Laughing Over Lemons

Posted on by Astrid

Laughing over lemons. That phrase has been on my mind for a few days. It’s a twist on the phrase “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.” I think sometimes it’s best to laugh at our worst days.

Like, when I had only been in the psychiatric hospital for a day back in 2007, I was telling psych ward jokes. You know, what’s the difference between the patients and the staff on psychiatric units? First, the patients get better and leave. Second, the staff have the keys. And there was another one. Something about not all patients believing they’re God. I think those last two apply to institutions for people with developmental disabilities too. I mean, particularly at the intensive support home (ie. the home for those with severe challenging behavior), my spouse said the only noticeable difference between the residents and staff was the staff carrying a pager to beep for assistance when a resident becomes violent. Other than that, both staff and residents were usually staring blankly at the TV.

We, the residents, were often blamed. Or at least, the other residents (other than me, that is) were. They have no motivation for life and they are too old to teach. Besides, no-one can force them away from the TV because that would be involuntary care. That’s what I was told. Never mind that I’ve witnessed on many occasions staff telling residents that they had gotten enough “attention” for the day because staff had been sitting with them for fifteen minutes with a cup of coffee.

I am often quite cynical in my humor. If only my cynical jokes weren’t actually 99% truthful. And now all I can hope for is that my joke about everything being okay in 2034 (because the world is going to be blasst to hell) isn’t going to turn out 99% truthful too.

I am linking this post up with Friday Writings. It isn’t necessarily a hopeful or positive post. However, I do feel that laughing over the many lemons life hands me and many other people in this world and age, can certainly be helpful.

Of Elements, Songs and World War III

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Esther’s writing prompt this week is “Element(s)”. I was immediately reminded of the song The Elements by Tom Lehrer.

Tom Lehrer, who passed away this summer at the age of 97, was a comedian and singer, though to be honest like most male comedians, he couldn’t actually sing. Then again, neither can I, but I don’t try. I don’t care whether he could sing or not though, as his song lyrics were brilliant. The Elements isn’t nearly his best song.

I love his songs about current events. Though they were written in the 1960s, some still ring true, in a scary kind of way.

I honestly have been feeling more and more unsafe over the past year or so. I mean, Millennials like me were in our teens when the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened and the world (or rather I should say the West) hasn’t been at peace ever since. I mean, the world’s never been at peace, but in 1989, the West at least thought it had won. Not so. Now with Trump in office in the United States, I wonder who “the West” even are anymore. I, being in Europe, feel more and more like it’s not just Russia and China who might cause the next world war, but Alabama might as well.

I feel more and more scared when I use my mantra that everything will be okay in 2034. I know, I started this thing as a satirical take on the book 2034, which is about the next world war. I realize now that the authors of the book were actually quite serious, but a few years ago, I thought I could turn things around by saying everything will be okay. I don’t mean this to be blasphemous, but I honestly got the idea from the Bible. I mean, I remember when I was (pretending to be) a Christian, I at one point wrote that everything will be okay in 2021 and sort of hoped that Christ would return that year. He didn’t, and as a non-believer I doubt He will in 2034.

Of course, I try to hope that there won’t be a World War III in 2034 or ever. But if there will be, I hope whoever presses the button, will remember Tom Lehrer’s survival hymn.

Everything Will Be Okay… #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

This week’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “wish”. What a timely prompt, as we look back at 2024 and look forward to 2025. I don’t usually have any new year’s resolutions, like I say. Rather, I call them “hopes”. They’re just the same, like I say every year, but calling them hopes rather than resolutions gives me an excuse not to think about them again until the end of the year. Then, if I didn’t make any happen, I could say they were just hopes. Like wishes, they feel a bit devoid of reality sometimes.

I mean, for 2025, most people could wish for world peace. Not gonna happen, baby! In fact, as I read the news recently, I’m more and more scared that even in a country that hasn’t been at war in almost 80 years, we won’t see a full year of peace.

And now I’m scared that by voicing that fear, I’m single-handedly making it happen. That’s my twisted mind playing tricks on me though.

I do wish for there to be many more years in which this country can live in peace. I know that, in a similar way to what I said in my previous paragraph, my constantly saying that “everything will be okay in 2034”, when the “2034” aspect of it was based in a twisted way on the idea that World War III will start then, might be tempting fate. Thankfully, I don’t believe in manifesting in this sense. Besides, don’t many faiths believe in reversal of good and bad? Like, in the Christian tradition, there’s this thing about the first who will be last. Either way, I hope and wish that my twisted words about 2034 will indeed be true and everything will be okay.

Tapering My Meds… in 2034?

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! One of this week’s Writer’s Workshop prompts is to write a post based on the word “medications”. I will probably have another med review with the intellectual disability physician in a few weeks. The aim for me has always been to taper my medications. This will probably take until 2034 and this time my use of the year 2034 is only partially a joke. After all, when I said that “everything will be okay in 2034” and explained to the physician that I always say “2034” when I mean “never” (because of the fact that the book by this title is about World War III), the doctor didn’t understand the joke. She actually seriously said that I’ll be on the right med regimen by 2034.

Like I said, I’ll have another meeting with her to discuss tapering my meds in a few weeks I think. Although I’d really love to decrease my medication dosage sooner rather than later, I do realize that I’ve been struggling more than usual lately. I haven’t shared about this on the blog much, but over the past several weeks, I’ve had emotional outbursts almost every evening. Part of the reason is the fact that there were quite a few temp workers assigned to me. Thankfully, as of yesterday, it was agreed that the staff will no longer send unfamiliar temp workers to me. I am very happy about this.

However, I am also concerned that the temp workers might just be the reason my already irritable brain chose to act out. In other words, it could definitely have been the case that my latest med taper wasn’t all that sensible. For this reason, I have pretty much made up my mind that I will not take another step until January or so. That way, I’ll be able to give the new agreement about no unfamiliar temp workers a fair chance. All I can hope for is that, if I tell the physician I want a break, it won’t end up being an end to it all.

After all, I do still experience significant side effects from my medication, like what I think could be a movement side effect from my antipsychotic (significant tremors and twitches) and I don’t want this to end up being permanent. This is another reason I don’t want to seriously wait for 2034 to be off my antipsychotic. By 2034, I’ll be 48 and that’s too young for crippling movement disorders.

Worries

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s Sunday Poser is about worries. What worries you about the future?

Unlike Sadje, I mostly have personal worries occupying my mind. Most of them also aren’t long-term. I mean, I do sometimes worry that the sweet and high-fat foods I consume today will lead to an untimely death ten or twenty years from now, but that worry isn’t as all-consuming as my worries about the next few weeks, months or the next year. I joke that, in 2034, everything will be okay. I got that from the book titled 2034, which I still haven’t read and is about World War III erupting that same year. I think it’s more likely that World War III is going to break out that year than that the care system will be any closer to ideal. However, in reality, I can’t look that far into the future, so I know I should care, but really I don’t.

This is probably the same reason the state of the planet doesn’t keep me up at night. That is, except when I read a news article detailing that the magical 1.5 degrees of warming have been hit in some parts of the world in 2023. Then I did worry: will the planet catch fire (not even sure whether I’m talking hyperbolically with all the wildfires we’ve had) next year?

Still, most of my worries concern my personal life. That doesn’t mean the news doesn’t effect me, but it only does when I think it relates to me personally. For instance, when I read that policy makers were talking about reintroducing 24-hour diapering for elderly people who can still use the bathroom but need assistance with it, I was intensely worried. It was said in the same article that the phrase I repeat many times over and over again when talking about my care was: “It’s better to have reasonably good care for two people than excellent care for one person.” Did they mean me? Was my care, with (at the time) nine hours of one-on-one a day, “excellent”? Apparently, because now I have just seven. But I’m still worried they mean me. After all, I still cost considerable money (far more than elderly people needing an hourly assisted bathroom break) and aren’t sedatives cheaper than one-on-one, just like diapers are cheaper than nursing assistants?

It isn’t really a clear thing I do worry about though. I mean, yes, I do worry about my care being cut, but then again, I can’t look far into the future. When I try, I’m always wrong on so many levels. So they remain mostly vague worries that keep me up at night.

Sometimes though, like recently, they’ve been more short-term, concrete things that worried me, such as over the past week the fact that my support coordinator, behavior specialist and intellectual disability physician had a meeting on Friday. The positive news is that the explicit compensatory system, by which every minute I’d come out of my unsupported time in distress had to be compensated for at my next one-on-one moment, was discontinued. Rather, from now on, staff will again discuss with me once I’m calm whether they can come back at a later time for my next support moment since they needed to spend more time on me. I am so happy I no longer have the compensatory system hanging over my head, even though some staff said the end result would be the same. I don’t care about the end result (which, by the way, will probably mean I’ll need slightly less support, honestly); I care that this makes me feel much more comfortable.