Notices by Everyone Deserves Nice Things (suzaneraslan@anticapitalist.party), page 4

@stackingstones Wow, you know, I just imagined what it would be like if, for instance, you had someone with a broken leg, and the treatment is:

• Don't walk on it
• Keep it elevated
• We're going to put this very hard, impossible to move in metal brace that severely limits your mobility
• You need to take these drugs for pain
• You will have to do this for months

and DIDN'T TELL YOU WHAT WAS GOING ON.

@stackingstones This, for me, was something that required me actually going through reading a lot about grief counseling and basically counseling myself through the grieving process.

Like, why isn't grief counseling an *automatic* therapy that is suggested for late diagnosed adults? There is so much of our past that suddenly comes into sharp relief when we realize what was going on the whole time. The might've beens can be rough.

@stackingstones This really goes back, in the end, to "assume competence."

Look, yes, my brain is weird, but just as you would explain to me a broken bone or a thyroid issue, or any other physical condition, *explain my brain condition to me.* I'm not incapable of comprehension and *active participation in my treatment* just because this thing is brain related!

@stackingstones Right, but you were also so informed going in. Imagine being, I don't know, 22 to 25-years-old, which a lot of people who have somehow pushed through before a diagnosis through sheer hell are when they get out from under parents controlling their medical stuff for the first time.

Actually, please don't imagine that, because I did, and now I want to be a human shield for you.

@stackingstones And in your case, presenting it as, "You have this comorbidity, we can start low dose medication, *if you would like to try it*, and we will be here to support you through that experience and pull you out at the first indication that this is destructive, or hold your hand through the dark until it gets better," but why would anyone want to spin the wheel when you know you have to go it alone?!

@stackingstones YES! There has to be some humility among doctors, and support networks in place where it's like, "Is this working? No? Is it making it worse? Yes? Ok, then maybe the issue is *not* that you're intransigent, maybe it's that we need to stop the therapy ASAP and reevaluate, not just persevere until you're beaten down."

@stackingstones And this is for a medication that's not even neuroactive! It affects hormones, so may have cognitive and mood effects, but I was, *gasp*, told what those might be, what to expect as normal, what was *not* normal, and how and when to take it to mitigate that.

No one has EVER done that for me with highly addictive psychoactive drugs. Never once.

@stackingstones I compare this to my dermatologist who gave me pills for mild acne, which is a cosmetic issue:

• required blood work to make sure I didn't have any latent issues that would make this dangerous for me
• laid out the side effects of the pills
• told me how long it would take to see results, and *what to expect in the interim*
• follow up call weekly for 4 weeks, and in persons 2, 4, and 12 weeks after starting pills

@stackingstones Instead, we're barely looked at as we're given a prescription, and we're told how to take it, and *maybe* told that it takes awhile to work, and then here we are, getting worse, or feeling no relief, and thinking we just have to persevere through terror.

@stackingstones If people were prepared out of the gate with, "Brains are extremely complex. What works for one person with this condition may not work for you, or may make it worse, but we're going to try. I'm here for you and will check on you every few days at first. If you have an adverse reaction, we'll stop this line of therapy as quickly as is safe and try something else," it would make a WORLD of difference.

@stackingstones Doctors are *not* pharmacologists, and their knowledge of medication is severely influenced and limited by pharmaceutical companies trying to sell them a wonder drug. If drug A doesn't work, or you have a bad reaction to it, the "data" (which we now know is often cooked or extremely limited but presented as both deep and broad) indicates that it should. So docs keep writing the scrip and imply you're "difficult."

@stackingstones Wow, this was a good post by this person, thank you for sharing. It brought something to my attention that I don't think was intended, but that is really important to address and I think is the reason for a lot of anti-med sentiment: there is little to no preparation or support for people who have neurological disorders and especially co-morbidities to talk about how the first thing might not work or even be bad.

@garbados Awww, thanks! When I’ve finished the first draft (which, you know, I’ve been working on for 16 months... 🤦🏼♀️), I’ll start sharing some second draft stuff.

@anne Yeah, that makes sense. It seems like it's always, "Look at this happy lesbian couple we don't actually know how to write. Kill one off so the other one is sad," and this is... not that, at all. She's very well developed and doesn't actually have a girlfriend, LOL.

I don't want to be the white lady who has a non-white character die of "Needing to die to advance the plot disease," but I also don't want to fall into the "Kill Your Gays" trope.

Or does it only qualify as the trope if there's only one or two queer characters and you kill them off? Like, if the majority are queer, am I not falling into it?

Let's say you're writing a book, and you need for one of your more important characters to die to be the catalyst for semi-non-violent protests to turn into revolution.

Let's say you knew who this would be when you started writing, but then you realized that you'd be killing off a gay character.

Then you realized that somehow the only non-queer characters in the entire book were non-white (there are non-white queer characters, too).

What do I, er, you do?

@paeneultima I’m actually more for letting everyone else in jail go and just having a special holding pen for corrupt, rich, white, cishet motherfuckers who have ruined the lives of Black, brown, trans, queer, and poor people.

Or just strip them of all of their assets (and I mean ALL— no good old boys club contact) and let *them* pull themselves up by their bootstraps.