proper way and so functional symptoms develop, which can be any number of motor and sensory issues as well as cognitive symptoms such as impaired thinking, brain fog, inability to find words and recall the names of objects, people and places. In addition to these, a symptom that a large number of FND sufferers encounter is seizure activity and seizure-like episodes. You may be conscious or unconscious during these seizures, able to speak or temporarily mute, able to move or paralysed - almost any type of seizure activity you can imagine. Personally, my seizures generally resemble focal or temporal lobe epileptic seizures, without the epileptic activity. Instead, as mentioned before, my brain can't process the signals it's supposed to be sending and receiving, and my body's functions essentially shut down. During a seizure, I have trouble interpreting what people are saying, it feels sort of like they're speaking in a language I don't understand. My body will shake, similarly to an epileptic seizure, though it's more severe on the right hand side of my body. I will occasionally lose consciousness, although recently I have stayed conscious throughout. I'm not actually sure which is more terrifying. After a seizure, I lose my ability to speak properly for anything from 5 minutes to the next few hours. In all honesty, the best way to describe it is that I sound like I've had no sleep and then gone and got drunk. I slur, but I also stammer and have a lot of difficulty getting out the words I want to say, because my brain has essentially forgotten how to make me speak. FND is honestly so draining.

It's taken me over a week to write this, and I have multiple half written or completed but unpublished blog posts just sitting in the editor. I've been in and out of hospital, I've been mentally and physically drained. But I’m determined to get back to writing frequently, as it does really help me. It’s almost a form of therapy for me and provides a means of catharsis. Don’t get me wrong; my mental health issues are still very much there when I’m blogging. But sitting down, blaring music and just writing does help to quieten the tics, intrusive thoughts and just general sadness.

I’m not entirely sure what the point of this post was. I suppose it was half to speak about FND, and have to just explain where I’ve been and get back into the swing of writing again.

If you’ve read this far, thank you.

xo

Ironically, I'm listening to Heartbeat Loud as I write this.

It's not really an unusual thing for me to be in hospital. I've been admitted for severe dehydration, constant infections, myalgic encephalomyelitis flare-ups, a strange type of liver disease, an exploded appendix and mental health issues. Those who know me well know I have a bit of a dodgy relationship with my health. However, last night was a first with being told by a health adviser that I needed to be seen for my heart in an emergency facility within the next 60 minutes. Having turned down an ambulance, I got up from the sofa and gathered my things; phone charger, mobile phone itself, bank card and some taxi fare, and Nick and I made our way to the hospital. Luckily, and similarly to my hometown, we live a mere 5 minutes from the emergency department.
I'm well aware at this point that NHS hospitals are incredibly underfunded, stretched and crowded through no fault of their own, hence taking the essentials to last me the next day or two should I have needed it. Upon arriving and seeing the walls adorned with 'average wait time 3 hours' whiteboards, I have to say I wasn't thrilled about my impending stay. Taking my pulse on my iPhone as I sat down, Nick gave me a kind 'be careful' as he noticed my pulse was climbing again.
I should probably explain. My heart rate has been massively increasing at random intervals of late, bouncing up to around 140 each time I stand up, causing me to feel it in my ears and in my neck. It got bad yesterday, and I almost passed out just standing up to grab my drink. (Thank god I didn't grab my drink, or I'd be dealing with coke zero and glass everywhere and that sounds way too stressful to handle.)
So there I was sitting in the waiting room. Two young girls with sick bowls probably didn't help my heart rate as my emetophobia was kicking in, but I just kind of assumed it couldn't get much faster. I was called in pretty quickly, within 15 or so minutes, by a young nurse with a huge smile on his face. This was nice, a bit of a change from the majority of triage nurses I've seen. Sitting down, I started explaining what was going on with my ticker, and in response he put a pulse oximeter on my finger, promptly grabbed my septum piercing and pulled. "Does this hurt?" That was an odd one, but made me laugh nonetheless. The pulse oximeter started reading my heart rate and Nick's face kind of said it all, as the display was angled towards him and not me. I could hear the beeps though, and they were pretty fast to say the least. Sounded like the drumline of an Andy C remix on speed. Irregular too. The nurse turned to me, asking me if it happened all the time or just on occasions. "Only really when I stand up. Or walk around. But sometimes when I'm doing nothing too, but that's rare." He laughed. "It's just high because I'm here!" Again, this made me laugh. Which made my heart rate shoot up higher. Damn amusing nurse.
He referred me for an emergency echocardiogram after disconnecting me, and I found out that my heart rate had been bouncing at almost every interval between 60 and 190bpm. Scary, but I was comforted by the thought that should anything happen, I am literally in the best place for it.

The next hour and a half were spent sitting in the waiting room, taking regular heart rate readings and trying to find which was the most comfortable position on a chair that creaked and threatened to break every time you put so much as a jacket on it. Side note, it's to sit forward with your elbows on your knees, but that's a bit irrelevant. After a wait, I was called through to see a doctor who sat me down on a bed, took my glasses off, checked my eyes. Then asked twice if I had taken any drugs. No, I just naturally look like this, I promise! After a short conversation about my symptoms and checking my ECG results, he concluded I have a lovely little heart condition called supraventricular tachycardia, or SVT. And what he believes is the beginning of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, too, but that one's almost to be expected with my myalgic encephalomyelitis. He explained that SVT is a condition characterised by arrhythmia and extremely high heart rates, sometimes up to 250bpm. That really is an Andy C remix on speed. It's caused by what is essentially faulty electrical signals in your heart, and is normally managed by medications or a heart surgery. That sounds scary and more painful than I'd like, so let's try the medications.

I was discharged and sent home as there's nothing emergency departments can do for supraventricular tachycardia unless your heart rate is not coming down from, say, 200bpm. It's now my job to get in with my GP and organise starting some heart medicines. Yummy!
Of course, with obsessive compulsive disorder, I've been researching each and every little thing about this condition. Not necessarily a bad thing. I'm not scared per se, just a little surprised that I have a heart condition I didn't really have any idea about before. And anxious to start medications, as beta-blockers made me feel so unwell last time I took them for something completely unrelated. If it's going to stop my actual drum and bass heart from sporadically going for a sprint though, probably going to be worth it.

I am not affiliated with any of the charities listed below, but as will be a regular feature of my blog, I have listed some charities and information pages regarding the issues talked about in this blog post and issues related to them.

Have a great bank holiday Monday evening, I'm off to await my Amazon package, make a roast dinner and cry about how I have to reduce my caffeine intake. 😅😅

• Supraventricular Tachycardia on NHS choices - supraventricular tachycardia information on NHS choices
• Supraventricular Tachycardia on the British Heart Foundation website - supraventricular tachycardia in young people - BHF
• Arrhythmia Allience UK - heartrhythmalliance.org
• Supraventricular Tachycardia on the Children's Heart Federation website - Supraventricular Tachycardia in children - CHF

xo

Motivational Speaking?

I’ve never blogged in the conventional sense before. I’ve had a tumblr account and thought I was a ‘blogger’, reposting pictures and text on subjects I’m passionate about, but even through my adoration of writing I’ve surprisingly never produced my own written content. 

A year ago, an elderly woman at a bus stop in Brighton told me I should become a motivational speaker. Through my own experiences I had completely changed her mind on a subject you normally wouldn’t converse with bus stop strangers over, but it had come up in conversation somehow. I don’t remember how, it was over a year ago. I remember the topic of conversation though and how her argument changed over the course of the discussion, but that’s another story for another day. I pondered her advice for a while and came to the conclusion that motivational speaking would scare me, whilst in an ideal world I’d love to do it. I would love to open even one mind in a crowd of one or two hundred high school students, but that would rely on me getting up onto the stage first or merely standing in front of them which is, at this current point in time, a terrifying concept. I suppose blogging is the first step towards potentially becoming a speaker, the reason being that I can gauge responses to my words and the topics I’m keen to talk about and identify whether or not I should actually do it, should I prove to be a terrible writer. Which is a large possibility. 

You don’t know until you try!