Spoonie thoughts: I dislike Metformin.

 I may a well embrace the fact that I qualify as a spoonie. That's a person with a chronic illness. I have multiple chronic illnesses so I definitely qualify. No nifty jacket, however. Today, my stomach has been acting up. I know it is because of the high dose of metformin that I'm on to manage my diabetes. I am thankful this medication helps but I do not like it. It smells like feet and makes my guts severely unhappy.

I take approximately 13 pills every day. It's hard for me to keep track of, even with the nifty multi-compartment pill sorter. Beloved takes the time every weekend to fill it up for the week. He really is the best thing to ever happen to me. Taking medication is hard for me. The act itself is no big deal. But emotionally, it's really hard. I grew up in a household where I got shamed for taking Tylenol for headaches and when my seasonal allergies were bad, I was accused of abusing Benadryl to get high. So, just the act of taking medication that is necessary is emotionally really hard for me because it brings up memories of being humiliated for it. When I started taking birth control to manage my poly-cystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), my mother all but called me a whore.

For some reason, right now, it's the metformin that's on my "hate to take it" list today. I think it is because of the fact that it's got my guts in a knot all day. It's bad enough that stress will do it, but to have my medicine making it worse, that really sucks. I know tomorrow will be different somehow. This doesn't happen every day. But it makes going out to run errands difficult because you're not sure if you are going to have to know where the nearest restroom is. 

I tell myself every time I take my medication, "This is going to make me healthier and it is going to help me." I have to remind myself every evening that is the case. Because my parents gaslighted me so hard into thinking that taking more than one medication at a time meant that either you were a drug addict or they were going to kill you. The irony here is that my parents are smokers. They weren't completely 'straight edge' or whatever the term for it was. They were just controlling assholes who thought nothing of chain smoking and doing whatever they could to make my life miserable. 

They have a habit of denying that chronic illness exists in the family. I got my asthma diagnosis at 20 and my parents were like "Oh, yeah, we knew about that. But we didn't have the money for the inhalers so you just had to suck it up and deal with it. You turned out fine." It makes me wonder how many of my bad colds were actually untreated cases of bronchitis. It's funny, because they had health insurance. The cost of a rescue inhaler with insurance is around $10. In the late 80s and early 90s, it would have been less because inflation. But they could afford to go buy cartons of cigarettes and when I developed a cough, I was told "That's not a real cough, put some effort into it." regardless of the reason I was coughing. Even now, I know they'd say that. Every time I caught a cold, I got lectured that the reason I was sick was because I wasn't coughing hard enough to clear my lungs. Never mind the fact that it was hard to draw breath enough to get a "healthy" cough going. And I got scolded for coughing too much, taking too much cough medicine, and being a good for nothing lazy lay-about.

Yeah, me being sick as a kid sucked. I did my best to just push through being sick until I got to the point where I was too sick to go to school and the school nurse sent me home because of it. I'm rambling. I have a lot of emotional trauma around being sick. I feel a lot of guilt and like I am a morally bad person because I am chronically ill, especially because of the mental illness. My parents didn't believe in mental illness. They considered it a flaw in character. Unless it could be used as an excuse for my mother's monstrous behavior. When I got put on antidepressants for the first time in college, my parents threatened to throw them away. I told them that I would bring it up with the family doctor who had prescribed them. They backed down, but continually shamed me for needing them.

That stupid meme about how depressed people need a pair of running shoes, a goldfish, and fresh air was my parent's prescription for depression. They haven't changed. When it became apparent that I had post-traumatic stress disorder after the abusive relationship I was in in high school, my parents insisted that I was being dramatic. They insisted that I was in the wrong for trying to destroy my exboyfriend's career in the military. They said that I shouldn't talk about what happened or we were going to get sued for defamation of character. (Never mind that my ex got thrown out of the military because he tried to punch out his commanding officer when they told him to stop calling me after my parents got sick of the constant phone calls. That was when they changed the household phone number for a second time.) They said that I was being a bitch to my father and brothers because I didn't tolerate their sexist jokes as much as I did before. 

The narrative was that I was the problem child. Not my brother who has been an alcoholic since high school. Not my other brother who does nothing but play video games and can't keep steady employment. Nope, it was me. The one who got sick a lot as a kid. The one who had screaming nightmares for a few months after that exboyfriend raped me. The one who had legitimate health problems from birth that they just didn't feel like dealing with. They blamed me for the reason why they didn't have money. I was born preemie. They got grants and the hospital had programs that were in place to help people who are broke pay for their care. But, I was the reason why they had no money. 

I'm bitter. Every time I look at my pills, I hear the echoes of my parents decrying anyone who needed medicine on a daily basis as drug addicts. I hear the scorn they heaped on my disabled aunts. I hear the scorn they heaped on me whenever I inconvenienced them by daring to catch a cold.

Today, it's the metformin I dislike. Because it is another sign that my body has betrayed me again and my pancreas is apparently defective.