what ails you?

without being morbid or anything, I'm quite intrigued as to what (if any) annoying physical problems Dissensians have to live with and how they deal with them.

Personally I have a totally ruined right ear (it looks ok from the outside tho), as a result of lots of infections and an operation to replace my eardrum. Hearing is subsequently quite poor and I have a strange metallic taste on the right-side of my mouth which gets worse if I touch my ear. On the plus side, noise gigs are strangely calming.

So, what ails you? The more disgusting the better...
 

owen

Well-known member
The more disgusting the better
happy to oblige!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crohn's

which is fucking annoying, frankly, though since being diagnosed I haven't had any 'accidents', and a chronic disease that is made better by drinking Yakult can't be all bad.

the most fun thing about it is that one gets so used to regularly discussing one's bowels as a matter of course that one frequently does so eg on buses, and people sometimes look askance. that and having an intimate knowledge of nearly all the public toilets in london rare in a heterosexual
 
tee hee to the hetero-toilets knowledge...

I suppose what I'm interested in (not like THAT interested, it's not a weird thing, honest, honest) is the unintended existential side-effects of illnesses like my enjoyment of noise gigs, owen's knowledge of toilet-location, etc.

Just after I got my ear-drum all renewed, and the metallic taste turned up I thought 'this is cool, this must be what robots would taste if they had artificial tongues'. But now it's just annoying and reduces the taste of food.

Another benefit, though, (especially when I used to live above a late-night Turkish dancehall) is the ability to lie on one side with the good ear down...thus ensuring a relatively quiet night's sleep (the vibrations you can't do much about tho).
 

martin

----
Not really an ailment, but I get double vision in my right eye and the eyelid's wonky as a result of being kicked in once. If I look upwards to the right, everything splits into two, and then into 4 - a bit like that old 70s hexagonal 'Top of the Pops' special effect. Side effect? I'm probably lethal on a motorbike

And I was born with a 3rd nipple, though that doesn't really grieve me
 

john eden

male pale and stale
I have shit co-ordination.

It's because one of my eyes is weaker than the other, so I don't have proper binocular vision. Apparenly this means everything is "flatter" for me. You are welcome to simulate this by closing one eye and then trying to catch something.

It meant I was always one of the last people to be picked for football teams (mind you, everyone says that now, don't they?).

I also used hay fever as an excuse to spend most summers of my youth indoors, tho I don't get that nearly as bad these days.

These two factors combined to make me the towering inferno of trainspotterish resentment you see before you today, your honour.
 
D

droid

Guest
Dissensus Group Photo 2006

aibo.jpg
 
fabulous! I want more!

what about scars? scars are great. I have a fairly noticeable one on my forehead (which allegedly gets more obvious when I've been drinking, whatever that means) from jumping into a metal fireplace strut when I was four, shortly after my mother had promised to take me and my brother to the circus. I really like it.
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
Well, since you ask:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cystic_fibrosis

Plus sides? Well, I'll never get fat, for one. And there's the fun of having your bag, full of nebuliser pumps, glass phials, pills and syringes searched at the airport, and victoriously pulling out a multilingual explanatory letter from your consultant, "Ha, I don't need your security checks!"

Beating people who should be way fitter than me up stairs/onto the bus/etc. Can turn you into a smug git though. See also, being the only person not to cough in a concert hall/theatre etc.

There's also the acute awareness of time, and how you might be wasting it. It's a good motivator.

And good-looking physiotherapists, of course. :)
 

Lichen

Well-known member
I am astigmatic (very crooked cornea, not bleeding palms). I found out in my mid-20's; I put my hand over my right eye and couldn'r read any of the ads on the other side of the tube tracks. When I got glasses I had the horrid experience of seeing myself and everyone around me in focus for the first time in my life. I still prefer soft focus and only wear glasses for safety reasons and for viewing distant media.


I also have a hideously mutated big toe nail that grows to form a rank, mushroom coloured talon. It was casued by kicking a barrier on the Northern Line. It will not yield to domestic equipment. I either have it machine-filed by a chiropodist or work on it with garden tools.
 

nomos

Administrator
I've been battling hypochondria for years. Also chronic hyperventilation. Not the smelling-my-lunch/paper-bag type, but habitually breathing in too much and out tool little. It sounds like nothing but it causes sleep and digestive problems as well as muscle tension.

Chronic headaches since I was little, sometime for weeks at a time, until I started seeing a chiropracter a couple of years ago.

Also minor things like astigmatism and a bad ear from standing beside the same speaker stack at a punk club week in and week out as a teenager. If I'm in loud circumstances and someone speaks loudly into that ear it turns into a painfully shrill warble.

My dad was nearly done in by a heart attack brought on by an ulcer combined with idiopathic hypertrophic subaortic stenosis , which is congenital but I've shown no signs yet. The doctors said he'd be in a textbook one day.
 
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nomos

Administrator
infinite thought said:
what about scars?
physical: bone spur above my right eye from the fat end of a flying baseball bat when i was 9. i had a concussion.

emotional: also, PTSD for a period after a massive car wreck. end-over-end a dozen times through a ditch at 90 km/h, according to witnesses. i was briefly amnesiac.
 
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Freakaholic

not just an addiction
I broke my back about 8 years ago, stupidly thinking i was still a kid and the tops of trees could hold me up. Fell three stories into some mud (thankfully) and had a stresss fracture in 3 vertebrae.

The lasting problems: The brace made my back muscles very weak, and for years standing for longer than 5 minutes hurt. I developed bad headaches, muscle aches, and felt that it added to my developing a more "sketchy" or tense attitude.

Noadays, I work out and sit in the sauna to relax teh muscles afterwords. That coupled with this little invention have made life not only bearable, but optimistic.

http://www.theracane.com/

If you have back trouble at all, or jsut feel tense sometimes, it is worth every penny.
 

dHarry

Well-known member
Freakaholic said:
http://www.theracane.com/

If you have back trouble at all, or jsut feel tense sometimes, it is worth every penny.

does having a mullet enhance its effectiveness?
canepose2.gif
;)

but seriously, is it just a plastic curved thing with knobs that press into the muscles? any moving parts? it sounds great, just the thing for my permanently tense and aching lower and middle back, shoulder-blades and neck, given that I can't afford daily massage+osteopathy.
 

Freakaholic

not just an addiction
dHarry said:
does having a mullet enhance its effectiveness?

but seriously, is it just a plastic curved thing with knobs that press into the muscles? any moving parts? it sounds great, just the thing for my permanently tense and aching lower and middle back, shoulder-blades and neck, given that I can't afford daily massage+osteopathy.


its exactly just a curved plastic thing.... it suppose to be specifically designed for yer back and whatnot, to not be able to hurt yerself, etc. but to me, its just like having a professional masseuse that you dont have to tell where the knots are, since they already know.
 

owen

Well-known member
i had to ingest nothing but water and these

elemental_028.jpg


for 10 days last month, which was a curious experience indeed- the best thing by far though was having an entirely free and prescribed diet, and it was terribly functionalist and futuristic- would have been useful if i were in a spaceship, as opposed to a south london bedsit (and getting to drink it in the NFT without incurring the usual wrath about food and drink...)
 
Right. Now you have to scan those bits of you in proper show 'n' tell stylee (people with proper illnesses obviously exempt).

Martin, I want your third nipple by 3 pm, Eden your flat eye by 3.30, Lichen's toenail by 4pm and automaticforthepeople's amnesia by...er...when...?

Owen, you can leave your bowels alone and Freakaholic can carry on playing with his bendy stick.

Class of sick Dissensians 2006 dismissed....
 
D

droid

Guest
LOL... Thanks a lot! My snorting-tea-on-the-keyboard-guffawing antics at that last post now has the whole office viewing me with wary suspicion! :mad:


BTW - I thought I had some health problems before reading this thread, but now Im not so sure... Get well soon people! (those of you who can get well that is...)
 
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