I had an Experience today, and learned a Lesson.
Donated blood.
Had big nice Chinese lunch (may or may not be relevant)
Biked home
Took a Long Hot Bath
Felt light headed, like you do after Long Hot Bath
Slight flooding when draining, oh well, let's use that water to scrub the floor tiles quickly
Sweating (of course, L.H.B), light headed, put my head down to recover
Tub and tub walls also dirty, eh, the cleaning detergent and cloth are right there. Quick wipe down.
Lots of sweating and v light headed.
Sit on low foot stool to recover. Deep breaths. No better. Still sweating and dizzy
Upset tummy, sit on toilet. Wiping is weirdly exhausting! Made noise. Partner shows up.
Then! Faint sitting up, twitching and vomiting while unconscious. Not great! But only for a few seconds. Partner held me up, I almost fell off...
Come to, rest a little, still sitting on toilet
Shower off sweat etc, and go to bed.
Lessons learned:
If you feel bad, stop and lie down. Pay attention to the body! (I think I also got stupid from low blood pressure, and didn't realise how bad it was)
Donating blood may make you light headed (who knew, right?)
Long Hot Bath will *also* make you light headed.
3 and 4 are a bad combo. Sweating a lot doesn't help.
I felt better fairly fast after a cooler shower and drinking water.
I did call the health advice line, they recommended going to the ER, but when there they weren't worried. Blood pressure was significantly lower than usual, but in normal range, maybe since this was 3 h after the Event and I had rested and recovered.
Tl;dr
Bloodletting, hot bath, and cleaning do NOT go together. You may faint and have a little bonus seizure. Avoid if possible.
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Footsicle.
The Brother scraped the area between his toes and would not leave it alone so got it bandaged temporarily. By the time he got the mummy wrappings off he forgot about the owie. Silken Windhound
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July means vacation schedule for public transportation so it took me an HOUR to get home instead of a thirty minute ride, there was NO air conditioning in the bus, it was RUSH HOUR, people were RUDE, I’m 1m49 so as always I got SQUISHED by everyone, it’s REALLY HOT right now in France, my flat is RIGHT UNDER THE ROOF and I just have a GERIATIC fan to fight against the heat POURING from the ceiling…
Recipe for a really bad end of a day right? Well not exactly I answer, because I have my compagnon de toujours back. I can finish reading my chapter.
Ao3 volunteers, thank you for resolving the issue promptly. Really thanks, you prevented a total breakdown
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Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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