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Stiff as a Board

Massive flare up. My lawyer forced me to do the Post Bankruptcy Filing Credit Counseling Teleseminar. I qualify under the disability provision to be exempt from all that credit counseling stuff, including having to go to the courthouse, but my lawyer refuses to believe that I'm too sick for all this and he wouldn't file the extra paperwork to exempt me. He actually looked me up and down and said that I was perfectly physically capable of doing all this stuff, including, he expects me to walk more than two block to the courthouse if my friend can't take me and I have to park in the scary enclosed city garage. You are not allowed to take a cellphone into the courthouse, so I can't take a cab and then call for one to come and get me. Too expensive to make one wait a few hours. I just hope my friend will come through for me that day.

So, this morning I did this awful teleseminar thing they force you to do after you file. They send you a workbook that's about between fifty and seventy five pages long. You are expected to read and retain what you read in it. Then you have to answer all these questions from it. Oh yeah, try that with severe cognitive problems and short term memory loss. I have reading retension problems. Not so much with short articles, but when I'm expected to read anything book length. The stress of this almost killed me.

They did allow me to do the actual questions online, but it's fifty questions, plus another twenty five at the end. So seventy five questions total. Took me about an hour and twenty minutes to do it. Would have taken longer if I hadn't read the workbook, but they make you reread it online as you go along. At the end, the last twenty five questions, if you don't have the workbook, you can't review anything. I would have failed it, if I hadn't been able to look stuff up. But I did pass it.

The real horror, was that none of this stuff applied to me. It's all geared toward healthy, working people who just screwed up their finances. It's not geared toward disabled people who can't work and can't have kids, or people who have lost family members to death. So all this stuff was about pension plans, 401k's, how to plan your budget for your child's future, how to figure out your working taxes from your job. Just all this stuff that I can't do, can't have, can't participate in. So, to me, it was an exercise in extreme cruelty. It's like being forced to face all the things in life you can't do or can't have. I'm too sick. The whole thing has contributed to a massive flareup.

The length of time I had to do this was too long. I don't last two hours at anything and I started to really feel it past the hour. And I was so stressed. People don't understand that for those of us with cognitive problems, we have to concentrate a thousand times more than a normal person does and even then, you can't force your brain to retain things. I think that's the worst part. I can't make people understand that I really have severe cognitive problems. You can't tell that from looking at me. But I really have problems with short term memory, reading comprehension and retension, audio processing disorder and sensory overload. I'm scared of going to the courthouse because I know it's going to flare me up and I hope I can answer the questions they ask me.

I am in so much pain. Pain all over, alot of muscle and joint stiffness, fever all day. My glands in my neck hurt like hell. And I had a light nose bleed. I don't usually get nose bleeds unless I'm really stressed, then I get them. The idiot doctors have never cared. Bad fatigue. I can type this, but if I try to move my arms or hands, everything feels like I have lead weights on them. Light and sound sensitivity. I'm really suffering today.

I called an old family friend because I thought it would make me feel better, but she doesn't have this illness and is so clueless that she always makes me feel worse. It's just, I hardly have anyone left to talk to now. She always acts like I'm being a hypo when I tell her I'm sick. And her answer for everything is get out there and join things, meet people, get a life. I can't. All the things in life that are supposed to make life worth living, I can't do them. The disease won't let me.

So today sucked.

Comments

That sounds awful Carrigon... and the old family friend doesn't help :/

Here's a hug -- you deserve one.
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I'm sorry you're having to go through this. Shame on the Lawyer!
 
Hmmmm....do you try and meeting other people with CFS? Go to a support group or even have friends from a forum? I have CFS friends and they are who I call. I wouldn't call someone who was well when things were really bad. They don't get it. Even a childhood friend. You need a comfort zone then, and you need to find those people, even if housebound. I have found and stayed in touch with several awesome friends due to the net.

Is this lawyer appointed to you? Could you have had another one? Honestly, I wouldn't deal with this dude. If some lawyer or doc doesn't get it...I bail on them and find someone who does. I don't know the situation. And if nothing else, I would yell and become sicker but not speaking your piece is worse. I am sorry he is so ignorant. Bring your disabled documentation with you. He is supposed to be defending you, so I don't quite get this.

Just try and rest and sleep and nurse yourself right now. Take care of you, the best way possible.
 
The people I know with this are too sick. They do what I do and take the phone off the hook most of the time cause they can't take a ringing phone. The support group here disbanded long ago, the people were all too sick to go. There is no more comfort zone. Once my family died three years ago, that was it. Any friends around disappeared completely. They weren't real friends anyway. And the friends I really had, they've all been long gone since I got sick. I only have a few people I can ever call. One aunt in law out of state and she's very sick with a million health problems and rarely answers the phone anymore. Then I have this family friend I called, who is so clueless about everything in the world, she probably wouldn't know what color the sky was if you asked her. And I have two friends locally with CFIDS, too sick to answer a phone most of the time. Those are my choices. I have online friends, but they don't have this and they don't understand. They feel bad for me when I don't feel good, but they don't know what to say or do. And my neighbors all suck. None of them are sick like me. And they just plain make comments about how I don't go out much, or they tell me that they are in pain, too, but they get on with their lives. They don't want to know it.

I prepaid this lawyer, I am stuck with him. But once I go to court and the bankruptcy is discharged, I never have to deal with him again. He doesn't care. He's too lazy to file the extra paperwork, and he just plain doesn't care how all this physically effects me. He seems to think all disabilities are the same and has told me that if his client with Alzheimer's can do all this, then so can I. He just doesn't get it that all disabilities are different.
 
That really adds insult to injury. I really feel the frustration, of both the incompetence of your lawyer, and the absurdity of those blasted forms. As far as neighbors and family that don't understand, my recommendation would be to save your breath, and your time. Print out studies like these, and have them to simply hand to them. Then tell them "after you've read these, let me know if you want to help." http://128.121.104.17/cfs-inform/Brainscans/brainscans.html
http://www.ahummingbirdsguide.com/
http://www.cfids.org/cfidslink/2006/brain.pdf
http://drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/Edge_Effect_-_the_Brain_in_CFS
http://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Brain-Neurologic-Fibromyalgia-Disorders/dp/1560249811
http://www.siberimaging.com/Treatment_for_CFIDS.html
 
Kelvin, I was literally ordered by my relatives to never give them another piece of info about this disease again. They are real psychos. They absolutely do not want to hear it. The one time I sent my cousin over to the hummingbird site, she deliberately misread it, called me up and said with alot of evil glee, "I KNEW it was a FAKE disease." And I was so shocked. I had sent her to that site because it had the most info on the symptoms we suffer from. I didn't even know there was a paragraph on the site that talked about how the name Chronic Fatigue was made up by people with a vested interest and insurance companies to cover up what was clearly ME outbreaks in the States. So, my cousin misread all this and told me it's a fake disease and I should shut up. And then the rest of the family ordered me to never give any of them another piece of info about this disease again.
 
Hang in there Carrigon, some how I think you are strong enough (spiritual) to handle this, it is hell I know, we have to take pain and tiredness with everything else life continually throw at us, sometimes I think it is so overwhelming that it's actually really ridicules. We can do it , finish this difficult road in victory.
 
Wow, these family members aren't even your friends.
“True friends stab you in the front.” Oscar Wilde.
A doctor friend told me once, "hey, you are always so worried about staying away from toxic air, toxic food, etc. Why don't you learn that toxic people are sometimes worse for your health, and learn how to stay away from them?" You might want to put some distance between yourself and these types of horrible people. “A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked” Bernard Metzler
 
Unfortunately, my relatives are very cold, cruel, evil people. They enjoy harming others. I no longer accept phone calls from them. And they haven't emailed me since around last June. I do feel better away from them.
 
Carrigon,

I'm so sorry to hear that you're still going through such difficult times. I'm glad you're no longer talking to your relatives at least. I know this is all very painful to go through. I hope things can turn around for you soon.

Hugs,
tee
 

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Carrigon
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