Christian tropers, join together!

PLEASE REMOVE ANY POST REFERENCING MINE save for simply sending me your prayers.

Thank you.

May be able to discuss the virtues of Catholic hospitals later, but please, remove posts referencing any of my recent posts. Prayer well-wishes should go in PM.

edited 1st May '16 8:26:56 PM by Shadsie

edited 2nd May '16 8:41:28 AM by phantom1

That's a horrible thing to go through, Shadsie. I'll pray for you as well.

God will definitely understand if it's something that bad. I hope you get better.

PLEASE REMOVE ANY POST REFERENCING MINE save for simply sending me your prayers.

Thank you.

May be able to discuss the virtues of Catholic hospitals later, but please, remove posts referencing any of my recent posts. Prayer well-wishes should go in PM.

Shine Through.

Just What I Need.

Alright. Things are fine now. I mean, I was REALLY loopy before, but I am a coherent human being again. This is my general address to places I do fan fic and art and such - as a run-through of what exactly happened to me.

Unless you want the super-short version, as I posted on my Archive of Our Own profile, which simply consists of: "I have been very injured / ill, so I won't be doing fan work for a while. However, as of May 2, 2016, at least, I am NOT DEAD YET! - *Kicks Death in the shin, paints flowers and abstracts on his skull, runs off with his scythe and laughs at him about it!"

Longer / detailed version:

Dear art and writing watchers, people who follow me on creative-places: I am issuing what I hope is a decent explanation of where I have been as well as why my current in-progress works may be subject to stagnation for a while (or else I might be ringing out things like a twitchy divine hammer, depending upon how settled I get and how much I need to use my projects to cope with life). I would expect “stagnation” as a default, however.

It started last week. I had been down and saying/writing my usual mopey things due to money problems. Then I got sick. I became very, very ill. I thought it was just a standard flu / stomach bug / fever. The stomach pain seemed to go away, but the headache and body aches did not. I like showers as home remedy, but even they stopped helping. Couldn’t sleep/ did so only fitfully. Saw my regular doctor, who thought it was a stomach-bug and sent me home with some anti-vomiting stuff. All very standard until a day later, I kept noting that the home thermometer I was using to gauge myself kept reading high and increasing, so… good-instincts, I guess, I called the Link to my Zelda (or Midna, or Malon, or whomever you ship…), Ark North and bothered him at work to take me to the local emergency room because I was starting to worry. (We have but one car, so, yes, I had to bother my man at work).

Upon being scanned and prodded, hoping this would just take a few hours and I could go home I was… instead, whisked away to one of the hospital’s “these people are at death’s door” wards. My kidney function was alarmingly low. I’d had a similar situation after a workplace accident, but I only had to take a few days being IV-flushed and it wasn’t a matter of a rider on a pale horse chasing me.

From what can be gathered, I had contracted some kind of common infection. However, because I have, for years, been treating my mood-condition with lithium carbonate, well… no one expects the Spanish Inquisition! I thought I was fine because my blood-tested “levels” of the drug were apparently fine in regards to balancing out with my body in general. Unfortunately, there was a perfect storm of me having lithium in my blood when the random infection from Hell hit and…

I hit a breeze in my transport wheelchair and could not stop shaking. I tried, and I had no control over my body temperature. I had thoughts about dying. I was stuck alive and being in pain. If I try to describe the pain, you may be here reading all day. I vaguely recall alternately begging to be put to sleep (as in, given something to sleep) and later begging for something to keep me awake because every tiny thing winded me and sent me down. With enough IV fluids, I started getting stronger. I also had a tendency to fixate on strange things and rave like a madwoman. Ark North stayed with me – as in, he worked when he absolutely had to and slept in my room. As it is, I’ve been moved to a less catastrophic patient-room, but am still waiting for some things to balance out.

I have also learned that I cannot eat food anymore. Go ahead and research “renal diet” if you want. Most things must be carefully portioned. Many things are forbidden. The last banana-milkshake I had some time ago… turned out to be my last, in all likelyhood. I think there may some hope of being able to “cheat” some or go back to normal once my body gets to a certain level of healing in function. I hope I can eventually get a clean bill to eat (with some acceptable exceptions – I like bananas, but am not married to them… life without tomatoes or potatoes just seems bleak, however). This diet is bland, bland, bland. I do fortunately like plain vegetables, but I don’t want to be like this all of my life.

Gah…. I have so many blood-draw and IV bruises at this point, I feel like I must look like I went through a war.

Oh man, that sucks :(

I think the whole diet thing is temporary, I'm just a little confused on it all.

Anyway, I just learned something cool from my husband about all of this. I think the folks here would appreciate it - a genuine spiritual insight. I was certain that a certain experience I'd had was a hallucination. It was when I was first being wheeled to my room and was hit by a cool breeze and got to shivering violently - some of the worst of it all - I was in such pain that I turned to the guy who was my nurse, embarrassed by what I wanted to ask, but genuinely curious as to whether we might be some kind of agent of the supernatural (give me break, I was contemplating death as a real probability, INCLUDING the eternal night option). I turned to this guy, in agony and asked him, semi-sincerely "Am I in Hell?" He answered "You are in Purgatory." And that simple answer made loads of sense - Purgatory being a place of suffering something that is a trial with light on the other side - even from a purely physical / life stance. The statement also gave me hope. I was in the worst pain of my life and the simple joke(?) made me think "there is something on the other side of this pain to live for."

I was telling my guy about my favorite weird hallucination from this period when I was out of it and he said of this one, having been there - "That was real." He'd heard me ask the question and the nurse give the answer. My mind was blown.

Out of the Ruins.

Wow, that certainly is strange/fascinating. Even with a light at the end of the tunnel, I hope the Purgatory is better than the whole experience you went through.

Sorry to change the subject for a while here, but I was curious what you believe about demons and "evil spirits" if there's such a thing. In my opinion, Satan is definitely real, but the other evil beings people sometimes mention... I can't see why someone's soul would be "allowed" to stay here on Earth and cause harm instead of going to the Afterlife.

Well in most fiction nowadays evil spirits are just the spirits of people that either die holding a grudge or who are forcefully taken from the afterlife and bound to something, which pisses them off and makes them how they are.

I remember, quite a long time ago, having an argument on one of the Progressive blogs - one of John Shore's I think, with someone who just wouldn't take no for an answer from a filthy....theist (that seemed to be the attitude the person had). The first volley started when he posted something about how he thought Jesus was "immoral" for messing up the pork farmer's business in the sending the demons into the pigs story. I responded by bringing up (with a link I have sadly lost to time) some scholar-theory / opinion I'd read elsewhere that the story was less supernatural hijinks and more of a biting political satire about the occupying Romans and what they do to the people (pigs being a symbol for the unclean and the Romans being fond of pork).

I told him that I liked to approach the story from a different angle. The way Jesus approaches the Legion-man is something I find touching because I am personally inclined to see it as a metaphor for how the mentally ill and off-kilter, instead of helped by most of society, tend to be ostracized and isolated. As a person with a disorder, I know this tendency keenly (I even know some of it in myself, sadly enough... there is definitely a part of us that deals with the difficult and the unfamiliar with a "run away!" instinct).

The original person there who was obviously playing a game of "Let's poke the theists just for fun" was rather insistent to me that it did not matter that Jesus helped a mentally ill man that no one else would approach, someone lost some of his livlihood/profits from it! How evil! I said that his point was playing right into my point, because that's how much of the world has been throughout history - profits and money above people / certain kinds of people. (I'm surprised he didn't harp upon the the deaths of the arguably more innocent pigs, but apparently he knew his place as a meat-eater). Through this, I did point out that some people thought it was purely a political satire, that my "people with mental illness and the courage to help them" just a Wild Mass Guessing / personal thing of me.

The guy basically kept telling me "I cannot take you seriously, you believe in demons," and "show me evidence of a demon/ anything supernatural" when my take was THE ABOVE - as in, "Demons are story-metaphors and/ or what people attributed mental illness to back in the days when the brain's function was not understood / they had a different model and world-view." His strategy seemed to be to harp a little on one of his own positions, to try to make me feel immoral for seeing Jesus as a decent moral teacher mostly because he seemed to care a great deal for a pig-famer who probably was an illustration rather than a reality, and to end up yelping "Show me a demon!" It's like, despite clear demonstrations if otherwise, the man just could not/would not believe that theists could see something other than literal and could, you know, analyze stories.

I am a long time Troper - I was back then, and yes, I was highly disappointed.

Sorry for taking too long for the story, but I wanted to share it not only to share my views, but to show how unbelievable some people apparently find "alternate" views from... some pendandic literalism they grew up with, I guess? Or the views the WANT people to have rather than what they actually do?

I forget, wasn't it Paul and Silas that freed that oracle girl of the demons in her and they got arrested for it?

Prayer Marathon.

No Greater Joy.

Just read Proverbs 21:3 when I was looking up stuff about the Rephaim just for kicks. Yet another unpleasant reminder of what a repulsive waste of life I am. It probably would've been better if I'd kept myself ignorant of that.

Even more fitting was Psalm 88.

edited 6th May '16 7:09:56 PM by TrulyDeceptive

*gives hug* The proverbs verse is just talking abut being a good person. Of course we aren't perfect, that's why we need Jesus. Don't be discouraged. Are you going through a rough time like in Psalm 88? It will get better. Eventually. Have some more cyber hugs! And maybe find a pastor or someone you trust to talk to. They can help you.

edited 6th May '16 7:55:41 PM by bookworm6390

The Promised Spirit.

I'm too lazy to look up the verse, but you aren't a waste of life!

If I have learned anything this week, it's just how hard absolute strangers will work to save your life and keep you alive. It really... is amazing - what ethic will drive people. I can't believe it's just about money or my medicaid paying up - I have to believe... "I came into the ER, the people did their job because they cared about their damn job." All the way down to all the orderly-types who put up with some of the more mundane, yet unspeakable things that happens with bodies.

It's like we're all in this together and we WILL save each other.

So don't think you're a waste! Tell the world (or your perceptions of it) to screw itself / themselves! You're a human and we're ALL messy. I was having this kind of thinking just prior to getting sick because of money issues and now I kind of don't care if I wind up eating out of a trashcan somewhere down the road because I am ALIVE. I'm not even entirely sure I'm out of Pugatory yet, but I am alive and that matters - and all of us have something to give, even if it's some tiny little thing like a timely smile.

So let me give you a weak-bodied hug from across the Internet.

Amen, Shadsie! Group hug! You Are Not Alone!

Hope you'll be well soon, Shadsie.

Not Forgotten.

So, I dunno if I've asked this before, but I wanna know how y'all feel about A Date With Rosie Palms.

Personally, I think if God didn't want us doing it, he wouldn't have given us the ability.