- 2 days
Chronic pain is so difficult.
There are no words in any language to sufficiently communicate how difficult it is.
It is post operative surgery waking up in agony levels of pain, every day, forever.
It breaks you mentally. It stunts your activity levels. It robs you of patience and kindness.
It is torture, performed by no one, where you would do anything to make it stop. Anything.
Being a compassionate, energy giving, productive, and present person in the lives of others whilst carrying the invisible caustic agony of chronic pain is a sysaphean task the is harder every degeneratively waking day.
Doing the right things (2 hours of PT and exercises every day, cognitive behavioral therapeutic techniques, biofeedback tools, purposefully doing what is painful to prevent classic conditioning avoidance, and no medication for pain) is so fucking hard. Every single day.
There is no vacation. There is no rest.
It is also bad if it’s just nagging pain. Even sciatica is not that bad most of the time but it just seems to never stop. It’s not something you can explain to someone. It’s like being married or having kids or losing someone close to you (etc etc): you might think you understand it, but you dont really get it until you live it.
That said, I changed my activities I do for fun and it did slow way down.
- 2 days
I can’t imagine what that is like, but I am very grateful for you sharing. I have only ever had a couple of surgeries and knowing the pain would end was what I was grasping at the entire time.
I am wondering if I ever meet a person suffering with chronic pain, what can I do to help them? Supporting them through their treatment is definitely a good idea. Being compassionate is a good idea on the surface, but I am not sure if I would be even capable of doing that when I have no idea what it is really like. Is it about understanding their suffering and accepting that their actions are effected by it?
When I try to think of things to say to them, I think of what I say to people who are suffering like “I hope you feel better.” and it just sounds insensitive.
My work/life balance is waaaaaay off.
I like my actual job. I like the people I work with. But when it’s a 55-hour work week with a 1-hour one-way commute, it’s exhausting. I’m missing out on time to be a dad, to engage in hobbies and self-care, home, social life, etc, because the down time I do have is usually spent resting and summoning the energy to go back to the grind the next day. Yeah I use my PTO and sick days, of course. The downside to that is that for an hourly employee that translates to a pretty big chunk out of my paycheck.
We’ve recently had a leadership shakeup here and our new boss is a younger millennial who supposedly has a more enlightened approach to running a business and taking care of its employees. We keep hearing rumors of increased PTO and promises to address work hours but we don’t expect to actually see any changes until after the new year.
I’ve looked for other jobs and generally what I’ve found is sites with toxic work cultures and/or negligible increases in pay and it’s not worth it for me. And I don’t want to take a job in another state that takes me even further away from my kid. So for now, odious as it is, I’ll stick with it and see how things shake out next year.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m the only one with this problem, and I’m not looking for advice, so if you’re about to post advice I’m going to ignore it. I just wanted to get it off my chest.
My parents flew in for a two week visit and good god I cannot wait for them to leave. Distance has not made this heart grow fonder and despite years of therapy, it’s still so hard to deal with this or set boundaries before them.
They’re unbelievably selfish. Ridiculous alcoholics. They hate each other but won’t break up, which just means they’re both so annoying. And they are so, so childish.
My younger self deserves so many hugs for going through life with them. And my adult self is struggling but doing the best they can. But they’ll be gone soon. Thank goodness
did they expect you to fix thier problem? when they retire do they expect you to take them in, that would be worst.
- Count042@lemmy.mlEnglish2 days
I fucked up my landing on my 67the skydiving jump, and got a spiral fracture of both my tibia, and fibula. My foot was pointing 90 degrees from where it was supposed to. I received a surgery that implanted a titanium nail through the channel for my marrow in my tibia along with 4 screws and some plates.
I’m 45 and this recovery is the single most grindingly long, and humiliating thing I’ve ever had to go through. I’m so utterly dependent on others. Which is something that is anathema to me, for which I’ve been going to therapy for years for.
And I’m lucky with clean breaks where they occurred (one at the bottom of the tibia, one at the top of the fibula.) This is supposed to be a quick recovery. I don’t even have a cast anymore after 3 weeks.
I guess I’m just incredibily tired, embarrassed and feeling bad for myself. And throwing this out into the void since I literally can’t really do anything other than go to the bathroom and shower by myself. Which, make no mistake, were huge victories.
- 2 days
Just went through something similar, 8 screws and a plate in my ankle. I highly recommend a knee scooter as it made me so much less dependent on others around the house. I didn’t fully realize how much it would help. I bought two one for the upstairs and one for the downstairs, and only used crutches on the stairs.
With the scooter I was able to make dinner for the family because I could carry plates or pans in one hand while steering the scooter and propelling with my good leg. With crutches I felt so helpless.
The scooters came with bags but I just used a backpack anyways so that my stuff would migrate with me between scooters.
- Count042@lemmy.mlEnglish2 days
Thanks, I’ll definitely keep that in mind.
Sadly my knee is not weight bearing, at least not yet. They had to go in above the knee to implant the titanium nail because the break was too close to the joint to go in underneath the knee. Anyways, my nail has very little flexibility right now. I’ll probably recover that faster than anything else, so once I can bend my knee and bear weight on it, I’ll get a knee scooter.
- 2 days
That fucking sucks, I’m sorry you found yourself in this position. Congrats on showering today and I hope tomorrow is a little easier as is the day after that. 67 sky dives? It’s pretty impressive you didn’t break anything before now!
Do you think you’ll sky dive again after healing?
- Count042@lemmy.mlEnglish2 days
Thanks for your kind words.
And yeah, there is something ineffable about hanging onto the outside of a plane at 15,000 ft. Also free fall is the closest you can come to flying outside of wing suits.
I fucked up the landing in two ways that combined to hurt me. You flare right before landing and that converts your downward momentum into forward momentum. I flared a couple feet too low. I also was trying to counter a slight crosswind with harness input, which put my body sort of into a 45 degree angle from the direction of travel with my feet first. Because I planed out about 2 ft off the ground, I didn’t have time to straighten out (and I should have been straight before I even flared, but I was new to harness input and trying to not use toggle input to correct for the crosswind). As a result, I was going 29 mph forward and wasn’t going down really at all.(I have a fly sight which is basically a 3d tracker, hence how I know) when the inside of my right foot, pointed closer to perpendicular to my direction of travel hit the ground.
I remember feeling my foot first glide a bit through the grass tops just after flaring and having time to think “shit” before I hit.
If I flared higher I would have been fine. If it been using toggle inputs rather than harness input, I could have still slid it in on my padded butt. Both together? Ouch.
Plus side: you did it as an adult. I’m sure the dependence sucks way worse, but I did the same thing (mountain biking though) when I was 14. They fixed mine with closed reduction, no surgery. It hit a growth plate and now I’ve got one short leg and some neat back pain!
I remember needing help to go to the bathroom to be the worst part, since it hurt so bad to let my leg down, but it really did heal fast. Hang in there.
- AskewLord@piefed.socialEnglish2 days
I wish it was 2012 again. When I could go out, talk to people face to face, and have good conversations. All of that is gone. And anytime I attempt it I am met with violent and negative reactions.
I used to go out and meet people and talk about books, movies, politics, and it was all civil and enjoyable and fun. Oftentimes they didn’t share my views, but either of us was angry or hateful. Now as soon as I try to talk about any of that I get some lecture about how enjoying movies is privileged and awful and pretensions and I’m a stupid horrible person for supporting evil racist Hollywood.
Now it’s impossible to do that. It sucks so much ass and I hate it and it makes me not want to socialize at all anymore. I don’t enjoy socializing with a bunch of people who just repeat the same platitudes over and over, I miss meeting people from different walks of life who were interested in learning from each other. That shit doesn’t exist anymore and I hate it so much.
I miss a world in which facts existed and were largely agreed upon.
- AskewLord@piefed.socialEnglish2 days
I feel the same way. But it was never like that 10 or 15 years ago.
I could speak my mind and people thought it was cool and I could form solid relationships and such.
Now the second I speak my mind everyone loses their minds because they are so obsessed with being as fake as possible and beating up anyone who isn’t as fake as they are. Everything is performative, and they all hate it but they still rapidly enforce it.
It’s fucked up. We did this to ourselves. I can’t even talk about movies like The Whale without people telling me that I must hate fat people if I watched it. It’s insane. No discussion is allowed.
- 2 days
people telling me that I must hate fat people if I watched it.
Huh? What on Earth is that about? The movie is a very compassionate portrayal of fat people, if anything
Yup. I think a lot of social media has turned into the “Outrage Olympics”. Whether the outrage is warranted or not, the siloed communities wallow in their performative group-think. It’s hard to break through the them-vs-us mentality. It has always been a human problem, but it really feels like it’s turned up to 11 in the past decade or so.
- HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish2 days
Hate mouth breathing. Im all stuffed up and it feels so much more effort breathing through the mouth plus it dries it out.
- 2 days
I’ve got a deviated septum, and going to have a surgery in a month. I can’t wait to be able to breathe through my nose!
- 2 days
You can resolve the past and create your own future, you are never stuck anywhere regardless of what happened to you.
- AskewLord@piefed.socialEnglish2 days
this sentiment isn’t acceptable on this platform, as far as I can tell.
People here seem committed to the idea they have no agency and are hapless victims and anyone else who made their life better only did so because of extraordinary privileges.
shit’s wild.
- 1 day
People that get jealous and/or insecure are so exhausting. And not because I don’t want to reassure them. It’s because you make me feel bad for being myself. So I’m not sorry my light is brighter than yours that’s not my problem or I will make it your problem. I’ll make sure my light shines extra bright because it makes you so upset. I’m not being unreasonable here, I’m not trying to make you feel bad about yourself, most likely I’m not even thinking about you. And if I am I just wish you didn’t try to dim my light. It really hurts. If communication about your abusive behavior makes you feel bad about yourself I hope you find peace and that you get over it because I do want good things for you. You say I don’t try to help you but all you do is deflect and blame me for your unhappiness. Just don’t put me in fight or flight or start shit on purpose and I can give you what you want. I’m physically unable to give you what you want if I can’t be calm and not worry about every little thing. I know intentions aren’t everything but you seem to think so. “Who cares if they get upset if I have good intentions right? I don’t have to care about their feelings it’s just my feelings you need to care about. Getting mad and fighting with me and getting my heart rate up is a great way to make me feel comfortable and safe around you so I can give you what you want /s.” It’s really that simple. I do care about you and if you think I’m being neglectful then ask nicely, we’re all adults here. If I hurt you I want to change so it doesn’t happen again but you are a brick wall. I know strong emotions suck but I can’t figure out how you should deal with them, I can’t do those things for you. Put some effort into it, I know you know how to figure things out and you’re smart so why can’t you see what’s best for you? And I’m not a therapist, I only know how I can help myself, but I try to help others by having curiosity and having empathy. And I talk to them softly and politely. You don’t get someone to open up to you by yelling at them and being angry. Communicate your feelings if you can and don’t take them out on me. I know life is hard but why be the scorpion that kills us both just because of your own greed? You’re causing unnecessary pain and you lie about yourself. I’m doing literally everything I can to give you what you want and it doesn’t make a difference if I do or not. I know you care about the attention I give you so that’s your incentive. And instead of being mad at me be mad at yourself and grow a fucking spine. I don’t feel bad you say you hate yourself and stuff like that because it feels like you hate me instead. I’m being myself and that’s a problem? You say I don’t try to laugh and joke with you but you force it and it makes me anxious. Those moments do happen it’s just not good enough. And I’m sorry but love me as I am and I will love you as you are. It feels like you don’t love me and you want me gone. It’s really confusing when you cry when I go on a trip like you’ll miss me but then you cause tension at home while I’m gone and I can’t do anything to protect her. And you can’t hide it from me either because it’s just a drop in the bucket at this point. I can tell when something is wrong and when you’re upset but if I ask it will start a fight. And that’s not fair. I want to be there for you but you don’t let me and you treat me like shit for it. You’re so confusing. Ughhhhhh
2 daysI’m not entirely comfortable about where we’re going with the decline of journalism.
I’m not saying that it’ll be a worse world. But it could be.
The press has got flaws and imperfections, but modern democracy has had it around and relied on it.
Shifts like the rise of 24/7 cable news eliminating local news, social media rising, and magazines and newspapers going into serious decline are changes that could have a lot of hard-to-assess impact on society.
I think that we’ll work out fixes for some of the things. And we’ve had benefits of new media. But…I feel like maybe we could wind up seriously regretting having a lot of the press go away. It won’t be easy to rebuild if we wanted to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers
United States
From 2005 to 2021, about 2,200 American local print newspapers closed.[20] From 2008 to 2020, the number of American newspaper journalists fell by more than half.[20]
Where once the ability to disseminate information was restricted to those with printing presses or broadcast mechanisms, the Internet has enabled thousands of individual commentators to communicate directly with others through blogs or instant message services.[64] Even open journalism projects like Wikipedia have contributed to the reordering of the media landscape, as readers are no longer restricted to established print organs for information.[65]
With profits falling, many newspapers have cut back on their most expensive reporting projects—overseas bureaus and investigative journalism.[92] Some investigative projects often take months, with their payoff uncertain. In the past, larger newspapers often devoted a portion of their editorial budget to such efforts, but with ad dollars drying up, many papers are looking closer at the productivity of individual reporters, and judging speculative investments in investigative reports as non-essential.[83]
Observers point out that the reliability and accountability of newspapers is being replaced by a sea of anonymous bloggers, many with uncertain credentials and points of view. Where once the reader of a daily newspaper might consume reporting, for instance, by an established Cairo bureau chief for a major newspaper, today that same reader might be directed by a search engine to an anonymous blogger with cloudy allegiances, training or ability.[95]
The closure of local newspapers has created a phenomenon of news deserts. A June 2022 report estimates that approximately 70 million Americans live in a county with one or no local news organization.[97]
Decline in political neutrality
The shift from news coverage in geographical regions to online markets likely contributed to increased political polarization in the 2000s and 2010s.[106] Research has linked the closures of newspapers to declines in civic engagement of citizens,[4][5] increases in government waste,[6] and increases in political polarization.[7] The decline of local news has also been linked to the increased “nationalization” of local elections.[8][9] As citizens have fewer opportunities to read about local politics, they are attracted to national sources (such as cable news) and begin to interpret local politics via national politics.[7][107]
