CJ the Curmudgeon

[cjsmith]

I'm beginning to lose patience with a certain category of people. Oh, I'm not proactively rude, but I no longer accept some pronouncements unquestioned.

"I can't swallow pills," someone said to me once. Well, I carefully didn't say, you better not live to be much older. (NB: This person had no dramatic anatomical weirdness. She could swallow food and drink.) Seriously, who lives to middle age without learning to cope with swallowing pills? Heck, who gets to COLLEGE age and hasn't learned to cope with that one? I felt like she was bragging that she was still five years old inside, and a spoiled five at that.

I remember a recent comment in a friend's journal about not dealing well with needles. I can relate. I used to faint -- no kidding here, FAINT -- at the sight of needles in use. I now inject myself daily. I don't LIKE it, don't get me wrong, but I DO it. There are certain special-snowflake attributes that I simply no longer have the luxury of keeping.

"Restrictive diets don't work for me," said a coworker of mine at lunch today, referring to what I don't eat on the Lyme/antibiotic/yeast-control diet. And this time, I spoke up.

"They don't?" I said. Like you're so special, I didn't say, that if you got this disease you would somehow be above managing it. "What if you knew that eating ice cream would make you pretty sick?" I asked instead. "What if you knew it would land you in the hospital, what then? Where's the line?"

He readily rephrased, saying he has no strong motivation to lose weight; I agreed that I could totally understand that, and we rambled off on side topics.

I think I'm beginning to see that in some cases, "special snowflake" translates to "I've been very lucky in certain ways and I take it for granted." I don't have nearly as much patience with that as I once had.

Bad me, for having little patience? Maybe, but y'know, I'm not at all sure of that.

Comments

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

I think I'm beginning to see that in some cases, "special snowflake" translates to "I've been very lucky in certain ways and I take it for granted."

i think you nailed that one.

*hugs*

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to use a shorthand for that, too. Here it is: "Young." :-P

[airporter.livejournal.com]

I don't have nearly as much patience with that as I once had.

And you should because? Seriously, it's not your job to coddle people through whatever psychoses they've managed to develop around swallowing pills, eating, or exercising their flabby bodies. Indeed, given what you've undergone to keep your energy and spirit up at times, you should be getting a baseball bat (nerf anyway) out to smack them with. The inevitability of decay is there and they'll see it eventually.

I'm not sure whether the gent you were conversing with gets points for readily rephrasing (depends on the content and tone) but I suspect you gave him the credit and kudos for that.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how different it seems to me when the person phrases it as an individual choice. "I have no strong motivation to lose weight" is his choice and honestly none of my business. "I would rather die of a heart attack at age fifty than swim every day" is my own phrasing, and while it's a bit melodramatic, again it's a choice I'm taking responsibility for. But "I can't" when there's no limiting factor... what possesses a person to limit his choices and his life that way? And then what benefit is gleaned from being PROUD of it?

[mapache]

Well, I've yet to figure out how the hell other people manage to swallow pills. My throat seems very adamant about not admitting anything that has been not chewed. I keep trying every few years, with the result always being either swallowing a glass or two of water and still having an increasingly-soggy pill in my mouth, or the occasional pill hacked out at high velocity. Thus, I find out if there is some kind of magical time delay thing going on, have yet to see the answer be yes, and just chew the damn things.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh yuck! Some of those things taste NASTY when chewed. Diphenhydramine, for example. *shudder*

I find that if I get a pill far enough back in my throat with -- this is key -- a big enough gulp of liquid, it works best. But then, I'm totally happy scarfing down big swallows of stuff. I think my throat just (metaphorically) throws up its hands and says "we'll let the stomach try to deal with THIS mess." And now my efforts to visualize this image are making my brain segfault. :-)

[brooksmoses]

Argh, indeed. Perhaps we need to average out; I mostly just swallow them dry -- well, okay, with a little bit of saliva for lubricant. (This rather disturbs suzimoses if she sees me doing it.)

Actually, I wonder if that might help, if you haven't tried that. I have problems when I have too much water, as the pills seem to never be in the part of the gulp of water that gets swallowed.

(Oh, and right; I forgot my vitamins this morning. Should take those. They seem to help a little against depression, though not nearly so much as they do lilairen. [Extreme sensitivity to lack of B vitamins, she has.])

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

ps: And now I feel really bad for being so insulting up there in paragraph two. I apologize! :-( That gal gave me the impression she hadn't much bothered to try, but that was an impression; I admit I totally judged without knowing.

[moriamerri.livejournal.com]

If you are interested, write to me (I think LJ can forward to me?) and ask about methods for learning to swallow pills. I have some collected notes on this subject written by parents of autistic kids who have used various methods. There are different approaches. One that seems sorta popular is to start with TEENY things and swallow them for a good long while and VERY SLOWLY increase size. Then again, maybe this is all more to the same, and won't work for you.

I'm a bit "special" on the pill thing -- I can swallow them but it took me YEARS and YEARS to do it without a lot of care. I still have to think about it once in a while. (Note: for capsules, tilt head forward, for pills tilt head back.) And I still REALLY don't like big pills. Will go out of my way to find smaller version, because the big honking pills are adequately unpleasant that I have to be REEEALLY motivated to take 'em.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

Applesauce can help.
Some folks, strangely enough, find that a bite of bread or something helps.
Big swigs of water are good too.

Try different things to see what helps, good luck with it.

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

I find that something really thick and creamy taken at the same time helps. I use Ensure, which I drink for breakfast anyway. I could imagine a thick milkshake would also help. But water or juice or anything with a low viscosity it about as good as using nothing.

[greendalek.livejournal.com]

*whistles in quiet awe, applauds softly*

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Aw shucks. *digs big toe into the floor, studiously looking at it*

[ame-chan.livejournal.com]

Y'know... it's funny. I was just talking to Sorcha (my daughter) about that. I'm considering going back to school and entering a nursing program and you know, I am kind of squicky about blood and guts and needles and "squishy stuff" in general. And she asked about that. My answer to her was, "Well, I think probably everyone is to start - and you learn to deal with it. I don't think anyone really starts out well equipped to deal with needles or poop or bleeding or vomit or squishiness. I think you either deal because it's what you have to deal with to do what you want to do, or you don't, and you don't do that thing."

Sometimes you have to sit down and actually *decide* you aren't going to be a special snowflake about something, even if you really don't like it.

Restrictive diets are really easy to say you won't eat, until you need to eat a restrictive diet. It's easy to be casual about things until eating the WRONG thing will kill you/make you sick/cause you pain, etc. And then? You just have to suck it up. Sure I miss peanut butter toast. Sure I miss sugared pecans in my salad. Guess what? I'd miss breathing more!!

I am with you on the little patience.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

Sometimes you have to sit down and actually *decide* you aren't going to be a special snowflake about something, even if you really don't like it.

Yes.

This.

I know someone who carries on about having a weak stomach and being easily sickened by smells. I used to be that way. And then I wanted to pass college biology. And I got over it.

It's a matter of sucking it up and dealing, which is for me one of the first measures of whether someone is a Grown Up or not.

[roseembolism.livejournal.com]

People can adapt to a lot, with sufficient motivation. For instance, I was so clumsy, I was sure that putting contact lenses in would damage my eye, but I learned to do it properly. Likewise, I managed with practice to transition from barely controlled hysteria at taking shots, to being able to calmly deal even with palette shots...years of needed work on my teeth helped with that one.

There can be physical/emotional barriers to dealing with things, but people can often find ways around them. The trick is knowing when it's an actual limitation, and not a psychological crutch.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, motivation is key. It took me nearly a month to be able to put contact lenses in in under ten minutes per eye. I know some people learn it more easily and more quickly, but by golly, I wanted to be able to wear those things.

My problem with needles didn't go away fast, either. It's not completely gone. But it's way better, after I've had a lot of motivation.

[brooksmoses]

That's rather interesting, how much "restrictive diets" have gotten associated with losing weight, such that it was your coworker's implied assumption (by which I mean not what he assumed you meant, but what a listener would be expected to assume) even in a context where you were clearly talking about an entirely different sort of basis for the diet.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I guess there are still a lot more people out there who want to lose weight than people who are made physically sick by specific foods. That's... maybe not such a bad thing, now that I think about it. It's nice when people don't get sick eating things! :-)

[allanh.livejournal.com]

Thanks to the truly wonderful conversation we had over dinner a few weeks ago, I've been doing quite a bit of Deep Thinking about chronic illness, and dealing with.

I now believe that coping with chronic illness - *any* kind of chronic illness - tends to reduce one's tolerance for absolute statements.

The "special snowflake" also translates to "I haven't had this kind of issue myself, so I am indirectly suggesting that it's not a problem for you."

First example that comes to mind is a date who once told me that all of my cat allergies were psychosomatic, because he'd never had a cat allergy in his life. It's one of the few times in my life I've actually walked out in the middle of a date.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I now believe that coping with chronic illness - *any* kind of chronic illness - tends to reduce one's tolerance for absolute statements.

That could be. Particularly if the absolute statements are about a topic deeply affected by that illness.

The "special snowflake" also translates to "I haven't had this kind of issue myself, so I am indirectly suggesting that it's not a problem for you."

And here I wonder to what extent I myself am doing exactly that. Up in paragraph two I derided someone who "couldn't" swallow pills -- and yeah, I'm pretty sure that in her case she hadn't much made an effort -- but lo, one of my early commenters is someone who has great difficulty swallowing pills whole. (Granted, he does what he has to do to get the job done, which I think puts him in a different category than that lady.) Do I blithely wave off people's difficulties because I myself haven't had them? Probably, sometimes. It's probably human nature. (But I also think my main point is valid. "Can't" is NOT always "can't", and sometimes "can't" is just a way of advertising how damned lucky you are that you haven't had to.)

[kimatha.livejournal.com]

I hear you.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

You are cordially invited to join the Curmudgeonly Old Farts Society, which consists of me so far because I just made it up.

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

I remember a recent comment in a friend's journal about not dealing well with needles

That was probably me.

Yep. I don't do needles. Why? A very traumatic experience as a young child. I still have nightmares. Do I do shots? Yep. Too damn many in my opinion. But I do, at least the needed and necessary ones. I just have my anxiety attack, turn my head and cuss out the person who's giving it to me (I warn them first). I'm a lot better than I was as a child when it took 3 adults to hold me down to get a necessary shot. So why haven't I gotten the latest recommended shot? 'Cause the pain hasn't gotten to the point of where I'm willing to overcome my anxiety. It may get there, and if it does, I'll grit my teeth, cuss out the doctor (like I did when he fixed my ingrown toenail), and get the shot. But in the mean time I'll take my advil, and ice it down, and wait. I may get lucky.

Re: Pill Swallowing.

I know LOTS of adults who cannot swallow pills. Their gag response is too strong. My FIL being one of them. His solution? Chew 'em up. Bleh. My Grandfather was another. All of his pills had to be crushed first. And he took about 30 pills a day to stay alive. This isn't something that is uncommon.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I hear ya. O'course, you (and your grandfather) got the job done, too, in stark contrast to some folk. Perhaps they can't swallow pills whole, but they can take medication in pill form; you don't do needles happily, but will if you absolutely must. We all have tradeoffs -- in some cases (like yours) far more painful than in other cases -- and the fact that you get shots shows that your life hasn't been all roses and song, allowing you to avoid something you strongly dislike.

There are times I wish my life had been all roses and song, I totally admit. :-/ Other times I think having to face some of these things has made me stronger.

Shorthand...

[elflet.livejournal.com]

When someone says 'I can't...", I apply a mental shorthand I learned at Outward Bound: "can't" == "choose not to"

I won't say it's 100% accurate, since I know some folks with physical disabilities that represent a true "can't".

[excessor.livejournal.com]

I never saw myself as a “special snowflake” (what a wonderful term) but I can tell you that being around someone who has a major chronic illness makes you realize how unspecial you are.

I never a had a problem taking pills, but I never liked them, either. Until I watched my best friend take his anti-AIDS medicines: 22 pills. He just shoveled a handful into his mouth and downed it with a glass of wine. (I suppose now isn't the time to talk about alcoholism, is it?) I routinely take four or five vitamins at once and think nothing of it.

I once shared an office with a woman who'd been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in her mid-20s. She walked with a cane and occasionally had to be in a wheelchair. Her (old world, unemotional, diapproving) father thought she was just pretending. It was sick.

After having lost a bunch of weight myself, I find myself translating “I can't lose weight” to “I'm not trying hard enough to lose weight,” with the knowledge that what we culturally believe to be true about losing weight is often completely wrong. I give people a pass and only try to educate when they truly ask. Unless I'm in a bad mood, when suddenly I begin to perform the mental equivalent of piercing voodoo dolls with red-hot pins.

But that's just me.

[inflectionpoint.livejournal.com]

Yup!

I useta worry about things a lot more. Then I worked with a guy who had post polio - he had one hand and one claw. He got around in a scooter and could walk three steps on sticks on a good day. He made me realise I could get a lot more out of what I had, and that I should just get ON with it, whatever it was.

And yeah... I saw a wonderful shrink for about a year and a half, and she mentioned that she was very careful of her health. And didn't say more than that. And then I noticed I'd never seen her stand for more than a few minutes and I'd never seen her walk more than a few steps - MS. And she found a way to get on with life, even though it certainly isn't what she might have wanted.

Some physical problems are very very real. I have a lot of respect for the people who live with them and have made lives. I want to learn that ability.

[sharya.livejournal.com]

Your term "special snowflake" is what I like to call "terminal uniqueness". It also tends to show up in phrases like "you can't imagine...", tends to go with drama-queen types, and accompanies those who are perpetual victims.

I hear you though, I don't have much patience for them either.

[chinders.livejournal.com]

Linguistically speaking, I'd say that most people use a few different "can't"s. There's the "can't" of "no seriously, I can't swim" the "can't" that's shorthand for "I'm unable to under the pre-assumed restrictions, such as time, pressure, etc" and there's the "can't" of "I would find that very difficult to deal with," which is, I think, most of what's being talked about here.

In the conversation "I'm diabetic and have to have daily insulin injections" "Oh, I just can't deal with needles!" I would argue that the second person is most likely actually trying to communicate "I can't imagine doing that, needles are very difficult for me to deal with" and doesn't actually mean to communicate "If I was in your position I would rather die than have those injections". Yes, this overlap in effective meanings is annoying, particularly to those who actually have to make the latter choice. But I don't think it's malicious or even overly insensitive in most cases, (I'm prepared to be proven wrong in replies, though.) I think it's just a quirk of the use of implicature associated with this word in our language.

That said, there are insufferable people out there who plain refuse to deal with life. There are also people who heavily object to certain aspects of life for various reasons, and the response doesn't have to be a binary choice between "grow up, suck it up & deal" and "I'm a special snowflake!" Sometimes it does, in medical instances in particular, but there are many cases where finding a creative way around the problem rather than having to "grow up" one's way *through* it is much more productive for everyone involved.

Cathy, who is a linguistics nerd.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I would argue that the second person is most likely actually trying to communicate "I can't imagine doing that, needles are very difficult for me to deal with" and doesn't actually mean to communicate "If I was in your position I would rather die than have those injections".

Yes, I suspect you've hit the nail on the head here. The second person may even be trying to communicate sympathy or empathy by way of saying "wow, needles are a toughie". Instead of that message, I hear "wow, I haven't been faced with anything half that hard", and my gut reaction is along the lines of "well thanks for rubbing my nose in it."

I may grow more patience again as I get older and get more used to the fact that I will never be truly healthy. It's possible my current curmudgeonliness is based mainly in frustration.

[msmichelle.livejournal.com]

Needles were my thing too...then I started giving plasma in college and it became an irregular source of income. I gave blood a few times after that too. After becoming prego, fugetabut anyone caring about needle phobia.
My eight years younger sister was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 11. I'd watch her routine and feel such pity for her. I am ashamed of my past inmature feelings b/c of her. I feel like she was unlucky in the big sis department, at times.

I know someone who has those annoying attributes you describe...attributes that seem egregious on a 40-something woman, and some days it's easier to bite my tongue be polite company and all. But, SOME DAYS?! Ugh.

Devil's Advocate

[katestine.livejournal.com]

Y'sure this wasn't a socially awkward way of paying you a compliment?

Re: Devil's Advocate

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh, it could be. I'm just... a little hair-triggered about some of this stuff. It's all too easy for me to hear the subtext "Well I'VE never faced anything HARD like lesser mortals do" (which is probably, in the limited context of the conversation, true, even if not at all the intended message) rather than "Oh man, I can't imagine what that is putting you through" (which is probably also, in the conversational context, true).

[moriamerri.livejournal.com]

any of y'all who found this conversation interesting and relevant may also want to read
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2008/06/mythbusting-disability-and-fear.html#disqus_thread

and the blog this is an entry of is also very worthwhile.....