Any Sign of Weakness

Just in case anyone was wondering why I put off mentioning that migraines and treating them were affecting my finances, just chalk it up to being one of those little effects of being constantly watched. When I do talk about anything being a problem for me, this is what I get. (Warning: slime pit link.)

Badger3k: In other news, Steffy is begging for money, and Avicenna is saying something against Thunderf00t (not sure what, couldn’t waste the minutes it would take to read his drivel). Ophie finds rape culture where most of us would find a kid connected to a politician gets out of trouble. Not sure about the rest of the article, but going to the “house they used to live in was burned down in mysterious circumstances) to suggest the townspeople burned it down in retaliation for reporting the rapes is a bit much (so far, it could change if I ever think it’s worth looking into).

BarnOwl: Peezus Christ on a crutch … they’re all medically “special,” “unusual,” and “rare.” What are the chances that they all have (sometimes multiple) rare chronic conditions, unique drug reactions, unusual allergies and autoimmune disorders, etc. etc. And their special medical conditions require that they quit their jobs to get healthy again, and that means cyber-begging with their piteous stories. I’ve had a few co-workers who develop special chronic conditions and “disabilities” that require reduced working hours and duties for accommodation, yet somehow magically they’re always healthy enough and have plenty of spoons to travel to Europe or Australia or ski resorts in the US and Canada to attend fun meetings and conferences.

Fuck that shit.

ERV: I noticed with the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome folks– It was incredible how active they were able to be online, despite their ‘inability’ to work. Dozens of Tweets a day, active on Facebook and special-interest forums, and look at Svan, able to organize posts full of meticulously screen-capped, uploaded, and organized Tweets from others, with commentary.

But work, no, work is simply too much for her to handle.

Also, ask my partner about my migraines. Ask. Ask how theyve been the past couple of months. You know what I cut back on instead of work? Blogging.

What a fucking loser.

Thanks for the unsolicited advice and all, Abbie, but I did that. You can even be a good skeptic and check for yourself. I usually put out two posts a day. Look at July, August, September. The number of posts is way down. Most of the posts are regular features that require less work on my part. There are gaps of several days. I did cut back on the blogging.

The blogging I did do took up most of the energy I had because it could be done lying on a couch between naps. Same for tweeting, though that was down too. How much energy do you think it takes to retweet something? To type 140 characters? These are the kinds of things that keep a person sane when they’re not going anywhere or seeing anyone. I went outside so little this summer that I’m currently on vitamin D supplements to make up for the lack of sunshine. That’s what migraines with vertigo and persistent urges to sleep do.

Nor am I unable to work, now that the medication situation is straightened out. I just think it’s wise–as someone who still gets the occasional, lesser migraine while medicated–to find a job that doesn’t require a nearly two-hour commute if things aren’t timed just right. That’s me looking to work more, not less. So is me giving myself time to properly work out the remainder of the sleep issues from the medication and the stamina issues from sleeping a summer away.

But if you think that makes me a “loser”, oh, well. I can live with that.

As one migraineur to another, though, consider talking to your doctor about those things if they’re getting bad. There are lots of options for treatment these days, and untreated migraines can turn chronic. But if that happens, I promise I won’t call you a “loser”.

{advertisement}
Any Sign of Weakness
{advertisement}

24 thoughts on “Any Sign of Weakness

  1. 2

    So we can add chronic fatigue syndrome to the list of things Abbie Smith and her conservative, bootstrapping sycophants don’t know anything about.

  2. 5

    Hi Abbie:

    In case you’re having one of your little pets read this to you, here’s a helpful link so that you don’t sound like such an ignorant fucking shitpile: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/chronic-fatigue-syndrome/DS00395

    There’s a lot of words there, and almost every one of them is not the word ‘cunt’, so don’t feel too bad if it’s all over your head. You’re supposed to be finding a cure for cancer anyway, not spending all of your time on the internet getting high-fives from cognitive fourteen-year-olds.

    After that, we’ll review your comment that starts with “I noticed with the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome folks” and have a little discussion about statistics and confirmation bias. But not until you’ve finished your finding a cure for cancer homework!

  3. 7

    Stephanie, don’t bother publishing that last comment of mine that’s in moderation, unless you really wish to. It’s just snark from me, and probably not helpful.

  4. 8

    Ugh. Assholes. On the plus side, it’s always amusing to be reminded of just how much they’re dependent on the FTB bloggers in order to actually have something to say. Kind of like those little fish that cling to bigger fish and eat their crap.

  5. 9

    Eh, it’s snarky. It also contains actual information about the disorder she thinks qualifies people for loserdom if they don’t immediately stop doing anything in public but work.

  6. 10

    BTW Abbie and Pitters will be very disdainful of suggestions she doesn’t know about CFS, this is one of her main claims to fame –
    http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-xmrv-paper-retracted-by-science-completely-this-time/

    Of course debunking an XMRV-CFS paper doesn’t mean she has any empathy or knowledge of what people with chronic conditions like CFS are capable of. And she demonstrates that nicely.

    Their parasitic pitstain existence and vast amount of wasteful online hating must really take its toll. I’m personally very surprised any of them are gainfully employed. Glad I donated to your finance fund, now in their honour!

  7. 11

    BTW Abbie and Pitters will be very disdainful of suggestions she doesn’t know about CFS

    Of course they won’t. They’re true skeptics. They’ll be much too busy fighting REAL issues, like vaccine misinformation and declining vaccination rates, to spend their time masturbating over how grievously Abbie’s reputation has been wounded. These are IMPORTANT people. They don’t have time for bullshit.

    Right?

  8. 12

    Hey, it’s Abbie, the Godmother of Slyme, owner of the Original Pit. I haven’t heard about her in a while. Nice to see she’s still got it… Christ what hateful pieces of shit these motherfuckers are. Sorry U ended up in their sights. No one deserves that.

  9. 15

    Wait, is that the same Abbie Smith who whined and cried and threw a temper tantrum because PZ had the audacity to comment on his own blog instead of hers and thereby depriving her of the 5 bucks additional traffic from PZs reader would have brought her?
    Is that the same Abbie Smith whose “handling medical bills you can’t pay* as a resposible adult” approach is “just tell the hospital you can’t pay anyway so they have to suck it up”?
    Yeah, because using the money of people who willingly and voluntarily contribute is bad, but just telling doctors and nurses that they have to work for free is OK.

    *Which is a different kettle of fish

    Also: I’m not donating to you, Stephanie. I’m paying for content I enjoy very much. There’s no free lunch, not even on the internet. Until now you could generously waive your due and tell us “just use it for people who need it more”. Now things have changed and that’s OK, too.

  10. 16

    Ah yes, I had forgotten that Abbie had decided that because XMRV doesn’t cause CFS that means CFS doesn’t exist. Not her finest hour, either as a human being or as a scientist.

  11. 17

    Oh, and btw “autoimune diseases”?
    Theyre a dime a dozen.
    I got one of the more common ones with a prevalence of 1 in 1000 but with women being far more likely to get it than men.
    Symptoms? Oh, yeah, fatigue. And since being tired in the evening isn’t that alarming in and on itself it takes lots of self-monitoring to find out whether your hormones are probably off again…

  12. 18

    When I read Abbie’s comment I wanted to punch my computer. I have fibromyalgia (basically, CFS with muscle pain and spasms, impaired cognition, and certain points on the body that are always tender like a really bad bruise) and am trying to find work that I might plausibly be able to keep for more than a few months. Retail’s out because I can’t stand for more than a few hours a day on a regular basis. Though I’m not sure, I’m hesitant to go into a job that requires a lot of mental clarity and attention, because I’m not sure how much working will increase my ‘fibrofog’. I won’t get hired to do what I’m actually trained to do because my last year in college was marked by increased pain, the side effects of opiates to treat that pain, and then around finals opiate withdrawal, tanking both my GPA and relationships with my professors. And since I’ve spent the two years since I’ve been in school not working, it’s difficult to convince anyone to hire me.

    So what have I done while not working? Among a few other mindless things, I was on social media a fair amount because it requires very little mental energy or clarity, neither of which I had in abundance. Like Stephanie.

    Let me rephrase and clarify for the benefit of the slow: Work and social media are qualitatively different. If you spend a day away from social media, you don’t get ejected from it. If you spend a week with the attention span of a gnat, you don’t have a boss to yell at you to get back to your task. If you have a few days where your thinking processes are impaired similarly to how they’d be after several drinks or a sizable amount of marihuana, you don’t have to worry too much about screwing up and ruining a project, or pissing off a customer. Social media rarely requires math skills, the ability to focus on a text longer than a few paragraphs or prioritize multiple tasks throughout the day, or being in a position other than curled up in bed with a cat in the small of your back to keep you warm. They. Are. Not. Equivalent.

  13. 20

    Work and social media are qualitatively different

    Of course they are. You’d think that would be obvious to anybody bright enough to walk and chew gum at the same time, wouldn’t you?

    What a piece of work Smith is. Vindictive, envious, and gratuitously unkind. I hope someday she gets a good, clear look at herself.

  14. 22

    Well, doing amateurish stuff like pottering around with barnacles and writing an occasional book is pretty much exactly like pottering around with social media, and anybody who is too ill or disabled to go out and get a REAL JOB that involves lots of TRAVEL FROM HOME TO WORK and SUPERVISION and RULES and A PAYCHECK is a fucking loser.

  15. 23

    Giliell @ # 17
    Sounds like you and I have the same autoimmune disease. According to Wikipedia autoimmune diseases are among the top ten causes of death for women. It’s also the case that having one autoimmune disease puts you at greater risk of getting another, and also of getting allergies, as the mechanism is somewhat similar. So multiple autoimmune diseases and/or allergies is really not surprising.

    But it’s nice (?) to know some people think that work-life balance is only for healthy people.

  16. 24

    This issue with the Slymepit reminds me of when I mentioned in a certain messageboard Richard Carrier’s proposal to write a book on the historical-Jesus question. Several of the board’s regulars sneered at that proposal. One might have expected them to like such an effort by a kindred spirit, but they didn’t.

    Later on, some of them sneered at “ceremonial atheism”, even though some others among them did not think that it’s worth sneering at.

    For my part, I have health problems that have interfered with my work and various other activities, but given what happened to Stephanie, I’m reluctant to reveal them. If the slymepitters thought me worth noting, they would be all over my problems, sneering like crazy the way that they’ve sneered at Stephanie’s.

Comments are closed.