busybee fluffy rambles

Wellp, today I got yet another denial from social security, which tells me this ain’t gonna change any time soon.

The previous denial came with a whole bunch of transphobia and also a claim that I am able to work, doing jobs which simply aren’t available and not reflective of the reality of my situation.

I haven’t received the formal denial yet, just the notification that my appeal was denied, so I suppose in a couple weeks I’ll be getting another giant packet from SSA to fume over.

got another rejection for disability

this time it came with a 20-odd page document explaining in great detail where this decision came from, and while I didn’t have the spoons to read the whole thing, the parts I did read boiled down to:

• We didn’t see anything in your medical record that says the things you said about your inability to work
• Because your medical records don’t say that we believe that you can do work that requires standing 6 hours a day
• You are totally qualified to do menial, repetitive tasks all day long and so surely you could do that for a career

And then there was a bizarre tangent about my HRT that I had no idea how it connected to my claim but felt vaguely transphobic, and also an insistence that I’d “rejected treatment” for my conditions, which is complete bullcrap; I tried so many different treatments but their side effects were much worse. I wanted them to work, it’s not like I chose for them to make my blood pressure skyrocket to 180/120 or give me days-long insomnia or give me fucking seizures.

As always the thing that upsets me the most is people asking me questions then either not believing or completely misinterpreting my response.

Oh and on top of that they used the fact that I’m able to manage my finances well enough to get by as proof that I’m not really disabled, either.

I’m so tired of this nonsense.

Here’s some things going on these days, since it’s been a little while since I’ve posted here.

I only just learned from eladnarra’s blog that May is ME/CFS awareness month, which I guess is fitting given that throughout all of May I’ve been getting painfully aware that I may have been developing it on top of everything else.

Basically, ever since I got COVID last June I’ve been especially prone to fatigue, vertigo, brain fog, shortness of breath, a persistent cough, and a whole bunch of other long COVID signs. The worst of it comes and goes, but this month has been particularly bad, especially on the fatigue front. And ME/CFS is a very common part of long COVID.

My pain flareup is finally subsiding today, and also I had a followup appointment with my ENT and another CT scan on my sinuses, which found that I do not currently have sinus polyps, although I do have a mild deviated septum. The ENT thinks it’s not necessary to get surgery and that I can just continue to manage the occasional sinus infections as they come up, and that my usual ongoing management strategies are the way to go (which I assume means saline rinses and Sudafed, although we didn’t actually discuss those at all).

Here’s some stuff about stuff.

The last few days I’ve been having yet another awful chronic pain flareup. So it’s been one of those time periods when I kind of wish I didn’t have a body, or at least didn’t have to exist so much.

This time I don’t even know what brought it on, it just kind of came out of the blue, after a whole week of being too fatigued to do anything substantial.

I’m trying to finish up my remaining commitments for strawberry jam although everyone waiting for music from me is understanding and not in a huge rush. There’s one piece I want to get done today because the team is trying to wrap up development today but they also waited until the last minute to give me a specification for what they wanted so I’m not feeling too bad if I can’t get anything done for them, I guess.