S: How’s the foot, clusmyboy?
B: I’m ok. Hurts like a bitch. How are you fool?
S: My bones crack easier. Turns out my low potassium level ends up leaching potassium from skeletal bones. Cracked my thumb brushing my teeth. No biggie.
B: I hate these diseases that are more on the rare side. They are painful and people don’t understand them.
S: Long ago I stopped trying to explain myself, particularly mental health, to anyone outside of my education programs. Being met time and time again with “But that doesn’t make sense” or “Have you JUST tried this or that” is wearisome and time-wasting. And, I’ve got a precious reserve of moral outrage, so why waste it on something so Google-friendly?
Instead, I point them to a website or more often a single word to Google. I then invite them back to ask any questions they might have after some independent, critical secondary research.
I’ve got nothing to prove. Right now, I’ve got hypokalemia. If interested why I’m dragging my arse around with a pimped out walker, look it up.
Very rarely does anyone come back with questions. Their academic curiosity was merely cleverly-disguised gossip-mongering. If they do return, it’s often with the same flavor of questions . . . “I heard what you said, I read WebMD, and that still doesn’t make sense” . . . at which time I invite them to have the disease themselves or work towards a PhD in biochemistry to answer their own non-germane, non-erudite, non-eloquent questions. Have at it.
I don’t have anything to prove to people like that. They don’t want to understand anyway. My experience is they want to prove your suffering is a hoax.
Bosh.
B: I agree. Most people want to prove that it is a hoax.
(final words…)
Reprinted with kind permission from Steve’s Thoughtcrimes
